1 - Further, my brothers and sisters, 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.
2 - Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh.
3 - For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh -
4 - though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:
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;
6 - as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 - But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
8 - What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
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
10 - I want to know Christ - yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
11 - and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
12 - Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
13 - Brothers and sisters, 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,
14 - I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
15 - All of us, then, 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.
16 - Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
17 - Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.
18 - For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
19 - Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.
20 - But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
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.