St. Paul: Beware of Dogs....

 St. Paul: Beware of Dogs, Beware of Evil Workers

 Why did St. Paul call religious teachers dogs?

Philippians 3:2 warns against imposing 

Old Testament requirements that undermine 

salvation through Christ

 

Beware of Dogs!

 

In Philippians 3:2, Saint Paul issues a rather extraordinary warning: “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.”

 

Dogs! Evil workers! Mutilators of the flesh! Three descriptions, one warning. And consider this carefully: Paul uses such extraordinary language to condemn people who insisted that Gentile converts must undergo circumcision to be fully accepted as Christians.

 

He is not talking about prostitutes, drunkards or people openly hostile to Christianity. Not LGBTQ people. Not liberals. Not the usual targets of religious condemnation. He is talking about people who considered themselves defenders of religious truth!

 

These were people who knew the Scriptures, revered Moses and Abraham, and believed they were protecting the requirements of God’s covenant. They were not presenting themselves as enemies of religion. Quite the opposite. They believed they were defending it.

 

And what was their offence?

 

They insisted that Gentile Christians must be circumcised and observe Jewish religious requirements to belong fully to God’s people. In effect, they were making circumcision a condition of salvation.

 

Now, I find this extraordinary. If Paul could use such forceful language over a covenant sign that the Lord God Himself had given to Abraham, surely every one of us who professes to proclaim the Gospel ought to tremble at the responsibility of speaking in God’s name.

 

I certainly do. I sincerely hope I am not twisting Scripture in making the argument that follows. After all, I have no desire to become one of the very people Paul was warning against!

 

But the more I consider this passage, the more convinced I become that its warning is profoundly relevant to contemporary Christianity.

 

What Made Paul So Furious?

 

Paul was not furious because circumcision was evil. God Himself had given Abraham that covenant sign. Nor was Paul rejecting the Old Testament, from which he drew so much of his own teaching.

 

His objection was that these teachers were turning circumcision into a compulsory entrance examination for salvation. They were placing an additional requirement upon what Christ had accomplished.

 

Jesus Christ had come, suffered, died and risen from the dead. The Gospel was being preached to people of every nation, and now these new believers were being told that faith in Christ was insufficient. They must also submit to particular requirements of the Mosaic Law.

 

For Paul, this struck at the very heart of the Gospel.

 

And here lies the relevance of his warning today: Whenever we take an Old Testament requirement and make its observance a condition for receiving the salvation Christ has accomplished, are we not repeating the very error for which Paul called those teachers dogs?

 

That is the central question of this essay.

 

I am not suggesting that Christians should discard the Old Testament. Far from it. The Old Testament is Scripture, and Christ Himself declared that He had come not to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them.

 

The question is how we understand those Scriptures in the light of Christ.

 

There is a world of difference between learning from an Old Testament commandment and insisting that Christians must observe it as an additional condition for salvation.

 

There is also a profound difference between encouraging believers to give generously and teaching them that God’s favour can be purchased through prescribed financial contributions.

 

Paul was confronting the first kind of error. I believe we must be equally vigilant about the second.

 

Why Did Paul Call Them Dogs?

 

In the culture of Paul’s time, dogs were often regarded as unclean animals. Some Jews used the word contemptuously for Gentiles, and Paul turned the insult around against those who considered themselves religiously superior.

 

Paul could be a very dangerous man with words!

 

He also called these teachers “mutilators of the flesh,” refusing even to dignify what they were demanding with the name circumcision.

 

According to bible scholars, the Greek word for circumcision is peritomē, meaning cutting around. Paul instead uses katatomē, a word associated with cutting up or mutilation. 

Paul was dangerous with words (when he was provoked to righteous anger

 

His point was devastating. When circumcision is imposed as a condition of salvation, a sacred covenant sign is reduced to mere cutting of flesh.

 

Then Paul delivers the real blow in the next verse He declares: “For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”

 

Wow!

We are the circumcision! We who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and place no confidence in the flesh, we are the true circumcision.

 

Think about what Paul is saying. The very people being told that they must undergo circumcision are being assured that they already belong to the true circumcision through Christ. That their acceptance before God does not depend upon acquiring a particular physical mark or religious credential.

 

But how can an uncircumcised person be circumcised?

The Circumcision of the Heart

 

Because Paul is speaking of the heart - the Lord God wanted a people whose hearts belonged to Him.

A people who loved:

Justice,
Who practiced mercy and
A people who walked humbly before Him.

 

Paul’s warning remains relevant nearly two thousand years later. The danger is not simply that we might misunderstand a religious practice, but that we might become so attached to its outward observance that we forget what it was intended to accomplish within us.

 

And this brings us to a particularly uncomfortable question about contemporary Christianity.

 

When Religious Work Becomes Evil Work

 

Paul calls these teachers evil workers, a remarkable description because it suggests that it is possible to work very hard for God while working against the very thing God is trying to accomplish.

