Dogs and Concision

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Philippians” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, February 16, 1992.

Sermon transcript

This morning we begin our scripture reading in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. This is Galatians 1. We are reading from verse 1 through verse 12 this morning. Listen to the word of God. Paul, an apostle not of men, neither by man. but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are with me unto the churches of Galatia. Grace be unto you and peace, and God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, that there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Finally, brethren, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. Write the same things to you. To me, indeed, is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision, for we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh, though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he have whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more circumcise the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, and Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law of Pharisee.

Concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. that what things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ, yea, doubtless, and I counted all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but then that I might win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him, the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might obtain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

Pray with me now. Father, by your word you created all things, by your word you have inaugurated the new creation of which we have been made apart, we ourselves having been renewed in the image of God by the very workings of your Spirit in us. How we plead, Father, for the full benefit of your word in our lives. And Lord, we are asking for your servants who proclaim the word today, and those who would sit hearing that word, who would receive that word. We ask you, Lord, for the strength of your servants and for their integrity. May they proclaim the word of Christ honestly. We ask, Father, for the fruitfulness of that word to be made plain to them, and may they have the confidence that they have not labored in vain.

We pray, O God, that this would be so here and throughout the world. For Jesus’ sake, amen. Paul doesn’t beat around the bush. He minces no words when he goes after those potential troublemakers who now pose a threat to the Church in Philippi. He is very direct. He is very candid. He tells the Philippians, verse 2 of that third chapter, beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision.

These comments by Paul have proved to be somewhat troublesome for some in our own time. These comments have been described by many a sensitive Bible reader in this modern age as intemperate, abusive, insulting. For the enlightened and the religious, These words are hardly appropriate for someone seeking to advance the cause of at least their brand of Christianity and religion. In fact, so they say, outbursts like this greatly limit for Paul whatever credibility or usefulness he might have in the modern Church. After all, so they go on, despite Paul’s disagreement with these people that he so describes, these people are human beings with a right to their own opinion. And the highest cause of religion, is it not, is to bring divergent positions together to effect harmonious and balanced environments in which we might all learn and profit from one another. Besides, if we agree, and how can we not agree, if we agree that religion’s goal is the mutual maintenance of our collective self-esteem, how can Paul’s words not be destructive?

Words like these obviously reveal a dim and dark side to Paul’s personality. They render him incapable of reinforcing positive assessments and attitudes within the community. And so it is that Paul, in our judgment, is without a doubt unsuited for leadership. Well, actually, These people have hardly gone far enough. Paul’s words here are far worse than the modern religious sophisticates and the fossils of self-esteem imagine.

For there has never been anyone more capable of taking the steam out of self-esteem than the Apostle Paul. Paul is not only deliberately insulting, he is not only going after in an insulting way these troublesome apostates who are leaning now at the doors to the church in Philippi, that this fellow has the audacity to make fun of them. If offending them is bad enough, what if the guy ridicules them, to boot? This being the case, then, how far beyond social reclamation and reasonable defense has Paul placed himself in the minds of men? But I want you to understand just how deep the Apostle cuts. And then I want you to understand why he feels it’s so necessary to do that. First of all, he calls these people dogs. Why in ancient society Such a description as this carries us far from the quaint domesticated scene of the family gathered together around the fireplace with their faithful loving dog, is it a golden retriever? At their side. Maybe it’s a beagle.

As much as we love our dogs, In Paul’s day, dogs were a handy image for impurity, shamelessness, greed, cunning, influence, intrusiveness, ferocity, and scavenging. For the Jews especially, dogs were a figure of uncleanness, if for only one obvious reason. Dogs don’t understand kosher. Dogs feed indiscriminately. And in Paul’s day, they sat on chariot, filth and garbage. When the Jews were looking for an appropriate label to put over top of the Gentile world, they found the most appropriate in their mind, in the label, dogs. The Gentiles are unclean. They are dogs. Now before you get too hard against Paul for using such a description, I want to remind you about Jesus. Jesus uses this term himself. He uses it twice. In Matthew 7 verse 6, He uses it in a general application.

He says in the Sermon on the Mount, don’t give that which is holy to dogs. His point being that his disciples shouldn’t foolishly extend the priceless treasures of the kingdom to the profane. That is, to those who resolutely have set themselves against a holy thing. But Jesus uses the term one more time in the 15th chapter of Matthew, verse 26, and here in a more restricted sense. He uses it here to refer specifically to the Gentiles, to those who are outside of the covenant.

You may recall in this passage, Jesus has been addressed by that Canaanite, or that Seraphimician woman, whose daughter is demon-possessed, and he says to her, it is not good to give the children’s bread to dogs, by which he means he should give what is intended for the house of Israel to Gentiles. The woman doesn’t quibble with Jesus, but responds, even the dogs, which I am, eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.

