What Matters

Some Key Words (08/31/24-09/02/24)

Gain (kerde[2771]):: | pecuniary gain. Gain generally. | gain or advantage.
Counted (hegemai[2233]):: [Perfect: Present result of past action. Middle: Subject acts in relation to self, having personal involvement or allowing a thing to be done for himself. May indicate reciprocal action. May be deponent, with active voice application. Indicative: Action certain or realized.]
To lead on, lead forward. To be the chief principle. To think. | [Deponent] To lead, deem, consider. | To go before, have authority over, influence. To deem or account, hold as opinion.
Loss (zemian[2209]):: | detriment. | To regard as loss.
For the sake of (dia[1223]):: [Accusative]
| through, may indicate cause or occasion. | through. The condition in which one does a thing. Instrumental cause, by the service of [with Genetive]. In the Accusative: through, because of, on account of. For this cause, as impelled by.
Surpassing value (huperechon[5242]):: [Present: Action from internal viewpoint, open-ended, perhaps in progress, thus viewed without regard to timing. May indicate ongoing action. Active: Subject performs action. Participle: Verbal adjective. Present participles are contemporaneous, and indicative of state. Accusative: Direct object, receiving main verb’s action (I count).]
| To excel, be above. Participle: Superiority. | To stand out, excel, be superior.
Knowing (gnoseos[1108]):: [Genetive: Having relationship to the subject, perhaps as adjective or adverb, sometimes as object of some verb, preposition, or adjective. Here, the object of value.]
Knowledge, knowing experientially. Compared to epignosis, this is partial, fragmentary knowledge. | knowledge. | knowledge, understanding. Objective knowledge. Moral wisdom. But gnosis is primarily apprehension of truth, where sophia adds reasoning.
Count (hegoumai[2233]):: [Present: Action from internal viewpoint, open-ended, perhaps in progress, thus viewed without regard to timing. May indicate ongoing action. Middle: Subject acts in relation to self, having personal involvement or allowing a thing to be done for himself. May indicate reciprocal action. May be deponent, with active voice application. Indicative: Action certain or realized.]
[see above]
Rubbish (skubala[4657]):: | refuse thrown to dogs. Offal. | refuse, animal excrement, offscourings. In all, a thing worthless and detestable. [only used in this verse.]
Gain (kerdeso[2770]):: [Aorist: Action from external viewpoint, as a whole, and in the past. Might be viewed as progressive in this case. Active: Subject performs action. Subjunctive: Action contingent, probable, eventual.]
| To gain. | To gain, acquire. Often indicating gain that comes of escaping evil.
Found (heuretho[2147]):: [Aorist: Action from external viewpoint, as a whole, and in the past. In this case, usage feels consummative. Passive: Subject receives action. Subjunctive: Action contingent, probable, eventual.]
To find, with or without the effort of seeking. To learn, discover. | To find. | To find a thing sought, or to find by chance, come upon. To find by inquiry, to learn or discover, to recognize or be recognized.
Righteousness (dikaiosunen[1343]):: The essence of what is just. That which fulfills the claims of a higher authority. Conformity to such claims. Standing the test of God’s judgment. In reference to God, His own uprightness. In reference to man, full submission to God’s right of him. | equity of character. Christian justification. | The state of one who is as he ought to be. In a state of being approved by God. Integrity, virtue, uprightness. In Pauline technical application, a specific counterpoint to Judaizing tendencies, which indicate a perspective of salvation based on personal works of obedience to Mosaic law, i.e. salvation by merit. This, however, is impossible, for perfection is required, and perfection is beyond us. Even where natural law supplants Mosaic, the impossibility of adherence remains. Rather, righteousness is a grace appropriated, a gift pledged and revealed in Christ, and it is only thus one gains a state acceptable to God.
Derived (ek[1537]):: out of, from, of. Indicative of source or origin, or the state out of which one comes in tending toward another. | origin, from, out of. | from out of, from. May indicate condition from which one has come out or separated. Indicative of source or cause. The cause of action.
Through (dia[1223]):: | The channel of action. |
Faith (pisteos[4102]):: Being persuaded, having as one’s belief. Confident assent to knowledge of divine truth. | Moral conviction as to religious truth. |
From (ek[1537]):: [See Derived above]
On the basis of (epi[1909]):: [Dative: having secondary relationship to the verb. May indicate instrumental means.]
| at on, resting upon. | Upon. In the dative, of place, in which, the basis or grounds of action.
Know (gnonai[1097]):: [Aorist: Action from external viewpoint, as a whole, and in the past. Might be viewed as progressive in this case. Active: Subject performs action. Infinitive: Verbal noun indicating cause, means, purpose, or result.]
To know experientially. To understand, be aware of. | To know absolutely. | To come to know, gain knowledge of. To perceive, understand. Particularly applied to knowledge of God, as contrasted to the polytheism common at the time.
Power (dunamin[1411]):: Inherent power and ability. | miraculous power. | strength, ability, inherent power. Miraculous power.
Resurrection (anastaseos[386]):: To stand again, to rise again from the grave. | A standing again, resurrection from death. | a rising from the dead.
Fellowship (koinonian[2842]):: Fellowship, participation, communion. | participation in, social interaction. | having a share in, participation, contact, fellowship.
Sufferings (pathematon[3804]):: Suffering, that which is suffered. | a hardship. | that which one has suffered or does suffer. An enduring.
Conformed (summorphizomenos[4831a]):: [Present: Action from internal viewpoint, open-ended, perhaps in progress, thus viewed without regard to timing. May indicate ongoing action. Passive: Subject receives action. Participle: Verbal adjective. Present participles are contemporaneous, and indicative of state. Nominative: Subject (I)]
| Unique to Christian writings, the word means to be conformed to, have the same form, share the likeness of. | To bring to the same form, render alike to. [only used here in this verse.]
In order that (ei pos[1513]):: [Third class Conditional: Indicates a probable or possible outcome. Apodosis indicates consequences of protasis being achieved. + Indefinite Particle: shades the verb’s meaning. Presumably, in this case, it renders the protasis uncertain, either as to outcome or as to time.]
| if somehow. |
Attain (katanteso[2658]):: [Aorist: Action from external viewpoint, as a whole, and in the past. In this case, usage appears to be proleptic, and supplies the protasis of the conditional clause. Active: Subject performs action. Subjunctive: Action contingent, probable, eventual.]
| To arrive at. | to attain to a thing.

Paraphrase: (09/04/24)

Php 3:7-8 All those credentials and achievements and markers of piety I once thought so important? From my present perspective, I see they were all loss to me, for they drew me away from Christ, not toward Him. Indeed, to me all things, all these outward adornments and material gains are but loss when set over against the unmatched value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For Him I have suffered the loss of everything the world holds dear, everything my fellow Jews account to be of importance. And honestly? It’s all dung, offal unfit for man or beast, as it works to keep me from gaining Christ. 9 No! Let me be found in Him. Let my righteousness not be a thing of my own poor effort, as if I could ever account my obedience to the fulness of the Law sufficient to count as true righteousness. Rather, let my righteousness be that which is through faith in Christ, coming from God Himself on the sole basis of faith. 10-11 Oh! May I know Him – the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being totally conformed to His death so as to attain to the resurrection from the dead that is mine in Him!

Key Verse: (09/04/24)

Php 3:9 – May I be found in Him. May I be possessed of a righteousness not my own, not counting on works of my own, adherence to Law and such, but a righteousness that rests upon the very righteousness of Christ Himself, through faith in Him, coming from God on the basis of faith.

