Philippians 3:18

many Evidently holders of an antinomian parody of the Gospel of grace; see on Philippians 3:12. That there were such in the primeval Church appears also from Romans 16:17-18 (a warning toRome, as this fromRome); 1 Corinthians 5:6. To them Romans 3:31; Romans 6:1, refer, and Ephesians 5:6.

There may have been varieties under a common moral likeness; some perhaps taking the view afterwards prominent in Gnosticism that matter is essentially evil, and that the body therefore is no better for moral control; some (and in the Roman Epistle these surely are in view), pushing the truth of Justification into an isolation which perverted it into deadly error, and teaching that the believer is so accepted in Christ that his personal actions are indifferent in the sight of God. Such growths of error, at once subtle and outrageous, appear to characterize, as by a mysterious law, every great period of spiritual advance and illumination. Compare the phenomena (cent. 16) of the Libertines at Geneva and the Prophets of Zwickau in Germany. Indeed few periods of Christian history have escaped such trials.

The false teachers in view here were no doubt broadly divided from the Judaists, and in most cases honestly and keenly opposed to them. But it is quite possible that in some cases the "the extremes met" in such a way as to account for the mention here of both in one context, in this chapter. The sternest formal legalism has a fatal tendency to slight "the weightier matters of the law," and heart-purity among them; and history has shewn cases in which it has tolerated a social libertinism of the worst kind, irrevocably condemned by the true Gospel of free grace. Still, the persons referred to in this section were those who positively "gloriedin their shame"; and this points to an avowed and dogmatic antinomianism.

The "many" of this verse is an instructive reminder of the formidable internal difficultiesof the apostolic Church.

I have told you Lit. and better, I used to tell you, in the old days of personal intercourse. This makes it the more likely that the antinomians were not of the gnostic type of the laterEpistles, but of that of the Ep. to the Romans, perverters of the doctrine of free grace.

weeping Years had only given him new and bitter experience of the deadly results. For St Paul's tears, cp. Acts 20:19; Acts 20:31; 2 Corinthians 2:4. We are reminded of the tears of his Lord, Luke 19:41; tears which like these indicate at once the tenderness of the mourner and the awfulness and certainty of the coming ruin. See a noble sermon by A. Monod (in his series on St Paul), Son Christianisme, ou ses Larmes. An extract is given, Appendix G.

the enemies of the cross As deluding their followers and themselves into the horrible belief that its purpose was to give the reins to sin, and as thus disgracing it in the eyes of unbelieving observers. "The cross" here, undoubtedly, means the holy propitiation of the Lord's Death. For the Divine connexion of it as such with holiness of heart and life see the argument of Romans 3-6; Galatians 5.

G. AD. MONOD ON ST PAUL's TEARS. (Ch. Philippians 3:18)

"What is the Gospel of St Paul? Is it but a refined deism, announcing as its whole doctrine the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, as its whole revelation the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, as its only mediator Jesus Christ living as prophet and dying as martyr? Or is this Gospel a religion unlike all others (une religion tout à part) … proclaiming a God unknown, promising an indescribable deliverance, demanding a radical change, compassionate and terrible at once, … high as heaven, deep as hell? You need not, for your answer, consult the writings of the Apostle; you have but to see him weeping at your feet."

Saint Paul, Cinq Discours(ed. 1859), p. 62.