3:1 Further, my brothers and sisters, 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.
3:2 Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh.
3:3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh -
3:4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:
3:5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;
3:6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
3:7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
3:8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
3:9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in* Christ - the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. / *Or through the faithfulness of
3:10 I want to know Christ - yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
3:11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
3:13 Brothers and sisters, 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,
3:14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
3:15 All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
3:16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
3:17 Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.
3:18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
3:19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.
3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
3:21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.