The Surpassing Worth of Knowing 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”
(Philippians 3:8-11).
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ!
The Judaizers were a faction of Jewish
Christians who regarded the Levitical laws of the Old Testament as still
binding on all Christians. They were strenuously opposed and criticized for
their behavior by the Apostle Paul, who used many of his epistles, including
our text for today, to refute their teaching.
The Judaizers placed a high value on fleshly
things like ethnic background, physical rituals, and outward displays of good works.
They labored under the false impression that the salvation of their soul
depended on those earthly things. Paul did not want the Philippians to be
deceived by that kind of thinking. So, he used his own life as an example of
how perverted such thinking really is. If he chose to argue with the Judaizers
on their own terms, he would have greater reason for boasting than any Judaizer
could ever have.
Were the Judaizers concerned about circumcision?
Paul had been circumcised on the eighth day in strict accord with the
ceremonial law. How many Judaizers, many of whom had been later converts to
Christianity, could claim that? Were the Judaizers concerned about ethnic
purity? Paul did not belong to a mixed stock of less than 100 % pure Israelite
blood, as most of the Jews after the Babylonian captivity did. He was a member
of the tribe of Benjamin, one of only two tribes that had remained fairly
intact after the Jews returned from exile. Paul was a true Hebrew among Hebrews,
a genuine Israelite through and through, with a genealogy that would put most
of the Judaizers to shame.
His family had remained strictly faithful to
the ancestral religion and had even retained the Hebrew language, which many
other Jews had forgotten. If the Judaizers were concerned about the outward
keeping of the Old Testament ceremonial laws, Paul could boast that he had been
a Pharisee, a member of the strict Jewish sect that prided itself in keeping
the laws of Moses to the last detail. The Pharisees even added many of their
own laws to the laws of Moses. Even Paul’s father before him had been a
Pharisee, and none of his contemporaries came close to being as good a Pharisee
as Paul had been. During his years as a Pharisee, Paul, then known as Saul, had
diligently kept and upheld all the Pharisees’ laws and regulations. His zeal
for those laws, in fact, had been so great that it led him to try to violently
destroy the infant Christian church, because it taught a way of salvation
contrary to that which the Pharisees taught.
As measured by the standards of righteousness
that the Judaizers held, Paul was therefore practically faultless. And if
heaven’s gates could have been opened by any combination of these outward
things, Paul, both by what he had inherited and what he had attained, would
have been able to walk right in.
At one time, to Paul’s spiritually blind eyes, he
had considered all these things advantages that would help him gain eternal
life. The Judaizers still thought that way. But, Paul said, by God’s grace he
had now been led to see all these things in their true light and to discover
that they had no value at all. All those physical things, all those supposed
advantages did not gain real righteousness for him. They only led him away from
the only righteousness that saves.
The Lord had led Paul to that great discovery.
One day, as Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there,
the risen and ascended Lord Jesus had appeared to him. In that moment Paul saw
himself as the wretched, helpless sinner he really was. He experienced a
complete change of heart and a total reversal of values. The Savior he had been
persecuting became his Savior. The cause he had been bent on destroying
became his cause. All the things that had been so precious to Saul the
Pharisee became and remained forever useless to Paul the sinner saved by grace.
What caused this extraordinary change? Simply
this: Paul had discovered something to put on the credit side in comparison
with which everything else he could only imagine could be a debt. The something
is, in fact, a someone: It is Jesus, the Messiah, the King, the One who
was the subject of the hymn recorded in Philippians 2:6-11.
That hymn remains
important in our text because what Paul says about himself in this passage and
the following ones is quite close to what he said about Jesus there. Jesus did
not regard the huge advantage He had—equality with God—as something to exploit as
other kings do. Rather, He interpreted it as the vocation to take the penalty
due His people for high treason. That is why God exalted Him.
So, here, Paul does not
regard the huge privileges he had as something of which to take advantage.
Instead, he discovered in Jesus that the true meaning of membership in God’s people
lay in Christ’s suffering and death to fulfill all righteousness, with the
vindication of the resurrection of Christ as the basis for His own justification.
His works added nothing because it was his duty to be righteous under the Law.
Even if he obtained that, it did not necessarily mean he was righteous before
God. He had no credit because the Law could not atone for his sin. It could not
render him positively righteous before the face of God, even though it gave him
boasting rights in the Law.
