Introduction
In
this passage of Scripture we see the apostle Paul explaining to the Philippian
church the essential nature of really coming to know Jesus Christ in an
intimate way, what is involved in that, and the why behind it all. Paul addresses the humility involved in
knowing Christ, and the absolute dependence on God that is necessary to know
him. And Paul does this without laying down one requirement for
the believer. We will see that it
is something that God does in us.
We
went camping about a month ago, taking our travel trailer out for the first
time. I was sufficiently nervous
dragging something that big behind me on the highway, but eventually settled
into it. However, when it was time
to hitch up and come home, I found that the anti-sway bar had broken on the
trip up the mountain. No, I had
not noticed it when we originally arrived. I did fine getting down to the highway, but once I got up to
55 mph, the trailer began to sway, and I don’t mean just a little. I’m gripping the steering wheel for all
I’m worth, thinking to myself, “I can do this”, “just don’t drive 55”, “I can
get by without the anti-sway bar”, and “this thing isn’t going to get the best
of me!” Right. I white knuckled it for about 30 miles
before I finally pulled over, got on the Internet and found an RV dealer who
had an anti-sway bar to sell me.
White
knuckling—holding on so tightly to the steering wheel that our knuckles turn
white—is how I initially learned what it was to live “the Christian life”. It is how I learned what it was to get
to know the Savior. I used to think,
“I can do this”, and, as I was taught, I rigorously engaged in having a quiet
time, reading and memorizing Scripture, maintaining a prayer journal, evangelizing,
worshipping, serving at church, fasting, giving, and being at church every time
the doors were open.
I was way too young in my walk with Christ when I was
ordained as a deacon, and in the church culture of the denomination we were in,
the deacons functioned as the sounding board for the pastor. We were given any number of assignments,
and mine included attending the deacon meetings, being assigned to at least two
different committees, teaching adult Sunday School, and anything else that came
up. Oh, and it was clearly implied
that saying “no” was not an option—the culture didn’t allow for that. So that was how I thought—I have to be
involved to be a “good Christian”, in addition to all of the spiritual
disciplines I mentioned. And to
make it worse, time with my very young family was sorely missing, as well as true
intimacy with Jesus Christ. All of
my “activity” took the place of real time with the Lord.
Now don’t get me wrong—there is absolutely nothing
intrinsically wrong with any of these activities. Engaging in the spiritual disciplines is
very beneficial for us as believers.
The Holy Spirit has gifted all believers and those gifts are to be used
for God’s glory. But apart from
the gospel—the completed work of Jesus Christ—they are all ritualistic exercises
in futility. Why? Because of the motivation behind them, thinking
we will gain favor with God by engaging in them! Nothing we do can gain favor with God! Too often, those of us who engage in the meticulous,
ritualistic observance of the disciplines will even feel the need to double up
the next day should a quiet time or prayer time be missed. If we do this, what we are doing is we
are legalistically white knuckling the spiritual steering wheel all the
way. Our deeds are as filthy rags.
The
fact of the matter is that the gospel—what Jesus did on our behalf, that is, the
“work” to please God that has been already completed—must be taken into account
by each of us daily. I’ll address
that in a minute.
Philippians
3:8-11
8Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and
count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found
in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but
that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that
depends on faith—10that I may
know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death, 11that by any means possible I may
attain the resurrection from the dead.
In the first
part of Chapter 3, Paul warns the church about the Judaizers that were among
them, those who believed new believers needed to be circumcised in order to be
saved. He then said,
“3For
we (believers, those of us in Christ) are the circumcision, who worship by the
Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—4though
I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he
has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more”
and he went on
to list seven qualities that demonstrated the confidence he had in what he
did. He said he:
·
Was circumcised on the eighth day
·
of the people of Israel
·
of the tribe of Benjamin
·
a Hebrew of Hebrews
·
as to the law, a Pharisee
·
as to zeal, a persecutor of the church
·
as to righteousness under the law, blameless (without any fault)
Paul’s pedigree
made him the big shot in his circles, spiritually speaking. But after coming to an understanding of the
gospel and God’s grace, and
his own inability to keep the law, Paul cast all those things aside. He counted
them all as loss, not gain—in
fact, he considered all things,
everything, as being to his disadvantage because
of the the indescribable, ongoing value of knowing Jesus Christ!