Thematic Relevance: (09/02/24)	Satisfaction in the face of such loss represents a sea-change in perspective. Works left no place for rest. Resting in Christ leaves no place for such works.
Doctrinal Relevance: (09/03/24)	Christ is all. Our legal standing of righteousness, of justification, rests solely and exclusively upon His finished work. This does not give us cause to sit back in presumption, but gives us cause for a certain, assured hope that we shall indeed attain to the resurrection, because this, too, is from Him, His doing.
Moral Relevance: (09/03/24)	A reiteration: What have I set up as my personal marker of righteousness? In what ways am I putting my confidence in my compliance rather than His perfection? These things need to be excised. And on what may actually be a much more difficult front, what things am I still holding onto as being worth more to me than my Savior? Have pleasures become more to me than Him? Am I still willing to suffer the loss of all things for Him? And if not, why not? And if not, what will it take to regain that perspective, or perhaps even gain it for the first time? These are things that need pondering, and need as well the circumcised eyes informed by the Holy Spirit, that I might see clearly, and deal with what I see.
Doxology: (09/03/24)	I cannot help but sing out in light of this passage. While Paul’s language is couched in maybes, I really don’t think he is expressing any least doubt as to outcomes. It is more a case of remaining appropriate (in spite of his shock language earlier). We don’t presume upon God’s grace, but we rest assured in it. We do know Him, and as we grow, we shall know Him more. We do in varying degree have fellowship with His sufferings, and we shall share in His resurrection. We are being conformed to His death, and we shall be conformed to His life. All of this comes for no less a reason than that God has declared it so, God has made it so. From our perspective, He is in process of making it so, but the full force is that He already has. We know where we’re going, and we know it because, as He said through Isaiah so very long ago, “By My own right arm, I will do it.” I apparently paraphrase here, as I cannot seem to find my reference, though we read it but a few nights ago. Still, it is to the point. God will do it. He has done it! Rejoice!
Questions Raised: (09/02/24)	Are these subjunctives indicative of some doubt, or simply acknowledgement of God’s determinative position as to the outcome?

Symbols: (09/03/24)

Loss: To begin with, this term is a significant softening of Paul’s language. The NET takes pains to note that his intention here would seem clearly to be that of shock value. The term he has chosen to describe that works-based righteousness of his past speaks, depending on which lexicon you choose, either of those entrails and scraps one might throw to the despised dogs mentioned in the previous section, or of the excrement of such as dogs. If you will pardon the bluntness of it, he’s basically saying all of that was nothing but dog shit. And yes, I suspect he does intend to come across just so shockingly impolite. But let’s at least try a few references here. Fausset sticks with the idea that this would be the stuff thrown to the dogs. The ISBE notes primarily its association with something utterly worthless, an article for which no one cares. Thus, perhaps, those translations that put it nearer to garbage. Holman’s, on the other hand, sticks with the idea of excrement, though also notes association of the dung heap and the ash heap or rubbish heap. At the very least, then, we’re dealing in garbage, and then, perhaps with night soil or the creaturely equivalent. Vine’s at least observes the connection to the imagery of the previous section. These Judaizers thought of themselves as seated at God’s banquet, and of Gentiles as dogs. This is being utterly reversed by Paul’s declaration. Nope. You Gentiles are at the banquet, and the stuff these guys value so highly is utter crap, scraps from that banquet not even suitable to keep as leftovers. I’ve more or less stayed in me mode this time, as the references are quite brief. But the shock value of this must not be missed. It is the whole point. Even for those who are on the positive end of this message, it ought to hit with enough force to cause a sharp intake of breath. For those Judaizers, if they were in hearing distance, it would either knock the stuffing out of them or drive them to fits of rage to hear their beloved practices thus demeaned – and that, by a fellow Jew! Is it any wonder that they sought to silence this guy? It was either that or face the truth, and that, sadly, seems to have been beyond them to do.

People, Places & Things Mentioned: (09/03/24)

Judaizers: I’m not going to explore these guys very much, and in fairness, they are not directly mentioned here. But they’re never far from sight. These are the legalists of their day, so confident in their rites and practices, so sure they have this God thing down pat. And in their legalistic pride, they are quite certain they have earned the right to look down their noses at the likes of you or me. It is precisely this spiritual pride which has drawn Paul’s fire. It was the same spiritual pride that sparked Christ’s ire. The utter hypocrisy of thinking these mere bits of performance could mark one out as truly righteous, when all the incidental actions of their lives shouted something completely different was a stench and an offense to God. The same, we must surely recognize, goes for every supposed piety we toss up in hopes of feeling better about ourselves. If in anything we are back to putting confidence in the flesh, then in that doing we are distancing ourselves from our Lord, and from the very sanctification we suppose ourselves to have brought closer. To remind of the last passage: Beware! Observe what you’re doing and stop it!

You Were There: (09/04/24)

My first inclination was to again pursue the thought of what it would be like for those first hearing this letter, and especially if these Judaizers were present at the time. And to be sure, there would be severe shock for them in hearing this one who had just listed out his credentials refer to them in such awful terms. But today, I think it more beneficial to consider Paul’s state as he wrote these things. You feel it most poignantly in verse 8, I think. “For Him I have suffered the loss of all things.” Mind you, he doesn’t pause long on that thought, but it’s there. Here is a man in prison, his liberty almost entirely curtailed some four years now, between his time in Caesarea Philippi and here in Rome. It’s not clear that he could even ply his trade and keep up any sort of income to cover the costs of housing as he must.

Yes, he had some limited companionship, and could receive visitors – always under the watchful eye of the guards. But in a very real sense, he had nothing. He was entirely beholden to God’s provision to see him through his present condition, and these Philippians to whom he is writing have been instrumental in supplying that provision. And now, to send the letter, he is depriving himself even of that limited companionship he has had with Epaphroditus.

Okay, so if our understanding of Pharisaism is correct, then we must conclude that at some juncture Paul had been married. He may have been still, though for him to have been so entirely given to the work of church planting, it would seem no longer to have been the case. There are some oblique references to him having the right to bring a wife, as the other Apostles did. But nowhere is there actual mention of a wife actually being present. It would take rather a special wife to be willing to such hardships. I am aware that most any missionary outreach today includes both husband and wife, and even children, though the children have little enough say in the matter, I expect. But at least with those I have met, husband and wife are equally committed to the work, if in different ways.

And I can’t help but think of those pastors and elders we met in Malawi, men who would leave house and home for weeks at a time to go off alone to the work of church planting in some other neighborhood. What of the wives? They were at home trying to manage the house, and the fields, and the children, and keep everybody fed when there was no food to be had. Here, too, it takes a special kind of wife to deal with the hardship with grace and love. She, too, must know a commitment to the work of the kingdom, a prioritizing of gospel ministry even over personal condition. I don’t go so far as to say personal comfort, because that, to my Western perspective at least, is already long gone before that time of church planting even starts.

So, is it possible that Paul has a wife somewhere, to whom he also has certain fiduciary responsibilities, at the very least? Does he have children back in Tarsus, perhaps, who have rarely if ever known their father? I don’t think it likely, to be honest. But that gets us back to loss of all things, even the companionship of that spouse he once knew. He is a man very much alone, even when he has his more faithful companions at hand. Even with the likes of Timothy still present, the weight of office would impose a certain distance, an unsharable aspect of his concerns and insights. As to insight, it wasn’t for lack of sharing them, nor for deficiency in his capacity to explain them. But some things are for the office alone.

I am perhaps dwelling overly long on this aspect of loss, given how swiftly he moves on. Hear his response to that loss. “What have I lost? Garbage! It’s all garbage. All that effort to impress, and to show God and man alike just how holy I am? Garbage! All those rites and ceremonies, and carefully attending to this rule and that? Not even fit for dogs! It’s crap! The only thing that matters in the least is that I have gained Christ, and am even now found in Him, accounted righteous solely on the basis of His perfect righteousness.”