 

Consider some familiar declarations. “Unless you belong to our church, you cannot be saved.” Or, “Unless you pray in this particular manner, God will not hear you.” 

 

And, of course, the ever-popular, “Unless you sow this seed, your breakthrough will never come.”

 

Somebody tells you that Christ died for your sins, but before you can enjoy the blessings of His sacrifice, have you paid you tithes, first fruits! Covenant seeds! Prophetic offerings?

 

Now, let me be careful here.

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with Christians giving money to support their churches, helping the poor or contributing generously to worthwhile causes. Giving is an important expression of Christian faith - but... but.. give the people a chance! Give them a chance to express that Christian faith.... Don't rob God twice:

First of the money you collect unlawully, and second of the joy of seeing his little ones grow in faith and exercie that faith through their giving to worthy causee - stop ribbing them of the chance to grow through your coercive demanfds!!

 

Clearly I am bnot suggesting that every appeal to an Old Testament passage is an abuse of Scripture.

 

The problem arises when a religious obligation is presented as a transaction with God, when people are told that unless they make a particular payment, God will withhold His blessings, refuse to answer their prayers or deny them His favour.

 

Consider Malachi 3:10, the familiar passage about bringing tithes into the storehouse. It is frequently preached as though it establishes a direct financial contract between the contemporary Christian and God.

 

Pay your tithe, and God will open the windows of heaven. Fail to pay, and you risk losing His blessings.

 

But is that what the Gospel teaches?

 

                

Malachi was addressing a particular people within a particular covenant relationship. Christians must surely ask how that passage is to be understood in the light of Christ and the New Covenant.

 

The New Testament certainly teaches generosity. Saint Paul himself encourages believers to give willingly and cheerfully, not reluctantly or under compulsion.

 

But that is quite different from presenting a prescribed payment as the price of divine favour.

 

If circumcision could not be imposed as an additional condition for salvation, on what grounds do we impose financial obligations as conditions for receiving God’s grace?

 

To be clear, salvation and temporal blessings are not identical questions, and Paul’s argument about justification cannot simply be transferred unchanged to every teaching about giving. Nevertheless, the underlying danger deserves serious examination: the tendency to turn our relationship with God into a transaction.

 

The language may have changed, but the temptation remains familiar. We take something that may have a legitimate place in religious life and elevate it into an indispensable condition for obtaining what God freely gives.

 

That is how religious work can become destructive, even when those engaged in it believe they are serving God.

 

Beware of the Dogs in Our Own Pulpits

 

We must all be careful, therefore, especially those of us who consider ourselves Christians, defenders of the faith and proclaimers of the Gospel. We must be careful about the things we say, the teachings we promote, the people we condemn and, perhaps most importantly, the people and causes we defend.

 

There are many dogs in pulpits today. Of that, I have no doubt. People who present themselves as servants of God but whose words and actions undermine the very Gospel they claim to preach.

 

There are workers of evil whose works are manifest for all to see. Some knowingly defend, excuse and support conduct that is blatantly evil by the very moral standards they profess to uphold. Some even accept positions on councils and advisory bodies established by people whose wrongdoing they ought to be confronting.

 

And what makes this particularly troubling is that they often claim to be defending Christian values!

 

Justice? They love justice, but too often only when it concerns themselves, those who look like them or those who worship as they do. Injustice against others becomes something to explain away, minimise or simply ignore. The command to love one’s neighbour appears to acquire qualifications that Christ never attached to it.

 

Mercy? They preach about mercy but seem to have little patience for it when the suffering person belongs to a group they dislike. Empathy itself becomes a dirty word, something to be mocked as weakness or dismissed as fashionable sentiment. “The wages of sin is death!” they thunder, apparently forgetting that the same Scriptures proclaim the mercy of God. Mercy, it seems, is reserved for themselves and those they consider deserving of it.

 

Humility? Not much of that either. Some proudly describe themselves as “Shemites,” as though such a label confers spiritual superiority, while invoking “Hamites” as a contrasting category. These are ancient genealogical names turned into supposed measures of human worth, as though the Gospel had not already confronted the very idea that ancestry establishes one’s standing before God.

 

And these are people who profess to follow Jesus Christ!

 

Be in no doubt about the seriousness of this contradiction. When religious leaders defend injustice, withhold mercy, promote human hierarchies and excuse wrongdoing because it serves their interests, they provide striking contemporary examples of the broader danger illustrated by Paul’s warning: religious conviction employed in the service of evil.

 

And some of them are extraordinarily religious!

 

Perhaps the most dangerous religious person is not the one who knows he is doing wrong, but the one who is so convinced of his own righteousness that he can no longer recognise evil in what he says, does or defends.

 

That is precisely what makes Paul’s warning so uncomfortable. Being religious does not necessarily mean that we are doing God’s work. We may, in fact, be working against Him.

