The Belly Problem, Phil. 3:18-19

by Mark McCulley

    Philippians 3:18-19 For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame-who set their minds on earthly things."

    Notice first Paul’s weeping, his concern, his anguish, not only for those being persecuted, but also for those who are lost and are persecuting. I tell you weeping. Yes, opposition to the gospel has been predestined. Yes, God has excluded some sinners from salvation before they ever did anything bad (Romans 9). But that does not mean that God works in the means of reprobation in an identical way as God works in the means of salvation. And it certainly does not mean that those who believe the true gospel should be indifferent about those who are ignorant or unsubmissive to the gospel. We can’t say: makes no difference to me if you walk away... Certainly we can’t be saying this about our spouses, our children, our parents. “Who cares anyway!” To think like that is not only “cultic” but is to give evidence of not being compelled by the love of God’s reconciliation (II Cor 5). Love does not mean agreeing up front that ones we love are saved. But it does mean doing everything possible to live in a way that agrees with the gospel. And this means talking about the gospel, this means being willing to be questioned and tested, this means beseeching people to submit to the gospel. I tell you even weeping.

    The reason I insist on talking about the gospel to the enemies of the cross is not only a macho thing to convince myself again that I believe the gospel or to persuade myself that I have courage. I must talk abut the gospel because the gospel is the only way that other people can be saved. Romans 1:16; I Cor 1:18. The doctrine of the gospel is itself the message with God’s power to save. According to Phil 3:18-19, those who remain enemies of the cross will perish, will be destroyed.  Only God can save anybody, and God has not promised to save anybody without teaching that person the gospel. The promise of God is not to “all your children”, but to your children, as many as God will call”. Acts 2:39. God calls by the gospel. Not all who are externally called by the gospel are effectively called by God. But all who are effectually called by God are called by the gospel. (Romans 10:14-17). So we cannot tell if we are converted by our works alone. The only way we can tell if our works are good fruit (instead of fruit unto death) is to make your calling and election sure. (II Peter 1) By what gospel were you called? Did the gospel you claim be called by talk about election?

    Phil 3:18-19 is in contrast to 3:21. Their end is destruction; but our citizenship is already in heaven. Their end is destruction, but our end is transformation and immortality. They have their mind on earthly things; we are looking to heaven. When it says that they mind earthly things, this does not necessarily mean immoral things; it may only mean non-gospel things. It may mean somebody who thinks he used to be in this legalistic cult but is now focused on being a healthy and happy and productive member of the larger society. It may mean somebody who is in obsessive reaction to being in a group run by a guru and whose goal is to live on earth in open community. These earthly things are not bad: it not bad to want health and happiness and prosperity and community. But it is “flesh” if those things cause you to remain ignorant or submissive to the gospel. The glutton is not the only person who worships his belly. The preacher or the editor who will not preach the gospel and expose the false gospel in order to “keep my ministry and still have influence” is also serving his belly. His flesh may not look like the flesh of the preacher who openly teaches freewill and losing your salvation. But it’s still flesh.

    Of course there is a distinction between doctrine and life, between gospel and walk. But people who have gospel doctrine will walk by that gospel. This does not mean that they are less sinful than those who teach the wicked lies of universal atonement and salvation conditioned on the sinner. But it does mean that they will love those who love the gospel, and that they will not knowingly fellowship with those who remain enemies of the cross.. Phil 3:16 Let us walk by the same rule. Let’s not practice the ungodly practice of judging only by outward appearance or by our own standard of saved and lost. Without the imputed righteousness revealed in the gospel, the person who commits one sin is no better off than the person who commits more than one sin.

    It is legalism to think that we are converted because other people are less moral than we think we are. It is legalism to think that we are converted because we think we are less legalistic than we think other people are. II Corinthians 10:12 “For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves by themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise.” Notice what the verse says: WE are NOT like THOSE people. THEY have an unrighteous standard of judgment. We are not like them. We are not in the same class as them. We judge by the gospel. We judge ourselves and them by the gospel. Even so, in Philippians 3. Paul contrasts the citizens of heaven with the enemies of the cross.

