Philippians 3:18
( 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: ( 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:
Many walk as enemies of the cross of Christ, about whom Paul had told often and repeatedly and now tells even weeping and with grief. The warning stands joined to the call to follow faithful examples and to maintain unity in the work of the church. It warns the people of God about a peril among them, for these enemies put on garments of light as they did in Paul's day and gain influence, and believers must give them no encouragement. Their way of life is marked by appetite and indulgence, pride in what is shameful, and attention to earthly things, and their end is destruction.
The verse describes people who profess Christianity but live in a way that denies Christ, with pride, ambition, appetite, and self-pleasing making them enemies whose conduct and speech misrepresent Christ. It identifies as enemies those who profess to follow Jesus but love worldly things and are not devoted to the cross, while true followers make sacrifices and reject pleasures that do not draw them to Jesus or foster heavenly-mindedness and growth in grace. Those divided between Christ and the world prefer worldly company and resist correction and must either be wholly converted and sanctified by obeying the truth or remain with the world. Those whose works oppose the teachings of the gospel are enemies, so that phases of professed religious work carried on in a wrong spirit, in a diverted and self-chosen way, with judging of God's delegated ministers instead of building up the work to represent Christ, are just as much opposed to gospel teaching as the works of those enemies.
The verse identifies as enemies those who oppose the truth and who reject the truth about Christ and despise the cross. Satan uses these enemies to bind others through human influence by attaching multitudes to them with cords of affection, whether parental, filial, conjugal, or social, and the effect is the same, that they exert power to control conscience so that souls held under their sway lack sufficient courage and independence to obey their own convictions of duty. Those who faithfully testify of Christ may be hated and persecuted by these enemies, while their lives, shaped by Christ's spirit and by sharing in his sufferings, bear witness to the truth they proclaim.