Let us not lose sight of the fact that Paul is making a very cogent and pointed argument here. He’s not licking his wounds. He’s not writing from a place of pridefulness. He is defending Gospel truth, and more, defending those who have come to know the Truth. If those seeking to curtail the truth are offended by his forthrightness, so be it. They need to be offended. And God willing, may that offense become in them a goad to real repentance. This isn’t warfare against men and their opinions. This is battle against spiritual powers of darkness, and well does he know it. As such, even those acting as agents of these powers – wittingly or unwittingly – are not enemies to be destroyed, but lost souls to be recovered, if it be the will of our Lord and Savior that it might be so.

So. “You were there.” You are there in Paul’s prison home, reviewing a life of ministry, rejoicing in the recovery of your friend, and the opportunity to restore him to his friends and family back home. You are focused not on your circumstance (though certainly aware of and engaged with that circumstance). You are focused on the work of the King. You are focused on seeing those who have come to know Him safely ensconced in sound and resilient faith – faith anchored in truth, and able to stand firm in the face of any errant wind of supposed doctrine. What of us in our day, in our culture? How are we standing? What are we reflecting upon? Where are we focused?

Some Parallel Verses: (09/03/24)

3:7

Lk 14:33: You can’t be My disciple if you don’t give up all your possessions.
Heb 11:26: Moses considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

3:8

Jer 9:23-24: Let not the wise boast of his wisdom, nor the mighty of his might, nor the rich of his riches. If you must boast, boast of this: that you understand and know Me, knowing that I AM the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, for I delight in these things.
Jn 17:3: Eternal life is knowing You, the only true God, and Jesus Messiah whom You have sent.
Eph 4:13: [We keep building each other up] until we all reach the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God; until we are all mature, and reach the measure of the stature which is in the fulness of Christ.
2Pe 1:3: His divine power has granted us everything for life and godliness through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
Ro 8:39: No height or depth or any created thing shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Php 1:1: Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus in Philippi, overseers and deacons included.
Php 3:12: It’s not that I have already reached perfection, but I press on in order to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus laid hold of me.
2Co 5:15: He died for all, that all who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.
Isa 53:11: As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see and be satisfied. By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.
Lk 9:25: What profit is it to a man if he gains the world and loses himself?

3:9

Ro 10:5: Moses instructs that the man who practices the righteousness based on the law will live by that righteousness.
Php 3:6: If zeal is your measure, I was so zealous I persecuted the church. If the righteousness of the Law is your measure, I was blameless in adherence to that Law.
Ro 9:30: What then? The Gentiles, though not pursuing this legal righteousness of works, attained real righteousness; the righteousness which is by faith.
1Co 1:30: By His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

3:10

Ro 6:5: If we are united with Him in the likeness of His death, so too, in the likeness of His resurrection.
Ro 8:17: If we are children, we are also heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ – if indeed we suffer with Him so as to be glorified with Him.
Ro 8:36: As it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long. We are considered as sheep for the slaughter.”
Gal 6:17: Let no one any longer cause me trouble, for I bear the brand-marks of Jesus on my body.
Ro 1:4: He was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1Pe 4:13: To the degree that you share in Christ’s sufferings, keep rejoicing! Thus you may rejoice with exultation at the revelation of His glory.
2Co 1:5: For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.

3:11

Ac 26:6-7: I am on trial here for the hope of the promise God made to our fathers, which all the twelve tribes of Israel hope to attain by serving God night and day. It is for this hope, O King, that I am being accused by the Jews.
1Co 15:23: But each in due order: Christ first, as the first-fruits from the dead, then those who are His at His coming.
Rev 20:5-6: The rest of the dead did not come to life until those thousand years were complete. This is the first resurrection.

New Thoughts: (09/05/24-09/12/42)

Taking Out the Garbage (09/06/24)

In the last section, Paul looked back upon his life prior to Christ, when he thought himself a paragon of the Jewish religious community. He had thought very much like these troublers of the church against whom he is now writing. As we come into this part of the text, it’s needful to recognize that Paul is making the same point, continuing on the same line of reasoning. Look! I had the same perspective as they now do. All these things they count as markers of progress in piety, I can check them off for myself as well. Been there, done that. Indeed, if we’re going to play a game of credentials, I’ve got them beat on every score.

Now, he moves from past practice to present. Yeah, I had all that going for me. I was on my way, climbing the ladder. But do you know, when I met Jesus, I saw it all for what it was. All that I had pursued in thoughts of drawing closer to God was in fact pushing me away from Him. It wasn’t Him I was impressing, it was me, and those I sought to account my peers. It wasn’t piety, then, not by any healthy definition. It was pride. Pride disguised as piety may be some of the most rancid of characteristics we can develop. This is spiritual pride. This is the development of religiosity – a thing quite distinct from true religion – loudly decrying, “Look at me!”

Bad news: God does. And He’s found it wanting, severely wanting. What does He require of us? You likely know where this thought is going. Do justice. Love kindness. And most significantly, walk humbly with your God (Mic 6:8). What had this whole list of credentials been about? Was there anything of justice to it? Obedience, perhaps, at least within the limits of understanding, but not justice. No. What merit was Paul to claim in being born to Jewish parents? Was this somehow evidence of justness and kindness? It’s about as useful as you producing your birth certificate and expecting it to get you a seat at the table at some high-end restaurant. It’s nice and all, and may have value in its proper application, but it means nothing here.

By the time he reaches the end of his review, we find him persecuting the Church God had established in Christ on the basis of his zeal for God! Oh! But he had the backing of the temple on that, and indeed, as he indicates in other reviews of his record, when they called for the entirely unwarranted death sentence upon their co-religionists for the crime of knowing Jesus Messiah, Paul was right there to cast his vote in favor of that verdict (Ac 26:10). It still amazes me that this particular detail comes out as he is defending himself before Roman authorities as his own life has come under threat from those of a like zealousness to that which he recounts here. But how does this accord with seeking justice, loving kindness? Justice didn’t enter into it, and it would be hard indeed to account wresting people from their homes, ruining their livelihood at best, and costing them their lives at worst, as somehow a kindness.

What’s worse by far is all of these undertakings demonstrated that for all the spiritual pride of these find defenders of God’s holiness (or really, of their personal position and power), they knew nothing of God. Oh, they knew Him as a fearsome power to be dealt with carefully. They knew Him in a sense not so different from how those pagan societies around them knew their own demonic gods. But they didn’t know Him as He is, as He reveals Himself to be. They knew a tyrant that must be obeyed on pains of death and worse. They knew Him as a means to power on their own part. They knew that by promoting their intricate lattice of rules and regulations they could maintain power, maintain a façade of prestige, and enjoy the best of the land. But love? Kindness? Justice? Didn’t really enter into the equation.

We see, then, that spiritual pride, which so often fuels such zealousness, too often turns out to be spiritual hypocrisy. And if there’s one thing Jesus denounced with utmost vehemence during His brief ministry here on planet earth, it is hypocrisy. From His earliest teaching, there are warnings against that model of piety. “Don’t do as the hypocrites do” (Mt 6:2, Mt 6:5, Mt 6:16). They perform to be seen and noted. You, if you would please God, do what is right in silence, in secret, even. And by the end, it’s become a true assault. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” (Mt 23:31-29). Oh, you’ve got such fine looking practices, but it’s all looks and nothing of substance. God will not put up with such activity. He will not have His name sullied by those who talk a good game, but in reality are, to take Jesus’ description, “white-washed tombs full of dead men’s bones.”

