Affirming Priorities

Philippians 3:1-11

I’m teaching the senior youth catechism (church school) this year. And while there has only been two sessions so far, I’m enjoying the experience. These youthful adults are engaging, lively and interested in what we’re talking about. I see it on their faces and in their responses. My impression is that they want answers or at least better questions when it comes to matters of faith. I like that. As a teacher I look for that; it makes the experience a joy even while it’s a challenge. I’m always tempted to think that I have all the right answers when it comes to understanding doctrine. But when I’m honest with myself, I know that answers are best held loosely. Questions seem to get us much further along the faith journey.

Take the passage before us today. Verses 11 and 12 are the main point and if I don’t have questions about Paul’s statements and passions, then I wonder if I’ve read them at all.

¹⁰I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

I mean seriously: to know Christ? How does that work? What exactly is the power of the resurrection? What is the power of participation in his sufferings? Becoming like Jesus in his death? At first glance that does not sound like fun, does it? And then there is the issue of the resurrection. Many believers don’t even believe in that, or at least know about it as the ultimate reality of having faith in Christ. Too many of us seem to hold onto this life and fear death because they somehow think that after death all we get to do is sprout wings, float on clouds and play harps.

These are real questions and important ones. So what we’ll do today is work through what Paul has been talking about and maybe some answers will become clear or maybe we’ll discover that in a passage like this we’ll end up with partial answers and a new batch of questions. Either way, the Spirit will give us a better sense of being on the journey with Paul and millions of others who what to know Christ in ever-increasing ways.

So, we’ll take a look at three things in the passage: Paul’s caution, Paul’s confidence and Paul’s desire as a follow traveller on the way with God.

Paul’s Caution 1-2

Philippians 3.1-2 are all about Paul’s caution, which is a warning about those who teach anything but living for Christ, by the Spirit, to the glory of God. In Paul’s day and now there are people who want to turn a lively faith into a dead religion.

Paul has discovered that life in Christ is about searching for ways to express God’s love. To see the world and all who live in it as belonging to God. To express love to those who are different because Jesus died to redeem all that is lost.

Dead religion on the other hand is all about us and them. Those who are in and those who are out. As if God doesn’t love those who don’t acknowledge him. He does! As if God doesn’t bless all people with seasons, rain and harvest. He does!

Dead religion ends up being all about me at the center of the universe, not God. It makes work, people, the land and everything else into objects to be used up and thrown away. Lively faith on the other hand keeps God in the center; it sees the goodness of God in life, that work, people and the land are precious gifts to be cared for and protected. Paul’s caution, I think, is a good one.

Paul’s Confidence 3-6

And then there is his confidence in verses 3-6. By using the Old Testament sign of God’s promises in circumcision, Paul drives home the point. Verse two has mutilation which is like death and verse three is circumcision which was the symbol for life, for inclusion into God’s people. But cutting off some skin was never going to be enough – it was a sign only. God is always more interested in the inward reality.

Deuteronomy 30.6, “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.”

And this is what really matters. Not good behaviour, not religiously going to church every Sunday, not being nice to strangers. That kind of life is all too often an act. The world Paul grew up in was all about the Law and somehow living up to it. And to be fair many people did live up to it. Paul was one of them. He did everything right. He managed to be born into the right kind of family; he went to the right schools; he followed his religion with passion. And in that sense he was a righteous man. People approved of him as having his act together; the casual observer would have said that he loved God. And to some extent they would have been right.

In some ways it’s fairly easy to gain that reputation today by the same means. The problem then and now is that all of this being right was based on Paul’s efforts and the call on his life being as yet unanswered. Yes Paul was circumcised to show that as a baby and youth he was included in God’s people, just as we baptize our children for the same reasons. But then as now inclusion as a child is not enough. Paul himself says, when I grew up, I had to take on adult responsibility. So too with the children of believers today.

Let’s be clear, our children remain the children of believers until they accept the promises in their baptism. Nothing more and nothing less. The water is not enough; relying on infant baptism or goods deed to save is not enough. As we discussed last week in youth, even the good we do is always tainted with pride or self-interest. We need something else and that is where Paul puts his confidence. He will not rely on his own sense of being a good person. In fact he considers all of his gains to be garbage. Stinky garbage the kind of garbage that people would through into the gutter because they had no sewer system. That’s right, human waste and rotting left-overs.

Paul’s confidence is in knowing Jesus and nothing else.

Paul’s Great Desire 7-11

And that is his great desire. He will not rely on his own sense of right and wrong, but allow the Spirit to shape it. He will no longer hold stubbornly to opinions about what kind of behaviour is right or wrong, but he will allow the Spirit to show him that the way toward life for others is different than his. Paul’s behaviour was nearly perfect and yet he was dead inside.

Changed by the Spirit, it was Paul who said, 1 Cor 9.19, “though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible . . . I have become all things to all people  . . .  I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.^”

So he got involved with people of different backgrounds, ethnic groups and religions. Paul looked for common ground. What makes us alike as human beings rather than what is different.

I once had a very tattooed and pierced man ask if I would be welcome inside the church.

Isn’t it sad that for so many the desire to find out who Christ is has been blunted by judgment over behaviour.

Paul finally understood his deep longing to “know” God. A word that reflects both the way of life that is right and good and intimate fellowship with God. He and so many more have the first part, but miss the second. Good behaviour does not save; it is God alone who changes the human heart. As it says in the prophet Ezekiel:

^11.19I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. ²⁰Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

God is active in the hearts of people all over. And his goal is to achieve the best response possible to grace. Grace getting from God what we don’t deserve. Getting from our parents, friends and teachers what we don’t deserve.

Getting forgiveness, unconditional love and acceptance. This is what Paul knows – he’s experienced it. Have you?

It’s like doing something wrong and being taken out to dinner afterward instead of being punished. Humanly that makes no sense! And that’s the point. Grace is about an invitation into a new way of living where thoughts of doing wrong slowly die.

It’s radical and amazing and life changing and so much more. Grace produces joy. In Greek the words are Charis and chara; very closely related and that helps drive the point home. Joy depends on grace; it emerges out of grace. Joy filled people have experienced getting what they do not deserve and they live with gratitude from that day forward. Never perfectly, but always yearning to share in whatever it is that is living with and for Christ. Including the sufferings and hardships that come by saying Jesus is Lord of my life.

The goal has and always will be to know God because in knowing God we become more human, more alive, more whole. More willing to love the unlovable; more willing to be patient with our fellow travellers in Christ; more able to share in Christ’s suffering so that old and dead attitudes and habits fall away. More aware that what we are is defined by God and God alone. More aware that all people are defined by love, transformed by love and are meant to live to express love in this a fallen world. In a single phrase, to believe that in Jesus we do what God is.