SECOND READING Philippians 3.4b-14

A reading from the letter of Paul to the Philippians.

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth
day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews;
as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the
law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of
Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I
regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a
righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in
Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of
his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if
somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this
or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has
made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing
I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards
the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.