Throughout, this was the mindset that drew Christ’s most vehement anger. And let there be no doubt, it was godly anger. How could it not be, coming, as it did from God Incarnate? And Paul was right there, absorbing the blows and so caught up in the hypocrisy that he no doubt felt the whole thing not just unwarranted, but evidence of error in its own right. But he was wrong. So very, very wrong. It took Jesus knocking the wind out of him, figuratively, to bring him to his senses. His sight was taken from him temporarily in order that he might truly see. Now, having seen the error of his ways and the true heart and spirit of God, he was a firebrand once more, but this time turned the same direction as Jesus, ready to knock down every sort of spiritual pride and hypocrisy.

That’s what happens here. We’ve had the wind-up. We’ve had the comparison drawn, and you can almost imagine these Judaizers listening along, nodding their heads, checking their spiritual bingo cards. Yep, yep, yep. He’s checking all the boxes. I can do the same, at least those at the start of the list. And they might even have been excitedly puffing up at the mention of his having persecuted the church, fighting to bring them back in line with Mosaic practice and punishing those who led God’s people astray. Yes! Yes! Hurray for our side! And now comes the knock out.

All of that I just listed? All of those credentials I thought so important, those you think so necessary to mark out a true believer? Garbage! Having found Christ (or more properly, having been found by Christ Who sought me out and smacked me up side the head to bring me to my senses), I see that all of those credentials of mine were not buying me anything. In fact, they were costing me. They were increasing the weight of sin in my account. Piety? Far from it!

He’s lining right up behind Jesus here. It’s a marvelous coincidence of God’s timing (which is to say, no coincidence at all) that we are reading Luke 11 this week for our men’s group. There is Jesus, invited to dine with one of the Pharisees in Jerusalem, a meal no doubt attended by many from their social class, as we find both Pharisees and scribes present at table. And what’s their reaction to this teacher? Offense! He didn’t wash His hands before dinner. Now, Luke describes it simply as surprise, but why a surprise? This was in their list of regulations. Mind you, I don’t think you’ll find it in Leviticus, but it was in their myriad volumes of additional evidences of piety. And here, in the midst of this dinner at which He is a guest, He just launches. Oh, yes, you Pharisees are ever so careful with your baptisms of cup and platter, but look within! You’re full of robbery and wickedness! (Lk 11:37-39). Can you imagine such a thing around your own dinner table? We’re not talking sons or daughters perhaps seeking to establish their independence. We’re talking invited guests, folks you thought to be doing an honor by having them over. And this is the way they repay your kindness?

You can see the reaction, especially as He doesn’t stop there, but runs through a brief list of their practices, revealing the hypocrisy of each one. And the scribes at table pipe in. “Hey, Jesus! It’s okay for You to take the Pharisees down a peg or two, but You’re insulting us, too!” And then it gets serious indeed. “Yeah, you guys? The blood of all the prophets, from the beginning until now, shall be charged against you.” And the conclusion lays bare the enormity of their failure. “For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You won’t enter in yourselves, and you do your best to prevent anybody else from doing so” (Lk 11:51-52).

This is the background of Paul’s assault on the Judaizers. They’re in the same place the Pharisees were. Or, if they’re not yet in the same place, they’re on the same course. How had the Pharisees become what they were? They started out so well. They wanted to obey. And they wanted to be sure of it. So, they set the limits a bit back from the black and white line of sin. Put the fence up a bit inside the boundaries, lest one accidentally step foot over the line. It sounds reasonable, and perhaps, in its original intent, it was actually reasonable. As a matter of personal exercise, I don’t suppose it would be in itself sinful. But it came to the point that what they had chosen to do themselves became a demand made of everybody else. It came to the point, a bit farther on, where their added regulations were more important to them than the original. And along the way, they lost the plot. They completely failed of understanding the intent, of shaping character and seeking what pleases God. Indeed, watching their reaction to Jesus, it’s clear they had utterly failed of actually knowing God. All they knew was the rule book.

So, back to Paul. He gets it. He’s been where they still are; even worse, if we suppose that these guys had at least acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah and not rejected Him outright. And now, having set up the pins, he knocks them out in one shot. All that stuff I was doing to be holy? It’s junk. Christ is all. Compared to knowing Him – I mean, really knowing Him as He truly is, everything is junk. All the stuff that we value so much in this life? Garbage! A fine career? A house and family? Productive vineyards or whatever other trade you may ply? Fat bank accounts? Worthless! Look at me! Here I am in jail for the crime of seeking to live for Christ. I’ve lost everything the world counts as worthwhile. I’ve lost everything the Jews account important. But, so what? I’ve come to know Jesus, and with that to my account, all the rest of this is garbage.

In fairness, garbage is not strong enough a term to convey what Paul is saying here. He uses the term skubala, which is a term we find nowhere else in Scripture. As such, there is at least some debate as to its exact sense, but I’ll tell you this, it’s not paper trash. It’s not boxes cut up and left curb-side. It’s not even the trimmings from the vegetables that maybe you’ve put in your composting pile. At best, we’re talking about offal, those bits left over after butchering the meat as being unfit for consumption. And do you know what became of such garbage as this in the society of that day? You threw it to the dogs. That way, it wouldn’t pile up in the street. But, on the other side of that equation, it was this practice that had made foot-washing such a point of order. To walk the streets barefoot, or even with sandals, was not a sanitary affair. If you find it too awful to contemplate that you might need to step around something the neighbor’s dog left as a deposit, this was there as well, but also every other sort of trash; rotting meat byproduct and whatever else needed disposing. Yeah, you’d want to wash your feet, too.

And that gets us round to the other understanding of this word skubala. Rather than that which one might toss to the dogs, it may very well refer to what results of the dogs having eaten those scraps: Excrement. As the NET points out, this is a declaration intended to shock the hearer. I have observed elsewhere in preparatory efforts the degree to which our various translations seek to hide his offensiveness here. “I count it all as rubbish.” Okay, that’s fine. But it loses something. Rubbish is a fairly tidy matter in our experience. I mean, sure, the kitchen barrel may be a bit odiferous come trash day, but we tie off the bag, set it curb-side, and soon enough it’s been whisked away. None of that is present in Paul’s choice of words here. I suspect the Message may come closest to conveying the strength of his denunciation. “Everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant – dog dung.” We’re getting closer. But I don’t think he’s being that gentle in his language. I expect the NET is right, and he’s really looking to shock with this declaration, and so, he’s calling it as it is. This is dogshit! And this being a bible study, I feel a strong need to apologize for stating it so, even though I would likely mutter something along the same vein when dealing with some issue of coding at work, or some tool not performing to my standards. I might indeed take much the same tone addressing whatever the latest bit of political turmoil happens to be this week, or the latest atrocious act of the administration and its hangers-on.

Remember our context, where we started on this thread of Paul’s message. “Beware of the dogs!” (Php 3:2). He’s already been turning their assessments on their heads. They, proud Jews that they were, looked down upon these benighted, uncircumcised Gentiles as dogs, creatures to whom you might, I suppose, throw the scraps from your table, might allow in the vicinity to scare off thieves, but hardly creatures to be welcomed into the house. They’re unclean! This had been their argument. If you would be truly clean, you must undergo circumcision, you must take up the whole panoply of Jewish practice. What are they doing? They’re throwing table scraps to the dogs. They’ll never view the Gentiles as equals, not even if they comply fully with every demand of Pharisaic practice.

