(To hear audio of this sermon, click HERE.)
Nothing Else Matters
Philippians 3:4-14
Trinity Christian
Church
Smyrna, Tennessee
September 9, 2012
Chris O’Rear, M.Div.,
M.M.F.T.
I know Marshall has been preaching
from the book of Philippians and today we are continuing the lessons from
Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi found in Philippians 3. I will focus today on verses 4 through 16.
Paul opens this section of the text by telling the people
in the church that what he is writing to them are things that he has written to
them before. He says that he does not
mind writing these things again and he is certain that it won’t hurt the people
hear it again. There DO seem to be some
things that we all need to hear again…from time to time. The church in Philippi was made up primarily
of gentile (or non-Jewish) converts to Christianity. However, the church seemed to struggle with
some groups Jewish believers within the church who wanted to say that you could
not be a “Real Christian” unless you did certain things or believed certain
things that the Jews believed and THEN followed Christ. Apparently, there were arguments within the
church there about what constituted true faith and whether these Jewish
elements were absolutely necessary to be a Christian. Paul says he is writing again to try to
clarify this issue for them. Paul refers
to those that are causing the trouble as “Dogs” and “Evil Workers”. These people wanted to hold on to their own
ideas of what it was to be good and right and add on to the simple truth of
grace and faith in Christ.
If there were such people today,
they might tell new Christians, “You are still ‘a Christian’, but you can be a
real Christian unless your parents and grandparents were Christians. They might tell new Christians, “You cannot
be ‘real Christians’ unless you were baptized as an adult and dunked under the
water.” They may tell others, “You are
not really Christian unless you vote for the political party that we vote for”. They might say, “You cannot be a “True
Christian” unless you support the same view on controversial issues that we
have”. These people that Paul is
speaking against put a great deal of value in their birth and their family
heritage. They insisted on their
particular religious practices and their own religious rules. Paul says if you want to rate yourself that
way, I can certainly rate myself that way…
4b-6 If anyone else
has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth
day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born
of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church;
as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Paul
is pointing out that under the categories that trouble-makers wanted to use to judge
others, he was without fault. He was not
a convert to Judaism, but had been born a Jew.
He had not just been a Jew, but had studied as a scholar of the law and
by his own understanding, he had kept the law.
He not only kept the law, but he sought to persecute others who he felt
were distorting the law. In short, no
one could boast about being a better Jew than Paul. He wasn’t just saying, “Hey, I’m one of
you”. He is saying, “I’m better than ALL
y’all”. However, Paul does not stop
there. He goes on in verses 7-9…
7-9Yet
whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of
Christ. More than that, I regard
everything as a loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord. For his sake I have suffered the
loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain
Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes
from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the
righteousness from God based on
faith.
Paul says that all those things that
he used to use to make himself feel better than others – all those things that
made him feel important and righteous – are really garbage compared to a
relationship with Christ. The actual
Greek word that Paul uses to describe what he thinks of his previous
accomplishments is not one that we could use politely in this congregation
today. Needless to say, Paul has had a
change of heart about what constitutes true faith and what is truly
important.
When Paul talks about how everything
he has been compares to “knowing Christ”, he is not talking about knowing about
“Christ”. He is not talking about
knowing what the Bible has to say about “Jesus”. He is talking about knowing in a deep and
personal way. If you were to ask me if I
know your pastor, Marshall, I would say, “Yes, I know him.” More than that, I would say that we are
friends. I would say that I respect him
and admire him. I love spending time
with him and I look forward to the opportunities we have to spend time together. However, when I wake up every day, I have to
admit, that I don’t think about Marshall.
As I am planning most of my days, I don’t wonder what Marshall is doing
or if he has anything he might need from me that day. To be honest, what he is doing really doesn’t
affect how I plan my day. However, if
you were to ask me if I know my wife, Lynda, I would say yes and it would mean
something completely different. I know
my wife about as well as one person can know another person (or at least I think
I do.) I know her likes and
dislikes. I know her favorite color is
black. I know THAT she has a huge
affinity for turtles…although I really don’t know WHY she has an affinity for
turtles. I know that if I were not there
to say, “No”, she would be one of those crazy animal hoarder people on T.V.
with dozens of cats and dogs. I know her
fears and frustrations. I know she hates spiders, but she thinks snakes are
kind of cool. She enjoys her work, but
her family is her life. I think I can
often know what will make her happy (Although I’m sure I have messed that up a
time or two). When I wake up in the
morning, Lynda is there. When I go through my day, I wonder what she is doing
and I miss seeing her. I often rearrange
my schedule to make time for her or to accommodate her schedule or needs. How my wife feels affects how I feel. We are connected. We are bonded. I KNOW her and in my life, there is very
little that means as much to me as my relationship with my wife. THAT is what Paul means when he talks about
his relationship with Christ and “Knowing” Christ.
His life has been so changed by his
encounter with the living God that nothing else matters to him as much and
nothing defines him more. Paul’s comment
here about his own experience should leave us questioning what gives us a sense
of purpose and meaning. There are those of
us that think that their own efforts make us who we are. We may see ourselves as better than others because
of what we do… or more likely by what we don’t do. We still make divisions among ourselves based
on a number of different things – how much money we make, what kind of car we
drive, the color of our skin, our political party, our criminal record (whether
we have one or not), our occupation, and our religion. Paul is reminding us that if we are seeking
to know Christ – to REALLY know Christ – then there is nothing else that
matters. In fact, all that other stuff
that we think makes us so great is really worthless.
Paul
writes:
10-12I
want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his
sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the
resurrection from the dead. Not that I
have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Chris
Jesus has made me his own.
Again
Paul is saying that our belonging to Christ is not about what we do, but what
Christ has already done. However, if we
truly understand the love of God for us in Christ, then we seek every day to
know him better – to know what it is to die to our own desires and our pride in
our own accomplishments and know the power of the resurrection that is a new
life based on something more. Paul
reminds us that when we are seeking to know Christ in this intimate way and to be
more like him, we are very much aware of our own in ability to do this and the
need to wake up each day with a renewed desire.
13-14Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one
thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to the goal for
the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
When
different kinds of Christians sometimes “respectfully discuss” their different
beliefs, there are some who point out this passage and say that Paul has not
yet attained his salvation and is doing works to accomplish it, but I don’t
think this is what Paul is saying. Paul
affirms that he knows Christ and is a Christ follower. What Paul is signifying is that when we truly
grasp who Jesus is and the magnitude of what it is to live a life as Jesus did,
we are very much aware of our own imperfections. However, Paul affirms that his
imperfections are not what define him.
I
know personally what it is to worry about my imperfections. Maybe you do to. We are all pretty good at knowing our own
mistakes and failures. There are not too
many people in here who don’t have something in their past that they are not
proud of. Maybe you have things that you
have only shared with a few very close friends or church members or maybe there
are things in your past that you have never told anyone. It requires a great deal of mental effort to
try to protect ourselves from these things we have done. Some people are overwhelmed with guilt and my
try to overcompensate by doing a lot of good things. Others try to cover up their feelings with
lots of activities or the use of alcohol and other drugs. We may feel like we can never get too close
to others, especially at church, because we fear that if people really knew all
about us, they wouldn’t really like us.
I had
a counseling client that I saw for several years that I will call Dan. Dan had at one time been a fairly successful
musician, but then had been diagnosed with a mental illness. When I first met him he had delusions of
being attacked by Satan and the fires of hell.
He would call me sometimes and tell me that he was being burned from the
inside out by the fires of hell. I had
no way to make sense of this, but I would listen and pray with him. As we talked through the years, he would
sometimes tell me of a dark time in his life when he was not medicated for his
mental illness and when he often used illegal drugs and alcohol. He told me of other things that he had done
that he was ashamed of and we would talk about those things. He would always come back to an affirmation
that he knew that God loved him. A couple
of years ago, Dan was in the hospital and had a condition that he feared would
take his life. I went to visit him and
he was panicked as he told me that he was afraid to die. He was afraid to die because he was afraid of
hell. He told me that there were 3
things that he wanted to tell me that he had never told me before. There in his hospital room, Dan confessed to
me the secrets that he had never told me in the years that we had been
visiting. There was nothing in that
confession that shocked me and nothing that “I” thought was that bad. However, for him, they were the dark things
that made him feel ashamed – things he had feared confessing to anyone. We talked about scriptures of forgiveness and
I prayed with Dan that day. Dan died several weeks later and I believe he died
at peace.
In
our passage this morning, Paul is reminding us that we are all imperfect and we
all have things in our past that are not great, but we are not defined by what
we used to be. We are defined by who we
are. Paul suggests that we need to
forget all that lies behind. Not to
forget it ever happened or try pretend that it never happened, but realize that
whatever is in our past is not what defines who we are. Our ongoing relationship with Jesus is what
makes us who we are. Just as what we
think are our great accomplishments are garbage compared to a relationship with
Christ, so what we think of as our failures is not the final word on who we
are. Indeed this is the good news of the
Gospel.
The
reality is that whatever you think makes you so great is really nothing
compared to what Christ has done for you and having a relationship with him,
but on the other side, whatever you think makes you so bad is not the final
word. God looks at us and sees the
person we were created to be and sees the fullness of our potential. God desires to empower us to live into that
potential. If Christ has made us His
own, then nothing else matters. I hope
that as you go from here today that you will leave with a renewed desire to put
aside the things that make you feel flawed and bad. Realize that Jesus has died for you and God
loves you and in that is all the value you need. The person sitting next to you, also has
things in their life that they are not proud of, but Church should be a place
where we can trust each other, share with each other and encourage each
other. Church should be a place where
people are not defined by what they have done, but whose they are. Likewise, in the body of Christ, we should
not make distinctions between ourselves the way the world does. We are rich and poor. We are republicans and democrats. We come from a variety of backgrounds and
nationalities. When we gather together,
the only thing that should define us, is the “surpassing value of knowing
Christ Jesus.” Paul says, “Let those of
us who are mature be of [this] same mind.” Don’t forget whose you are what you
have attained. Go and make KNOWING
Christ the center of your being and seek to love one another as Christ has
loved you. Amen.
