aul's warning against teachers of a ceremonial religion.

It scarcely seems congruous with the tone of the rest of this letter
that the preachers whom Paul so scathingly points out here had obtained
any firm footing in the Philippian Church, but no doubt there, as
everywhere, they had dogged Paul's footsteps, and had tried as they
always did to mar his work. They had not missionary fervour or Christian
energy enough to initiate efforts amongst the Gentiles so as to make
them proselytes, but when Paul and his companions had made them
Christians, they did their best, or their worst, to insist that they
could not be truly Christians, unless they submitted to the outward sign
of being Jews. Paul points a scathing finger at them when he bids the
Philippians 'beware,' and he permits himself a bitter retort when he
lays hold of the Jewish contemptuous word for Gentiles which stigmatised
them as 'dogs,' that is profane and unclean, and hurls it back at the
givers. But he is not indulging in mere bitter retorts when he brings
against these teachers the definite charge that they are 'evil workers.'
People who believed that an outward observance was the condition of
salvation would naturally be less careful to insist upon holy living. A
religion of ceremonies is not a religion of morality. Then the Apostle
lets himself go in a contemptuous play of words, and refuses to
recognise that these sticklers for circumcision had themselves been
circumcised. 'I will not call them the circumcision, they have not been
circumcised, they have only been gashed and mutilated, it has been a
mere fleshly maiming.' His reason for denying the name to them is his
profound belief that it belonged to true Christians. His contemptuous
reference puts in a word, the principle which he definitely states in
another place, 'He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is that
circumcision which is outward in the flesh.'

The Apostle here is not only telling us who are the truly circumcised,
but at the same time he is telling us what makes a Christian, and he
states three points in which, as I take it, he begins at the end and
works backwards to the beginning. 'We are the circumcision who worship
in the Spirit of God'--that is the final result--'and glory in Christ
Jesus'--'and have no confidence in the flesh'--that is the
starting-point. The beginning of all true Christianity is distrust of
self. What does Paul mean by 'flesh'? Body? Certainly not. Animal
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