And now, these Jews, who thought themselves the ones who would be at the head of the banquet table in God’s heaven, the Gentiles, perhaps permitted to wander the periphery like the dogs they are, find themselves cast as the dogs, and their practices as – at best – those worthless scraps they were throwing to the dogs as they saw it. Far more likely, though, that he is taking that extra step here, and observing that these dogs who thought themselves to be displaying their greater piety, were in fact taking a dump. They were a stench and an offense to God and man alike.

Let’s bring it back around to Jesus’ prior denunciation of their approach to sanctification. “For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You won’t enter in yourselves, and you do your best to prevent anybody else from doing so.” All this stuff you’re insisting the Gentiles must do to become acceptable in the sight of God is in fact demonstrating a complete lack of understanding as to Who God Is. You don’t know Him, yourselves. That’s plain from the demands you’re making. You’ve been witness to what God was doing in Christ Jesus. You are likely eyewitnesses to those things. You’ve seen the manifestations of God’s kingdom having come near. You’ve heard – I know you’ve heard – how the Holy Spirit has been coming to these Gentiles you so despise. You’ve seen the results. And rather than rejoice at the marvelously displayed mercy of the Lord of all Creation, you’re offended because in your eyes you’ve lost a bit of your former status. Brother, you never had status. You never knew God, not really. And without a significant change of course, comes that day when He returns, His reaction to your attempt to join Him is going to resound with the doleful response, “Depart from Me. I never knew you.”

This brings us to the subject of the next part of the study, knowing God. This is the one thing Paul sets forth as so valuable as to make all the rest so insignificant and even despicable. Best, then, that we take some time to consider just what it means to know God, or just what it is that is so important to know in regard to Him.

Knowing God (09/07/24)

Before I shift fully to the matter of knowing God, I want to pause just briefly on this matter of gain and loss. It is surely a reflection of our living in a world focused on capital exchange, but seeing these two words gets me thinking in terms of profit and loss. But that is not really where Paul is going with his message, nor is it where the words he has chosen to use are intended to point us. The matter of gain that he has in view is less about acquisition and profit, and more to do with such gains as come of escaping evil. The one who has been fallen upon by bandits and finds himself rescued from their evil intent has experienced real gain, even if he leaves that encounter with no more than when it began. The one who is caught in a trap knows gain when he somehow breaks free of it. This is far more the perspective Paul is bringing when it comes to those practices that he used to make his habit, his lifestyle. I thought that by doing all these things I was pulling free of evil, which is at least a part of what it means to be righteous. I thought I was delivering myself out of the danger of experiencing God’s judgment.

In like fashion, this consideration of loss is not about bank accounts draining, or being robbed of one’s savings. To be sure, his present experience was having some such effect, for he was held responsible to pay for his housing and upkeep while imprisoned there in Rome. But that’s not what he has in mind. Rather, he is saying all those practices he thought so valuable to his wellbeing turned out to be to his detriment. They were not merely profitless in terms of arriving at righteousness. They were trending in the other direction, pulling him farther from it. And as he expands his scope, as he considers all the stuff of life and living, he sees that all the trappings of this life come to the same thing: They are pulling us away from what matters, and as such, they are serving to our detriment.

And with this perspective of that which is to our detriment versus that which is rescuing us from evil, we come to the assessment he makes of his current estate. Yes, I’ve suffered loss. I’ve suffered the loss of those things the world values. I’ve suffered personal detriment in that I spent so much of my life pursuing a false righteousness. And I’ve suffered physically as a direct result of having found true righteousness. That is going to bother us, I expect. How can this be? Why should this be? Well, quite simply, it is because many around us, if they have any interest at all in righteousness, or at least considering themselves virtuous, are so invested in their own invented means to esteem that to point out the reality of the situation of them is simply unacceptable. But Paul’s reaction to this loss, this detrimental impact both of his prior pursuits and his present experience of worldly rejection on account of having changed course, is that it’s less than nothing. Garbage! Something to be scraped off one’s sandals.

And that brings us to the point of true gain, which again is more to do with rescue from evil than serving as some means to financial gain. What is of value in this battle against evil is knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And thus, the heading of this part of the study: “Knowing God.” This is far more than simply knowing that He exists, or acknowledging that fact. It goes well beyond whether one is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, although we might include that in what has been left behind. But a larger part of the problem, particularly for one like Paul who had been so diligent in pursuit of what he understood to be proper religious practice, is that nothing in that practice reflected a real knowledge of who God is. It led to a perception of God that was at odds with the reality.

This is the tendency of all legalistic efforts. I might even go so far as to say it lies at the root of them. These efforts have more to do with pagan idolatry, with ignorance and fantasy. What was going on with those other cultures around Israel, or with Rome and Greece, for that matter? They had all manner of gods they ‘worshiped,’ but for the most part, what constituted worship fell into one of two categories. On the one hand was the desire to appease or ward off the attention of these gods. Maybe you could buy them off with an appropriate offering, or a reasonable show of devotion, and they would, depending on their nature, grant you some benefit, or at the very least, not visit you with troubles. On the other hand were those who thought, by making it part of the worship of their idol, to make the unconscionable acceptable. Hey, if I’m leching for my god, it’s a good thing, right? Wrong.

Now, pursuit of works-based, merit-based righteousness may not lead us to considering the addition of cult prostitutes to our church services (God forbid!) what are we to make of those who not only welcome those coming out of lifestyles of perversion, but those who still openly and positively pursue such lifestyles? And what are we to make of it when these are not merely welcomed and then encouraged toward positive change, but accepted as being perfectly fine with God just the way they are? For all that, who among us can honestly assess their present habit of life and suppose it’s all just perfectly fine with God? If we could achieve such standing, then works righteousness would make sense to pursue, and frankly, Jesus would become an unnecessary feature. And that, in turn, would leave God, Who is perfectly holy, as having spent long ages planning and pursuing a course of unnecessary evil on the part of Jesus. Keep going, and we now have a Jesus who is perversely determined to self-harm. These things simply won’t do. They cannot hold true. For such to be true, God would have to cease being God, and that is an impossibility for the Self-existent One.

So, what this comes to is that these practices of self-induced righteousness reflect a faulty knowledge of God at best, a complete absence of the knowledge of God at worst. If you are serving God with the mindset that you have to keep your nose clean lest He reject you forever, then you haven’t known Him yet. If you are giving Him lip-service, dutifully checking off your daily and weekly ritual observances, but then getting back to life on your own terms, then you don’t serve God. You serve some genie of your imagination. You’re playing games like the pagans, hoping to do enough to appease Him, maybe cajole a blessing out of Him, but you don’t know Him.

Notice that Paul doesn’t directly go to the experience of benefits from God, nor to the being secured from His wrath, although that idea is never far from sight. No! It’s knowing Who He truly is. And that knowledge of which He speaks here is gnosis, the knowledge that comes of experience, and speaks to an intimate involvement in what is known. The far more frequent word for knowing is oida, but that is more the intuiting of truth from observation. This gnosis is the stuff of experience. Here is the surpassing value: I have intimate, experiential knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. I know Him, not just of Him, not just that He is in existence, but as one knows their spouse (hopefully), as one knows their dearest friend. I know Him like I know the pleasures of a sunny summer day spent walking the woods. I know Him like I know the peace that comes of going to the seashore and just sitting there and watching the waves roll in. I know Him as He truly is because I have experience of Him as He truly is. He is my constant companion, my Friend, my Beloved. And I am His.

