Philippians 3

What’s Happening

Some leaders in the Philippian church are trying to discredit Paul and his teachings. Instead, they teach that adherence to certain Jewish practices is necessary for someone to enter into covenant relationship with God. In particular, these teachers demand that followers of Jesus be circumcised—the defining mark of Jewish identity. But Paul outright rejects this (Philippians 3:2). He writes that even as a circumcised man himself, he knows his covenant membership in God’s family does not come from Jewish identity markers, but completely through Jesus (Philippians 3:3).

Before he met Jesus, Paul used to believe just like these teachers. He embodied every identity marker of God’s historic people. If anyone had reason to claim covenant belonging through the Torah’s appointed markers, it was Paul (Philippians 3:4-6). But everything he once saw as establishing his membership in God’s chosen family, he now sees as a loss. Compared to the value of knowing Jesus, everything else is worthless (Philippians 3:7-8).

Paul explains why: the Torah was never the final means of covenant belonging. Those markers always pointed toward a coming Son of Abraham who would gather the nations into God’s family. Jesus is that Son. Covenant belonging is now through him—not the law’s identity signs (Philippians 3:9).

And this trust in Jesus shapes Paul’s deepest longing. He no longer desires to be formed into the ideal Jew; he desires to be conformed to Jesus—the ideal human, the image of God made flesh. Paul wants to know Jesus so intimately that he reflects Jesus’ character, shares in Jesus’ sufferings, and even dies Jesus’ kind of death if necessary (Philippians 3:10). Becoming like Jesus in his death is not a loss to Paul—it is the privilege of being remade into the image of the true Image-Bearer (Philippians 3:11).

This is what Paul presses toward: Jesus alone as the source of covenant belonging, identity, and transformation—not any other human identity or cultural sign (Philippians 3:12).

Paul goes further. Those who boast in circumcision as the entrance into God’s family are, in reality, working against Jesus. Offering a different path into covenant relationship with God puts a person at odds with the very one the law pointed toward (Philippians 3:18-19). Nothing on earth—not identity markers, Torah signs, or human achievement—can make anyone a member of God’s family. Only Jesus can. And one day Jesus will return and transform our weak bodies into his glorious image (Philippians 3:20-21).

On that day God’s family will be complete—for every nation—through Jesus alone.

Where is the Gospel?

Our hearts are naturally inclined to seek covenant belonging through something other than Jesus—our traditions, our identity, our morality, or our achievements. We instinctively cling to something that marks us as “in.” But God’s covenant family has always been created by promise, not by human excellence.

Jesus demonstrates this beautifully. During his ministry, he welcomed sinners—the very people the religious world excluded. The Pharisees were scandalized, but Jesus insisted he came not for “the righteous,” but for sinners (Mark 2:17). Covenant belonging isn’t earned. It is given. And it is given in Jesus alone.

Paul knows this firsthand. He had every covenant marker and every religious credential imaginable. But none of it brought him into the family of God. Worse, it distracted him from the truth that only trusting in Jesus—his life, death, and resurrection—unites a person to God (Philippians 3:9-10). As he says elsewhere, salvation is by grace through faith, and this is not from ourselves (Ephesians 2:8-9).

And now we see why Paul longs to be conformed to Jesus’ image.
Being part of God’s covenant family means being restored into the likeness of its Head—Jesus, the true Image of God. Paul doesn’t want to be shaped by any other human standard—not ethnicity, not tradition, not achievement. He wants to be shaped into the very life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the ideal human (Philippians 3:10-11).

Jesus has opened the covenant to all nations, forming a new humanity in his own image. And that is the gospel: Jesus welcomes sinners, reshapes them into his likeness, and brings them into God’s family forever.

See for Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the God who welcomes you into his covenant family through Jesus alone. And may you see Jesus as the one who not only brings you into that family, but who transforms you into his own image.