Please turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 3. If you're using the black Bibles that are sitting in the pews, you can find this passage on page 981. Again, we'll be looking at Philippians 3, verses 8 through 11. Dear God's Word. 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. Heavenly Father, we thank you that this word, which we have just read from, is breathed out by you, that it is your very word. We pray today, Lord, that you would give us a clear understanding, not only of what it says and what it means, but what it means for us, how it applies to us, what kind of hope you are calling us to, what kind of relationship with you you are calling us to, and what kind of life you are calling us to. Above all, Lord, may you be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen. We continue in our series on the book of Philippians, this letter written from prison by Paul to his friends in the Roman colony of Philippi in the region of Macedonia. We've been looking, last week we looked at chapter 3 verses 1 through 11 as a whole. We saw that Paul tried to close the book and then didn't think he could. He remembered he needed to talk about something else. He says in chapter 3 verse 1, Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord, for to write the same things to you is no trouble for me, and it is safe for you. Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. And he's talking about these Christians who had become Jewish most of the way by getting circumcised and keeping all the food laws and the Sabbath laws of the Jews. And they were going around telling the other Christians that in order to be real Christians, they also needed to become Jewish in their practice. And Paul says, absolutely not. Absolutely not. In fact, he goes on to say, I am all of the things they wish they were. But I know that those don't matter before God, and that I have only one reason to boast before God, and that is Jesus Christ. He's the only reason I will boast. Now, as we look at verses 8 through 11 today, we're going to look at these verses, these four verses, and see what Paul has to say about his life as a Christian and, therefore, about our lives as a Christian. And this is the first thing I want to say about this. It's not on your outlines. The Christian life has, at the same time, a relational goal and a destination in time. A relational goal and a destination in time. Here's what I mean by that. If I go on a road trip with my family, maybe we'll go to a national park somewhere, maybe we'll go up to Maine, to Acadia, where we've gone in the past with mixed results. If I go on a road trip with my family, I have two things going on at once. I have a destination in time, eight hours or whatever it is, up to Acadia, and that is the place I'm going. For me, it's a national park. I have a destination in time, but that's not the real point of the trip. The real point of the trip, both the time in the car and the time once we get to the destination, the real point of the trip is that my relationship with my family and our relationships with each other would be built up. In the same way, the Christian life has a destination in time, and that is, Paul says, the resurrection of the dead. And it has a relational goal that both on the way there and when we get there, we will know Jesus Christ. OK. Now, Paul says these are the two ways of looking at the Christian life, the relational goal and the destination in time, knowing Christ and the resurrection of the dead. But at the same time, he says that in order to pursue these things, we need three things. First of all, we need righteousness that comes from Christ's faith. I'm going to get into all these in a few minutes. Righteousness that comes from Christ's faith. Second, we need power that comes from Christ's resurrection. And third, we need participation in Christ's sufferings. Righteousness that comes from Christ's faith, power from Christ's resurrection and participation in Christ's suffering. So let's get right into it. What is this righteousness of Christ that Paul talks about? He says in verse 8, he says, indeed, I count everything as lost. He's talking about all of his privileges, all of his assets. Indeed, I count everything as lost. The fact that I'm Jewish, the fact that I'm a really good Jew, the fact that I'm a Pharisee and I used to keep the law blamelessly as far as other people were concerned. He says, I count all this as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Uh, for his sake, I 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. Well, Paul says a whole bunch of things in quick succession here. He says that his aim is to gain Christ, right? To gain Christ. Now we already know that he has Christ. He's a Christian. Every Christian has Christ. But what he's saying is at the same time, he wants to live a life that is seeking Christ. He will stop at nothing to gain Him. He says in the same breath that he wants to be found in Him. Be found to be in Christ. Although again, he already has Christ. Every Christian is in Christ. Okay? I started to do a little computer search on, in Christ, in Greek and in English. And if you were to start looking, if you use a computer website like biblegateway.com or something like that, just type in the words, in Christ, and see how many references you get. I think it was in the hundreds. And I just, my eyes glazed over and I gave up. All the way through the New Testament, all the way through the Apostle Paul's writings, he speaks of us being in Christ, having power in Christ, being forgiven in Christ, having new life in Christ, being dead to sin in Christ. He is in Christ. We are in Christ. And yet he also wants to make it his goal that on the last day he will be found to be in Christ and all the way in between. How will this happen? How can we gain Christ, know Christ, be found in Christ? What Paul says is absolutely crystal clear. Not by our own righteousness. Not by our own righteousness. What is it, Paul is asking, that justifies me before God? If I stand before God, what reason