Pray to Begin
Ask — that the God who taught Paul to count “all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus” would give you, this hour, a fresh sight of that surpassing worth; ask that Christ Himself, and not merely truths about Him, would be the aim of your reading.
Confess — every quiet way you still lean on your own record — your goodness, your discipline, your religion — to feel secure before God; lay those confidences down, and come to receive a righteousness you could never earn, “the righteousness from God on the basis of faith.”
Give thanks — that the Christian life is not a treadmill of proving yourself but a race with a settled prize ahead, run by one who has “taken hold” of you first; thank Him that He will finish what He began, and ask for grace to press on.
Today’s Passage: Philippians 3
Paul has been urging joy, and now he says it plainly: “rejoice in the Lord.” But joy has enemies, and he names them at once — teachers he calls “dogs” and “mutilators of the flesh,” men who were pressing circumcision on Gentile believers as though law-keeping could add to Christ. Against them Paul sets the true mark of God’s people: those “who put no confidence in the flesh.” Then, remarkably, he turns the argument on himself. If confidence in religious pedigree could save anyone, it would save Paul — and he lays out his flawless credentials, a résumé no rival could match. And in the very next breath he tears the whole page up: “whatever was gain to me I count as loss for the sake of Christ.” Everything he once tallied in the profit column he now files under loss, even “rubbish,” for one surpassing gain — to know Christ, to be found in Him clothed not in his own righteousness but in the righteousness that comes “through faith.” From there the chapter becomes a runner’s confession: Paul has not arrived, but he presses on, forgetting what lies behind, straining toward the prize of God’s heavenly calling. He closes with tears over those “whose god is their belly” and with hope for those whose true home is elsewhere: “our citizenship is in heaven,” from which a Savior will come to transform our lowly bodies into the likeness of His own glorious body.
As you read, hold this: Whatever was gain to him, Paul counts as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ — trading every claim of his own righteousness for the righteousness that comes through faith, and straining forward to the resurrection prize.
Context The world of Philippians 3
Written from prison, radiant with joy. Paul writes to the Philippians as a prisoner (1:13), most likely from Rome around A.D. 60–62. It is worth remembering that as chapter 3 soars into talk of knowing Christ, resurrection power, and heavenly citizenship, the man behind the words is in chains. His confidence does not float on comfortable circumstances; it is anchored in a Person he has come to treasure above his own freedom.
A church he loved, and a threat he feared. Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia, proud of its citizenship and its ties to Rome. The believers there were dear to Paul — the church that first received him in Europe (Acts 16). But a recurring danger shadowed the early Gentile churches: teachers, often called Judaizers, who insisted that faith in Christ was not enough, that Gentile converts must also be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be truly right with God. Paul’s sharp words in verse 2 are aimed squarely at them.
“The circumcision” turned inside out. In a stinging reversal, Paul takes the very language his opponents prized. They called the uncircumcised Gentiles “dogs”; Paul flings the word back at the false teachers. They boasted in circumcision; Paul says “it is we who are the circumcision” — the true covenant people are those who “worship by the Spirit of God” and “put no confidence in the flesh.” The mark of belonging to God was never a matter of the knife but of the heart.
A runner in a colony of citizens. Two everyday pictures from the Greco-Roman world shape the chapter’s second half. First, the athlete: Paul imagines a runner in the stadium, eyes fixed ahead, “straining toward what is ahead” toward the prize. Second, the colony: Philippians knew exactly what it meant to be citizens of a distant mother-city while living far from it, ordering their whole life by Rome though they had never seen it. Paul lifts that civic pride into the heavens — “our citizenship is in heaven” — and reframes the believer as a colonist of another country, awaiting the King who will come from home.
Philippians 3:1–3 (BSB)
¹ Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. ² Watch out for those dogs, those workers of evil, those mutilators of the flesh! ³ For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—
Paul begins on the note that gives this whole letter its name: “rejoice in the Lord.” But he immediately shows that joy is not naïve — it must be guarded. Three times over, with rising force, he warns against a group of teachers: “those dogs, those workers of evil, those mutilators of the flesh.” The words are deliberately jarring. In the ancient world dog was a term of contempt Jews sometimes used for Gentiles; Paul turns it on those who would burden Gentile believers with the law. Mutilators of the flesh is a bitter play on words — the Greek for circumcision (peritomē) is twisted into mutilation (katatomē, a mere cutting). Where the ritual is trusted to make a person right with God, Paul says, it is no longer covenant sign but self-harm. Then comes the great reversal: “it is we who are the circumcision” — not those who bear a mark in the body, but those marked by three things Paul lists like a portrait of authentic faith. We “worship by the Spirit of God” — true worship is Spirit-born, not ritual-driven. We “glory in Christ Jesus” — our boast is a Person, not a performance. And we “put no confidence in the flesh” — we rest nothing of our standing before God on our own credentials. That last phrase becomes the hinge of the entire chapter, and Paul is about to prove he has earned the right to say it.
