Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
This is the third in what’s turning out to be a series of four sermons, one for each chapter in the book of Philippians. As you know, the epistle to the Philippians is often called the Epistle of Joy. In the first chapter, Paul regarded his relationship with the Philippian Christians as a joyful partnership, or fellowship, koinonia, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Last week, chapter two, it was the joy of being of the same mind together as a congregation, the mind of Christ, thus joy in the mind of Christ. Today, in chapter three, it’s the joy in knowing Christ, even at the cost of all else in life.
Jesus stated that truth more bluntly in Matthew 10:37 and 38: “He who loves father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.” Being a follower, a believer in Christ, requires a devotion unparalleled by any other relationship one has in this world.
Now Paul applies that principle to himself this morning in chapter 3, verses 7 and 8 of the epistle: “Whatever things were gained to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Now the word used that we translate into English “knowing” is gnosis. It’s knowledge. It doesn’t mean to simply know something about Jesus, right? We all know family and friends, acquaintances and strangers alike, who say they know about Jesus, they know Jesus, but they really actually don’t. They’re rather clueless when you start having a conversation with them. But gnosis means to have an intimate knowledge of the person or the thing of which you know.
Paul is not saying here that he would have given up, made a decision for Jesus, knowing that all things would be lost. Rather, he is saying instead his personal relationship with Christ Jesus, rooted in faith and love, enables him to walk daily with Christ, understanding that he has or can lose everything on account of it. After all, he’s sitting in a Roman prison. Knowing Christ, you see, is a big thing in life. If you know Christ in the biblical sense of the word gnosis, everything else in this world pales in comparison to that knowledge, to that faith, to that trust. Your greatest accomplishments and possessions, ambitions, your pride, your relationships, are nothing compared to knowing Christ. They all vanish in the face of our Lord.
Listen to the list of titles and accomplishments that Paul once trusted in and boasted about as a religious leader of the Hebrew people: “If anyone else thinks he is confident in the flesh, I have more reason.” In other words, I was better than you. “Circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, 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 which is in the Law, found blameless.”
It’s an impressive list of boasting, if you’re a first-century Jew who has an understanding that salvation is by obedience to the Law, by the traditions of the Pharisees, and by the pedigree of the bloodline. Paul was an Israelite, a Jew through and through, by the definition of the day. He was about as good as it could get. Circumcised the eighth day, in other words, right on time, not the seventh and not the ninth, on the day it was supposed to happen. Of the people of Israel, he’s one of the chosen people of God, not a pagan, not a proselyte convert, not a Gentile. Of the tribe of Benjamin. Now among the tribes, the Benjamin tribe was in fact one of the most prestigious lineages that one could possess. The first king of Israel, Saul, came from the tribe of Benjamin, and Paul was named after Saul. He was, after all, Saul of Tarsus, long before he was renamed by the Lord to be Paul.
A Hebrew of Hebrews, if pedigree counted, and it did, Paul checked all the right boxes. As to his works, Paul wasn’t just an ordinary Jew going about fulfilling the letter of the Law. No, he was a Pharisee. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He had gone above and beyond the basic devotion and compliance requirements of the Law itself. He chose a dedicated life of religious service, a vocation, a job unique and demanding in religious vigor. He was a Pharisee, and the Pharisees were the elite lawkeepers of the people and of the day. They made it their business to know each and every detail of the Mosaic Law, not to mention all the rules and traditions, oral and written, that were intended to prevent a person from breaking a commandment. They saw it as their job to keep Jews from breaking the commandments, and they went about their job with great sobriety.
As to zeal, he wrote, a persecutor of the church. Paul was so dedicated to the Law and to the religion of the Pharisees, that was the only way to please God, he volunteered for the job to seek out and destroy Christians, to arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem for trial. He also was a participant, he held the coats of the people who stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr. As to righteousness under the Law, he says he was blameless.
So if anybody could be saved by following the Law, it was Paul. Not perfect, though he strove for it under the Law. No one had better pedigree, no one had a better resume, no one was more active and attentive and zealous or righteous in keeping the rules and regulations in pursuit of righteousness of his own than Paul himself.
But now, having been called by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul saw everything in his life different. He once thought of himself as a good man, back among the best of the religious leaders. But in 1 Timothy 1:15, he calls himself now chief of all sinners. In Philippians, he says, “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.”
In other words, he exchanged the righteousness he had worked for his whole life for the righteousness that was given freely in Christ. He uses a word here, by the way, skubalon. It’s a Greek word we translate “rubbish.” It’s kind of a politically soft, sensitive way of translating this word. It usually means dung. It usually means manure. It means the stuff that you throw away, the dogs might eat, or that you just leave to stink and rot away. That’s now how he sees his own works: as rubbish, dung, stuff that stinks and is to be thrown away.
Start talking to people about that when they start boasting about their good deeds and how they’re basically good and God’s going to let them into heaven. Really, remember that word, skubalon. Just say skubalon. They ask you what it means, and tell them. You don’t even have to make it pretty, just tell them.
The old sinful nature wants us to take pride in how we live our lives. We all too often get wrapped up in our own identity. We try to give value to our lives by the things we do, by the good intentions that we house, at least by our definition. We think of ourselves as if these things can produce a righteousness that is in fact pleasing to God, when it is not. In reality, apart from faith in Christ, our works and our lives are skubalon, rubbish, dung, when compared to the righteousness that is freely given to you, and was given to you in the waters of your Holy Baptism. You were given the very works and person and righteousness of Jesus Christ. And according to chapter 2, you were given the mind of Christ too.