have I to expect that God is not going to destroy me as a sinner and a rebel against him? What claim do I have on God's mercy and on his grace? Will it be the righteous things that I've accomplished? Paul's already gone through it. He says, my credentials are impeccable. OK, my resume is complete. My CV is bursting at the seams with good things from a human perspective that I have done for God. And what he says is, no, none of that matters. I will not gain Christ. I will not be found in Christ because of righteous things that I have done according to the law. And by the way, we all do this. Now, most of us here, I think, are not Jewish, right? So we don't necessarily go to the Old Testament law in order to feel like we've accomplished something, in order to feel like we're important or we're good. We go other places, don't we? And the culture around us is full of different alternatives. I want to get into a couple of those alternatives right now. And these won't apply to everybody here, these won't apply necessarily to people you know, but among the upper classes, among the people who are a little bit wealthier, have a little bit more power in our country, here are some of the ways that they justify themselves. First of all, justification by social involvement. I talked earlier about Providence has an incredible number of non-profits. If you're in any kind of commercial area or residential area, they're on every block. There's a non-profit for something or other. There's some crazy statistic that Providence has more non-profits per capita than any other nation in the US, something like that. And most of them do excellent things. They do good things. What I want to get at is, why do people go to work for many of these organizations? Well, I know from my own experience working for a 501c3 that motivations vary. Sometimes the people that work in a non-profit organization have a very good desire to help needy or marginalized people. In fact, I'll go so far as to say they all have a desire to help needy or marginalized people, but it can go beyond that, to becoming validated, to becoming verified, to becoming justified personally, before God, perhaps, and before other people, so that you can say, well, I've been working at a non-profit. You can say that to your family. You can say that on your resume, so when you stop working at a non-profit and start working at a for-profit, you have something to boast of. You can say that to your friends. They'll know you are something. They'll know you are good, perhaps even before God. And this is often the reason, I've said this before, I say it many more times, that people become pastors, is that they want to have justification by church. They want to be justified by being religious people, and there's no better way to do that than to become the person who stands up front and lifts up the Lord's Supper, and the person who preaches to everybody, and stands in the back of the church, and hears, my, that was a lovely service today, minister. Justification by social involvement. By the way, what does Jesus say about this? Don't let your right hand know what your left is doing. Secret. Secondly, justification by education. Some of you know a lot about this. Who gets heard when there's a discussion of right and wrong in our society? It's the person with the PhD or the MD after their name. Who gets heard even in a theological discussion? It's the person with the doctorate. Who gets respect from their colleagues? Many times it's the person with the most impressive CV, the best schools to his name, the Ivy League, top tier schools. In a meritocracy, a culture where those who are most successful rule, where those who accomplish the most are in power, the surest road to greatness is through education. Of course, who did Jesus choose to be his ministers? Uneducated fishermen from Galilee. And thirdly, a justification by innovation. The world mourns Steve Jobs, right? He was truly an innovator. He was truly one of the most amazing businessmen and designers of the last, I don't know how many years, you pick. Justification by innovation. This is perhaps in our culture the only thing more powerful than education. Are you a creative problem solver? Are you innovative? Do you think up new things? You can get respect without education in our culture. If you're too busy doing things and innovating things to stay in college, you have to drop out of Stanford or Harvard because you're just too busy with your startup. Doing a TED Talk. If you don't know what a TED Talk is, don't worry about it. Paul says, we came to you not with clever words. And Jesus said, I do not speak my own words, but those which the Father has given to me. Now, not all of you, but many of you feel these pressures. You feel the pressure to be socially responsible and socially involved to prove yourself in this way. You feel the pressure to get a lot of education, and maybe very high octane, prestigious education. You feel the pressure to be an innovator, somebody who's impressive and creative and has savvy business sense, because you know that if you get together with the other alumni from your school in a few years, or with your family at Christmas, and you don't have the PhD going on, or the post-doc, or the fellowship, and you don't have the breakthrough innovation or the hot business model, And if you don't have a record of having spent your time with Teach for America or working for an urban land trust, you don't know how you're going to hold your head up. You don't know how you're going to tell people that you haven't been doing any of those things. Because the message that we get in many parts of the world, many parts of our culture, is that if you haven't done these things, you ain't much. And that is a lie. Now, some of us, these aren't our problems, but all of us are faced with the temptation to justify ourselves, one way or another, to find some sort of reason why, before God and man, we are worth something. But the Gospel steamrolls that. Because the Gospel tells us that our righteousness, our justification, our