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.+