Philippians 3:4–6 (BSB)
⁴ though I myself could have such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to righteousness in the law, faultless.
Before Paul asks anyone to lay down their religious confidence, he shows that he is not asking from a place of weakness. He was not a man who found the law too hard and gave up; he was a man who kept it magnificently and walked away anyway. So he opens his ledger. Four of his credentials were his by birth: circumcised on the eighth day — exactly as the law prescribed, no late convert; of the people of Israel — a true son of the covenant nation; of the tribe of Benjamin — the tribe that gave Israel its first king and stayed loyal to David’s line; a Hebrew of Hebrews — Hebrew-speaking, Hebrew-raised, no compromise with the surrounding culture. Three more he achieved by his own effort and zeal: as to the law, a Pharisee — a member of the strictest party, devoted to obedience down to the smallest detail; as to zeal, persecuting the church — so fervent for his ancestral faith that he hunted down the followers of Jesus; and, most staggering, as to righteousness in the law, faultless — measured by external law-keeping, no one could lay a charge against him. This is not false modesty inverted; it is the strongest possible case for confidence in the flesh, built by the best possible candidate. Which makes what he says next all the more shattering.
Philippians 3:7–9 (BSB)
⁷ But whatever was gain to me I count as loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God on the basis of faith.
Word study "Rubbish" — skybalon (Philippians 3:8)
Greek: σκύβαλον (skybalon), pronounced SKOO-bal-on. Strong’s G4657.
This is one of the bluntest words in Paul’s vocabulary, and translators have long felt its edge. Skybalon meant the refuse a person throws away — table scraps, kitchen leavings, the filth swept out of a house — and it was also a common word for dung, human or animal waste. Older English versions softened it to “dung”; the BSB reads “rubbish.” Either way, the force is deliberately crude: Paul takes the very things he had just listed as his proudest assets — pedigree, zeal, spotless law-keeping — and says that beside Christ they belong on the refuse heap. Notice he does not merely call them worthless, as though they were neutral. Once they became rivals to Christ, once they were trusted to secure his standing before God, they became actively repellent, something to be discarded with disgust. The shock is intentional. Religion done well is the hardest thing in the world to let go of, because it feels like gain. Paul says: not gain — garbage, if it stands between you and knowing Christ. And observe why he throws it out — “that I may gain Christ.” The word for rubbish is chosen precisely to measure the distance between what he lost and what he found.
Word study "Righteousness" — dikaiosynē (Philippians 3:9)
Greek: δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē), pronounced dee-kai-oh-SOO-nay. Strong’s G1343.
Dikaiosynē is the great word for being right — right with God, in a right standing, acquitted and accepted. The question that has driven every anxious conscience is how a person comes to possess it, and verse 9 sets two ways sharply against each other. There is “my own righteousness from the law” — a rightness I generate myself by my obedience, the kind Paul had built up over a lifetime and just called rubbish. And there is “the righteousness from God on the basis of faith” — a rightness that originates in God, is credited to me as a gift, and is received not by achieving but by trusting. The two prepositions carry the whole gospel: righteousness from the law is earned; righteousness from God is given. Paul’s dearest wish is not to stand at the judgment clothed in a record he manufactured, but to be “found in Him” — hidden inside Christ, wearing a righteousness that is not his own. This is the charter of the entire Christian faith: we are accepted before God not by what we do for Him but by what He has done for us, laid hold of through faith. Every claim of our own performance is set down; the righteousness that saves is a robe we are given, never a wage we are paid.