All the things Paul had formerly regarded as
profit he now regarded as less than useless, not because all of them were wrong
in themselves but because he had wrongly regarded them as tickets to eternal
life. So, like a ship’s captain tossing baggage off a foundering ship so that
the ship would not sink, Paul rid himself of all the things that had been so
important to him. In that sense, he lost everything. Yet in his heart he knew
that his “loss” was really not loss at all. All the things he had discarded
were nothing but garbage, a worthless mess, for they had stood in the way of
his knowing and trusting in Christ.
It is important for us also to realize that
some of the things we might regard as advantage or gain can actually be loss
for us if they stand in the way of our knowing and trusting in Jesus. Being
born into a Christian home, being instructed and confirmed, receiving a
Christian education, and being members of a Christian congregation are all
great blessings and advantages in themselves, but we cannot regard them as
tickets to eternal life. Likewise, other legitimate blessings of the Lord—like
intelligence, money, good looks, education, even our own personal moral
victories—can actually become hindrances to our salvation, if for any reason we
put our trust in them instead of placing our whole confidence in Christ.
Through Christ, Paul obtained a righteousness
that enables sinners to stand before the judgment seat of God. Before he came
to know Jesus, Paul trusted the righteousness that he thought he was earning by
the kind of life he led. But once the Scriptures were opened to him, the
apostle came to realize how worthless all human righteousness really is.
Gaining one’s own righteousness by keeping the
Law could be done only by perfectly fulfilling the law. In the Law, God demands
perfect holiness in thought, desire, word, and deed. No sinful human being can
be perfectly holy. The righteousness that Paul thought he was earning as a
Pharisee, the righteousness the Judaizers still claimed they and their pupils
could earn, was worse than worthless.
In Christ, on the other hand, Paul had found
real righteousness. Jesus earned this righteousness for sinners by His work as our
substitute. God freely gives that righteousness to sinners through the Gospel.
Individual sinners personally receive this righteousness by faith, which the
Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts through the very Gospel message that
announces and offers this righteousness. From beginning to end, the
righteousness that saves is God’s gift to sinners.
Based on this righteousness alone, God accepts
sinful human beings as His children. From beginning to end, the righteousness
that saves is God’s gift to sinners. Based on this righteousness alone, God
accepts sinful human beings as His children. Paul knew that in Christ he had
obtained that marvelous righteousness from God. He was not about to give it up or
again foolishly place his trust in the worthless human righteousness that had
intrigued him before. Nor did he want the Philippians to be deceived by the
Judaizers into giving it up.
Over 20 centuries later, the apostle’s inspired
words also urge us to place our confidence in the righteousness of Christ alone.
The apostle encourages us to count everything else as loss for the surpassing
greatness of knowing Christ and finding in Him the righteousness that avails
before God. He encourages us to reject all righteousness apart from Christ as
sham righteousness that cannot save.
Believers, who possess Christ’s righteousness
and feel His love in their hearts, will want to grow in our knowledge of Him. We
will want to experience His love ever more deeply and respond to that love with
lives of loving service.
The Lord blesses such growth in His believers
through the Gospel in Word and sacrament. As we regularly find Christ in His
Word, remember our baptisms, and receive Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s
Supper, the Holy Spirit reveals the Savior’s love and the desire and power to
serve Him. Through the Spirit’s work in our hearts, we experience the power of
Christ’s resurrection. We receive from our risen Lord the spiritual strength to
overcome sin and grow in Christian living.
We also experience, as Paul did, “sharing in
His sufferings” and “becoming like Him in His death.” Believers cannot atone
for our own sins by suffering and dying, but we share in the fellowship of
Christ’s suffering and become like Him in His death. We share this when we endure
the scorn and ridicule and even at times the physical persecution of the
hostile world, when we daily crucify our own sinful and selfish nature with its
lusts and desires, and when we joyfully and uncomplainingly follow their Savior
on our path of suffering and trouble in this sinful world to the glory of
eternal life with Him. Toward that great goal Paul constantly strove; toward
that great goal every believer, including each one of us, also strives daily. May
God grant this to us all. Amen
The peace of God which passes all understanding
guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture
quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001
by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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