3
“I Am Pressing On to Make Him My Own”
1 Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in union with the Lord. To write to you about things I’ve already warned you about before is for me no inconvenience, and is for you a protection.
2 Watch out for those dogs, watch out for those evil workers, watch out for those who practice self-mutilation—I refuse to call it “circumcision.”
3 We, you see, are the ones who bear the critical circumcision, who worship and serve by the very Spirit of God, who exalt what Messiah Jesus has done and put no confidence in mere human strength and credentials—
4 even though there are many things in that category that I myself could claim in my favor. If anyone else at all believes he has warrant for placing confidence in such things, my reasons outshine theirs:
5 Circumcised on the eighth day, belonging to the nation of Israel, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew-speaking Jew born of Hebrew-speaking parents; in regard to Torah, strict in my adherence, a Pharisee;
6 as for zeal, persecuting the assembly; as for the righteousness that is in Torah, blameless.
7 Such things that were in my eyes gains, however, these I have come to regard, on account of the Messiah, as loss.
8 No, more than that, I regard all things a loss on account of that which is so much more valuable, namely, knowing Messiah Jesus my Lord, on account of whom I forfeited all those things and regard them as pure crap, so that I may gain the Messiah
9 and be found in union with him, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is by Torah, but that which comes through the very faith of the Messiah,+ the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
10 I want to know the Messiah and experience the power of his resurrection and share in his sufferings, being conformed to his death,
11 in the hope that, by any means possible, I will share in the resurrection from the dead.
12 I’m not claiming that I have already made the Messiah my own, or that I have already been fully and finally consecrated. Yet I am pressing on to make him my own, because Messiah Jesus has made me his own.
13 Brothers and sisters, I don’t think of myself as having already made him my own. Still, one thing I do: Forgetting, on the one hand, the things that lie behind, and straining, on the other, toward the things that lie ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal in order to win the prize to which God summons us from on high through Messiah Jesus.
15 As many of us as are mature, therefore, this is the kind of mindset that we need to maintain. And if you have, in some particular area, a different mindset, this, too, God will reveal to you.
16 In any case, whatever progress we have made, it is according to the same standard that we are to continue living our lives.
17 Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who are living their lives this way, just as you have an example in us.
18 Many, you see, about whom I have spoken to you many times, and now do so again even with tears, live their lives as enemies of the cross of the Messiah,
19 whose end is utter ruin, whose god is their own selfish interests and appetites, and who pride themselves in things of which they should be ashamed, whose minds are set on these: The sinful ways of the earth.
20 As for us, the capital city that lists us among its citizens and governs our way of life is in the heavens, from which we eagerly await, too, a Savior, the Lord Jesus the Messiah,
21 who will transform these weak and mortal bodies of ours so that they are conformed to his glorious body, using the same great power by which he is also able to subject to himself the whole creation.