I am thrilled to share a great article by a  young man that is demonstrating a very good grasp of Full Preterism and as a bonus, is a very good writer! His name is Jason Humber. Enjoy!

Don K
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Guest Article: Letting Go of the Flesh (?)

Paul made a list of everything he once had confidence in.
Circumcision. The nation. The tribe. The ancestry. The law.
He called all of it flesh. Not one thing on his list had anything to do with a body.
Then he called it rubbish and threw it out, and he said why. In order that I may gain Christ.
So why are we being taught to pick it back up?

PAUL’S OWN LIST

There is a way most of us were taught to hear the word flesh. It means the carnal side of a person. The appetites. The desires that pull a man toward what he knows is wrong. The weakness that comes with being made of dust. The part of us that wars against the spirit.

That is the meaning most of us carry into Philippians 3. It is not the meaning Paul is using there, and he does not leave us guessing about it.

He says that the people of God “put no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). Then he adds that if any man ever had grounds for that confidence, it was him.
“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3:4-6)

That is his list. That is the flesh he once had confidence in, named item by item in his own words.

• Circumcised on the eighth day. A rite performed on him before he could speak.

• Of the people of Israel. The nation he was born into.

• Of the tribe of Benjamin. His tribe inside that nation.

• A Hebrew of Hebrews. His ancestry, on both sides of the family.

• As to the law, a Pharisee. The party he belonged to.

• As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. A record anyone could confirm.

• As to righteousness under the law, blameless. A standing he kept without fault.
Not one item on that list is an appetite. Not one is a craving, a temptation, or a weakness of the human frame. Nothing on it has anything to do with skin, bone, or bodily desire.

Four of the items were handed to him. He did not pick his nation. He did not pick his tribe. He did not pick his parents. He was eight days old when he was circumcised, and he had no say in any of it.

Three of the items he earned. He joined the strictest party in Israel. He built a record of zeal that other men could point to. He kept the standard of the law and could not be faulted on it.
So every item came to him one of two ways. He was born into it, or he earned it.

And every item is doing the same job. Not one of them describes what Paul was made of. All of them establish where he stood inside the old covenant order, and why anyone measuring by that order should have counted him among the people of God.
That is what Paul put under the word flesh. Not a nature. An order.
Then he tells us what he did with it.

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:7-8)
Paul does not say he added Christ to the list. He does not say he kept the list and set Christ at the top of it.

He counted the whole list as loss. Rubbish. Something a man throws out.
And he gives his reason in words that leave no room for a middle position. In order that I may gain Christ.

He goes on in the same sentence and names what he received in its place: “and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9)

The letting go was not a side effect of gaining Christ. It was how he gained Him.

Which means it runs the other way as well. Paul did not lay those things down because they had quietly become unimportant to him. He laid them down because he could not hold them and have the thing he was reaching for.

So here is the question I cannot get around.

Paul named the nation, the tribe, the ancestry, and the law, and he counted every bit of it as loss for the sake of Christ. Why would anyone teach us to pick back up what he laid down in order to gain Him?

Where to go deeper, with the teachers whose work stands behind this study, is in the comments.
#EastTexasEschatology #EschatologyMadeSimple #Philippians3 #WhatIsTheFlesh #CovenantEschatology