 

And that is a warning for all of us, myself included.

 

Good Works Are the Fruit of Grace

 

There is another distinction we must preserve. Paul was not saying that obedience is unnecessary or that good works are worthless.

 

Far from it.

 

Good works are the fruit of grace, not the price we pay to purchase it.

 

Christian faith is not a licence to ignore God’s commandments or abandon our responsibilities towards others. Saint James reminds us that faith without works is dead.

 

The Christian life requires repentance, obedience, charity, justice and mercy. The sacraments themselves are gifts of grace, not trophies of human achievement.

 

But none of these things gives us the right to imagine that we can place God under an obligation to reward us.

 

We respond to grace; we do not purchase it.

 

There is a profound difference between giving because we love God and giving because someone has convinced us that God will punish us financially if we refuse.

 

There is an equally profound difference between observing a religious practice because it draws us closer to God and insisting that the practice itself gives us power over God.

 

Does Christian Love Permit Such Language?

 

There is, of course, an uncomfortable question. Why did Paul call people dogs? Is that not contrary to Christian love?

 

Paul was confronting a teaching he believed endangered the Gospel, and his language was deliberately forceful. But understanding his language does not give Christians permission to insult everyone who disagrees with them.

 

Some Christians read “Beware of dogs” and immediately begin looking for people to bark at!

 

That misses the point.

 

Paul was challenging a religious teaching, not condemning an ethnic people. Paul himself was a Jew. Jesus was a Jew. The apostles were Jews. This passage must never become an excuse for contempt towards the Jewish people.

 

Indeed, the concept of circumcision of the heart came from the Jewish Scriptures themselves. Paul’s argument was about the meaning of belonging to God and the sufficiency of Christ, not the inferiority of any people.

 

And perhaps this is where we ought to be especially careful about applying Paul’s language to contemporary religious leaders.

 

It is one thing to identify teachings and conduct that contradict the Gospel. It is another to assume that everyone with whom we disagree deserves to be called a dog.

 

We must be prepared to challenge wrongdoing without allowing our own indignation to become another form of self-righteousness.

 

Why Have I Never Heard This Preached?

 

Can I be honest?

 

I do not remember ever coming across this passage before now. Neither do I remember hearing a sermon devoted to it, and I find that rather extraordinary.

 

You would think that a warning this important, delivered by Saint Paul to the early Church, would occupy a prominent place in Christian preaching. After all, Paul is warning believers about the danger of religious people who distort the Gospel while imagining themselves its defenders.

 

What could be more relevant to Christianity today?

 

Yet I suspect many Christians are far more familiar with Malachi 3:10, the passage about bringing tithes into the storehouse, than with Philippians 3:2.

 

Why? Could it be that some passages are more convenient to preach than others?

 

Malachi 3:10 can be used to encourage people to give money, while Philippians 3:2 challenges those who claim religious authority to examine themselves.

 

One can fill the collection basket.

 

The other might empty a few pulpits!

 

Of course, I cannot conclude from my own experience that the passage is rarely preached. Perhaps I simply have not been paying sufficient attention. But that does not diminish the importance of the question it raises.

 

Are we teaching the whole Gospel, or are we selecting those passages that best serve our interests?

 

Are we leading people towards Christ, or are we placing additional burdens between them and Him?

 

And are we willing to examine our own religious practices with the same seriousness with which we scrutinise the behaviour of others?

 

Rejoice in the Lord!

 

There is something beautiful about the order of Paul’s words. Before he says, “Beware of dogs,” he says, “Rejoice in the Lord!”

 

Why? Because he wants to protect the joy of the Philippian Christians, the joy of knowing that their acceptance before God rests upon Christ rather than religious credentials, ancestry or human achievements.

 

And Paul knew something about religious credentials. Circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, zealous for the Law!

 

What a résumé! If anybody wanted to compete in religious qualifications, Paul was prepared to show them his certificates!

 

But then he says that everything he once counted as gain, he now counts as loss for the sake of Christ.

 

All those magnificent credentials, all that religious prestige, all those achievements suddenly became secondary to knowing Christ.

 

Paul had put his religious résumé beside Christ, and suddenly, it was no longer magnificent.

 

The God Who Sees the Heart

 

That, ultimately, is the lesson.

 

The Old Testament remains Scripture. Its teachings about justice, mercy, holiness and love of neighbour remain profoundly important to Christian life. But Christians must understand those teachings through the fulfilment of God’s promises in Jesus Christ.

 

We must not turn religious observances into additional conditions for salvation, nor transform acts of generosity into payments for divine favour.

 

And if we are ever tempted to boast about how much we have done for God, we should remember what Paul did with his magnificent religious résumé.

 

He put it beside Christ.

And suddenly, it was no longer magnificent.

 

I rest my case

 

Don Kenobi

#OldManInTheMolue 

#MyFrancisEssays 

#ChristianityWithoutApologies