was a _sine qua non_ in order to a valid hope of
salvation through the Gospel; that the man awakened from his paganism
must be at least something of a Jew to be anything of a Christian; that
the door was _not_ absolutely open between the sinner's soul and the
Saviour, to be passed through by the one step of a living trust in the
Promise.

Let us remember that assertions like these, which to Christians now may
seem obviously futile, by no means necessarily seemed so then. Then,
much more than now, pagan enquirers after JESUS would be sure to be
conscious that the true salvation offered was, in one sense,
emphatically a Jewish salvation. It was the message which told of the
life and death, the person and work, of One who _was_, "after the
flesh," a Jew. It was the announcement that the long hope of _Israel_
was fulfilled in Him. Its terminology was full of words and ideas
altogether Jewish. And its messengers--above all, for the Philippians,
St Paul--were Jews, of unmistakable nationality, training, and
(doubtless) appearance. On a first view, on a hasty and shallow view
certainly, it may have seemed a quite natural incident in such a
message when some of its propagandists asserted that to reach this
Hebrew Deliverer and King the enquirer must form a connexion in
religion which should be definitely Hebrew.

It is conceivable that even yet, in the history of the Church, this
phase of error may in some form assert itself again. We look in the
future, it may be in the near future, for the keeping to the old Israel
of promises which have never been revoked. We believe that Rom. xi.
shall yet find its fulfilment, and that the "receiving of them again
shall be life from the dead" to the world. In that great period of
blessing, the work of missions may (shall we not say, probably will?)
be very largely taken up by Hebrew Christians. And if any of these,
like some of their predecessors of the first age, should have only a
distorted view of the Gospel of Christ, their intense national
character may tell not a little on the form of their message. But this
is by the way. All that is really before us here is the fact that--not
the open hostility of unconverted Jews but--the sidelong counter-action
of Judaistic Christians was threatening Philippi, and must be met by
the Apostle.

Nor was this, if we explain rightly the close of ch. iii., the only
such danger in the air. The antinomian traitor was also within the
gate