Wuest, not surprisingly, really captures this in his rendering of verse 8. “That which excels all others [is], my knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord which I have gained through experience.” I might add ‘of Him’ to the end of that. And this, in turn, reflects what has been from the beginning. What was Adam’s chief blessing and experience? He walked with God. It comes a bit late in the account of his time in Eden, but in noting how, after he and Eve had violated the one rule given them, we hear that “They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Ge 3:8). This was not something they were experiencing for the first time. More nearly, it was something they were experiencing for the last. But it had been their experience to that point, that God would come hang out with them, speak with them, share life with them. Was He revealing all His inmost thoughts? Probably not. But He was informing them of His ways, His character, and He was doing so not merely by sitting them down for lessons, but by the very fact that He chose to be there with them. He expressed the nature of His essential being by being there.

Then, we can come to the prophets, and God’s message to man delivered through them. In particular, we can have a look at what He speaks through Jeremiah. “Let him who boasts boast that he understands and knows Me” (Jer 9:24). Now, had it stopped there, it wouldn’t be saying much. Such boasting might or might not be true. And how much was known beyond the bare fact of His existence remains unaddressed. But it doesn’t stop there. He keeps going. What such a one knows is, “that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth; for I delight in these things.” That’s it! He sees who I Am. He applies this intelligence, and thus, acts circumspectly. Bring back Hosea 6:8, and we have that aspect of walking humbly with Him. He has perceived and experienced the lovingkindness of God, that He should (going back to the root word chacad which lies behind checed) act towards us as towards an equal, though we are so far short of any such equality. Thus, it is indeed a kindness, a most generously merciful and gracious acceptance that we find from Him.

We have experience of His impartial judgment, a judgment that bends to no bribe, plays favorites towards no man, but, with a wisdom far in excess even of Solomon’s renders due penalty upon the criminal, and due recompense upon the innocent. Mind you, we also have experience of the sad reality that there is no one truly innocent. And yes, we see what seems to us justice delayed, but we know – again with an experiential intimacy of knowing – that in due course justice shall be served. The wicked, though they may go to the grave seemingly unscathed, shall yet face the final tribunal, and shall suffer the due penalty for their sins in full. The upright in heart, those whom God has been pleased to redeem from their slavery to sin and to re-equip with hearts attuned to Himself and the Spirit to guide and impel them on their way, may suffer all manner of indignities and persecutions and illness and what have you in this life. Indeed, take Jesus at His word and you can be pretty well assured that this will be your experience. But those who know the lovingkindness of God and the true work of the Son, know that this life is but a blip, and eternity awaits; an eternity in which has been stored up a very real recompense in glory.

Most critically, I think, we come to know God’s righteousness. We have come to the experiential recognition that He is indeed Good. His every undertaking is morally virtuous. His every decision as concerns ourselves is for our best and ultimate good. That is the verdict we have from Romans. “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, those who are called according to His purpose” (Ro 8:28). And I cannot emphasize enough that this verse says nothing of works. It’s about His call. And His call is again an expression of that lovingkindness of checed. He has been merciful. He has not left you wallowing in your sins, but has rather supplied the way of escape. There’s that gain again. He’s pulled you free of what was your most mortal danger. And, if we come to Peter’s epistles, we know He didn’t stop there. He didn’t just pull you out, and then leave you to fend for yourself as best you could. No! He supplies us with everything needful for life and godliness, and that, from His own divine power (2Pe 1:3-4). We have been recreated as partakers of the divine nature! You want graciousness? There it is in fullest supply.

This is God, Whom you have come to know as He has worked His transformation upon you. The Holy Spirit has entered in, opening eyes, ears, and understanding to perceive the wonder of God, the love of God, the goodness of God. The transformative impact of a spirit reborn within you has resulted in a heart able to love God for Who He truly is, a mind to know both experientially and intuitively just how truly Good He is. And so, knowing God, we come to assess our circumstances differently. We don’t bemoan (at least not constantly). We assess. Okay. God is in charge, and this is happening. God is good, and acts for my good, because I know He has called me. The Holy Spirit testifies that it is so. Ergo, whatever I may think of these present events, they are in fact for my good, and my best course is to seek understanding as to how that is so. My best course is prayer.

Lord, help me to do just that. Help me to understand Your purpose in these early mornings of late. Help me to see the good You are doing in the difficulties our daughter is facing. And by all means, let me again say thank You for the way You have been carrying her through those difficulties. It’s clear to me that You have intentions for her. I pray You might make that clear to her as well, and grant her that same change of heart that You granted me, that she might indeed come to know Your goodness and love, and to love You in response. I pray, as well, that You would so work on my own heart, my own understanding, to better apply all that You teach me to how I live my days. Teach me to rest in You, but to work in Your strength and power as well. Grant that I might serve You in ways that please You, and not just to please myself. And to the degree I teach, whether by instruction or by example, hold me fast in Your Truth, that the lessons I impart may be true to You in every regard. In all, precious Lord, let my character be such as declares my intimate, experiential knowledge of You, and let that knowledge more fully form me.

On What Basis? (09/08/24-09/09/24)

As important as it is to know God, to truly know Him as He truly is, that alone would be insufficient to save. Or, let me say it in a different way. Knowing Him as He truly is, we know that the matter of our righteousness is of critical importance. His mercy is great, it is true, and His lovingkindness is eternal. Yet, there remains justice and righteousness to consider. His justness is as perfect as His love, His righteousness as perfect as His mercy. He cannot and will not violate one for the other. And so, as concerns those He loves, righteousness is a necessary requirement. He Who is perfectly righteous cannot rightly love that which is unrighteous. This leaves us in a bit of a state, doesn’t it? For if we assess ourselves rightly, with eyes wide open, then we will find ourselves hard pressed to assess ourselves righteous. But we know He is. We have tasted and seen just how good God truly is, and this being the case, we feel our loss keenly. Like Adam and Eve, suddenly aware of good and evil, and that the evil is to be found in themselves, we can only expect separation. If we would have hope, something must be done. But what?

Seeing the Law and that in this Law we have the very detailed exposition of God’s requirements, it would naturally follow that our concern for righteousness would lead us to make every effort to comply with that Law. But even this, as it turns out, requires deep, intimate knowledge of Him we would please, for the Law, in spite of its exposition, remains a thing in need of interpretation and application. We see it with Jesus’ exposition on just a few of its points. We hear, “Thou shalt not murder,” and we figure we’re in the clear on that one, having not killed anybody. But there’s a whole moral mindset behind that. What is set forth is but the pinnacle of wickedness in that regard, and God’s not satisfied with addressing only the pinnacle. The whole issue must be addressed. Likewise, the matter of adultery. Oh, you might not be so brazen as to slip into your neighbor’s house while he’s away, and have your way with his wife, or, from the other side, you may not be so bold as to invite the nice young mailman in to satisfy your urges while your husband’s at work. But again, that’s only the pinnacle of a mountain of sinfulness, and God wants the whole mountain gone. It starts with the thought life. It starts with the wandering eye. We get the idea.

The Pharisees got the idea as well, at least in some degree. And they thought to address it by broadening the requirements a bit. If this is the line we would not cross, then let us establish a fence back here, a few feet away from that line, lest we stray across it. But they still hadn’t addressed the mountain. They’d just shaved a bit more off the top, at least in principle. Whether anything whatsoever had been achieved in reality is another story. If we take Jesus’ assessment as accurate (and why wouldn’t we?) then their true condition was one not of partial success, but rather one of thoroughgoing hypocrisy. Oh, they could talk a good game about their piety, but a look at the inner man would find him still entirely untouched by righteousness.

