In Philippians 3:2, Paul warns the believers of those Judaist false teachers who constantly opposed the apostle. They corrupted the pure truth of the gospel of God’s grace by demanding law-keeping and the physical ritual of circumcision, saying, “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved” (Act 15:1).1 Such was the character of their false teaching that Paul refers to them as “the concision” (Php 3:2), i.e., the cutting off or maiming. They gloried only in that external ceremonial act of circumcision, but they knew nothing of the inward moral or spiritual teaching, and they would readily cut off the Gentiles from God’s gracious provision of salvation in Christ.
In verse 3, the apostle describes the features of inward spiritual circumcision for believers in the Lord Jesus: “For we [emphatic] are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice [glory, ESV] in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” Those who wholly trust in the death and resurrection of Christ alone for salvation are the true people of God in this day of grace. We look to Christ as our only glory in the context of spiritual worship in this age of the Spirit. He alone is our confident trust as we worship in the presence of God, and we have no confidence in anything of our own sinful flesh.
The Spiritual Circumcision of Christ
In OT times, when God established physical circumcision as an external mark for the people of God, there was still to be an associated inward spiritual truth. “And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live” (Deu 30:6). They were not to be a stiff-necked, rebellious people, but, as those who were circumcised in heart, they were to love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul. The physical ritual of circumcision was meaningless without a moral correspondence in the lives of God’s people, namely, to display that love for the Lord God by wilful submission and obedience to His commands. Stephen challenged those Jews who were about to kill him: “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost” (Act 7:51).
The apostle Paul in other epistles emphasises the inward spiritual truth of circumcision for believers in this present Church Age. “But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God” (Rom 2:29). “In whom [Christ] also ye are [have been, JND] circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ” (Col 2:11). Circumcision is entirely a spiritual truth for believers today, connected with the cutting off of the sinful flesh and all fleshly desires.
Colossians 2:11 is indirectly referencing the death of Christ at Calvary, and what He accomplished in His death for us when Messiah was “cut off, but not for himself” (Dan 9:26), and when He was “cut off out of the land of the living” (Isa 53:8). The Saviour’s death is viewed from the perspective of an act of circumcision or cutting off, when the sinful flesh was dealt with before God, i.e., the “putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.” At the cross the Lord Jesus died as a representative Man, and in His death God judged sinful man in the flesh. The cross of Christ is therefore the end of man in the flesh doctrinally, and at conversion the believer in Christ comes into the good positionally of that spiritual “circumcision of Christ.”
Paul states a related positional truth in Galatians: “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal 5:24). This is not something we have to accomplish for ourselves; the teaching is that it was accomplished for us by the Saviour in His death, and we come into the good of it when we trust Him for salvation. But the doctrinal truth needs to be acknowledged and accepted as true of those who are positionally in union with Christ and made “complete in him” (Col 2:10). There must be the practical reality of the truth in our lives, and this is developed by the apostle in specific details in Colossians 3. Living morally circumcised lives as a result of the spiritual circumcision of Christ involves lives which have once and for all put off, wholly divested and discarded, the old man with his sinful flesh. Our lives practically are to reflect the truth that God no longer looks upon man in the flesh, because of what Christ did representatively for us at Calvary by “the circumcision of Christ” (2:11).
The Spiritual Worship of God
In Philippians 3:3, Paul elaborates on the significance of this spiritual circumcision of Christ for believers today, the consequences of looking to Christ and His death as the judicial cutting off of the flesh, and hence the termination of man in the flesh before God. The first statement he makes is that we “worship God in the Spirit”; the worship of God is now to be purely spiritual, empowered and directed by the indwelling Holy Spirit of God. It will not involve any of those physical rituals of Judaism, the carnal fleshly ordinances or ceremonial activities such as external washings and repeated animal sacrifices. Our spiritual worship today is not associated with any earthly physical sanctuary or temple made by hands. Rather, we enter spiritually into the true heavenly sanctuary; we have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Heb 10:19) and “worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him” (Joh 4:23).
The implications of this truth are that true spiritual worship for this Church Age is not connected with our physical bodies and does not require anything that appeals to the flesh, or that is specifically recognised or attractive to our physical senses such as sights or sounds. Nor is the worship of God even at the level of our souls, but rather we “worship God in the Spirit” as we commune spiritually in the conscious presence of divine Persons. The following article will further develop this teaching of looking to Christ alone as our only glory.
1 Bible quotations in this article are from the KJV unless otherwise noted.