It was for Christ’s sake, for the sake of his relationship with Christ and his position in Christ, that Paul forfeited his
qualifications, and considered them as being no better than scum, the most
worthless and detestable thing imaginable. Again, he did so—and this is critically important to
understand—because he recognized the
immeasurable value of knowing Jesus Christ! And this was not something that Paul went back and forth
with—no. When he said he counted the
gain he had accumulated as loss, it was something that was a done deal,
accomplished in the past, with the results continuing into the present. It was a fact. It was permanent. And it was all because of Christ and
what he had accomplished on the cross.
Paul’s
Continuing Argument: v. 8-9
In verses 8 to 11 then, Paul goes into a more detailed explanation of
what he was talking about earlier.
In verse 8, he said he considered, that is, he viewed all of
the things he listed earlier as being to his disadvantage because of the fact
that knowing Christ was what
governed his life. Paul saw the
list as obstacles to knowing Christ.
Knowing Christ was
what controlled his life is what characterized his life. Knowing
Christ was what mattered and was what was supremely
valuable. This “knowing”
is different than the word “know” in v.10—here, Paul is talking about his acquired
knowledge of Jesus Christ,
that is, pursuing him, passionately, learning more and more about him. That mattered to Paul—it mattered way
more than the spiritual history he
had put together before his experience on the road to Damascus.
“Gain
Christ”
In addition to knowing
Christ, we see here that Paul’s focus was to cast those things aside so that he
would be found in him. He wanted to “gain Christ”—not
the things of the world—not the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life—but Christ. The
believer who loses all things like Paul is talking about, because
of Christ, is the one that gains
Christ. With the things of the
world cast aside (an attitude), the obstacles to knowing Christ are gone! Paul knew that it does not profit a man
to gain the whole world, only to lose his own soul. (Matthew 16:26)
Gain
à Confidence
Understand, that
which we “gain” is that in which we have ultimate confidence. If what we consider gain in this life consists
of our job, our salary, our family, our position in the community or in our
church, it is those things in which we place our ultimate confidence. No so for Paul. No, instead of his elevated position as
a Pharisee, with everyone looking up to him, he was interested in gaining Christ and being found in him! It was in Christ that he placed his trust, it was in Christ
that he experienced the ultimate confidence. None of that other stuff mattered! It was “in Christ” he wanted to be found on the last day,
living in him, with Christ as the
important aspect of his existence.
Not “the most important” thing, but THE important thing!
Found
in Christ
To be “found in
Christ” is to be living spiritually in him when he returns because one is
living spiritually in him in the present.
The idea is something that may or should happen (gaining Christ and being
found in him), suggesting that the action is dependent upon some condition
being met. What might that
condition be?
Well, it’s in
two parts, described for us in v. 9 in the negative and in the affirmative:
u
…not having a righteousness of my own
that comes from the law, this would be called a “works righteousness”, but (instead)
v
(having a righteousness) which comes
through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
Righteousness
has to do with being fully justified, exactly measuring up to what God
requires. The word conveys the
idea of perfectly conforming to the law of God, and expresses the idea of being
in right relationship with God or of being rightly related to God
by virtue of our performance.
Remember in the
beginning I mentioned Paul’s warning to the church about the Judaizers? Paul warned them about the Judaizers
that were among them, those who believed new believers needed to be
circumcised. Recognize that the
Judaizers wanted those in the Philippian church to “do” things. They were advocating a “works
righteousness”, not unlike the church in Galatia or those today who will teach
that one must engage in the spiritual disciplines or observe man made rules in
order to be “right” with God.
Think about it…if
righteousness comes by our keeping Law—or engaging in the spiritual
disciplines, or doing anything
else—then Christ died needlessly. (Galatians 2:21) Paul is not denouncing the
Law nor the righteousness demanded by it but he is denouncing his own former
self-righteous confidence in his own merits. No amount of law-keeping,
self-improvement, discipline, or religious effort—including the spiritual
disciplines mentioned earlier—can make anyone right with God. While those
things may give a false sense of righteousness, they do not measure up
to the standard of a perfectly righteous God.
As he makes his argument, Paul knows he will not gain Christ and he will
not be found in him when he returns if he depends on his own self-achieved righteousness
that results from his feeble attempts at keeping the law. Paul knows that his obedience to the
law, his ritualistic, honorable, morality is not sufficient to make him
righteous in God’s sight. Paul had
come to realize and understand that there is no way to perfectly keep the law
of God, which is the standard required by God. No, Paul knows that the only righteousness that counts is
righteousness that comes through faith in Christ and Christ’s finished work on the cross. He knows that righteousness that is
acceptable to God is actually from God. How is that possible?
