What does "have no confidence in the flesh" mean (Philippians 3:3)?

All these things the Apostle tells the Philippian saints in three short sentences. And now he goes on to tell us the other side of the matter; in four short sentences: "For we, we are the circumcision, the ones worshipping by (the) Spirit of God, and exulting in Christ Jesus and not confiding in flesh." As we have seen, the Scriptures plainly tell us that in the sight of God circumcision is a heart matter, not an outward thing: and so Paul can say: "For we, we are the circumcision." Paul was a Jew, but the Philippian Christians were Gentiles: but circumcision in the flesh availeth nothing: so, no matter whether Jew or Gentile, "we are the circumcision, — "the ones worshipping by (the) Spirit of God, and exulting in Christ Jesus, and not confiding in flesh." In our ordinary English Bibles we read, "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit." But the way we have rendered it is almost certainly correct; and you will see that the New Translation by Mr. Darby renders it in almost the same way. You will recall that our Lord in John 4:24, said: "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." There is no way to worship God in spirit and in truth, except "by the Spirit of God." I fear that very much of what is called "worship" today is not by the Spirit of God; and is not in spirit and in truth. The very first necessity to worship by the Spirit of God is that we should be born again, — "born of the Spirit" (John 3:5). They who are not born again, are still "in the flesh", and "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." (Rom. 8:8). The contrast here is between external ceremonies, which these evil workers were pressing, and worship by the Spirit of God.

The word used here for worship is one which the Scriptures have taken to express the service of God, which was told forth in type by the priesthood of old. So here the Spirit of God claims that every true believer is "one worshipping by the Spirit of God." That means that every true believer is a priest. And other Scriptures tell us the same thing, as for example, "Jesus Christ … hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father." (Rev. 1:5 & 6. See also 1 Peter 2:9.)

In our last chapter we spoke of the first few words quoted above: "And not confiding in flesh," but the words that follow are so closely linked with these, that we must quote them again if the Scripture is to be clear to us. The true "circumcision," as we saw, does not trust, or, have confidence, in the flesh. But, apparently, certain men had come to Philippi and were telling the saints they must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses if they were to be saved. These men had confidence in the flesh: — just what the true circumcision had not. Now Paul is about to take his place, so to speak, alongside of these men, and compare his own credentials with theirs. The sense of the translation "I might have confidence in the flesh," as it is usually translated, is true; but Paul puts it that he actually has confidence in the flesh. (See the New Translation). And from man's standpoint, he had entire ground for such confidence. So now he places himself at the standpoint of these Judaizing men who had come to Philippi. He continues: "If any other think to trust (or, have confidence) in flesh, I rather." Now he states seven seasons why he might have confidence in flesh: In (the matter of) circumcision, eight days old; From (the) race of Israel; Of (the) tribe of Benjamin; A Hebrew (sprung) from Hebrews; As to law, a Pharisee; As to zeal, persecuting the church; As to righteousness, the (righteousness) in law, being blameless. These evil teachers seem to have pressed circumcision more than anything else, (Acts 15), so Paul begins with it. A proselyte might be circumcised at any age, but the law required a Jew to be circumcised on the eighth day: and Paul had met every requirement of the law, as far as circumcision went.