Here the ledger is torn in two. “Whatever was gain to me” — every entry in that impressive column of verses 5 and 6 — “I count as loss for the sake of Christ.” The language is deliberately commercial: Paul takes items from the profit side and moves them, one by one, to the loss side. Then he presses even further: not merely his religious assets but “all things” he now counts as loss “compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” And to make sure no one mistakes this for polite exaggeration, he reaches for that jarring word — skybalon (SKOO-bal-on) — “I consider them rubbish.” Refuse. Waste to be thrown out. And note that Paul does not despise these things because they were bad in themselves; his heritage was a genuine gift of God. He despises them only as rivals — the moment they competed with Christ for the trust of his heart, they became garbage. Why such violence toward his own goodness? “That I may gain Christ and be found in Him.” Here is the exchange at the center of the gospel: Paul lets go of a righteousness he built — dikaiosynē (dee-kai-oh-SOO-nay) “from the law” — in order to receive a righteousness he could never build, “the righteousness from God on the basis of faith.” To be found in Him is to stand before God clothed not in one’s own record but in Christ’s. This is not Paul lowering the bar because the law was too hard; it is Paul, the man who kept the law faultlessly, testifying that even a flawless record is the wrong currency. The only righteousness that counts before God is the one He gives to faith.
Philippians 3:10–11 (BSB)
¹⁰ I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Word study "To know" — ginōskō (Philippians 3:8, 10)
Greek: γινώσκω (ginōskō), pronounced ghin-OH-skoh; noun γνῶσις (gnōsis), GNOH-sis. Strong’s G1097 / G1108.
When Paul says he counts everything loss for “the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ” (v. 8) and that his one desire is “to know Christ” (v. 10), the word he uses is not the language of cool information. Ginōskō — and its noun gnōsis — is the Bible’s word for knowing by relationship and experience, not merely by facts. It is the word the Greek Old Testament uses when it says a husband knew his wife, the knowledge of intimate, personal union. Paul is not saying he wants to know about Christ, the way a scholar knows a subject; he already knew the Scriptures inside out. He is saying he wants to know Christ Himself — to experience His resurrection power at work, to share the fellowship of His sufferings, to be so joined to Him that even Christ’s death shapes the pattern of his own life. This is why the credentials had to go: a résumé can make you impressive, but it cannot make you intimate. And notice the direction of the knowing — it presses toward the future, “to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” To know Christ now in the power of His rising is the down payment; to be raised with Him at the last is the whole inheritance. The aim of the Christian life, stripped to one line, is here: not to master information about God, but to know Him.
Now Paul tells us what he was reaching for when he threw everything else away. His single, consuming aim is “to know Christ” — ginōskō (ghin-OH-skoh), the knowing of deep personal union, not mere acquaintance. And he unfolds that knowing in three movements that belong together. First, “the power of His resurrection” — the same life that raised Jesus from the tomb, now at work in the believer, breaking the grip of sin and death. Second, “the fellowship of His sufferings” — a startling desire, that to truly know Christ is also to share what He shared, to be drawn into His path of costly love rather than around it. Third, “being conformed to Him in His death” — the daily dying to self that lets the life of Christ come through. Paul refuses to split these apart, as though we could have Easter power without Good Friday fellowship. The road to knowing the risen Christ runs through the cross-shaped life. And it all leans forward: “and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” That word somehow is not doubt about whether he will be raised — Paul is certain of the resurrection — but humility about the road, a refusal to presume he has already arrived. Which is exactly where the next verses go.
Philippians 3:12–16 (BSB)
¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ All of us who are mature should embrace this point of view. And if you think differently about some issue, God will reveal this to you as well. ¹⁶ Nevertheless, we must live up to what we have already attained.
Word study "Press on / pursue" — diōkō (Philippians 3:12, 14)
Greek: διώκω (diōkō), pronounced dee-OH-koh. Strong’s G1377.
Diōkō is a word of hot pursuit — to chase after something with everything in you, to run something down. And here it hides a quiet, astonishing testimony. It is the very same verb Paul used a few lines earlier, in verse 6, when he described his old life: “as to zeal, persecuting the church.” The Greek for persecuting there is diōkō — the identical word now translated “press on.” Once Paul’s fierce, driving energy was aimed at hunting down Christians to destroy them. That energy has not been extinguished by grace; it has been re-aimed. The same man who once pursued the church now pursues Christ, chasing after the One who first chased him down on the Damascus road — “that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” The picture is a runner in the stadium, body stretched forward over the finish line, “straining toward what is ahead.” Grace does not make a person passive; it redirects the whole force of a life toward a new prize. And notice the order that keeps the running from becoming anxious striving: Christ took hold of Paul first. The pursuit is a response, not a bid to earn what is already secured.