    Most commentators on Philippians 3:18-19 focus on the word “belly” and assume that it means immorality and greed, not only the desire for too much food but the lust for money and sinful pleasures. They do not connect “belly” here to the desire to have one’s own righteousness from the law, even though that has been the topic of paragraphs just before. But the lust of the flesh is most subtle when it comes to legalism. The trouble with “taste not touch not” is when people think that their tasting not and touching not brings them some blessing which the righteousness of Christ could not bring. There is nothing wrong with tasting not and touching not. Indeed, God’s law teaches us not to taste and touch what is unlawful. Simply because we do not agree with another person about what God’s law teaches is no excuse to call that person a legalist. But a person is a legalist, even if he has a right interpretation about what God’s law teaches, if that person thinks that his obeying that law brings him a blessing which the righteousness of Christ did not cause.

    The unlawful desires of the flesh are most subtle when it comes to legalism. The law of God should not be blamed for legalism, even though God has predestined the abuse of the law. When a person thinks that his not tasting and his not touching brings him blessing, that person is not only a legalist but also an antinomian, because that person is thinking that God is satisfied with something less than perfect obedience and satisfaction of the law. The only way that God can be (and IS) pleased with the good works of a Christian is that the Christian knows that these good works are blessings from Christ’s righteousness, not a supplement to Christ’s righteousness. And this distinction is not only something that God knows, or only something that smart “Reformed” theologians know. Every Christian knows that Christ’s righteousness is the only merit of every love-gift from God.

    So “belly” in Philippians does not simply mean “stomach”. The belly is more than the stomach. Indeed, as one commentator has suggested, we are not wrong to tell little children that the mother’s womb is her “belly”. What is meant by the term is WHAT WE CAN PRODUCE. Flesh is what we can produce. Belly is what we can produce. And the sin which deceives us all by nature is that WE DESIRE WHAT WE PRODUCE TO BE OUR SALVATION. We will give God’s “grace” the credit for helping us produce it. We have no problem saying that “particular election” is the reason our bellies produced it. But, like Cain, we want to take what we produced and offer it to God as some small part of what God will accept it as righteousness. We don’t mind of God has to produce some righteousness also to supplement it and “make up the difference”. We don’t even mind if God is simply inscrutably unjust and “sovereignly” decides to not remember his justice and his threats against those who do not believe the gospel. But the one thing we want, the thing which the people who killed Jesus wanted, is the one thing Cain wanted, and that is to have God accept what we have produced and what we sincerely (even if ignorantly) offered to God.

    As I have been told by persons I love very much, you are not going to tell me that I am lost just because I do not believe in definite atonement. And then they say: I know what I used to be, and I know that I am different now, that I am not what I used to be, not only morally but religiously. Now I have faith. Now I know it’s all Christ. Now I know it’s not works. Now I know it’s grace. And I just don’t even need to get into this question of who Jesus died for. And then, in contradiction to that, they say: I know he died for me because I was a sinner. And I ask again: did Christ die for all sinners? And again they say: I don’t need to get into that. And I ask: how do you know that Christ died for you? Does the grace to believe come from the death of Christ or from some other place? And they say: don’t need to know  where I got faith because I got it. And then I ask: faith in which Christ, the one whose death saves or the one who died for those who will be lost? And then they say: pharisee, cultist, legalist...

    They do not like Cain try to kill me when God respects one gospel and rejects all other gospels. But the motive for them calling me a legalist and a pharisee is the same as Cain’s motive for murdering Abel. I John 3:12 explains: “why did he murder him? Because his own works were evil and his brother’s righteous.” As the false gospel can’t see that “belly” in Philippians 3 is more than morality, neither can the false gospel understand why one person’s work are evil and another person’s work are not evil. They cannot understand that it is evil to condition salvation and blessing on works. Indeed, despite talk about election and regeneration and -in many cases- even about definite atonement, those with the false gospel still judge saved and lost by works alone instead of judging works by saved and lost.