The thing, therefore, that he would press upon them now, as if it was all he wanted to say, was, "Rejoice in the Lord." He might seem to be insisting upon this in almost a needless manner, but it was not needless; nor for those who realized what Christ was to them, irksome either. There was opposition also. There were "dogs," evil workmen, men of the concision, just, surely, the judaizing spirit that we have seen active in the other epistles. He gives them the same title that they would apply to Gentiles. They were dogs, unclean, ferocious creatures. They were workmen it is true, but evil workmen, and busy for no good end. They were the "concision," the mutilators of the flesh, as we may say, but which left it still with real strength for hindrance. After all, it was flesh they trusted in. The law, as we have seen many times, has to do with the man in the flesh and no other. Ascetic severity may be practised even to any extent, as the apostle has told us in Colossians, while the flesh gets real satisfaction by this. He will not call them the circumcision, the title they would have given themselves; for, now that Christianity has come, true circumcision is no more in the flesh, but is spiritual. There had indeed always to be what was spiritual in connection with it, to make it true for God; but now the characteristics of the circumcision are spiritual altogether. We are that, he says, who worship in the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who have no confidence in the flesh. Manifest it is that this "no confidence in the flesh" applies as much to the flesh in the Christian as to any other. Confidence in self, of any kind, is confidence in the flesh. The opposite to it here, the Object of all glorying, is Christ Himself. The knowledge of the new man is, as we have seen, Christ is all; and this it is that makes worshipers in the power of the Spirit of God, for Christ alone is He whom the Spirit glorifies, and with whom He occupies the heart. Beautiful it is to see how here the lesson of Romans, as already said, has been learned. There is no mention all the way through the epistle by the apostle, on his own part, of conflict with the flesh. His heart is there where the flesh can have no place. "The law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, has set" him free from the law of sin and death." This Object beyond himself has made him master of himself. There is a real attainment which is the very opposite of that self-conscious sanctification which so many are seeking now. On the contrary, he sees self in such a way as that he can trust it no longer, and Christ, not self, (good or bad either,) is the One before his eyes. He does not turn back to tell you of his own experience. He is not thinking of his own attainments. He has attained nothing yet, as it were, until he is with Christ in glory. This is the genuine Christian spirit, as far removed from the helpless misery of the bondage which some would persuade us is normal for the Christian, as it is, on the other hand, far from all Pharisaic self-satisfaction or comfort in one's own condition.

He does indeed now tell us what ground of comfort he might have, if any, in the flesh; but only to dismiss it all as unworthy; as that which, if it were gain to him, were all the more, on account of the Christ before him, loss indeed. Anything which gave value and importance to himself would be but loss. It is in Christ that he finds all; and there is no separate interest, no treasure of any kind apart from Christ; but it is of use for him to show that he is not despising things which were not his. On the other hand, he had all that the proudest Jew could boast himself of, — a Jew himself, a circumcised man, circumcised. the eighth day, of Israel's race, of the tribe of Benjamin, — not a descendant of one of Jacob's handmaids, — a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a thorough, out and out Jew, unmixed with Gentilism in any way. As to the law itself; one of the straitest sect, a Pharisee; as to zeal, (the kind of zeal that goes with law keeping,) persecuting the Church of God; but as to himself also, with regard to such righteousness as could be found in man under law, blameless. Plainly he was one in whom there was no conscious evil indulged to awaken the clamor of conscience in his soul. As he says in Galatians, he was no sinner of the Gentiles. The very things which made him afterwards to realize himself the chief of sinners were, in this way, to him, (in the state of which he speaks,) only things to be credited to him for good. As he has told us in Romans, he had not yet found the power of that commandment which brings about the full detection of man's natural evil, "Thou. shalt not lust."

The apostle does not talk of sin in the flesh here. The flesh has its religion as well as its lusts, and this is much more attractive than worshipping God in the spirit - the flesh cannot do this. "Though I might also have confidence in the flesh," such is the flesh's religion. Paul was the most positive enemy of God all the while. Suppose this blamelessness of Paul - to whose credit was it? Paul's. Wherever religion is a credit to us, it is not worth anything; worse than that, it deceives us. You may have all the truths which do not test faith, and yet be without this. The time will come when whosoever "killeth you will think that he doeth God service," They thought they were doing God service, but they would not hear of the truth that tested faith - the Father revealed in the Son.

No confidence in the flesh we should therefore place at the very forefront, if the child of God would really and truly walk in the Spirit. By thus speaking we are fully aware that we return to the A B C of the gospel; but who gets the first letters of this alphabet so perfectly as never to want to go over them again! We have to come back not only daily but hourly to this point; and there is no greater danger than to suppose we are fixed for life in having "no confidence in the flesh." There are all kinds of back-doors open to return to it; we do not speak of trusting in the flesh for eternity, but trusting in it for the difficulties of the day. An unconverted man, who rests his hope for divine favor on turning over a new leaf, is trusting in the flesh for eternity, and thereby rejecting Christ's work of redemption. A child of God who is trusting in his strength of resolve, for example, is, so far as that extends, having some confidence in the flesh, and hence is setting aside the power of the Spirit in him.

