Additional Notes §23
§23 Warning Against Enemies (Phil. 3:18–19)
Paul warns the Philippians against those whose example is morally harmful, not helpful.
3:18 / It was the behavior of the people now referred to that made them enemies of the cross of Christ. The men who tried to impose the Jewish law on Paul’s Gentile converts in the Galatian churches implied by their teaching (according to Paul) that Christ’s death was pointless and ineffectual (Gal. 2:21) and in that sense might have been called enemies of the cross, but nothing is said against their moral standards. The enemies of the cross denounced here are described in different terms from those people against whom the Philippians are put on their guard in verse 2 and need not be identified with them. It is useless to insist in this connection that “entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary” (the principle known as Occam’s razor), as though that dictated the identification of the two groups: real life is more complicated than logical argument.
It is evident from his general correspondence that Paul at times had to wage war on at least two fronts—at Corinth, for example, against ascetics on the one hand, who would have liked to forbid marriage (1 Cor. 7:1), and against libertines on the other hand, whose slogan was “everything is permissible” (1 Cor. 6:12). The grace of God is received in vain equally by those who continue to live under law and by those who think they should “go on sinning so that grace may increase” (Rom. 6:1). In verses 18 and 19 Paul is concerned about people who took the latter line, in practice and teaching alike. Christ endured the cross to free believers from sin and to reconcile them to God (Rom. 6:7; 2 Cor. 5:18–21); those who deliberately indulge in sin and repudiate the will of God deny all that the cross of Christ stands for.
Paul had warned the Philippian Christians against such people before—whether by word of mouth or in writing we cannot say. If he now repeats his warning, it is because he knows it to be necessary. Such people were exerting their influence in many churches, and they might make an appearance in the Philippian church, if they had not done so already. It is not suggested that the Philippian church was inclined to countenance them, but Paul knew how insidious their arguments were and how disastrous their example could be.
3:19 / The destiny of such people, says Paul, is destruction; those who follow their bad example are likely to share their fate.
Their god is their stomach; compare Romans 16:18, where the Roman Christians are warned against undesirable characters who “are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites” (“appetites” there renders the same noun, Gk. koilia, as stomach renders here). The rendering stomach is perhaps less apt than “appetites,” because the latter indicates that gluttony is not the only vice with which the people in question are charged. Similarly in 1 Corinthians 6:13, where Paul quotes the libertine epigram, “Food is for the stomach [koilia], and the stomach [koilia] is for food,” the context makes it plain that sexual license, not freedom from food restrictions, is the subject under discussion. If their god is their “appetites,” that means that their “appetites” are their ultimate concern; they do not say so expressly, but that is the implication of their way of life.
Their glory is in their shame (a good instance of oxymoron): this confirms our understanding of the preceding clause. There is no hint at circumcision here, as though their shame denoted the part of the body that bore the seal of circumcision; a specific example of the situation deplored by Paul is provided in 1 Corinthians 5:2, where an irregular sexual union within the church that not only contravened Jewish law but also shocked the pagan sense of propriety (even in the permissive climate of Corinth) was regarded by some church members as rather a fine assertion of Christian liberty. “Your boasting is not good,” said Paul in that situation (1 Cor. 5:6), because they were proud of what they should have been ashamed of. A century and a half later Hippolytus of Rome speaks of a group called the Simonians who “actually congratulate themselves on their promiscuity, because (they say) that is what is meant by perfect love” (Refutation of Heresies 6.19.5).
Such people had no awareness of the call to Christians to exhibit a higher standard of behavior than that which their neighbors observed; they were content for their mind to be on earthly things. There was, in fact, no reason to think that they had ever been touched by the grace of God proclaimed in the gospel; their lives were far from yielding the fruit of the Spirit.
3:18 / Before the enemies of the cross of Christ P46 inserts “watch out for” (Gk. blepete, borrowed from v. 2). Polycarp quotes the phrase “enemies of the cross” (To the Philippians, 12:3); earlier in the same letter he declares that “whoever does not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil” (7:1).
The identity of these enemies is disputed. W. Schmithals sees in them the same Jewish-Christian Gnostics as he discerns in “those men who do evil” of v. 2; like their counterparts in Corinth, they “put ‘knowledge’ in place of ‘the folly of the cross’ ” (Paul and the Gnostics, p. 107). W. Lueken (ad loc.) thinks of Christians who cannot break loose from the old familiar pagan immorality (similarly E. Haupt [ad loc.], and T. Zahn, Introduction to the NT, vol. 1, p. 539). E. Lohmeyer (ad loc.) considers them to be lapsed or apostate Christians; H. Appel more precisely (and correctly) identifies them as professing Christians who misuse the doctrine of grace as an occasion for libertinism (Einleitung in das NT, p. 57).
3:19 / These enemies are bound for destruction (Gk. apōleia), the word used in 1:28 of the destiny of the church’s persecutors. Cf. the participial phrase hoi apollymenoi, “those who are perishing,” used in 1 Cor. 1:18; 2 Cor. 2:15; 4:3 of those who reject the gospel. In 1 Cor. 1:18 it appears in a context that speaks of the cross as being “emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17).
A verbal parallel to the clause “whose god is their belly” comes in Euripides, Cyclops 334, 335, where the Cyclops says, “I offer sacrifice to no god but myself, and to this belly of mine, the greatest of divinities” (kai tē megistē gastri tēde daimonōn). Schmithals thinks the words point to “disregard for the rules concerning food” (Paul and the Gnostics, p. 109); but Paul himself shared that disregard. J.-F. Collange (ad loc.) suggests that the description is of self-worshipers who contemplate their own navels (not a natural meaning for koilia).
In contrast to those who glory … in their shame Paul speaks of himself and his associates as having “renounced secret and shameful ways” (2 Cor. 4:2). (In Jude 13 libertine teachers are compared to “wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame.”) J. A. Bengel (Gnomon, ad loc.) and some later writers have understood the reference here to be to circumcision, as though Gk. aischynē (“shame”) were synonymous with aidoia, but this sense is poorly attested for aischynē.
The earthly things may be contrasted with “things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God,” on which Christians are directed to set their hearts (Col. 3:1, 2). This, in effect, is what Paul now goes on to say.