Philippians 3:18

‘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,'

In contrast with Paul and his fellow-workers are those whose walk is extremely unhelpful as an example, a fact which moves the Apostle to tears. They profess to follow Christ but are in their examples and lives ‘enemies of the cross of Christ'. They are against all that the cross of Christ stands for. They do not take the ‘way of the cross, by dying with Christ and walking as He walked. Rather they choose their own road, a road of self-enjoyment and self-propagation. They do not want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, and the sharing in common with Him of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death. They want to express themselves and have people looking up to them while they benefit materially from it.

‘Enemies of the cross of Christ.' We might ask, in what way were they enemies of the cross of Christ? In context the answer is given in Philippians 3:19, that it was by their behaviour and their aims. They rejected the call to participate in His sufferings and to reckon themselves as dead with Him to the world and all that it offers, and chose rather the pathway of self-indulgence and self-aggrandisement. Whatever their professed beliefs, they lived a crossless life.