Now turning back to Philippians chapter 3, and taking up Paul’s use of this term once more, we see that as Paul uses it, a new dimension improves. You see, these church enemies at Philippi were of a special sort. They were the kind who had overlaid the gospel with Jewish trappings. They were somewhat like the Jewish bull worshippers in the Old Testament. the ones that were sure to worship Jehovah, but they added to their worship of Jehovah the worship of Dale. Well, here you have mixture as well. These enemies in the church at Philippi were the kind who had overlaid the gospel of Christ with Jewish trappings. And not only that, they boasted in their Jewish connections and in their Jewish observances.

Do you catch then what Paul is doing when he calls these people, specifically, dogs? He appalls to them a term. He appalls to them a term. that actually sets upon them the very description that they have reserved for those for whom they have the greatest contempt. Paul applies a term to these so-called Christians who pride themselves in their Jewishness and force their Jewishness on the Church. Paul applies a term to these which Jews have reserved for the unclean and the Gentiles. These people, then, so Paul suggests, are just the opposite of what they claim. Instead of being clean as Jews, they are unclean as Gentiles. Paul then follows suit with his other descriptions. His next description of them is as evil workers. By calling these enemies within the Church by that description, he turns on its head their estimation of themselves.

For these very people preached worse righteousness. They preached that they were the doers or the workers of good. Paul sizes them up as those who would boast of a righteousness all their own derived from the law. These people pride themselves in fulfilling the law, in doing the works of the law. Paul, however, classifies them not with the workers of good, but among the workers of evil. And just how scathing this statement is registers when we realize that the background for this description by Paul rises out of the solitary.

And the multiple blasts that we hear in the Psalms directed against the workers of iniquity. Here are those, so say the psalmists, who devour the word’s people like bread, Psalm 14, verse 4. Here are those, so say the psalmists, whom the world hates, Psalm 5, verse 5, whose image the world despises, Psalm 73, verse 20. These belong among the wicked who are described throughout the extent of that seventy-third psalm, and they are not among the righteous whose reward is God.

But Paul reserves his deepest and most sarcastic cut until the end. He calls these people the concision. That’s the King James translation. The New American Standard translates this description as the false circumcision. In actual fact, neither of these translations communicates what Paul is saying.

These people are not the circumcision, even though they are champions of the right of circumcision. In fact, they are quite insistent upon that right, that it be observed even by the Christian Church. These people are not the circumcision. Rather, they are the mutilation. It’s a rather graphic, candid, direct statement. These people are the mutilation.

They bear no sign in their circumcision of their inclusion amongst the people of God. They bear no sign comparable to the circumcision of the Old Testament, even. that this sign which they bear now as the source of their religious boast links them not with Israel, but with the pagans who lacerated their bodies as an indication of their devotion to their deities. A practice you may recall employed by the prophets of Baal in their confrontation with Elijah on Mount Carmel.

Paul could not be more caustic, he could not be more declamatory, he could not be more brutally frank, more crushing, more sarcastic about the self-proclaimed friends of Jesus, ambassadors of the gospel, who are, in actual fact, Jesus’ most outstanding foes. But what is it that drives Paul to the point that he would jeopardize his place in polite religious society? It’s nothing personal. He isn’t driven by jealousy. because he is anxious to hold on to this Philippian church for himself, and these people who are coming in pose a threat to him. That’s not his motivation. His motivation is a matter of greatest importance, greatest moment.

In the balance, as he will go on to argue in the remainder of this third chapter, is the gospel of saving grace in Jesus Christ. A gospel which, by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, confers upon unrighteous sinners the superlative righteousness of the Heavenly Father. A gospel that so perfectly magnifies the excellence of God’s gift of Christ. the one in whom we are given a new identity and made to be, by grace, citizens of an entirely different realm, the kingdom of heaven. A gospel that proclaims the futility of the deeds of the flesh, the futility of boasts in the flesh. but a gospel that proclaims instead the power of God and the freedom found in the Spirit. It is a gospel that insists upon its exclusive truth over against any and all who would manage, mangle, minimize, or mistake its clear and beautiful intent.

Paul knows Absolutely. That his salvation and the salvation of these Philippians, together with their mutual joy, are in the balance. And he is determined to fight with all of his might against any form of religious pretension. against all enemies who might rise from within, against all dogs, evil workers, mutilators, against all who would boast finally in their flesh, in their ability, in their works, in their goodness. As if by that root they could place God in their debt. Such is Paul’s stand, and he is adamant.

He will not recant, and he will not recoil. Our stand can be nothing less. we must stand with determination for this gospel, this gospel which the Apostle preached, and we must stand for it without embarrassment and without apology. our Father we rejoice in the Spirit which drove the Apostle and now drives us that we would hold fast to the Gospel of Christ and insist upon its proclamation, its full and complete proclamation. May we have nothing to do with compromise when it comes to the gospel of Christ.

We ask our God, that we may be bold as the apostle was, to stand against all boasts in the flesh. Yes, with regard to enemies that would rise within us, but also with regard to that pretense that may rise within us. O God, be pleased to give us strength and a clear eye, that we might put far from us all vanity, all boasting, to the end that we may glory in the sufficiency of our God and the adequacy of Christ’s merit. We pray it in his name.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.