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Philippians 3:4b-11
No Confidence in the Flesh
If anyone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
In today’s reading from his Letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul starts out by recounting his religious credentials from the time before he encountered Jesus and was called to become his lead missionary to the gentile world.
As the passage shows, Paul had been one of the best-educated Jewish leaders of his generation. Before Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus, Paul had been one of the most respected leaders in the Hebrew religious establishment. He was descended from a good Hebrew family from a prestigious tribe – the tribe of Benjamin. Paul was also a member of the Pharisees, which you might remember as a group of Jews committed to obeying the laws of Moses much more strictly than the typical observant Jews of their time.
And Paul had other qualifications he doesn’t get around to mentioning in this passage. He had been a personal student of the great Jewish scholar Gamaliel, who might have been the most respected rabbi of his time. So Paul had about the best education it was possible for a young Hebrew to get.
Paul also reveals in the Acts of the Apostles that he was a citizen of the Roman Empire, which was fairly rare for Jews of his time. And it seems that he also had a good education in secular fields, as well. New Testament scholars say he seems to have been trained in Greco-Roman rhetoric, because his speeches and his letters are structured according to the rules of that discipline. Those speeches and letters also show that Paul had a pretty good education in Greek philosophy – he could tell the story of Jesus among the Greeks by using principles of their own philosophical tradition. He could even quote from Greek poets and philosophers.
Once the Jesus movement took root, Paul was the leader of the Jewish persecution of the followers of Jesus. In the early years of the movement, most of those who followed Jesus were Jews, and church historians say that many of those Jewish followers of Jesus continued to observe the religious traditions of their people. It seems that lots of them went to the Jewish synagogues on Saturday and then participated in Christian worship on Sunday. And because they continued to practice the Jewish faith, the followers of Jesus were considered to be under the authority of the Jewish authorities.
Roman law applied throughout the area, but the Romans allowed the Jewish leaders to enforce discipline within the synagogues. That meant the Jewish leaders could throw Christians out of the synagogues, or even have them lashed or imprisoned.
The Jewish leadership apparently spread the word among their congregations not to have anything to do with followers of Jesus. Those who converted could be shunned by their families and sometimes lost their homes and jobs and businesses. And while the Jews weren’t officially allowed to execute people, if a Jewish mob occasionally stoned followers of Jesus, the Romans apparently didn’t get too worked up about it. That’s what happened to Stephen. His stoning doesn’t seem to have been an ‘official action’ of the Jewish leadership, but he was still killed with the approval of that leadership. And Paul was the one who stood by and watched the coats of the mob who threw stones at Stephen.
All in all, Paul was considered a leading member of the Jewish leadership of his day.
But in today’s reading, Paul says that having encountered Jesus and become his disciple, he came to think of all those achievements of his former life as so much ‘rubbish.’ In addition to coming to a deep, personal relationship with Jesus, Paul has also experienced a major change in his thinking. He no longer believes that he can accomplish ‘a righteousness of his own,’ by observing the laws of Moses and following Hebrew practices and rituals. Now, Paul says, he has become convinced that his only way of being righteous in God’s eyes is by faith in Jesus.
Paul also believes that the ultimate source of Jesus’ great authority is not his wisdom as a teacher (as great as that wisdom obviously was) but rather the moral and spiritual authority resulting from his suffering and death on the cross. And Paul expresses a longing to share in those sufferings, because that will allow him to share in Jesus’ resurrection, as well.
For those of us who are trying to follow Jesus 2,000 years later, it seems to me that Paul’s teaching – and his example – call us to embrace two ideas.
The first is that trying to achieve a level of righteousness through our own efforts and self-discipline is a waste of time. And even worse than a waste of time – it’s actually dangerous. When we get too wrapped up in our own ideas about what a righteous person should do and say and look like, we can end up failing to recognize real righteousness when we see it. That’s because that real righteousness doesn’t match our preconceived notions. It’s important to remember that all the Jewish leaders who demanded Jesus’ crucifixion did it because they believed they were serving God and promoting righteousness. But they had come to mistake their own customs for real righteousness. That can happen to Christians just as it did to the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day. (Which is why so many people who call themselves Christians wind up sounding like Pharisees.)
The second important idea in this passage is that as followers of Jesus, sharing in his righteousness means being willing to share in his sufferings. Almost none of us will be called to the same kind of suffering Jesus himself experienced. But if our lives don’t include any real and meaningful sacrifices for the sake of our discipleship, then we should probably ask ourselves whether God is going to regard that discipleship as real. If our discipleship doesn’t cost us anything, it’s probably not going to allow us to share in the righteousness of Jesus.
Let’s pray together: Lord, take away our desire to achieve righteousness by doing and saying religious things. Help us instead to follow Jesus more and more closely so that we can share in the true righteousness that comes only from him. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
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