In short, the Law, good though it is, was not working for man. Or, more appropriately, man had not rightly perceived the full force of the Law. Unwilling to face the impossibility of true compliance and seek God for an answer, they had sought to find some way to claim adherence, some way to account themselves right with God. They were not, really, all that different from ourselves back when we inclined to think ourselves good men, or at least good enough. All of this led to what must have been a significant crisis of faith for Paul. We are not really given a window into his dealing with the overturn of everything he thought he was supposed to do to please God. It’s well and good to see that he responded quickly at the start, receiving what God was giving in spite of the shock. But I can readily imagine that a fair part of those three years of personal training he underwent were spent wrestling with this new knowledge, this new awareness. But he won through, and that is coming across loud and clear in this passage.

That’s what we’ve been looking at. He knew all about works righteousness. He had practiced it with utmost alacrity, and like so many, he was utterly convinced that he was doing just as he should, was doing great, and really making God happy. And then the truth hit, and as we saw in the previous part of this study, his assessment was overturned. All those ways in which I thought I was keeping myself from evil had me so blinded to God’s goodness that I was actively evil in my own right. All I thought was to my great spiritual benefit was in fact to my great spiritual detriment. For in my pursuit of merit I had become blind to what really mattered. I was too concerned with do this, don’t do that, and not sufficiently concerned about character, about being truly godly. I had lost sight of Who God Is, and by my actions and my thinking, I had come to present Him more as a tyrant emperor god, than the loving Father that He is. I was so busy proving myself found that I was near to being utterly lost.

So, another way was needed, and another way was provided in Christ Jesus. Here was a means to true righteousness for man. Here, in point of fact, was the only means, the only hope of pleasing God. Having cast aside all of that loss-inducing practice, there remained the need for righteousness, but if one was to have true righteousness, it must needs be true. And the only true righteousness to be had in this world must come from Him Who is truly righteous. Behold the God-man! Behold hope! This is the core of Christianity, right here. Thayer’s lexicon, in addressing this matter of righteousness, observes the technical application that Paul is making of the word here, and throughout his teaching. There is a specificity to his use of the term which is indicative of that crisis he had weathered, and which each one of us must weather in our turn. The Judaizers, and other such legalists, posit salvation by merit. The crisis point is hit when the realization sinks in that any such salvation is beyond us. We are incapable of earning salvation. The only way we’re going to obtain salvation is via the means God has supplied in Christ, which is to say, that salvation which comes to us as a gift, a matter of God’s grace alone.

This was the message of the Cross. It still is. Here is the way made where no way could be found. Here was the answer to the conundrum, not just for man, but for God. For man, the issue was how to become perfect as God requires. After all, if we were conceived in sin, sinners even before birth, and guilty of the sin of Adam from the outset, how could we ever be perfect? We have no means of altering the past, no way to cut off that legacy. And again, if we will stop preening for a moment, and insistently pushing our idealized sense of self as the real self, then we shall come face to face with the fact that it’s not just Adam’s sin that has left its stain on us, but our own. If his was the original crime, we’ve done plenty to add to the record. And there is no eraser we can apply to that record. It’s in indelible ink.

That left God in a bit of a quandary as well, were it possible to posit any such condition for Him. He must arrive at a means to establish a real, just assessment of righteousness for man, else there could be no rescue of him. And, if I were to flip the picture, if He were not to rescue man at all, then surely His goodness is tarnished. I mean, after all, He knew beforehand that Adam would fail the test. He knew it before He made him. The whole ugly history of mankind was a priori knowledge to Him who set the work in motion. So, how is it to be accounted good? If this imperfection has been so destructive of the creature, how is He good who created it? But, just as Adam’s fall was known a priori from before the beginning, so, too, was the solution to this dilemma. The moment of Christ’s birth, the course of His earthly life, and the manner of His death, right down to the minute at which His life was given to pay for our sins, was all in place before the first step of Creation. When God was Himself alone, and the universe but a blank page, if in fact it had any existence at all as yet, already this whole plan and purpose, from hovering over the formless void in Genesis 1:1-2, through the Incarnation of Christ, His death and resurrection, and right on through to the consummation of His purposes in Revelation 21, was agreed upon amongst the Persons of the Trinity, in their Unified Oneness. The whole was established in every detail, every last moment, every least action of every individual being throughout the entire stretch of time, before time itself was stretched out. There would be a Fall. But there would be a Way. There would be failure. But there would be a remnant. Always, there has been a remnant. Always, there were those who were being saved, and always, it was through the one means provided by God: The righteousness of Christ.

So, perhaps we need to pause and ask, just what is this righteousness? It’s a word we use often enough. And we sort of nod and approve, but I don’t know as we ever really hear it explained. It’s sort of an assumed knowledge in the church, like grace, like joy, like so many Christian concepts. We just kind of expect that those who come to church already get it, and so, we can just toss the word out there, and everybody will understand. And those who don’t? They look about at the nodding heads and assume they should understand, so if they don’t, they may tend to nod along with the rest, lest they look stupid. Maybe we’ll look it up when we get home. But we never do.

Okay, so what is it, this righteousness? What does it mean to be righteous? Well, we probably understand that it speaks to an uprightness of character, to a state of moral goodness. But then we are forced to ask how that moral goodness is to be defined. After all, we have any number of opinions as to what is right and good out there. And you hear it often in this post-modern age, my goodness may not be the same as yours. Well then, we’ve got a problem, don’t we? Yes. Yes we do. And the problem is that we don’t have a clue, honestly. We’re just making up standards as we go along. If we leave it at that, we’ve arrived at anarchy, at the state of Israel during the period of the judges, where we read the assessment that, “every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg 17:6). This is our world today. Do what you want, for what you want is right. That’s the moral standard. And it’s no standard at all.

No, it’s all well and good to say that righteousness is a matter of moral good, but we must have a firm definition of moral good, and we can’t find such definition in unstable man. It must come of a higher authority. And indeed, that sense is baked into the term. Righteousness, if I take from Zhodiates’ definition, fulfills the claims of a higher authority. Thus, legal innocence, which would be sort of the poor man’s righteousness, consists in being in compliance with the civil law, however it may apply to a given situation. To take the obvious application, you can’t claim legal innocence as you race down the highway well above the speed limit. You can’t claim to have fulfilled the claims of that higher authority – not even if everybody else is doing the same as you. Not even if the enforcers of that civil authority do the self-same thing. That all of society has cast off the rule of law does not render your own lawlessness any more righteous. It only reveals the rot in society at large.

But while compliance with the claims of civil authority is in fact expected of the Christian – expected by God Who institutes those civil authorities for our benefit – that is not the end of it. We know a higher authority. We know that God Himself is the true reference point for moral goodness. He IS moral goodness – in perfection. He IS the standard. And measured against that standard, we’re back at, “Woe is me!” For there is none found righteous, and even the most cursory glance at our record yesterday, for that matter, our record thus far today, must surely discover points of non-compliance. We are too corrupt to comply. And yet the demand remains, yet the perfectly just claims of perfectly righteous God, that we who are by rights His property, given as He created us, must be as He is: perfectly righteous. Oh dear.

Here is the definition of righteousness that matters. God is perfectly upright, as He must be. After all, there is no higher authority than Himself, no other to whom He must submit. So, He submits to Himself, and does so perfectly. One could argue that this is exactly what was happening with Jesus in His time here on earth. Indeed, I think Paul has already made that argument, hasn’t he? Jesus, “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Php 2:8). That’s the foundation for our righteousness – the only foundation. He did it. And He did it as a man. It would gain us nothing of God came down and remained Himself. If His obedience was solely the product of His godhood, then it does nothing more than prove that He is Who He is. But if this obedience was as a man, which is implied in the forerunning notice that He emptied Himself in becoming a man like unto ourselves (Php 2:7), then He has really done something. Then, His sacrifice has worth. Then, an answer has been given to the conundrum of our salvation.

