¹ Finally, brothers, I wish you joy in the Lord. To write to you what I have already written before is no trouble to me and to you will be a protection.

² Beware of dogs! Beware of evil workmen! Beware of self-mutilators!

³ We are the true people of the circumcision since we worship by the Spirit of God and make Christ Jesus our only boast, not relying on physical qualifications,

⁴ although, I myself could rely on these too. If anyone does claim to rely on them, my claim is better.

⁵ Circumcised on the eighth day of my life, I was born of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. In the matter of the Law, I was a Pharisee;

⁶ as for religious fervour, I was a persecutor of the Church; as for the uprightness embodied in the Law, I was faultless.

⁷ But what were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses.

⁸ Yes, I will go further: because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss. For him I have accepted the loss of all other things, and look on them all as filth if only I can gain Christ

⁹ and be given a place in him, with the uprightness I have gained not from the Law, but through faith in Christ, an uprightness from God, based on faith,

¹⁰ that I may come to know him and the power of his resurrection, and partake of his sufferings by being moulded to the pattern of his death,

¹¹ striving towards the goal of resurrection from the dead.

¹² Not that I have secured it already, nor yet reached my goal, but I am still pursuing it in the attempt to take hold of the prize for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

¹³ Brothers, I do not reckon myself as having taken hold of it; I can only say that forgetting all that lies behind me, and straining forward to what lies in front,

¹⁴ I am racing towards the finishing-point to win the prize of God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

¹⁵ So this is the way in which all of us who are mature should be thinking, and if you are still thinking differently in any way, then God has yet to make this matter clear to you.

¹⁶ Meanwhile, let us go forward from the point we have each attained.

¹⁷ Brothers, be united in imitating me. Keep your eyes fixed on those who act according to the example you have from me.

¹⁸ For there are so many people of whom I have often warned you, and now I warn you again with tears in my eyes, who behave like the enemies of Christ's cross.

¹⁹ They are destined to be lost; their god is the stomach; they glory in what they should think shameful, since their minds are set on earthly things.

²⁰ But our homeland is in heaven and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,

²¹ who will transfigure the wretched body of ours into the mould of his glorious body, through the working of the power which he has, even to bring all things under his mastery.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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