Paul explained it here and in Romans 3, where he argued that it is
possible because it was the Father who sent the Son to bear the penalty for our
sin, to bear the wrath of the Father, to take it all upon himself for the
benefit of those who would be called to salvation by God. God provided the required righteousness
for us. It is because of Christ’s
finished work on the cross, it is because of Christ’s righteousness that believers,
through faith, are deemed righteous.
And this righteousness is a gift to the believer from God.
Faith
Paul continued in v. 9, making the point that true righteousness comes through
faith
in Christ. Faith involves completely renouncing any confidence in ourselves, completely
leaving behind any confidence in our accomplishments or any confidence in our
“spiritual maturity”. Faith is
receiving the gift of salvation from God, and it is the Holy Spirit who enables
us to receive that gift. We cannot
do even that ourselves! Instead of being confident in our own spiritual efforts,
faith entails emptying ourselves of ourselves (think Philippians 2), and
relying completely on the perfect righteousness of Christ, relying on his
death, burial and triumphant resurrection. That is humbling, and that is the point~
So a few minutes ago, I talked about revisiting the
gospel—what Christ did on our behalf—on a daily basis. In his book, The Discipline of Grace,
Jerry Bridges[1] argued that
believers must “preach the gospel to themselves every day”. Why? Why would that be important? I mean, the gospel is what we need for salvation, sure, but
not after we have been saved, right?
No! The gospel is important to each of us every day because, as
Bridges put it,
“to live by the gospel means that we
firmly grasp the fact that Christ’s life and death are ours by virtue of our
union with Him. What He did, we
did…because of our frequent failures before God,
we do feel under condemnation, we do not
feel God is for us but rather must surely be against us, we do think he
is bringing charges against us. At
such times we must preach the gospel to ourselves. We must review what God has declared to be true about our
justification in Christ.”
[p. 54]
He continued,
“to preach the gospel to yourself, then,
means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to
Jesus through faith in his shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again,
by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that he is your
propitiation, and that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.” [p. 59]
Preaching the gospel to myself will remind me that I am
in right relationship with God.
When my conscience reminds me of the sinner that I am, by preaching the
gospel to myself I remind myself that Jesus has already dealt with my guilt! As a result, there is nothing for me to do and nothing
I can do to curry any favor
with God! The same is true for every
believer!!
The Crux of
the Matter: What is Involved? v. 10-11
And this is the crux of the matter…what
is involved in knowing Christ?
Paul says that his desire is to know
Christ—and here he uses a different word for know than in v. 8. Here, the word “know” means to
intimately be connected to, to be completely familiar with on the deepest
level. More than knowing about
Christ, Paul wants to intimately, deeply, and personally be familiar with who Christ
is, all that he is about. Paul
here is talking about a personal union with Christ that works itself out in all
of our experiences. In this union,
we experience his power in
our lives. This intimate
relationship is expressed in a unity with Christ that results in our reliance
on Christ in everything! Jesus,
praying for all of his disciples, including you and me, prayed about this very
thing in the Garden.
3And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom you have sent.
That word know is the same word as here in v. 10;
Jesus prayed that you and I would be intimately, deeply connected to him and
the Father, he wants us to be intimately familiar with who he and the Father
are and all they are about. That,
Jesus said, is eternal life.
Only a person
who has been regenerated, and who has truly been saved, will sincerely claim to
want to KNOW Christ. This is the
desire of one who knows his or her sins have been forgiven, and that
they are “in Christ”, as Paul put it in Romans. I mean think about it, you and I have been rescued from a
terrible death—eternal separation from God. Why wouldn’t we have the desire to more fully KNOW
him who delivered us? Why wouldn’t
our “soul
long and yearn, even to hungering and to thirsting” as Spurgeon put it,
to KNOW Christ? You and I cannot
be satisfied merely knowing that “Jesus loves me and I’m not going to hell”! He took the penalty for our sin,
and he suffered a miserable death FOR US!
Because of that, if we have truly been converted, we will LONG to
really KNOW him!
Or, we may know theology inside out and upside down, but have no burning
in the belly to really KNOW him—is
that enough? I would argue NO! That is Paul’s argument too! I mean, WHY would we settle for just that? Paul was no different from you or me. He wanted more too—he wanted to really
KNOW Jesus, and that must be our
burning desire as well, to KNOW Christ personally!
Resurrection
and Suffering
Paul wanted this church to understand the idea that “knowing Christ” here
in v.10 involved a couple of things:
u
the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ—all that it implied, as
well as
v
sharing in Christ’s suffering.
Power
of His Resurrection
The word power here is describing for us the
idea of effective, productive energy that actually accomplishes something. This
resurrection Paul wanted to know would primarily include salvation, because
apart from Christ’s resurrection from the dead, there would be no rebirth,
there would be no justification, there would be no salvation or resurrection of
believers at the end of the age! Paul
recognized that the power of Christ’s
resurrection was at the heart of the gospel and that it was directly related to
attaining the resurrection from the dead he mentioned in v. 11. Jesus’ resurrection is the guarantee of
the believer’s resurrection!
Suffering
Not only that, but Paul wanted to share in Christ’s suffering, he wanted
to participate in the misery that Christ endured, the evil Christ endured, and by
doing so, he wanted to be conformed to Christ in his death.
I finished reading a book a few months ago called Holiness by Grace,
by Bryan Chapell.[2] It is definitely in my top five
favorites. In the chapter entitled
“What’s Discipline Got to do With It?” he wrote the following: at p. 170-172
…the
suffering we experienced was necessary for us to understand the God we were
preparing to proclaim. Suffering
cannot be avoided if we are really to know Christ. Since the Bible says that he became like us in order to
sympathize and understand our condition (Hebrews 4:15; 5:2), the converse must
also be true. We must know his
suffering in order to know him.
The apostle Paul writes, “I want to know Christ and the power of his
resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his
death” (Philippians 3:10). If even
an apostle would only know Christ through suffering, then I must recognize that
the Christian disciplines that reveal him include Scripture reading, prayer,
communion with fellow believers—and sharing in the fellowship of his
suffering.
But
what is the nature of Christ’s suffering that we must share, in order fully to
know his fellowship? His suffering
included poverty and humiliation, pain and death. All of these he endured for us…he suffered to take on
himself the guilt and the consequences of the sins of others. Thus, if we are to know him through his
suffering, we will not merely have to experience the difficulty of nameless
forces and circumstances; we must also experience what it means to suffer for
the sins of others. We must be
willing to endure and love the damaged and damaging personalities who make us
suffer. This is Luther’s theology
of the cross—the understanding that our deepest knowing of the One who bore the
cross for us in some measure depends on our own cross-bearing of the miseries
of this world and even of the miserableness of others…amid such suffering there
is a deep spiritual blessing….
Reading that blew my mind! I
had never understood that sharing in Christ’s suffering consists of suffering
because of the sins or sinful attitudes of others. Don’t you love it when the Holy Spirit pulls the cord for
the light to come on?
Now remember that "sharing in Christ’s suffering”, suffering because
of the sins or sinful attitudes of others, is what Paul is talking about. He is not talking about
suffering because of the consequences of our own sin, but because of the sin of
others. So think about it:
·
Have
people plotted against you (and I don’t mean in your own mind)? Think of Jesus, against whom the chief
priests, the elders, and the high priest conspired.
·
Have you
been ridiculed for your faith?
Think of Jesus being stripped, mocked, spit on, beaten, ridiculed and
accused
·
Has a
friend betrayed your trust?
Think of Jesus, betrayed by a man with whom he had spent the last three
years, a man who had been a witness to his restorative work. Or think of the other 11 guys, who ran
away like scared rabbits.
·
Have you
experienced injustice? Think
of Jesus, who went through sham trials, none of which were just. Think of Jesus, who paid the price for our sin, the ultimate injustice.
·
Has a son
or daughter or a parent abandoned you, walked away from the rest of the family? Think of Jesus on the cross—crying out
in a loud voice “My God, my God, (My Father) why have you forsaken me?” (not
that that was sin on God’s part, no!
He hung there because of our sin!) But Jesus felt forsaken.
Grace
21For to this [suffering] (we) have been called, because Christ also
suffered for (us), leaving (us) an example, so that (we) might follow in his
steps. 22He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
23When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered,
he did not threaten, but continued entrusting
himself to him who judges justly. 1 Peter 2:21-23
29For it has been granted to (us)
that for the sake of Christ (we) should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake… Philippians 1:29
Suffering for doing good, suffering for the sake of Christ, suffering
because of the sin of others—all come
to us as believers because of the grace of God. You may say, “Huh, are you nuts?” Well, that is exactly what Paul was
talking about when he said,
·
“…it has been granted (bestowed
upon) to you that for the sake of Christ you should…suffer for his sake” (Philippians
1:29) and when Peter said,
·
“19For this is a gracious thing,
when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.” 1 Peter 2:19
Friends, do not be discouraged
by the suffering brought about by the sin of others—it is what we called in my
world of law enforcement e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e, evidence of our intimate relationship
with Jesus Christ! No, it’s not
fun. No, it is not something we
would intentionally choose to go through.
