What Does Philippians 3:6 Mean?

(6) **Concerning zeal, persecuting the church.**—The word “zeal” (as in Acts 22:3) is probably used almost technically to describe his adhesion to the principles of the “Zealots,” who, following the example of Phinehas, were for “executing judgment” at once on all heathens as traitors, ready alike to slay or to be slain for the Law. He shows how in this he departed from the teaching of Gamaliel, when he was “exceedingly mad against” the Christians, and “persecuted them even unto strange cities.” **Touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.**—The “righteousness in Law,” which our Lord called “the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees” (Matthew 5:20), is the righteousness according to rule, in which a man, like the rich young ruler, might think himself “blameless,” and even hope to go beyond it in “counsels of perfection”—not the righteousness according to principle, which can never fulfil or satisfy itself. While St. Paul confined himself to the lower form of righteousness, he could feel himself “blameless;” but when he began to discern this higher righteousness in the Law, then, he felt the terrible condemnation of the Law, on which he dwells so emphatically in Romans 7:7-12.