Over Our Self-Confidence
Blessed Mourning • Sermon • Submitted • 18:52
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· 5 views4.3.22 [Philippians 3:4b-14] River of Life (5th Sunday in Lent)
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Knowing Christ Moves You
Knowing Christ Moves You
To recognize the worthlessness of your own attempts at righteousness
To rejoice in the righteousness God has earned for you and gifted to you
To pursue God’s greater goals for you
During different stages in life different things drive you. When you are in school, things like achievements in academics, athletics, or extra-curricular activities—and yet still being popular—feel like matters of life and death.
Young people out on their own for the first time—especially those starting a family—devote the best of themselves to meeting their financial and family obligations. They’ll pick up as many extra shifts as they can. They’ll stay up through the night because their child is sick.
In the next stage, things might become a little more stable. Life becomes less about survival—making ends meet and making sure there’s food on the table—and more about improving. With the kids a little more self-sufficient, parents look to position their kids for success while advancing their own careers. As the days of everyone dwelling under one roof draw to a close, families may splurge on a big vacation or a family reunion trying to savor the closing days of this stage of life.
Then the kids move out. Ideally. Retirement goes from dream to reality. You become your own boss, kind of. For most folks, retirement—though it’s good—isn’t quite what they imagined. More doctors visits and less daiquiris than all the commercials depict.
But it’s about this time that the focus of most people begins to shift. It’s not that you become less hopeful about the future. Perhaps its just that you begin to appreciate the here and now a little more. You savor the present. Maybe it’s a byproduct of the kind of wisdom that comes with age. Perhaps it’s seeing more than a few of your contemporaries struggle with sickness and death.
When that shift happens, words like legacy take on a fuller meaning. A person naturally begins to consider what they have done and what they have to pass on. As they look back to the past, they likely have some regrets. There are even some things they’d like to totally overhaul. A few moments they’d like to go back and appreciate more. They grow nostalgic. More sentimental.
At first glance, it might seem like that’s what Paul is doing in Philippians chapter 3. Paul is (Php. 1:13) in chains for Christ, probably in Rome where he would be executed. But Paul isn’t nostalgic. He doesn’t want to go back and savor the past. Instead, (Php. 3:13) he forgets what is behind and strains toward what is ahead. And he encourages us to do the same.
This is our shared legacy as Christians. Paul wants all of us to have his clarity, his focus, his purpose. He wants you to have the one thing of (Php. 3:8) surpassing worth—knowing Christ Jesus your Lord.
Knowing Christ Jesus is not merely a mental exercise. Knowing Christ Jesus moves you to do three things. #1 It moves you to see past the gimmicky nature of your own righteousness and recognize it as garbage. #2 Knowing Christ Jesus moves you to rejoice in the righteousness that God has earned for you and gifts to you. And finally, #3, knowing Christ Jesus provokes you to pursue God’s goals for you.
Paul starts with the gimmicky nature of man-made righteousness. He warns the Philippians Christians about people that always seemed to swim in his wake—the Judaizers. This is the same movement that wreaked havoc among the Galatians. False teachers were telling Christians that in order to really be saved by a Jewish Messiah you had to first become a real part of the Jewish people.
Paul says that’s nonsense. He has all the credentials they claimed were important. Some he inherited—his Hebrew heritage was unblemished. Others he had to put in the work for—living as a zealous Pharisee. But his summary statement is crucial. (Php. 3:6) As for righteousness based on the law, I was faultless.
Now he saw them as gimmicky. Those things that (Php. 3:7) were gains to him, deeds that gained people’s attention, didn’t gain salvation. When Paul’s fellow Israelites looked at him, they would have been impressed with his pedigree, his moral fiber, and the strength of his will. But after seeing true righteousness, Paul considered them (Php. 3:7) loss. Not just worthless, but spiritually destructive. They couldn’t bear the weight of justifying him before God.
We all fall into the same trap when we look at our lives, don’t we? Maybe it’s a pedigree and performance thing much like Paul’s past. Maybe you come from a long line of Christians, or Lutherans, or confessional Lutherans. Perhaps you were baptized as an infant, confirmed as a youth, and you’ve always been faithful in worship. You never went through that rebellious stage. You were always involved at your church. Always giving. Always volunteering. Maybe you raised up kids and made sacrifices so they could go to Lutheran schools. Perhaps you look at your kids and grandkids sharing your faith and you feel like you’ve done well passing on your spiritual heritage. God says none of that makes you more worthy of his grace. These are done to his glory, not yours!
It could even be that your lack of pedigree makes you feel remarkable. Maybe your whole family is full of unbelievers. You may have lived that way for a while, too. And now you look at all the work you put in, all the relationships that you’ve sacrificed, all the sinning you’ve left behind, and there’s a part of you that feels like you’ve contributed something really significant to your salvation. Jesus did it all, you say, but I put in the work & made it mine! And it wasn’t easy!
It’s shocking how selective our memories can be. When we look back, we remember vividly all the good we’ve done. We think our heavenly Father should be so pleased with our loyalty. But how many times have we done what is right for all the wrong reasons? How often have we served while giving those who aren’t serving side-eye? How many times have we given to the Lord with gritted teeth? How many times have we resisted temptation mostly because we want to avoid the probable painful consequences? How many times have we done what God says is good mostly because it makes us look or feel good? This is what Isaiah was exposing when he says: (Is 64:6) All our righteous acts are like filthy rags. (Php. 3:8) Garbage, Paul says.
When we know Christ, and what true righteousness looks like and does, we consider everything we’ve done to secure our own salvation a total (Php. 3:7) loss. Like cargo on a sinking ship, it’s got to be thrown overboard. But God has gifted us something wonderful—his Son.
God doesn’t just want us to realize that our righteousness isn’t up to his standards. He wants us to see that his Son met the standard in our place. Even more than Paul did, Jesus had the pedigree and the perfect performance. He was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus was David’s Son and David’s Lord. (Micah 5:2) He was born in the town of Bethlehem as God promised. (Mt. 2:23) He was raised in Nazareth as the prophets foretold. (Is 7:14) He was the son of a virgin, the sign of his divine nature, God dwelling with us. Jesus was everything God told his people to be looking for.
But he was more than that. He was perfect in thought, word, and deed. Zeal for God the Father’s will consumed and directed him. (Ps. 119:105) God’s Word was a lamp to his feet and a light for his path. (1 Pt. 2:22) There was no deceit in his mouth. (Jn. 1:14) He was full of grace and truth. (Lk. 4:13) He lived in a way that was so set apart from sin that Satan backed off for a time because he couldn’t get Jesus to give in to temptation. He was the spotless (Jn. 1:29) Lamb of God. He was the innocent Son of Man.
(Jn. 8:46) Even his enemies, (Jn. 15:25) who hated him without reason, could not prove him guilty of a single sin. He was perfect in thought, word, & deed. (Mk. 10:45) He came to serve, to patiently rebuke sinners and still love them, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
This is why Jesus came. Not to show us that flesh and blood could be faultless, but to take all our sins upon himself and suffer and die for them so that we might receive the prize his perfection has earned. He rose from the dead to assure us that he has power over sin, death, and the devil. (Jn. 20:23) He has the power to forgive. (Ezekiel 36:26) He has the power to transform. (Php. 2:13) He has the power to work in us to will and act according to his good purpose. (Php. 1:6) He has the power to bring this to completion. We rejoice in knowing Christ and being found in him, not having a gimmicky righteousness but a God-gifted righteousness that is ours (Php. 3:9) on the basis of faith—and even (Eph. 2:8) this is not from ourselves. We have gained Christ because God is good, full of grace & gifts us his righteousness.
Having gained Christ and his righteousness we rejoice. We don’t have to earn our own salvation. We will not stand in God’s divine courtroom and have to submit filthy rags for evidence and hope that is enough. We point to the person he sent to stand in our place: (1 Cor. 1:23) Christ crucified. We point to the Jesus who loved us enough to live for us and die for our sins. We point to the Prince of Peace who prevailed over death and devil and shares with all of us his plunder. We point to the Christ who has pursued our salvation. To the Jesus (Php. 3:12) who has taken hold of me. His righteousness is mine, because he has donated it to me by his suffering and death. We know Christ Jesus as our Lord and that provokes us to pursue God’s goals for us.
For Paul, he knew exactly what that meant. He was going to give his life for the name of the One who suffered and died for our sins. For us, the details are not quite so crystal clear. But what drives us is crystal clear. Like Paul, we (Php. 3:14) press on toward God’s goals for us.
Those goals may be different at different stages of life, but what drives us stays the same. We are giving glory to God. When you are a student, God’s goals for you are to make the most of every opportunity in the classroom. Study hard. Practice patience and forgiveness. Love your classmates because Christ first loved you.
Young parents, your calling is to trust in the Lord for your daily bread and not in your own ability to secure enough. Your calling is to train your children up in the Lord not so that you have the picture perfect family but so that your family knows Christ Jesus as their perfect Lord and Savior. Give regular family devotions the same priority you would a sick child.
Maturing families must keep their eyes on the prize, too. It’s easy to let up a little when things seem more stable. Steer the days that you still have your kids under your roof back to their Savior. Remind that earthly success is transitory. Rebuke them when they are making choices that run the risk of forfeiting their soul in an effort to gain the whole world.
And as you reach retirement and beyond, don’t live like your race is over. Retiring comfortably isn’t God’s ultimate goal for you. Use this new stage of life to prioritize and practice what God holds in high esteem. Don’t coast, but be active in putting your faith into practice. Devour the Word of God regularly. Don’t let the aches and pains of growing old get you into the habit of skipping church. Don’t let the constantly-changing nature of this world convince you that you can’t connect with the generations after you. Don’t let sickness and disease convince you, you cannot do the work of an evangelist. You may not be able to go to 10s and 100s with the good news of great joy. But your sickness will draw people to you. (Eph. 5:16) Make the most of every opportunity—even the not so obvious ones. (2 Pt. 1:5) Make every effort to be a truthful, graceful, & encouraging mentor to those a few laps behind you. This is your legacy—(Jn. 15:16) fruit that lasts.
During all the different stages of life, one thing drives every single one of us, one thing moves us in everything we do, one thing is of surpassing worth and worth losing everything else for: Knowing Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior. May God continue to empower us to press on. (1 Th. 5:24) The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. Amen.