The True Circumcision

How would you define the people of God today? What descriptors would you choose to use? Well, Paul provides his own answer to that question in his letter to the Philippians. He describes the people of God, the circumcision, as serving God by his Spirit, boasting in Christ Jesus, and putting no confidence in the flesh (Phil 3:3). Let’s look at what NT scholar Gordan Fee has to say about this verse in his volume on Philippians in the New International Commentary series.

The Appeal – Against Circumcision

As immediate response to the ironic “mutilation,” Paul asserts:

“For we [in contrast to what they are trying to get Gentiles to do] are the circumcision [hence you do not need literal circumcision], who serve by the Spirit of God and ‘boast’ in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”

Philippians 3:3, author’s translation

Here is a sentence at once full of rhetorical power and theological grist. The rhetorical power lies partly in the paronomasia and partly in his choice of a verb from the temple cultus to describe what “we” do (see “c” below). The theological grist is to be found in every phrase. This verse, not v. 2, is the principal sentence in the present appeal, whose theology is going to be explicated by means of Paul’s own story in vv. 4–14.

a. The emphatic “we”—not they—by which the sentence begins is the first occurrence of this theological phenomenon in the letter.

It is Paul’s regular habit in the middle of an argument to shift from the second or third person to the inclusive first person plural whenever the point shifts to some soteriological reality that includes him as well as his readers. Thus, rather than “you” Philippians are the true circumcision, it is “we”—you and us, Gentiles and Jews together—who are such. In this case, of course, the shift in person paves the way toward the “I” of vv. 4–14; but the recurrence of this phenomenon in vv. 15–16 and (especially) vv. 20–21 indicates that it is not simply preparatory here.

b. In saying that “we,” both Jews and Gentiles together who have put our trust in Christ, “are the circumcision,” Paul indicates that the primary issue is not the Philippians’ salvation, but rather the identification of the people of God under the new covenant.

Lying behind this usage is the theology and intertextuality of a passage like Rom 2:28–29, where Paul takes up the promise of Deut 30:6 and turns “Jew” and “Gentile” end for end—in terms of “circumcision of the heart” by the Spirit. Now the reason for the rich imagery in Phil 2:14–16 comes into focus, where by a similar reversal the Philippians are seen as “the blameless children of God.” Paul, it needs to be emphasized, knows nothing of a “new” Israel; for him there is only one people of God, who are now newly constituted—quite in keeping with OT promises—on the basis of Christ and the Spirit; and it is by the Spirit in particular that Gentiles have entered into their inheritance of the blessings promised to Abraham (Gal 3:14).

c. Paul first describes the true circumcision as “we who ‘minister’ by the Spirit of God.”

The crucial term here is the verb rendered “worship,” which rendering in this case can be quite misleading. Paul’s usage is determined by the LXX, where it is used almost exclusively to denote the Levitical “service” in the temple cultus. Here it stands in ironical contrast to v. 2. “Mutilation” is what those who “served” in the temple cultus were forbidden to do. Now, in contrast to the “workers of iniquity” who are engaged in such illegitimate “service,” Paul says we are the true circumcision, who “serve” by the Spirit, over against serving by the flesh.

The verb, therefore, is not the one for “worship” in the sense of what the congregation does together as a gathered people, but represents the “service” of God’s people in terms of their devotion to him as evidenced in the way they live before him. Rather than offer such service by “cutting away the flesh,” so as to be identified with the people of God under the former covenant, the true circumcision live (= “serve”) in Christ by the power of the Spirit. Thus Paul has in view not external rite over against internal “spiritual” service, but two ways of existing—in the “flesh,” which he understands as life centered in the creature as over against God, or as the eschatological people of God, evidenced to be so by the Spirit of God, through whom all life in the present is now service and devotion to God.