worth comes from someone else. not from anything we've done. And so Paul says, it is the righteousness which is because of the faith or the faithfulness of Christ. Now, our Bibles in verse 9 translate it somewhat clumsily. Not a righteousness of my own that comes from the law. This is what they translate clumsily. But that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. What it literally says is the righteousness that comes from the faith of Christ, from Christ's own faith. Now, what does that mean? He's Jesus. He has to have faith? Well, he doesn't have to have faith in the sense of he tried really hard to believe that there was a God. No, of course not. He is God. But even Jesus Christ himself exercised faith in the Father's word to him. We don't, you see, we don't merely have obligations to our families and our schools and our cities and our nations. We have obligations to God himself to be righteousness, obligations that we cannot keep. And so we depend on the righteousness of another. Jesus Christ is the faithful one. Jesus Christ is the one whose faith with the Father is perfect. How could we boast of our creativity? All things were created through him. How could we boast of our love for other people? Greater love has no man than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. We depend on the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. We do. This is where our righteousness comes from. This is where our justification comes from. This is where our standing before God comes from. We stand before his cross, and we see one who died for his beloved people. We stand before his cross, and we see one who did not consider his equality with God something to use for his own advantage, but became a slave for our sake. We stand before the cross and we see the one who believed that God would raise him from the dead if he willingly laid down his life. Do you think that because Jesus was God, it was no problem for him to go to the cross? It took every bit of the same faith for the Lord Jesus Christ to believe that God would somehow bring him through the grave as it does for any of us. He struggled and sweated and wept in Gethsemane with a genuine fear, the same way that we would. And yet he believed God that he would bring him through. Our faith does not rest on faith. It does not rest on faith itself. Not like George Michael, I gotta have faith. Faith in whatever, faith in myself. Our faith is not in faith. Our faith is in the faith and faithfulness of Jesus Christ. So how do we get that faith? That's the question. How does that righteousness of Christ, which He accomplished by His faithfulness, by His faith, become ours? How does it no longer just his righteousness, but also becomes ours? Well, this Paul does say here very clearly. In this, the translation does get the righteousness of God that depends on faith, that comes with faith, that comes through faith. When we believe the promises of God accomplished in Jesus Christ, it is counted to us as righteousness. The righteousness of Christ becomes our righteousness. Just as when Abraham believed God's promise to him, it was counted to him as righteousness. Our boasting in our works is removed. The righteousness of Christ is before us. Will we choose to believe what the Lord says? Will we choose to disbelieve in all our other claims to be righteous? You see, if you're going to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you are no longer going to rest in your education to make you something. If you're going to be a follower of Jesus Christ, you are no longer going to have the same kind of drive to be clever and innovative and successful that your co-workers do. Your life, your heart won't depend on it in the same way. If you are going to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, you won't even trust in your History of social involvement. You're very activist. You're an activist. You've done good things. You've helped the poor. You won't even trust in those things to make you something before God and man. It is the righteousness of Christ alone that makes us something. And any good thing that happens to us, any good thing that we do, flows from that and is in submission to that. So Paul says that as we go on this trip, as we go on this journey, as we seek to know Christ more, the relational goal, and as we go toward our destination, which is the resurrection of the dead, that we know the righteousness which comes from Christ. We need the righteousness which comes from Christ. He says the second thing that we need is the power of the resurrection of Christ. The power of the resurrection of Christ. Now, what is this redundant? Is he talking about the same thing all over again? We're going toward our resurrection, and we have the power of Christ's resurrection. It's not the same thing. What he means is this. When he speaks of the power of Jesus' resurrection, he means the same power by which God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. God works in us the same spiritual power that he worked in Jesus when he raised him from the dead. And you remember that that happened, right? You remember that Jesus didn't just get up on the third day. It says in the beginning of Romans that God raised him from the dead. It says the same thing in the book of Acts. God raised him from the dead. And Paul is clear. What is the power by which God raised, or by whom God raised Jesus from the dead? It is the Holy Spirit. Paul says in Colossians 1, for this I toiled struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. It's the same power by whom God raised Jesus from the dead. In Colossians 2, he speaks of faith in the powerful working of God who raised Christ from the dead. In Romans 1, he declared Jesus to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ, our Lord. Not only was this power of God, this Holy Spirit power of God, working in Jesus to raise him from the dead, but that same spirit now works in and through us, we who have put our faith in Christ. Colossians 1 again, may you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy. The