If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of 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 under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count 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 that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:4-14 ESV)
Where is your confidence placed? Where is your hope centred?
If anyone ever had reason to be positive about his own life and accomplishments, the apostle Paul did. He was a “Hebrew of Hebrews”. He was circumcised on the 8th day, part of the tribe of Benjamin. He was a Pharisee, dedicated to following and fulfilling the Law. He was one of the early persecutors of the followers of Jesus, because he believed firmly in the Pharisee way. As far as the revealed Law of God went, if ever there were someone who could be self-confident, it was the apostle Paul.
And yet Paul didn’t seek to brag about these things, but instead counts it all as loss for the sake of Christ. As he goes on to say, he counts everything as loss because of how much better it is to know Jesus Christ His Lord.
This brings the first question which you and I need to ask of ourselves: are we willing to count everything as loss compared to knowing Christ? By everything is meant everything. No exceptions, no exemptions. Is your confidence in your flesh, in your education, in your social standing, in your family, in your economic background, in the things of this world, or is it in God the Father and what He has done for you in Jesus Christ?
To further heighten the contrast, Paul uses a comparison which our English translations often soften to make it sound more refined. Paul says, “I count them as rubbish.” The word for rubbish here is also, and more commonly used in classical Greek, to mean the stuff that the baby leaves in her diapers, the stuff the dog leaves on the lawn. Filth. Refuse. Dung. To use an analogy that I’m certainly familiar with, Paul holds the things of this world as being equal to dirty diapers compared to the greatness of knowing Christ and being found in Him.
I would like to pose a question, at this time. What would your life look like if this were how your own personal priorities were arranged? What would our church be like if we all held Christ so far above the other things of this world, be them possessions, commitments, relationships, or whatever?
This is an easy question to ask, but not so easy to answer. For while we might like to give a glib answer, if you are truly honest with yourself, could you truly say that the rest of your life is merely dirty diapers compared to your relationship with Jesus Christ? Would our churches ever struggle with our budget commitments if Jesus were truly first in our lives and we gave to Him first out of what we have? Would we ever have troubles finding Sunday School teachers, or people to serve on the council or on committees or doing evangelism and outreach work in our communities if Jesus were truly first in our lives and we were so dedicated to Him that the rest of life was merely so much dirty diapers?
Really, the question here is quite simple: do you fear, love, and trust God above all things, or only above most things, reserving some things in your life—be it your family, or your job, or your friends, or your possessions—to have the number one spot? God doesn’t like to play second fiddle to other gods, regardless how nice or how fitting they may seem to us. God wants to be your only God. No exceptions. He demands to be first, and if He isn’t first, He reserves the right to say on Judgment Day that He doesn’t know you, because that’s what you’ve been saying to Him your whole life by putting Him in a lower place than He should be. Consider well the story of the vineyard as in Isaiah and in the words of our Lord for today! God is not afraid to replace unfaithful labourers with those who will heed His call.
These are not easy words to hear, nor should they be. We live in an era, however, where they are words we need to hear. We build our lives around our jobs and our kids and our friends and even our church lives, but not so much around Christ. Even if you or I can’t think of anything in specific we have done on any given day, this general attitude of our lives is always something needing to be repented and transformed by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Every day we need to repent of our self-focus and turn back to the promises God made to us in Baptism.
It’s critically important to know that it IS impossible for us to achieve a totally God-centred life in this world. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t need Jesus to come and die on the cross for us. Our righteousness, our God-centred life, does not come from within, from the decisions we make, nor from the choices we undertake. It is a gift of God, given because of Jesus, and Him only. The self-made need not apply to God’s kingdom. Any time the focus shifts off God and onto yourself, you’ve gotten it wrong.
So the whole life of the Christian is one of striving toward the goal of rising on the last day, when Jesus returns. Our whole lives are to be pointed toward the cross and the empty grave, seeing that we have died with Christ, our sins are taken away, and that we now live in the hopes and expectation that Jesus’ empty grave will one day be our own empty grave, too.
It’s not that we have achieved it; it is that we are in the process of achieving it. The moment that you are claimed by Christ in Baptism you start on the road of being His disciple. The choice remains for you throughout life to leave the road. Many do, to their eternal peril. But Christ is always there to call you back to Him, to receive repentant sinners and restore them back to the road of pressing on. As long as you have breath, Jesus calls you to come back to His way. As the apostle says, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
Basically, this means that the Christian life is one of slugging it out in the trenches, one of unending striving and struggle, one which seems completely unglamourous at times. There isn’t a lot of frilliness to following Jesus. Instead, there is a constant war between your spirit, renewed and redeemed by Christ, and your flesh, which constantly wants to go the broad, easy road of the devil and the world. The way to eternal life is narrow. It has a cost. It cost Jesus His life. It will cost you yours, in this world. Jesus did not say that “whoever loves his life in this world will lose it” simply as a metaphor.
It is hard to be a Christian. It is hard to give up on those things which we hold dear when they get in the way of Christ and His kingdom. But like Paul, you have been called to follow Christ. Jesus never promised it would be easy. When He calls us, He calls us to take up the cross and follow Him. It’s not easy. You’re going to stumble and fall along the way. But that’s why it is so important to continue in Christ and under the cross. The only hope for you and for me is the good news of the forgiveness of sins. We haven’t made it our own, but instead, we simply receive what is given us and in faith cling to the promises God makes, knowing that He hasn’t called us by accident but because He will see you and me through to the end. God doesn’t make promises He doesn’t intend to keep.
To that end, He gives us the strengthening and supports we need along this road of faith. He gives us our fellow believers in the congregation to encourage us and to offer mutual rebuke and reproof when needed. He gives us the promises of Baptism to which we can return time and again in Confession and Absolution, whether generally in church or privately with me as your pastor. He gives us Jesus’ body and blood, the heavenly food and drink that removes our sin and strengthens our trust in Him. He gives us all that we need to support this body and life quite apart from our asking. He does this because He is our Father and we are His children, and He wants us to make it home safely when this life’s journey is over.
No, He hasn’t promised that it will be easy for any of us. But He has promised that He will be with us, come what may. He has promised us, and we in turn are called to press on through the good and the bad, through the high times and low points, through the sin and the struggle and the fear and the doubt, clinging to the cross of Jesus, finding there our strength and hope for our times of need. He calls you to repent of those things which take your life’s focus off Him and to return to His grace, His mercy, His forgiveness, and empowered by Him, each day, to press on to know Christ, to seek to know Him so much that the things of this life, the things of this world simply melt away like snow in the spring. He has called you in Baptism to be His own, and He calls you each day to forget what is behind, strain forward to what is ahead of you, to return to Him and start each day anew, taking up your cross, and following Jesus all the way.
It’s not easy, but it’s the only way to eternal life. Only where your confidence and hope are in Christ alone is there eternal life. And that is only possible under the forgiveness and salvation given to us in Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, applied to us in Baptism, received by faith. God grant us all His grace and mercy that we too would strive each day of our lives to continue in this mercy and grace, as did the Apostle Paul! In Jesus, the only Lord. Amen.
Last updated October 2008 by the webmaster.