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1 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. For me to write these same things again to you is no trouble for me, and it keeps you safe.
2 Watch out for the dogs. Watch out for those evil workers. Watch out for the mutilation.
3 For it is we who are the circumcision—the ones who worship by the Spirit of God, and take pride in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
4 Even so, I myself could have confidence in the flesh. If anyone thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I could have even more.
5 I was circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; with regard to the law, a Pharisee.
6 As for zeal, I persecuted the church; as for righteousness under the law, I was blameless.
7 But whatever things were a profit for me, I have considered them as loss because of Christ.
8 In fact, now I count all things to be loss because of the surpassing value of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have given up all things—and I consider them rubbish—so that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God that is by faith.
10 So now I want to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
11 so somehow I may experience the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained these things, or am already perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which I was taken hold of by Christ Jesus.
13 Brothers, I do not think that I myself have yet taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what is ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal with a view to the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
15 All of us who are mature, let us think this way; and if you think differently about anything, God will also reveal that to you.
16 In any case, with a view to what we have attained, let us keep living according to the same standard.
17 Be imitators of me, brothers. Closely watch those who are walking by the example that you have in us.
18 Many are walking—those about whom I have often told you, and now I am telling you with tears—as enemies of the cross of Christ.
19 Their end is destruction. For their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. They think about earthly things.
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
21 He will transform our lowly bodies into bodies formed like his glorious body, formed by the might of his power to subject all things to himself.