Paul, in this text, is talking to the Christians in Philippi.
We must remember that Paul is speaking to the Christian church in a time when
the Jewish religious leaders were insisting that the Christians must be circumcised
in order to find favor with God. After all, it is what the law demands. Paul
is telling these Christians at Philippi that this isn’t so. If it were
true, Paul would be on the top of the list of those in favor with God. Paul
has a good résumé. Paul goes on to list all the reasons why
he would be on top of the list of those who were in favor with God: circumcised
on the eighth day; member of the people of Israel from the tribe on Benjamin;
a Hebrew born of Hebrews; a Pharisee, a keeper of the law; a zealous persecutor
of the church; blameless under the law. And yet Paul considers all of these
qualifications rubbish.
The key component of the issue Paul is addressing is what it
means to know Christ. This question is at the very heart of what it means
to be Christian. In our passage, Paul is, in some sense, giving his own personal
testimony about what it means to know Christ. For Paul, knowing Christ is
far beyond the things we do--the things that can easily cause us to have confidence
in ourselves rather than in Christ. For Paul, what matters is knowing Christ
and that alone.
We live in a world where we are taught to be self-sufficient.
If it’s going to happen, it’s going to be me who gets it down.
Our parents raise us to do things ourselves. If we want good grades, we have
to study hard and so we do. If we want to make the basketball team, then we
have to practice hard. If there is anything we want done in our life, we have
to do it ourselves--good grades, making the team, getting a raise. As a result,
life becomes about us and our ability to get things done.
Reading a text like this is difficult. We want our accomplishments
to count for something. We want to be able to thumb through our résumés
and have confidence that if God was taking notice of all our hard work, He
would let us in. In the Church today, we have a tendency to be like Paul.
We measure our faith, how Christian we are, on the works we do. Look at how
good a Christian I am. I go to church, I teach Sunday School, I sing on the
praise team, I am on the church board . . . the list goes on and on. We have
confidence that it is these things that make us right with God. Life lived
this way can be very frustrating--after all, we never feel like we are quite
good enough. There is something more I need to do. If I could just do this
or just do that, then somehow life would be good and just maybe God might
even notice.
Our righteousness, our right-standing with God has nothing to
do with us, it has everything to do with God. We do not gain our own righteousness;
rather our righteousness comes through faith in Christ. Paul puts it this
way: “not having a righteousness that is my own (that somehow I accomplished)
but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based
on faith (again, not on what we have done or not done).” The simple
truth is: God loves each and every one of us and there is nothing we can do
or not do to change that. Our right standing has to do with God and God’s
grace in our lives and not about our ability to get God to notice us. What
a relief.
Our response to a passage like this should not be seen as something
else we have to do. Far too often in the church, I fear we have seen the end
task of preaching (both delivery and receiving) as nothing more than something
else we have to do, as though a sermon is in the same line as the next great
self-help book. To view this text in this way is to miss the point completely.
The question isn’t, “so what do I have to do with this text?”.
Rather the question is “how do I respond to this text?” Our response
can be no different than the response of Paul: to consider all of our accomplishments
as rubbish; to realize that our relationship with God is not about our abilities
and our own hard work but about knowing Christ. What does it mean to know
Christ? It means to become like Him: in His life, in His death, and in His
resurrection.
(For the full manuscript
of this sermon go to www.preachersmagazine.org and click on “Sermons.”)
We live in a world that preaches self-reliance. If it is going
to be, it is going to have to be me. Yet, Paul in this text shares a message
that is completely different from that of the world. Paul used to live in
that sort of world--where accomplishments got you raises; hard work got you
on the team; strict adherence to the Law was thought to gain you favor with
God. Yet now, Paul considers all these things rubbish. If anyone had reason
to boast, it was Paul. He did everything “right.” He did the right
things, was born of the right family, said all the right things and performed
all the right actions. All of these “right things,” however, fail
miserably in comparison to knowing Christ. Our right standing with God has
absolutely nothing to do with things we do (or don’t do for that matter)--our
résumé--but has everything to do with Christ. May we be found
in Christ. May we become like Him: in His life, in His death and in His resurrection.
