3:1 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.

3:2 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.

3:3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh--

3:4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:

3:5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;

3:6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

3:7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

3:8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ

3:9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,

3:11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

3:13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,

3:14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

3:15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.

3:16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

3:17 Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.

3:18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.

3:19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.

3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,

3:21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.