NEW TESTAMENT

Philippians 3:13–21

The Holy Bible · English

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Brothers, I don’t regard myself as yet having taken hold, but one thing I do: forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before,

ExplanationCommentary

EXPLANATION

Verse 13. I do not count myself. That is, I do not suppose that vain security is sufficient to put my salvation out of doubt, and that Christ having died, nothing remains for me to do. No; I consider myself as a wrestler at the games, uncertain of success. Calmet.

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I press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, think this way. If in anything you think otherwise, God will also reveal that to you.

Nevertheless, to the extent that we have already attained, let’s walk by the same rule. Let’s be of the same mind.

Brothers, be imitators together of me, and note those who walk this way, even as you have us for an example.

ExplanationCommentary

EXPLANATION

Verse 17. Be followers of me, always in distrust of your own merits, and always eager to advance in perfection, as I am. It is a happy thing when a pastor can thus in all sincerity and simplicity address his flock.—He exhorts them to follow him in what he had taught them, and in the model of a good life, which he had set before them. He repeats to them, with tears, what he had formerly told them, that many walk and conduct themselves as enemies to the cross of Christ, to Christ crucified, by abandoning themselves to the pleasures of a sensual life, who glory in things they ought to be ashamed of. He hints at the disciples of Simon Magus, or of the Jewish doctors. Witham.

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For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, as the enemies of the cross of Christ,

whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who think about earthly things.

For our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.

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