Lest anyone imagine that a man who speaks of resurrection power has already crossed the finish line, Paul plants his feet firmly in the not yet: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect.” The apostle who wrote half the New Testament refuses the language of arrival. Instead he “presses on” — diōkō (dee-OH-koh), the verb of full-out pursuit — “to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” Everything in the Christian life hangs on that order: Christ laid hold of Paul first, on the Damascus road, and now Paul runs to lay hold of all that Christ has secured for him. He captures it in one athletic image: “one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” Forgetting what is behind does not mean amnesia; it means refusing to let the past — whether old failures that accuse or old achievements that flatter — set the terms of the present. The runner does not glance over his shoulder. He strains forward, muscles taut, eyes on “the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.” Then Paul widens the invitation: “all of us who are mature should embrace this point of view.” Maturity, it turns out, is not the sense that you have made it, but the honest, forward-leaning humility of the runner still in the race. And he adds a gracious patience — where believers still see some things differently, “God will reveal this to you as well” — provided we “live up to what we have already attained.” Keep running in the light you have.
Philippians 3:17–19 (BSB)
¹⁷ Join one another in following my example, brothers, and carefully observe those who walk according to the pattern we set for you. ¹⁸ For as I have often told you before, and now say again even with tears: Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. ¹⁹ Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.
Paul’s confidence is never proud isolation; he points to a shared way of life. “Join one another in following my example” — not because Paul is flawless (he just insisted he has not arrived), but because his life is visibly pointed the right direction, pressing on toward Christ, and such patterns are meant to be watched and imitated. The Christian life is learned, in part, by “carefully observ[ing]” those who walk it well. But there is a rival pattern, and Paul cannot speak of it dry-eyed: “as I have often told you before, and now say again even with tears: Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” Notice the emotion. Paul does not sneer at those who oppose the gospel; he weeps over them. Then he diagnoses them in four swift, sobering strokes. “Their end is destruction” — the road they are on has a real destination. “Their god is their belly” — their appetites rule them; whatever they crave has become the thing they serve. “Their glory is in their shame” — they boast in the very things that ought to humble them, calling good what God calls ruin. And the root of it all: “their minds are set on earthly things.” Here is the great divide of the whole chapter. It is finally a question of what the mind is fixed on — the perishing things of earth, or the risen Christ. Everything Paul has said about counting his credentials as loss comes down to this reorientation of the mind’s deepest attention. And it sets up the glorious contrast of the final two verses.
Philippians 3:20–21 (BSB)
²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who, by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself, will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.
Word study "Citizenship" — politeuma (Philippians 3:20)
Greek: πολίτευμα (politeuma), pronounced pol-EE-tyoo-mah. Strong’s G4175.
Paul could not have chosen a word more perfectly aimed at his readers. Philippi was a Roman colony — a settlement of Roman citizens planted far from Rome, granted the proud legal status of the mother-city. The Philippians ordered their whole civic life by Rome though most had never set foot there; their laws, their dress, their loyalties, their identity all came from a capital hundreds of miles away. Politeuma is the word for exactly that — a commonwealth, a state, the community whose citizen you are and whose life governs yours. Paul takes this civic pride the Philippians knew in their bones and lifts it heavenward: “our citizenship is in heaven.” The believer is a colonist of another country, living faithfully in this world while belonging fundamentally to another — the very opposite of those whose “minds are set on earthly things” (v. 19). And citizenship carries expectation: a Roman colony awaited the visits and protection of its emperor. So Paul writes that we “eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” The word Savior was a title the Roman world lavished on Caesar; Paul quietly gives it to Jesus alone. Our true King will come from our true home — and He will not leave us as we are.
Against the downward pull of minds “set on earthly things,” Paul lifts his readers’ eyes to their true address: “our citizenship is in heaven.” The word is politeuma (pol-EE-tyoo-mah), and to a Roman colony like Philippi it landed with unmistakable force — you already know what it is to belong to a capital you have never seen, to live by its laws in a far country. That, Paul says, is the Christian’s real status: a colonist of heaven, resident on earth. And such citizens live in expectation: “we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” The verb strains forward like the runner of verse 13 — this is not idle waiting but leaning, longing hope. And the hope is gloriously physical. Christ will “transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.” The word lowly is honest — our present bodies grow tired, sicken, and die; there is nothing to romanticize. But they are not the end of the story. By the same omnipotent “power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself,” the risen Christ will remake these frail frames into the likeness of His own resurrection body — imperishable, radiant, deathless. This is where the whole chapter has been running. Paul threw his credentials on the refuse heap to know Christ and the power of His resurrection (v. 10); here that power reaches its final object — our very bodies, raised and glorified. The prize at the end of the race is not an idea. It is Christ Himself, and life with Him in a body that can never die.
