Watch Those Dogs! Philippians 3:2

In Philippi, Paul warns the early church “watch those dogs”! Paul intentionally uses abrasive language with the term “dogs”. Dogs in early times were considered unclean scavengers; it was a pejorative term aimed at a group of churchgoers called “Judaizers”. Judaizers were a faction in the church at Philippi who demanded new converts to the faith follow all Jewish legal proscriptions, including circumcision, to be fully accepted into the faith.

Paul sarcastically charges them with only “interested in appearances” and whose main goal was to sow discord and division into the congregation. In other words, the focus of these early believers was what faith looked like from the outside-in versus the inside-out.

It was a form of deception that threatened to capsize the faith of the believers at Philippi.

That deception lives on! The Bible warns of deceptive people whose only goal is the advancement of their own agenda.

In Proverbs 26:24 we read, “Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts, they harbor deceit.” In Genesis, we see four types of deceptive people illuminated:

One, the outright liar (Genesis 3:4) “You will not surely die”, the serpent says to Eve.

Two, the exaggerator (Genesis 25:32) Esau sells his birthright through his elasticizing of the truth.

Three, the half-truther (Genesis 12:13) Sarai tells a half-truth to spare her life.

Four, the evader (Genesis 4:9) Cain responds, “I don’t know” when God inquires about his brother, Abel.

Just as Paul warned the first-century church to be aware of those “dogs”, so we in the twenty-first century must be on guard (watch) against false teachers, not just on the inside, but on the outside, too. These are people who peddle perverted doctrine – just as the first-century Judaizers – to sow discord and satisfy their own political agendas.

White Christian nationalism, for example, is a distorted dogma (hence, “dogs”) that is premised on the aberrant belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and should remain so, aligning national identity with white, Protestant and conservative cultural values. Watch those dogs!

White Christian nationalism is nothing new; it has been around since the founding of this country. Only this time and in this season, it has heard and is answering the clarion “dog whistle” from the White House.  Watch those dogs!

It is, therefore, aligned with power and imperialism and is primarily why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would brazenly recite Psalm 144 as bombs fell on innocent civilians across Iran. Watch those dogs!

It is anti-Black; it is anti-immigrant; it is anti-women. As such, it is anti-Luke 4:18, it is anti-Micah 6:8 and it is anti-Amos 5:24! Watch those dogs!

Reach Pastor C. at: info@pastorwericcroomes.com