    Why? Because of their belly. As I have suggested earlier, I think we can understand “belly” in at least two senses here. First, there is the ugly unheroic desire to “keep one’s ministry”, to compromise the gospel message in order to bring along a mixed congregation. Life is easier when one is not being confrontational about the gospel. Life is easier when one can first agree that all who believe in the deity of Christ are saved. Romans 16:18 “For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple.” I know this kind of thing is a reality; I have been in many congregations where the clergyman constantly flatters people by telling them that they are not homosexuals, not liberals, not legalists, not easy believers etc. like other people are. Even the “first legalism” scolding kind of preachers can help their people to flatter themselves: “we must be all right because we sit here week after week and take this scolding like we need to.”

    But I don’t think that the short-term pleasures of insincerity and compromise explain all the meaning of “belly” here. I don’t want to dismiss that of course. I know that when I was a lost Calvinist (for 20 years), I liked to flatter myself about not flattering myself. But I do think the “belly problem” goes deeper. The problem is that we as sinners in rebellion against God and God’s gospel like what we produce and want to offer it to God as some small reason that God blesses us. As I have suggested, “belly” doesn’t just mean what we want to receive, what we desire. It also means what we produce and what we want to offer (to God and to people so that they will say that we are saved). And these two thing are connected: we DESIRE that what we PRODUCE will be accepted by God. And God won’t have it. And true Christians won’t have it. And when they won’t have it, those who are lost but who profess to be Christians get mad like Cain did. Just before they rush off to have fellowship with those who will say that they are saved because of what they have produced, these lost religionists make a point of accusing those who won’t speak peace to them: YOU are the elder brother, YOU are the pharisee, YOU are the legalist, YOU are the dangerous cultic one.

    The next phrase in Philippians 3:19 says: “whose glory is their shame”. The enemies of the cross glory in that of which we should be ashamed. We should be ashamed of all that we produce and rest only in what Christ produced before Christ sat down at the right hand on high. Instead, all of us before we are converted (if that happens) want to give God credit for helping us the creature to produce something which then obligates God the creator to save the creature who has produced it. Most of us when we were lost didn’t call what we produced “works”. Many of us when we were lost even sincerely believed that God predestined us to have faith. But we still DESIRED to have faith in a man-produced Satanic-produced gospel instead of the gospel revealed in the Bible.

    God will help you to be blameless concerning the righteousness which is in the law. Who would ever be ashamed of that? God will help you to not rely on circumcision and water baptism. Who could be ashamed of that? God will help you to see that you don’t need to perform and to see that God does not require either merit or righteousness. Who could be ashamed of that? So what is all this concern about not being ashamed of the gospel? What is all this talk of glorying in things we should be ashamed of? We are not homosexuals who glory in our homosexuality. We were never murderers, or even if we were, we never gloried in it. But Paul learned both a shame and a glory which is not natural, which none of us are born with. Paul learned to glory in, to exult in, to boast in the cross, not in the flesh. He explains this not only in Galatians 6:14 and in Philippians 3:3. Paul explains it in Romans six.

    Romans six is NOT saying: don’t worry about easy-believing one true doctrine, because the bottom line is that Christians “reign” by now being able to produce a quality-righteousness. Romans 6:17 says this: “you WERE SLAVES of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.” This does not mean: were liars and thieves and never ashamed of lying and stealing. Yes, there are some who may not be even ashamed of those things. But such things were always shameful to Nicodemus (who would not come to the light lest his good deeds be exposed as evil deeds, John 3:19). Such things were always shameful to Paul, who had been zealous according to the law, as he remembers in Philippians 3. Romans 6:21 “What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed?”

    After one believes the gospel, one no longer remains an enemy of the cross, is no longer ashamed to say that Christ on the cross only died for the elect and that this death is the only difference between converted and lost. A lot of people claim to be converted who will not say that, who think that such a thing does not need to be said and should not be said. Why? It’s their belly.