I would notice a few more passages which may help individuals to seize the true idea of worship. The first is Philippians 3:3: "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." We may remark that the question here is not about sin, or the flesh, but of "confidence in the flesh" — that is, about the religion of the flesh, which is altogether as evil as its lusts; for, after all, religiousness is but one of them, though covered with the veil of works and of holiness. The touchstone of the religion of the flesh is that it does not tend to the glory of Jesus, or that it does not glory only in Jesus. It can be much occupied in good works; it can be without reproach as to conduct; can have much of self-denial, much of piety, plenty of humility; can talk much of the love of God; but while pretending, perhaps, to found its services upon His love, it will be conversant rather with that love of God which is in our heart — with our love to Him, and not with His love to us. It may be asked, "But if all these things can exist in a person, and be nothing but the religion of the flesh, how can we discern the true circumcision?" Scripture tells us: "it rejoices in Christ Jesus." Nothing is easier than to judge as to these things, if Christ is our all. The fact that He is so makes us feel, without hesitancy, that all this religiousness is of the flesh, and yields its help to that which destroys Christianity from its foundations. Is another mark desired, by which one can judge of this religion of the flesh with all its pretensions? It does not hold the Head; that is, he who has confidence in these religious actings of the flesh never has the consciousness of his own union with Christ. He knows not what it is to be raised up together with Him and made to sit together with Him in the heavenly places. He knows not what it is to be a member of His body — bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh — one spirit with the Lord. Such a one will, perhaps, recognize this as true for the Church, in an abstract manner (for the religion of the flesh can be orthodox), but he has not faith to recognize it as true of himself. Faith is an individual thing; and it places him who possesses it in the enjoyment of the object which it regards, or under its effects. Colossians 2, as well as the chapter cited above, judges all the fair but specious appearance of fleshly religiousness. The Lord, in His addresses to the scribes and Pharisees, judged it in its grosser forms.

'Have no confidence in the flesh.' Carnal confidence, in the sense of natural self-reliance, is, as a moral trait, inseparable from the 'flesh,' against which every believer has to watch and fight. Its corrective in a child of God is self-judgment. It is the snare into which Simon, son of Jonas, fell, to be delivered through self-knowledge by the grace of Him whose warnings he despised. But it is not exactly this that the Apostle is here disclaiming on behalf of 'the circumcision,' but rather, as the sequel shows, a false religious trust. Paul's language can be truth in the lips of no child of Adam who has not first found by faith both death and burial for his 'old man' in the Gospel. For such words belong to those only who are themselves no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit, because indwelt by the Spirit of Christ.9 Another confidence is theirs — that boldness which articulates the boast in Christ which we have just been hearing;1 a confidence which has its rest in God, whose manifested love in Christ is both believed and known by those whom, by His effectual calling, He has separated to Himself. He who was once their natural dread is now become their hiding-place.2 The joy of a true believer is that he has found in Christ deliverance from himself, as well as an escape from his just judgment as a sinner. His sorrow is the still continuing evil vitality of that which, though judicially dead, strives still within him, so long as he is in this fleshly tabernacle, against the Spirit of its Divine supplanter. Instead, therefore, of confidence in the flesh there is, for God's children, groaning in this body until the day of its redemption come. There is a constant jealousy of the contagion of the flesh in every divinely enlightened conscience, while God's children find no fear in that 'love' which is the origin of their election, and the eternal portion of their hope.3

Verse 4. 'Though I might also have confidence in the flesh,' etc. We have now presented to us, in this and the two following verses, a summary of the legitimate grounds of that 'confidence in the flesh' which has been discarded deliberately by 'the circumcision' as a worthless and deceptive thing. With a just egotism, Paul steps forward as a witness of God to illustrate in his own person the sound doctrine of the Lord. For as a chosen vessel unto Him, a part of his fitness for the Master's special use was the thoroughness of his character, and experience as a consistent follower after righteousness in the way of works. To speak slightingly of the 'concision' would have been scarcely becoming in any Gentile teacher's lips, but of the value of legal righteousness and of traditional and man-taught religion Saul of Tarsus was at least competent to speak, his own kindred and countrymen being witness. If any then still thought himself secure upon a legal basis, and saw as yet no safer stand nor higher object of attainment than to be a blameless follower of Moses, let him hear the confession of one who could guide him as a master through all paths of natural merit, and yet show to him a better way.