power which raised Christ from the dead works in us for endurance and patience with joy. In Ephesians 1, he speaks of the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the workings of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. The immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe that the same power that he worked in Christ when he raised them from the dead. Ephesians 3, of this gospel, I was made a minister, a servant, according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me by the working of his power. Later on in the same chapter, he prays for the Ephesian church, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. Last week we looked at how up in verse 3 we see a mark of God's people that they worship by the Spirit of God. The Spirit empowers us for obedience in every part of life. And I really think that that takes two... It's separable, but there's two parts to this. First, what the Spirit does is He sets the crucified and risen Lord before us. Psalm 16, which we'll sing later, I have set the Lord always before me, because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. If the Lord is before us, if we see the Lord and meditate on the Lord with the eyes of our minds, the eyes of our hearts, it is a work of the Spirit. If we are arrested by the thought of the crucifixion, if it shakes us up and gets our attention and stops us from scurrying around and doing whatever we do, That is the work of the Spirit. In the same way, in Romans 5, Paul says, hope does not put us to shame. Why? Because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. He says in 2 Corinthians 3, speaking, he's drawing a contrast between the moment when Moses came down the mountain with the tablets of the law, and his face was shining because of the glory of God, and the people didn't want to see him, they didn't want to look at him. He's drawing a moment of contrast between that time and now that we see Christ in the Gospel. He says, we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who in that Old Testament passage is the Spirit. Do you catch this? The Holy Spirit causes us to see Christ with unveiled face. And having caused us to see Him, He stirs our hearts in response. so that we begin to treat Him appropriately, so that we begin to regard Him as who He is and what He is, so that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is no longer just a thing that we memorize because that's what we're supposed to memorize. It's no longer a thing that we know in our heads only, but it's a reality that starts to transform our hearts and our lives. Ezekiel says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And Paul says in Galatians 4, because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that we don't only see the son, that, seeing Him, we are transformed into sons. The resurrection power of God, present in us by the Holy Spirit, causes us to respond to the truth of the Gospel, not only to intellectually agree that these things are true, but to cry out, Father, to tremble at the warnings of Scripture, How do you know when you're treating the Bible seriously? When it warns you, it scares you. To rejoice in the promises of Scripture. How do you know that you're taking the Bible seriously? When it gives you reason to rejoice, you rejoice. To love the Lord who loved us and gave himself up for us. And furthermore, while doing this work in our hearts, The resurrection power of Christ causes our words and works of kingdom witness to be effective. It causes our words and works of kingdom witness to be effective. Often this will mean mercy and care for pressing needs. Sometimes in the history of the church, it meant miracles. Always there is power in the proclamation of the gospel. God promises in Isaiah that my word shall not return to me empty. I will not sow the seed and nothing come up. And we are the bearers of that word. Whether in preaching, or in missionary work, or in speaking the gospel to our children at home, or in sharing the gospel with our neighbors, we carry that same powerful message. The third thing that Paul says, he says, in the Christian life, we need the righteousness of Christ, we need the power of Christ's resurrection. The third thing that he says is perhaps the hardest to take. And that is that we need to participate in, we need to have fellowship in Christ's sufferings. Participation in his sufferings, being conformed to the shape of his death. That's what he says. that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death." Now, that, Paul, doesn't mean that I get to, you know, I'm going to be crucified in the same way that Jesus was. He means that I am also going to suffer because He calls me to suffer. And we see this so clearly in Scripture. There is no room in the Bible for a gospel without suffering. Remember that James and John, two of Jesus' younger disciples, had big plans for themselves. I love it that, I think it's in Mark's Gospel, they get their mom to go to Jesus. They don't ask of themselves, they get their mom to go to Jesus and say, Lord, please grant that when you come into your kingdom, my sons would sit next to you, beside your throne, on your right hand and on your left. And of course they're envisioning like a Cuban revolution, right? There's going to be an overthrow of the government and they're going to be, you know, Jesus is going to be Fidel and the two of them are going to be the henchmen, right? And Jesus turns to them, I think, he doesn't talk to the mom anymore, he turns to James and John and he says, are you able to drink the cup that I drink? Or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? They turn in a moment of extreme foolishness and at the same time faith. They say, yes. He says, you will. You will. I can't make any guarantees about those thrones, but you will drink the same cup that I drink and be baptized through the same baptism that I will undergo. What is this cup and what is this baptism? It is his death. It is his suffering. It is his passion. In John, the last chapter