Study notes Going deeper
Righteousness given, not earned — the heart of the gospel. The center of this chapter, and of the Christian faith, is the exchange Paul names in verse 9: he lays down “my own righteousness from the law” to receive “the righteousness from God on the basis of faith.” This is not a corner of Paul’s thought; it is the drumbeat of his letters. To the Galatians, wrestling with the very same pressure to add law-keeping to faith, he wrote it as plainly as it can be said:
"know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified." Galatians 2:16 (BSB)
Notice what this does not say. It does not say the law was bad, or that obedience does not matter. It says obedience cannot be the ground of our acceptance — that place belongs to Christ alone, laid hold of by faith. The most religious man of his generation staked everything on this: a righteousness received, never achieved.
To know Him is the whole aim. Strip the Christian life down to a single sentence and Paul gives it in verse 10: “I want to know Christ.” Not to know about Him, but to know Him — the same intimate knowing Jesus Himself set at the very center of eternal life:
"Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent." John 17:3 (BSB)
Eternal life is not first a place or a length of days; it is a relationship — knowing God through Jesus Christ. Everything Paul discarded, he discarded to gain this.
A body like His glorious body. The hope that crowns the chapter — that Christ “will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body” (v. 21) — is the same resurrection hope Paul unfolds at length elsewhere. Our frail, dying bodies are seed; what is raised is of another order entirely:
"So will it be with the resurrection of the dead: What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power." 1 Corinthians 15:42–43 (BSB)
This is why the believer can hold present weakness — even a prison cell, even a failing body — without despair. The story does not end at the grave. The One whose resurrection power we come to know now will one day extend that power to our very bodies, and make them like His own.
Personal Application
1. What is still in your profit column? Paul took the things he was proudest of — his heritage, his discipline, his spotless record — and moved them from gain to loss, even to rubbish, because they had become rivals to Christ. What do you quietly count on to feel secure or worthy before God — a moral record, religious effort, respectability, usefulness? Not because these things are evil, but because they can subtly take Christ’s place, what would it mean to reckon them loss — to rest your whole standing on the righteousness God gives, and not on the one you build?
2. Knowing Him, not just knowing about Him. Paul’s single, burning desire was to know Christ — an intimacy, not merely information. It is possible to know a great deal about God and remain strangely far from Him. Where has your own faith drifted toward managing beliefs, duties, or facts, rather than actually knowing the Person at the center of them? What is one way you could seek Christ Himself this week — in prayer, in the Scriptures, in obedience — rather than settling for knowledge that never becomes intimacy?
3. Forgetting what is behind, straining toward what is ahead. Paul refused to let his past set the terms of his present — neither old failures that accuse nor old achievements that flatter. He ran forward, eyes on the prize, because Christ had already laid hold of him. What behind you is keeping you from running — a sin you cannot seem to leave at the cross, or a success you cannot seem to stop leaning on? What would pressing on look like for you today, remembering that the race is run by one already taken hold of, not one still trying to earn the finish line?
Pray to Close
The central truth: whatever was gain to him, Paul counts as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ — trading every claim of his own righteousness for the righteousness that comes through faith, and straining forward to the resurrection prize. The Christian life is not a treadmill of proving ourselves; it is a race with a settled prize, run by those Christ has already taken hold of.
Praise — the Lord Jesus, whose worth is so surpassing that beside Him a lifetime of achievement can be counted as rubbish and gladly let go; adore Him as the one gain worth losing everything to hold.
Confess — the quiet ways you still trust your own record — your goodness, your effort, your religion — to stand before God; lay that self-made righteousness down, and receive again the “righteousness from God on the basis of faith.”
Ask — for the one thing Paul asked: to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection; to press on with eyes fixed ahead, forgetting what lies behind; and to live today as a citizen of heaven, eagerly awaiting the Savior who will make even these lowly bodies like His own glorious body.
Worship for Today
Knowing You (All I Once Held Dear) · Graham Kendrick
Few worship songs sit as close to a single passage of Scripture as this one sits to Philippians 3. Graham Kendrick wrote Knowing You as a direct meditation on verses 7–10 — Paul’s counting of all things as loss, his consuming desire to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, and the trading of his own righteousness for the righteousness that comes through faith. The song moves exactly as the chapter moves: from what was once treasured and now surrendered, to the surpassing worth of Christ Himself as the believer’s one true gain.
That makes it an unusually fitting close for today’s reading. Where Paul writes the theology of the great exchange, this hymn turns it into confession and prayer, giving the congregation words to say back to God what Paul said — that Christ is worth the loss of everything, and that to know Him is the deepest desire of the heart. Let it carry the chapter from the page into your own worship.
Listen: