Philippians 3 - Amplified Bible(AMP)

The Goal of Life

1Finally, my fellow believers, continue to rejoice and delight in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble for me, and it is a safeguard for you.

2Look out for the dogs, look out for the troublemakers, look out for the false circumcision;

3for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory and take pride and exult in Christ Jesus and place no confidence in the flesh—

4though I myself might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks that he has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have far more:

5circumcised when I was eight days old, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee;

6as to my zeal, a persecutor of the church; and as to righteousness which is in the Law, I proved myself blameless.

7But whatever former things were gains to me, these things I have come to consider as loss for the sake of Christ.

8But more than that, I count everything as loss compared to the priceless privilege and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have lost everything, and I consider it all garbage, so that I may gain Christ,

9and may be found in Him, not having any righteousness of my own derived from the Law and its rituals, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

10And this, so that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, by being continually conformed to His death;

11so that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

12Not that I have already obtained it or have already been made perfect, but I actively press on so that I may take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me and made me His own.

13Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,

14I press on toward the goal to win the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

15All of us who are mature should have this attitude. And if in any respect you have a different attitude, that too God will make clear to you.

16Only let us stay true to what we have already attained.

17Brothers and sisters, together follow my example and observe those who live by the pattern we gave you.

18For there are many, of whom I have often told you, and now tell you even with tears, who live as enemies of the cross of Christ,

19whose fate is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who focus their mind on earthly and temporal things.

20But our citizenship is in heaven. And from there we eagerly await the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;

21who, by exerting that power which enables Him even to subject everything to Himself, will transform our earthly bodies so that they will be like His glorious resurrected body.