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¹ Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not irksome, but for you it is safe.² Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision:³ for we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh:

⁴ though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh: if any other man thinks to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more:⁵ circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as concerning the law, a Pharisee;⁶ as concerning zeal, persecuting the church; as concerning the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.⁷ Nevertheless what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.⁸ But on the contrary, I also count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and regard them as crap, that I may gain Christ,

⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, [even] that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith:¹⁰ that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed to his death;¹¹ if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.¹² Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if also I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.¹³ Brothers, I don't count myself to have laid hold: but one thing [I do], forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

¹⁵ Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything you are otherwise minded, this also God shall reveal to you:¹⁶ only, to what we have attained, by that same [rule] let us walk.

¹⁷ Brothers, be imitators together of me, and observe those that so walk even as you have us for an example.¹⁸ For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, [that they are] the enemies of the cross of Christ:¹⁹ whose end is perdition, whose god is the belly, and [whose] glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.²⁰ For our citizenship is in heaven; from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ:²¹ who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, [that it may be] conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things to himself.