This chapter Philippians 3 consists in the main, of exhortations to holy living, and to an effort to make great attainments in the divine life. It is full of tenderness and affection, and is one of the most beautiful appeals which can anywhere be found to induce Christians to devote themselves to the service of the Redeemer. The appeal is drawn in a great measure from the apostle’s statement of his own feelings, and is one which the Philippians could not but feel, for they knew him well. In the course of the chapter, he adverts to the following points.
He exhorts them to rejoice in the Lord; Philippians 3:1.
He warns them against the Jewish teachers who urged the necessity of complying with the Mosaic laws, and who appear to have boasted of their being Jews, and to have regarded themselves as the favorites of God on that account; Philippians 3:2-3.
To meet what they had said, and to show how little all that on which they relied was to be valued, Paul says that he had had advantages of birth and education which surpassed them all and that all the claim to the favor of God, and all the hope of salvation which could be derived from birth, education, and a life of zeal and conformity to the law, had been his; Philippians 3:4-5.
Yet he says, he had renounced all this, and now regarded it as utterly worthless in the matter of salvation. He had cheerfully suffered the loss of all things, and was willing still to do it, if he might obtain salvation through the Redeemer. Christ was more to him than all the advantages of birth, and rank, and blood; and all other grounds of dependence for salvation, compared with reliance on him, were worthless; Philippians 3:7-11.
The object which he had sought in doing this, he says, he had not yet fully attained. He had seen enough to know its inestimable value, and he now pressed onward that he might secure all that he desired. The mark was before him, and he pressed on to secure the prize; Philippians 3:12-14.
He exhorts them to aim at the same thing, and to endeavor to secure the same object, assuring them that God was ready to disclose to them all that they desired to know, and to grant all that they wished to obtain; Philippians 3:15-16.
This whole exhortation he enforces in the end of the chapter Philippians 3:17-21 by two considerations. One was, that there were not a few who had been deceived and who had no true religion - whom he had often warned with tears, Philippians 3:18-19; the other was, that the home, the citizenship of the true Christian, was in heaven, and they who were Christians ought to live us those who expected soon to be there. The Saviour would soon return to take them to glory. He would change their vile body, and make them like himself, and they should therefore live as became those who had a hope so blessed and transforming.