Verse 5. 'Circumcised the eighth day,' etc. He begins with what is hereditary, and therefore independent of his own choice or will. Paul was no proselyte, but a Jew both born and bred; of faultless lineage as an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, and brought lawfully within the fleshly covenant of circumcision, he was entitled unimpeachably to that relative 'advantage' which is the birthright of Israel after the flesh.4 He then passes to his proper and responsible self: 'touching the 1aw,5 a Pharisee.' To that party in its strictest form he had adhered when come to years, receiving and retaining, as in a kindly soil, the teachings of Gamaliel.6 And here we should remark that, of the contending sects of Sadducees and Pharisees, religious excellency could be found only in the latter. For they at least did outward honour to all God's words, though too often annulling them by their traditions, while the Sadducees selected at their will. Obedience was the principle of the one; of the other, mere rationalistic self-assertion. A Pharisee might be, and often was, a godly man, which a Sadducee could scarcely be. Paul 'served God' while in darkness, and was truly conscientious in his sins.7

Paul might indeed boast, if needful, in that which belonged to the flesh. As to all Jewish privileges, he possessed them in the highest degree. He had outstript every one in holy zeal against innovators. One thing alone had changed it all — he had seen a glorified Christ. All that he had according to the flesh was thenceforth loss to him. It would place something between him and the Christ of his faith and of his desire — the Christ whom he knew. And, observe, that here it is not the sins of the flesh which Christ expiates and abolishes that he rejects; it is its righteousness. It has none, we may say; but even if the apostle had possessed any righteousness of the flesh — as, in fact, he did possess it outwardly — he would not have it, because he had seen a better. In Christ, who had appeared to him on the way to Damascus, he had seen divine righteousness for man, and divine glory in man. He had seen a glorified Christ, who acknowledged the poor feeble members of the assembly as a part of Himself. He would have nothing else. The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord had eclipsed everything — changed everything which was not that into loss. The stars, as well as the darkness of night, disappear before the sun. The righteousness of the law, the righteousness of Paul, all that distinguished him among men, disappeared before the righteousness of God and the glory of Christ.

Verses 15-18 are parenthetical, as again are verses 25-27. Taken together they give us the sad story of Peter's downfall, in which the Lord's prediction of John 13:38 was fulfilled. That this should be one of the few episodes recorded by all four Evangelists is worthy of note. God does not take pleasure in recording the sins of His saints, so we may be sure that there is in it warning and instruction much needed by all saints in all ages, for self-confidence is one of the commonest and most deep-seated tendencies of the flesh: a tendency which, if not judged and refused, invariably leads to disaster. True spiritual circumcision involves "no confidence in the flesh," (See, Phil. 3:3), but that is a lesson we do not learn save through a good deal of painful experience.

Dogs, evil workers and the concision, are terms which fit the many cults today, including "Christian Science," the "new thought," the "new religion and modern theology," all of which deny the gospel of Jesus Christ. True believers are the circumcision, not a circumcision made by hands, but a spiritual circumcision, the putting off of the body of the flesh by the death of Christ (Col. 2:11). The cross of Christ separates the believer from the flesh, the religious forms, and self-improvement, and separates him unto God. And knowing that Christ is all, glorying in Him with no more confidence in the flesh, the believer worships by the Spirit of God, and no longer in ordinances. The indwelling Spirit fills the heart with Christ, glorifies Him, and true worship by the Spirit is the result. To have no more confidence in the flesh, to expect nothing whatever from ourselves, to glory only in Christ Jesus is true Christian attainment and experience.