    I am not of course saying that these lost religionists are fat people. I am not even saying that they are insincere people who want to speak smooth words to keep everybody happy. When Paul was lost, he was not such a person. He was too zealous for that When I was lost, I was not such a person. But I still had a “belly problem” when I was lost. My problem was that I desired for God and others to approve what I produced. My belly produced it. My belly, my lust had an appetite to approve what I produced and what I would produce.

    For many walk, and I tell you now even weeping, who are enemies of the cross, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame. I was such a person. I was proud of my Calvinism, proud of what I thought God had given me that God had not given other Christians, proud that I was not a legalist or a cultist who judged everybody alike by one standard...I had a belly problem. I could not produce the righteousness God required so I worshipped another God who would save sinners without any righteousness and without any knowledge of His righteousness. My belly could not produce perfection but my belly nevertheless desired to boast in what it could produce.

    Belly is not a very pretty word. We do not often think of our bellies as our most attractive feature. Especially some of us. Belly is just how we live, belly is just what we need to eat, to take in to keep living. We think of our minds, of our hands, of our tongues as that with which we produce. But I want to close this chapter with two more words, words which are even less pretty than “belly”. One is “stomach”. As I have suggested, belly may be more than stomach. But it is stomach. Which of us likes to think much about what goes on in our stomachs? Our stomachs are in us, our stomachs are God’s gift to us. We would all be in trouble without stomachs. I have two friends who have had to have stomach operations, who now have to live with very small dysfunctional stomachs. They are ashamed of the sounds which come out from their stomachs. We are all ashamed of the sounds which come out of our stomachs.

    I tell you this. When God delivers us to the true gospel, we will no longer be pluralists about the old gospels. We will be ashamed of that in which we once gloried. We will not continue to try to praise the holy God of the Bible for saving us by means of a false gospel. We will not keep up the lie that we were still Arminians after we were converted. We will not keep up the lie that we were converted. Then and only then will we be converted so that we no longer glory in OUR shame. Not Their shame. Not Your shame. My shame. I have taken many words. And the second word you must know now even if I didn’t say it. Paul said it back up in chapter 3.

        The word is dung. Before we were converted, we thought our dung didn’t stink. I hope you see how bad our situation was. It’s not just that we were not ashamed of our dung. The great tragedy was that we were PROUD OF OUR DUNG. We gloried in our...dung. We did not glory in the lies we told, we did not glory in the things we stole, we did not glory in our disrespect to our parents. But we gloried in the idea that Jesus died  for everybody but that only some people (like us) would be saved. Some people, like us. This is the belly problem, this is the dung problem. You are not going to tell me that a little thing like if Jesus died for everybody is such a big deal. That’s what we said when we were lost. Even when our own personal preference was to say that Jesus didn’t die for everybody, when we were lost we still didn’t think it was a big deal.

    The big deal was our belly. The big deal was what we thought God had produced IN us. I know that we don’t like to think about it, but when stomachs work, what do they produce? When the nutrition goes off to other places, what is left that the stomach has produced? That is what Paul calls his former religion. And that is what we too will call the false gospels we used to believe. We will not remain so delicate and gentle with ourselves. The big lie will stop.

    We will stop saying that our lost relatives are not lost. We will stop saying that we were not lost when we were lost. When we were lost, we were “free from righteousness”. We were servants of sin, working in vain in a religion which is at enmity with God and with which God is at enmity.

    It is simply not enough to “move on” to that righteousness which Christ obtained, which is through faith in Christ. I must count the dung to be dung if I want to be found in Christ. I don’t count the dung to get into Christ but if I find myself in Christ, I will no longer be able to stomach the old gospel of which I am now ashamed. I won’t be able to stomach it in other people either. That doesn’t mean that I hate those people. It does mean that when those people rely on the old false gospel I used to believe, that I will not agree that they are saved because they believe that old gospel. Rather I must say that them believing that old gospel is evidence that they are not yet converted. If I love them, I will tell them that. I now tell you weeping...