of John, Jesus says to Peter, truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you were old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. And John notes, this he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. No, no, no, it's not death in a nursing home. When he says, you will stretch out your hands and be carried where you do not want to go, he is promising that Peter will die as he did on the crucifixion. Paul, the greatest servant of Christ that we could name, the greatest missionary the world has ever seen, met Jesus in a blinding moment on the road to Damascus. And he was left for three days and three nights in absolute despair, blind, eating and drinking nothing, sure that he was going to perish forever, until Ananias comes to him at the command of the Lord. And the Lord says to Ananias, I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. Well, that's all well and good, right? That's for apostles. That's for James and John and Peter and Paul. But is that for the rest of us? Well, we know this passage, don't we? He said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. So we too are called to share in the suffering of Christ. It might not be the same kind of suffering that Paul suffered, jail time in an ancient Roman prison or in the Trastivir quarter of Rome. We suffer when we put to death the sins of the flesh. We suffer in the ordinary human hardships, but we suffer also by extraordinary attacks by the enemies of Christ, both human and spiritual. You know, it was compelling to me a couple of weeks ago when Pastor Olivetti was talking about how the mother churches, the planting churches in Indiana, often suffered after they had planted a new church. You know, we've seen that here. The church that planted ours immediately afterwards began to suffer a rash of serious and sometimes fatal disease. And they suffered. They suffered. Is that simply coincidence? It is not. They were taken through it by the sovereign hand of the Lord, yes, but by the attacks of spiritual enemies. Suffering for Christ may mean giving up your own agenda and embracing His. This is what self-denial is. It means that whatever plans or goals I have for myself, and Paul talks about this explicitly, doesn't he? Whatever plans or goals I have for myself, whatever things I've accomplished in the past, whatever privileges I may have, I count them as loss. I consider them garbage. For the sake of knowing Christ. to seek the resurrection of the dead. This is hard, especially for people who expect to be successful, who expect to be in control. But these are precisely the ways Christ suffered for you. We've looked at the righteousness of Christ. We've looked at the power of Christ's resurrection. We've looked even at this participation in Christ's suffering. We've talked about a little bit about how this is how we come to know him. But what is that destination in time? Paul puts it succinctly, powerfully in verse 11. That I may share his sufferings, become like him at his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Now this shakes us up a little bit, doesn't it? Because it makes us sound like Paul's not sure if he's going to get raised from the dead. Is that the case? No. He is sure. He's clear throughout his writings. You can look at Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4. This is clear throughout his writings. He teaches that there will be a final judgment of all mankind and a final transforming resurrection, particularly for the people of God, that they will be raised with transformed bodies, never to die again, and to live for all eternity in God's blessed presence. And this is in keeping with the rest of scripture, with the teaching of Christ himself. The only question that Paul has is, what will the path to that resurrection look like? What will the path to the resurrection look like? The emphasis of this verse is not on whether he will reach the resurrection, but on how he will reach the resurrection. It is not on that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. It is on that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead. I don't care what it takes. I don't care what the path holds. I don't care what suffering, what participation in Christ's suffering He may have for me. I'm willing to do it because I know what the destination is. The resurrection is a gift of grace, and it gives us a plan for life. The resurrection life is won by Christ's faithfulness. It is received through faith. So how then will we live? First of all, knowing that our standing before God and man flows from Christ's status as vindicated and risen Lord, second, by the power of the Holy Spirit, by whom God raised Jesus from the dead, and third, with a readiness to share in the sufferings of Christ on the way. But above all, in a confident expectation of the renewal of our bodies, our souls, and the world, that we may truly, now and then, come to know Christ the Lord. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we pray that we would do what you are calling us to do. We pray that we would be what you are calling us to be. But we rejoice, Lord, that it's not mainly about anything we do at all. We rejoice that we have a righteousness which comes not from anything that we've accomplished in this life, but a righteousness which comes from what Christ has accomplished for us. We rejoice that there is a power at work in our souls that comes not from our own goodness or interest in you, not from our own religiosity, not from our own mystical sense of things, not from our own spirituality, but there is a power at work in us which flows directly through the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the outpouring of your Holy Spirit who works in us now, making you present and authoritative to us. And we rejoice, Lord, that this path gives us the hard but real privilege of participating in the sufferings of our Lord Jesus. Lord, let us walk in this path, that by any means possible we may attain to the resurrection of the dead. Hear us and be at work in us, we pray, O Lord. Amen.