Rejoicing In The Lord!
Paul encourages the Philippians believers to rejoice in the Lord. To rejoice in the Lord is to know that we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ by telling others of our "newfound" faith in Christ. There is always a threat by others within the Church today whose primary goal and objective is to rob believers of their relationship with Jesus Christ through man-made rules and regulations (Phil. 3:1b). Legalism, moral plank, and Christian perfectionism is at the heart of spiritual apostasy (1 Tim. 4:1). The outcome of apostasy is to destroyed the true faith and to ruin the moral lives of God's people. There are many professing believers despite of the truth of God's Word they will persist in such doctrinal error so as to reveal what they really believe and who they are (Matt. 7:15-ff). The apostle Paul also warns the Philippians believers by saying: "Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh...