Philippians (#5)

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Philippians 3 NTE -- 3 So then, my dear family, it comes down to this: celebrate in the Lord! It’s no trouble for me to write the same things to you, and it’s safe for you. 2 Watch out for the dogs! Watch out for the ‘bad works’ people! Watch out for the ‘incision’ party, that is, the mutilators! 3 We are the ‘circumcision’, you see – we who worship God by the spirit, and boast in King Jesus, and refuse to trust in the flesh. -- 4 Mind you, I’ve got good reason to trust in the flesh. If anyone else thinks they have reason to trust in the flesh, I’ve got more. 5 Circumcised? On the eighth day. Race? Israelite. Tribe? Benjamin. Descent? Hebrew through and through. Torah-observance? A Pharisee. 6 Zealous? I persecuted the church! Official status under the law? Blameless. -- 7 Does that sound as though my account was well in credit? Well, maybe; but whatever I had written in on the profit side, I calculated it instead as a loss – because of the Messiah. 8 Yes, I know that’s weird, but there’s more: I calculate everything as a loss, because knowing King Jesus as my Lord is worth far more than everything else put together! In fact, because of the Messiah I’ve suffered the loss of everything, and I now calculate it as trash, so that my profit may be the Messiah, 9 and that I may be discovered in him, not having my own covenant status defined by Torah, but the status which comes through the Messiah’s faithfulness: the covenant status from God which is given to faith. 10 This means knowing him, knowing the power of his resurrection, and knowing the partnership of his sufferings. It means sharing the form and pattern of his death, 11 so that somehow I may arrive at the final resurrection from the dead. -- 12 I’m not implying that I’ve already received ‘resurrection’, or that I’ve already become complete and mature! No; I’m hurrying on, eager to overtake it, because King Jesus has overtaken me. 13 My dear family, I don’t reckon that I have yet overtaken it. But this is my one aim: to forget everything that’s behind, and to strain every nerve to go after what’s ahead. 14 I mean to chase on towards the finishing post, where the prize waiting for me is the upward call of God in King Jesus. -- 15 Those of us who are mature should think like this! If you think differently about it, God will reveal this to you as well. 16 Only let’s be sure to keep in line with the position we have reached. -- 17 So, my dear family, I want you, all together, to watch what I do and copy me. You’ve got us as a pattern of behaviour; pay careful attention to people who follow it. 18 You see, there are several people who behave as enemies of the cross of the Messiah. I told you about them often enough, and now I’m weeping as I say it again. 19 They are on the road to destruction; their stomach is their god, and they find glory in their own shame. All they ever think about is what’s on the earth. -- 20 We are citizens of heaven, you see, and we’re eagerly waiting for the saviour, the Lord, King Jesus, who is going to come from there. 21 Our present body is a shabby old thing, but he’s going to transform it so that it’s just like his glorious body. And he’s going to do this by the power which makes him able to bring everything into line under his authority.

Imagine a spreadsheet...

Now what should we track?

Assets and liabilities?

A family budget?

Retirement savings?

Whatever it is… we put all the things of value in as positive numbers, and then the liabilities or things that we have to spend we put in as negative numbers… and, depending on what we’re tracking, we hope to either break even or have a rising balance.

A monthly family budget? It’s okay to break even.

Retirement savings? You want those numbers to keep climbing.

If you’re now retired and you’re watching the numbers go down, you’re likely calculating how long the money will last. When do you need to sell the house and downsize? And of course, not everything that goes into these conversations can be represented as a value on a spreadsheet.

Can you no longer safely make it up and down the stairs? Well, it won’t matter what your bank balance is, you’re probably going to be trying to get out of your 2 or 3 level home as quickly as you can at that point.

But what would happen if all of a sudden the things that had value disappeared? Or were eclipsed by a new value?

For some, it comes suddenly, a diagnosis or a death of a loved one.

For others, there are creeping realizations that the plans you were making aren’t what you actually want to do.

In our text today, Paul talks to the Philippians in terms of assets & liabilities and introduces the idea that Christ issues an entirely new standard of true value.

In Christ, things that used to be considered truly valuable are now seen as secondary. Or even as worthless in this new economy.

In Christ, there is a radical reorientation. What was once thought to be of value is now rendered worthless. And what might have previously been dismissed or disregarded, is the central force. In a culture bent on earning as much “honour” as possible, Paul is not rejecting the value of honour, but radically redefining what honour is in light of Jesus.

Gupta: “What Paul rejects in Philippians 3:5-6 is not his Jewishness, his love for Israel, or his heritage…[but] his former lens for self evaluation.”

So in our text, we see a radical reorientation of value. And we also see a community trajectory.

v7-9 spreadsheet of assets and losses - A different “scale” of value?

NTE - whatever I had written in on the profit side I calculated it instead as a loss

Gupta “all these things have lost their value when Christ entered the equation”

Christ as the “new standard and summation of true value”

So in our text, we see a radical reorientation of value. And we also see a community trajectory.

12-21 - community trajectory…

A work in progress (so don’t trust the people who say they’ve “arrived”)

Gupta: “I have not reached the finish line but I have learned not to look back” (3:12-14)

There is a personal nature to this trajectory… Paul himself if straining ahead … but it is also something that they are doing together. Straining ahead, not looking back. But paying attention to one another, taking care of one another, practically and in spiritual terms.

In the final two verses of our text, Paul reminds the Philippian church that they are part of a larger body… with a different citizenship. The culture in which they live, the one that places all the value on status and honour, that is the not their true citizenship. And so they will calculated their profit and losses in different ways from the people around them.

20 We are citizens of heaven, you see, and we’re eagerly waiting for the saviour, the Lord, King Jesus, who is going to come from there. 21 Our present body is a shabby old thing, but he’s going to transform it so that it’s just like his glorious body. And he’s going to do this by the power which makes him able to bring everything into line under his authority.

To live as citizens of heaven, we keep in mind that our true home is elsewhere. This doesn’t mean we don’t settle in. Make ourselves at home. But we constantly go back to the spreadsheet and we question ourselves… are we counting the right things as profit? Are we shifting our values to be more like what the culture we’re embedded in values? For the Philippians, this was status and honour. And Paul doesn’t say, status and honour don’t matter, but rather that they’re not things that can be grasped onto and used for our own advantage.

So, in Christ, there’s a radical reorientation of value and there’s a community trajectory towards the One in whom the future is secure and through whom transformation occurs.

How… how does this happen? How do we live out this radical reorientation? How do we live as a community with a shared trajectory towards Christ?

The key is in vs 9-11.

Living this way, with the right orientation and trajectory… is righteousness. Right-relatedness. A state or status of relating to God and to others and to creation in ways that are right and good and the way God intended. How do we get that? Where does it come from? Let’s read 9-11 again…

9b ...the status which comes through the Messiah’s faithfulness: the covenant status from God which is given to faith. 10 This means knowing him, knowing the power of his resurrection, and knowing the partnership of his sufferings. It means sharing the form and pattern of his death, 11 so that somehow I may arrive at the final resurrection from the dead.

v9 status that comes through the Messiah’s faithfulness. Righteousness or right-relatedness that comes from the faithfulness of Christ.

Christ is not only the orienting point but also the source of our right-relatedness. We RECEIVE right-relatedness, we don’t produce it.

And we receive it in relationship, in knowing Christ. And not just the risen and ascended Christ, but the also participating in his suffering and conforming

v10 r from knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection (Paul was not an eyewitness) and participation in his sufferings…conformed to his death… knowing and also being associated with the Messiah who didn’t hold onto the things that could be used for his own benefit but emptied himself… even when that cost him power and status and honour…

We know Jesus. We know Him crucified. We know Him risen. Even though we, like Paul and the Philippian believers, weren’t firsthand witnesses of the resurrection. We witness the power of His resurrection in the lives of one another. And we witness the radical reorientation in the “partnership of suffering”. Our lives are patterned after Jesus’ death and resurrection… Our shared trajectory is resurrection. When the One who holds all the authority in heaven and on earth will finally rule as the King over all things… when all of creation will be made new. Christ radically reorients what is valuable and Christ Himself is our trajectory… he is the One to whom we are heading…