Read:
Reflect:
For Reflection: What parts of your past do you most need to make a break from? Is Paul trusting in his own righteousness to experience resurrection (9-11).What are you trusting in? In verse 10 Paul declares what he most wants. What do you want? Joy Sightings: 1
Lagniappe:
Isaiah 64:6
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3 Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.
Breaking with the Past
To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a source of steadfastness.
2 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh![a] 3 For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God[b] and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh— 4 even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ,[c] the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 I want to know Christ[d] and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.