The prophet Isaiah summarized our spiritual standing before God, apart from faith in the Messiah, in Isaiah 64:6: “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all of our works are but filthy garments.”
Not only did Paul come to see his works for what they were, filthy rags in God’s sight, done by a man who is unclean, he came to understand that knowing, that is, loving, trusting Christ, brings a surpassing righteousness that makes everything else in comparison pale. Paul discovered the righteousness of Christ and gladly turned in his good works for Christ’s very own righteousness. “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived by the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from faith.”
See, that’s how you memorize that last verse, verse nine. And the next time people start telling you that God loves them and is going to save them because they’re basically good people, though not perfect, quote that verse and watch them stare.
For the Christian, the road to self-discovery and worth takes you to Christ, not to yourself. To knowing Christ, to loving Christ, to trusting in the promised Messiah. This is the surpassing worth of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Nothing else in life can compare to that holiness that God gives you in Christ and through the Word and Sacrament ministry.
So once you tell them they have no righteousness of their own, it only comes from Christ, you then have to go on and tell them that the place that they find that righteousness of Christ is in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church. Not the local contemporary concert. It’s in the Word and Sacrament ministry, where His Word is preached in all of its severity and its comfort, and the sacraments administered according to His instructions. There He is imparting, giving away, not nearly the forgiveness of sins, but rather, or plus, the righteousness of Jesus Christ Himself.
You see, the truth is, you are saved by works, just none of them are yours. They’re all Christ’s works. His works, His keeping of the Law on your behalf, His fulfillment of all the will of His heavenly Father, His punishment which He took for you in your place. He bore the weight of your sins. He suffered and died for your sin. He shed His blood, His holy blood, to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And when you confess your sin, He is faithful and just to cleanse you from all your sins and grant you righteousness.
Once that happens, why, now you live in the state of forgiveness, the state of grace. Now you’re free, and now you know the joy of knowing Christ. The joy comes from the knowledge that in Christ Jesus, all of your salvation is in His hands, and none of it in your works.
And what did Paul do with this righteousness, this freedom and joy given to him? Verse 10: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” Notice that good old theology of the cross stuff. He doesn’t all of a sudden talk about having power to become wealthy. He doesn’t have a conversation about the glory of this or that thing that can be now done in this world. He joins himself to the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And two out of those three are unpleasant, to say the least.
“If somehow I obtain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already grasped it all or have already become perfect, but I press on, if I may also take hold of that for which I was taken hold of by Christ Himself.” He acknowledges that he’s a Christian now because Jesus took hold of him. He didn’t decide and grab Jesus. Jesus grabbed him. There are no volunteers to be Christians, by the way. There’s only conscripts. There’s people that are drafted, drafted by the Word and Sacrament ministry, by the gift of faith, by the work of God in their lives.
As he sat in jail, awaiting his fate, including the end of his life by possible execution, Paul looks not for a way out, but he looks to Christ’s very own execution, to Christ’s suffering and death, and to the future hope of the promise of the resurrection of the dead. He not only wants to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, he wants to share in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. He’s even willing to die in the same manner as Jesus died, that is, by Roman crucifixion. Now he was half Roman citizen, so he got spared the crucifixion, was simply beheaded at the end of the day.
In regard to all the disappointments and sorrows and sufferings of his life, Paul puts it all in perspective, both here in Philippians chapter 3 and also in Romans chapter 8: “I consider the sufferings of this present time are nothing to be compared with the future glory that is to be revealed to us.”
So live or die, going home to be with Jesus or remaining here, Paul says, for the progress of the Christians in Philippi, Paul presses on. He simply does what he’s supposed to do each and every day, trusting all things into the hand of his Lord Jesus. “I press on, if I take hold of that for which I was taken hold of by Christ. Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet, but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.”
See, we’re called to do the same thing. Press on, to go forward, to what lies ahead of us, toward the goal for the prize, as Paul puts it, that is, eternal life in the presence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus that’s the call of the Christian.
But have you ever noticed how often you and I spend in the past, pulling out our old sins, or the sins of other people who have hurt us? How often we talk about the should have, would have, could have in this life? There’s no should have, would have, could have in St. Paul or in the biblical text. Instead, you’re supposed to forget what has come before, that which is forgiven in Christ.
As I once told a pastor that was in severe trouble from an old sin somebody dug up on him: if it’s been dug up in the past and you’ve confessed in the past, then it’s the devil himself doing it to you. And you know what to tell the devil, right? We live in the future, that’s where we’re supposed to go. We’re not supposed to keep going back to that thing that happened to us, that he or she did to us, that we did to ourselves. Should have, would have, could have aren’t supposed to be in the Christian vocabulary.
The Bible teaches that when it comes to our works, our sins, our past, God truly forgives, and when He forgives, He forgets. Isaiah 43:25: “I am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” Or Psalms 103:11-12: “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.” From the New Testament, Hebrews 10:17: “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
There’s nothing that can be compared to a forgiving that actually forgets. There’s nothing that can be compared to a joy that comes in knowing Christ and receiving all the benefits of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus we don’t demonstrate it, we have been given that joy, the great joy that comes from knowing Christ, for He first knew you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.