⁴ Mind you, I’ve got good reason to trust in the flesh. If anyone else thinks they have reason to trust in the flesh, I’ve got more. ⁵ Circumcised? On the eighth day. Race? Israelite. Tribe? Benjamin. Descent? Hebrew through and through. Torah-observance? A Pharisee. ⁶ Zealous? I persecuted the church! Official status under the law? Blameless.

Gaining the Messiah

⁷ Does that sound as though my account was well in credit? Well, maybe; but whatever I had written in on the profit side, I calculated it instead as a loss—because of the Messiah. ⁸ Yes, I know that’s weird, but there’s more: I calculate everything as a loss, because knowing Messiah Jesus as my Lord is worth far more than everything else put together! In fact, because of the Messiah I’ve suffered the loss of everything, and I now calculate it as trash, so that my profit may be the Messiah, ⁹ and that I may be discovered in him, not having my own covenant status defined by Torah, but the status which comes through the Messiah’s faithfulness: the covenant status from God which is given to faith. ¹⁰ This means knowing him, knowing the power of his resurrection, and knowing the partnership of his sufferings. It means sharing the form and pattern of his death, ¹¹ so that somehow I may arrive at the final resurrection from the dead.

Chasing on to the finish

¹² I’m not implying that I’ve already received “resurrection,” or that I’ve already become complete and mature! No; I’m hurrying on, eager to overtake it, because Messiah Jesus has overtaken me. ¹³ My dear family, I don’t reckon that I have yet overtaken it. But this is my one aim: to forget everything that’s behind, and to strain every nerve to go after what’s ahead. ¹⁴ I mean to chase on towards the finishing post, where the prize waiting for me is the upward call of God in Messiah Jesus.