By the Spirit of God

Thus, “serve” has to do with “righteousness”—the real thing, which reflects God’s likeness and character in Christian behavior (e.g., looking out for the interests of others, 2:3–4, as modeled by him who revealed God-likeness in emptying himself by taking on the form of a slave, 2:5–7); and such “service,” which is effected in the life of the believer and believing community by God’s own indwelling Spirit, is a million miles removed from “service” in the form of Torah observance. In turning Torah into “laws to be observed” God’s people thus turned them into merely human regulations, missing their intent as revelation of God’s likeness to be lived out among God’s people; hence the need for a circumcision of the heart, effected by the Spirit, to replace that of the “flesh.”

Significantly, Paul qualifies “Spirit” by the genitive “of God.” This designation occurs often enough that one should perhaps not make too much of it here—this is who the Spirit is, after all. Nonetheless, since Paul does not often use this qualifier in this construction, there is probably more emphasis here than at first meets the eye. Very likely this is a pointed contrast to those who think of themselves as rendering service to the one God both by their own circumcision and by insisting that believing Gentiles offer themselves to God in the same way. True service to God is that which has been engendered by the Spirit of God, where through life in the Spirit the believer thus “boasts in Christ,” who has brought an end to the time of “the flesh.”

d. But if one begins Christian life as an experienced reality of the Spirit, the basis of that life is Christ himself, which in this sentence is expressed in terms recalling Jer 9:23–24: “who boast/glory in Christ Jesus.”

On the meaning of this word see on 1:26 above. Here again it carries the nuance of “boasting” in the sense of putting one’s full trust and confidence in, and thus to “glory” in. Although the presence of the Spirit functions as Paul’s primary contrast both to “works of Law” and to “the flesh,” in this letter in particular he can scarcely bring himself to speak of Christian existence without mentioning Christ. In the personal word that follows, this is the theme to which he returns in grand style.

God’s new covenant people, therefore, do not need to become Torah observant, precisely because they “boast in Christ Jesus”; they have put their trust in him who has effected God’s true righteousness for them. Thus, Christ Jesus, by death on the cross, has brought them into relationship with God through sheer grace; and the goal of Torah is realized not in their becoming observant but in their walking by God’s Spirit who now indwells them.

e. Finally, and now in contrast both to “boasting in Christ Jesus” and to “serving by the Spirit of God,” he adds the telling blow: “and who put no confidence in the flesh.”

This clause is full of irony, Paul’s way of moving from their specific expression of Torah observance (the circumcision of the flesh) to what he recognizes to be the theological implications of Gentiles’ yielding to circumcision. It reflects the similar argument in Gal 3:2–3, where Paul uses “flesh” exactly as here, referring first to the actual “flesh” cut away in circumcision, but at the same time as the primary descriptive word of life before and outside of Christ. Thus, as in that passage, “Spirit” and “flesh” stand juxtaposed as eschatological realities that describe existence in the overlap of the ages. One lives either “according to the Spirit” or “according to the flesh.”

These are mutually incompatible kinds of existence; to be in the one and then to revert to the former is spiritual suicide from Paul’s point of view. And this is where the Judaizers have gone astray; they reject “boasting in the Lord” for “confidence in the flesh.”

Thus with this full description of those who belong to the Israel of God as newly constituted by Christ and the Spirit, Paul sets the Philippians in sharp contrast to what the “mutilation” would do for them. As he will go on to argue by way of personal narrative, there is absolutely no future of any kind in reverting to what is now past, which Christ and the Spirit have brought to an end.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

We should note finally the implicit Trinitarianism of this sentence. The true circumcision, thus true righteousness (both one’s relationship with God and behavior that reflects his character), comes from God (v. 9), by whose indwelling Spirit believers now serve him in “righteousness,” who have first of all put their trust in Christ Jesus, who has effected “righteousness” for them. “Righteousness,” of course, is not mentioned in this opening theological sentence; but it is implied in the first clause, “we are the circumcision,” as is evidenced by vv. 6 and 9. The key to that righteousness is here set forth by means of its primary new covenant components—Christ and the Spirit.

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