Paul Puts No Confidence in Human Effort
We put no confidence in human effort, though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
Phil 3:3-6
The astute ones among you will wonder what I am doing. There are those who contrast and compare the Gems I write. That’s good! Don’t let me “pull the wool over your eyes“. [What an interesting English idiom. I must research it and see where it comes from.]
In previous Gems I gave the segment title before it as:
Don’t Trust the Righteousness that Comes From the Law; Trust The Kind Christ Gives (Phil 3:1-16)
Then under my Splitter Approach I repackaged it as:
A warning against false teachers (3:1-3)
Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. I never get tired of telling you these things, and I do it to safeguard your faith. Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved. For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort,
Phil 3:1-3
Saul putting his confidence in his own righteousness
though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
Phil 3:4-6
Now I have made another change. Did you notice it? I took “We put no confidence in human effort,” from verse 3 and added it to the following segment which I originally titled “Saul putting his confidence in his own righteousness” and changed the reference to include that concluding part of verse 3 and retitled it “Paul Puts No Confidence in Human Effort”. Why am I messing with the Bible. The simple reason is that Paul’s thoughts here flow on. Notice how the break between verse 3 and verse 4 divide the initial opening statement of Paul’s next point
“We put no confidence in the flesh / human effort,” is separated from “though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could.”
Robert Estienne has chopped Paul’s flow of thought in half across the division between verses. But in reality Paul is using the fact that the Judaisers make much of cutting off the flesh in their rituals, in order to go on to talk about the time when he did the same thing. That is, the time when Saul (Paul) himself put all his effort into his own focus on human effort. However, now he sees things differently. While I titled it “Saul putting his confidence in his own righteousness” – that was actually unfair to Paul because he has introduced his statement with the little portion “We put no confidence in human effort”. That is now his renewed focus, having gained the mind of Christ! So it was unfair of me to title it as I did.
In brief, what Paul was doing was using the Judaisers as examples of the false teachers the Philippians have encountered to show how their focus on the flesh and the cutting of it is running counter to the things of Christ. Paul now looks on the things he once focused on in the past quite differently. But of course these are the very things the Judaisers were focused on:
I was circumcised when I was eight days old.
I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel
a member of the tribe of Benjamin
a real Hebrew if there ever was one!
I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law.
I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church.
And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
Paul now sees his past focus in an entirely different light. The light which emanated from Christ on the road to Damascus. That encounter with the living, resurrected Christ has changed Paul’s view of the traditions of Judaism forever. Now he is looking back on his credentials as a circumcised-card-carrying-member-of-one-of-the- tribes-of Israel, a-pure-bred-Israeli differently. We will see just how differently in the next text division! All that Paul held to be of importance is now seen in a different light. The way he saw things in the past was exactly like a Judaiser. Allow me to make the sense even clearer, in deference to Paul’s own words. He too was a Dog; a proponent of the mutilating of the flesh in order to follow the Law and the Traditions of Moses. I am lifting this analogy and some of the related thoughts from the words Luke uses to describe the events and description surrounding the Stoning of Stephen. Why? Because that is how Luke put the story together. Where did Luke get it from? From Paul. Paul looked on a the stoning of Stephen and condoned all that happened to Stephen. Following that Paul became a tyrant, hell-bent on stamping out this divisive new sect.
Paul has had a complete and utter transformation of his Jewish mind-set and now sees the reliance on human effort for just what it is. An anathema to the mindset of Christ. “Have this mind in you that was also in the mind of Pharisees and the teachers of the Law? The proponents of judaic system? No thanks. I, Paul, now want to have the mind of Christ.” The mind of Christ now supersedes all else! Paul is merely using his past Jewish mind set and training as a pharisee in polemical way. That is what they thought. But Paul didn’t think that way anymore and proceeds to set his readers straight on the way they should view the false teachers. Those Judaisers and Pharisees who have a skewed view of reality coloured by the traditions of Moses. These are the very things that offended him and the other Pharisees and teachers of Law in how Stephen had been reinterpreting Jewish history from a Hellenist’s perspective. Interesting isn’t it, that the very mindset which caused Paul to be offended by Stephen’s words Paul now agrees with. Because that mindset is the mindset of Christ.
Paul is using his way of thinking in the past to demonstrate how he once thought like them – the opposition. But i realised with the title I had given to the second division of text between these first two units, in a splitters approach to this passage, were subtly incorrect. In the past it was indeed true of Saul relying on human effort. But it is no longer true of Paul. Paul is merely using it now to show how wrongly he thought in the past. I needed to be fair to him and change the title to adjust for that nuance of thought.
If you have found my reasoning in this Gem hard to follow, don’t let it trouble you. Just let it slide. Know that Paul was not teaching reliance on human effort to the Philippians. Rather he was using the time in the past when he did do that as an illustration for the Philippians to guard against false teachers. Including that time when he, Paul, was a false teacher himself.
I become a hypocrite if the verbal part of my life remains true but my inner life is false.
Art Katz
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson
The longer we hold on to falsehood, the greater its power to harm us.
Ian Vail
You can help others when you do for them what they can’t do for themselves, but not when you do for them what they won’t do for themselves!
Ian Vail
Above all, learn to discern so you can tell the difference between the real and the false for yourself.
Ian Vail
Those trained to spot counterfeit currency don’t study the range of the false notes; rather they study the genuine.
Ian Vail
Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus,
Phil 2:5