But it is still evidence!
But fixing our eyes on Jesus and the prize that awaits us—the upward call
of God in Christ Jesus—gives us hope,
·
5and hope does not put us to shame,
because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who
has been given to us. [Romans 5:5]
·
(We do) not shift from the hope of the gospel
that we have heard (because of trials)…but we continue in the faith, stable and
steadfast… [Colossians 1:23]
·
…we (you and me) have our hope set on the living
God…(not the things of this world)
[1 Timothy 4:10]
·
(Remember, we are)…waiting for our blessed hope,
the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ… [Titus
2:13]
Be encouraged in all of the situations where you and I as disciples of
Jesus experience suffering as a result of the evil intentions of others, as a
result of the sin of others, we fellowship with Christ in His suffering! The suffering Jesus endured for us was a direct result of the
grace of God! Because he loved us,
he sent his Son to be the sacrificial lamb.
Imagine hearing from Jesus:
3I
know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and
you have not grown weary. [Revelation 2:3]
Are you enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of his name? Are you growing weary? Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector
of our faith! Put your hope in
him! Trust him! Look for the Day of his return!
Suffering
and Gospel
So in A Gospel Primer for Christians, Milton Vincent ties the
gospel and our sharing in Christ’s suffering together. He wrote:
“[T]he
gospel is the one great permanent circumstance in which I live and move; and
every hardship in my life is allowed by God only because it serves his gospel
purposes in me. When I view my circumstances in this light, I realize that the
gospel is not just one piece of good news that fits into my life somewhere
among all the bad. I realize instead that the gospel makes genuinely good news
out of every other aspect of my life, including my severest trials. The good news about my trials is that
God is forcing them to bow to His gospel purposes and do good unto me by
improving my character and making me more conformed to the image of
Christ. Preaching the gospel to
myself each day provides a lens through which I can view my trials in this way
and see the true cause for rejoicing that exists in them. I can then embrace
the trials as friends and allow them to do God’s good work in me.”[3]
By sharing in
his sufferings we become like him in his death. None of our
suffering conforms (is the same as) to his suffering, but just as Christ was
killed for the sin of others, we are marked by the cross because we belong to
him, because we now live in him.
And personally,
understanding that I share in his
suffering here and now—as opposed to my suffering—does not make it any less
painful, but it sure has changed my attitude
toward those whose sin or sinful attitude translates to calamity or affliction
for me! It has helped me to actually
love (or at least move in that direction) those whose sin brings pain and
tragedy to my life.
Paul and
the Resurrection: v. 11
Finally, Paul
wrote:
11that
by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
If we are to
share in his resurrection, we must be conformed to his death—Paul addressed
that. Spurgeon said this was a
“slow and painful death” (sharing in his sufferings) that we experience as we
are conformed to Christ’s death. And,
as believers, we are engaged in a struggle to persevere to the end.
Paul does not
view his salvation as something strictly in the past. Here he implies the future aspect of salvation, and, I would
argue, he preaches the gospel to himself in that he talks about the future
aspect or final outcome of the gospel.
Twice in Matthew’s gospel (chapters 10 and 24), Jesus said,
“But the one who
endures to the end will (future) be saved.”
The writer of Hebrews twice (chapter 3 and chapter 6) talks about
enduring to the end.
I believe that is what Paul had in mind here—you and I must endure
to the end. We must keep a
watchful eye on our own lives. Of
course, it is Christ who enables us
to endure to the end; it is he who sustains us to the end. (1 Corinthians
1)
In writing to
the church at Corinth, Paul also said:
1Now
I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you
received (past), in which you stand (present), 2and by which you are
being (future) saved, IF you hold fast to the word I
preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:1-2
Here, Paul talks
about our salvation that has occurred (past), is occurring (present), and will
occur (future), all contingent upon our holding
fast to the word that has been preached to us.
Application
So what do we
walk away with from this passage?
I would suggest we consider 5 things:
1.
My righteousness is through faith in Christ, not
in “doing”.
2.
Knowing him intimately
must be the focus of my life.
3.
If I am in a position to make a choice between
the world or Christ, I will choose Christ.
4.
Even losing everything because of Christ means I
gain Christ.
5.
Sharing in his suffering means I come to know
him intimately.
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