Righteousness is, then, full submission to the right God has to require our full compliance to His ways. And it is a state we can only receive, not manufacture. It is a righteousness that comes of ‘grace appropriated,’ to take from Thayer. It is a gift given us by the Father, revealed in Christ, appropriated as the Spirit works within us to make us receptive to the gift. Here is the only answer to our problem of sin. God has declared us righteous, whom He has given to the Son. We would not, after all, be an acceptable gift for the Son otherwise, for He, too, is God in full, and as such, perfectly righteous, perfectly holy. A tarnished gift would be no gift at all. So, here we stand. We have obtained that for which we did not seek, gained right-standing with God in spite of our abject failure to stand at all. We have become acceptable to God in the only manner possible: by the blood of the God-man, shed on our behalf, applied to us while we were yet His enemies, our hearts rendered tender to His affections, our spirits reborn within us, and our character slowly but surely being refashioned by the loving hand of our Father, that we may indeed arrive at that perfection of compliance which has already been set to our account. We have the legal standing, and have had it from the moment of our salvation. We are working on the real, material standing, as He works within us to render us both willing and able in the power of His own divine strength and goodness (Php 2:12-13, 2Pe 1:3-4).

Righteousness, then, does not come of obeying the Law, for the simple reason that obedience to the Law in the perfection required is beyond us to achieve. It must come from elsewhere. This simply won’t suffice as a source of righteousness in us, or a cause for God to render a judgment of righteous in regard to us. In an interesting confluence of pursuits, both yesterday’s sermon and our men’s group study last Tuesday converged on the account of the scribe who sought to test Jesus, as covered in Luke 10:25-37. That scribe, or lawyer as he is accounted there, asked Jesus what was to be done to inherit eternal life. Now, his intent was not to perceive wisdom, but to catch Jesus out on some fine point or other on which to discount Him. But Jesus, as Pastor Mathews observed yesterday, took a traditional rabbinical approach and turned the question back for deeper consideration. What do you find in the Law? How does it read, in your opinion? And this scribe, well-versed in Law, gives a solid enough answer. Love God with everything that is in you, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus commends that answer, and then appends, “Do this and you will live” (Lk 10:28).

This is the issue we find with that righteousness that seeks its source in the Law and obedience to it. We know it. We just don’t do it. In point of fact, lawyers that we tend to be when it comes to our active pursuit of obedience, we, like the lawyer in this tale, are too busy seeking the limits of required compliance. Like him, our inclination is to ask, “How far do I have to take this?” And Jesus, in His answer, effectively says, “As far as you can.” See, if you were really in pursuit of righteousness and not just self-satisfaction, your question would have been, “How far can I go with this?” Remember that ‘all’ in loving God? Give it your all! Give it everything you’ve got, and more! Well, that same degree of devotion goes into that second command to love your neighbor as yourself. I mean, honestly, would you pull up short in loving yourself? I suppose some might. But we would account that the result of some mental disease in need of treatment. Why not the same when it comes to loving your neighbor?

Paul, coming back to our epistle, sets before us the remedy to our problem. We can’t achieve righteousness by the Law because we are incapable of full obedience to its requirements. If this is our means to life, then we are dead men walking. But there is One who, being made man, actually managed what we never have and never will. He, born of the Spirit, did not begin with the deficit we have as inheritors of original sin. That line was cut off. And freed of that initial burden – already sufficient to ensure true compliance was impossible – He proceeded to live a life of full and complete adherence to every dictate of God’s Law, and to every direction of His purpose. The Pharisees could grumble all they liked at His propensity to dismiss their traditions when they got in the way of true righteousness. But their traditions were never binding on conscience anyway, or ought not to have been. They were not the Law, however highly the Pharisees valued them. And as He lived perfectly, so He died perfectly, which is to say, whereas death is the penalty for sin, His death could posit no just cause for that penalty. There was no sin to punish, and as such, His death was not punishment, could not be. Rather, His death was the sacrifice for sin, our penalty paid by Him on our behalf. The demand of justice was met, and met for every last one for whom God saw fit to have His sacrifice applied. Eternal blood was more than sufficient to atone for the sins of every man or woman ever to live, should that be the scope He chooses. But the sum of it is this: Our righteousness does not arise out of compliance to the Law, but through Christ, through His compliance, and His offering of Himself on our behalf.

As such, while righteousness remains in accordance with Law, it has not come out of our accord with the Law, but His. It has come, we might say from the Law, but only through Christ, and thus, from our perspective, through faith. Our faith, our trust is in Him, not in us. Our legal standing in the sight of God is in Him, not in us. And observe the continuance of this point. This righteousness that is ours through faith in Christ comes from God. This is our second encounter with ek in this verse. In the NASB, the first is translated as derived from, and the second as comes from, but it is the same little word, the same indication of source. Our source is not God’s Law, but God Himself. He has provided the means for compliance with His requirements, and He has done so in Himself. For the Lord our God is One. Father, Son, and Spirit may, and surely do indicate distinction of Persons within that one God, and we may be at a loss to offer proper explanation of the mystery of the Trinity. Yet it is there to be seen clearly in Scripture. It’s there in this very passage, where we have faith in Christ, leading to righteousness through Christ, having its source from God. Make no mistake. Paul speaks of two Persons here, not just in parallel reference to the one Jesus. Add the Spirit, by whom we have come to possess this faith, by whom we have been granted to see and recognize this Jesus in whom we have believed, and the Trinity is in harmonious, unified action to bring about our redemption, our righteousness.

Here is your legal standing. Here is the solution to that dilemma we saw. Perfect compliance was needful for perfect Justice, and perfect compliance was perfectly beyond us to supply. So, God supplied it, and we now, by His doing, by faith alone, that none may boast, are in possession of a legally accounted righteousness, and this righteousness rests solely, exclusively, upon the finished work of our Savior. It is His righteousness that is applied to our account. And His righteousness is a done deal, an accomplished work. There is no question of failing in Him, for He has completed the course perfectly.

Let me string together a couple of translations of verse 9 here. “I am right with God, not because I followed the law, but because I believed in Christ,” says the NCV. I am, “no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God’s laws, but by trusting Christ to save me,” as the TLB supplies it. Now, I might quibble, I suppose, with shifting the focus from righteousness to salvation, but what, after all, is our reason for pursuing righteousness, if not salvation? Why would we trouble ourselves with that pursuit except we have sensed our mortal danger, perceived the demands of justice, and found ourselves wanting? Oh, the struggles we undergo in seeking to present ourselves as upright. Oh, how we strive to feel good about ourselves. We will compare and contrast ourselves with others – preferably with those we find somehow inferior to our illustrious selves – so that we can feel better. Pharisees all, as we proudly proclaim, “At least I’m not like that guy.” Or, if we find one who is clearly superior to ourselves, we begin examining closely, looking for blemishes on his character, that we might take him down a peg and once more put ourselves up there on the first-place pedestal. It’s a losing game, but it’s the only one we’ve got. To continue in clear recognition of our miserably poor character would leave us deranged, suicidal. Honestly, what do you think is happening around you in the world? Why the rising suicide rate? Why this inclination to go shoot up a bunch of people you don’t even know? It’s the response of despair. It’s the recognition of fallen self, however hard that one has sought to bury recognition, left with no possible hope of redemption. And this is what the world has on offer. They’re very good at condemnation, but there’s no hope attached. You may be victim of your circumstances, but your circumstances condemn you, and there’s nothing by which you can be freed of that record. Sorry. It’s permanent, and you’re doomed, and we shall now proceed to despise you in hopes that maybe we can escape noticing that the same is true of ourselves for just a bit longer.

It’s awful. Were you and I caught in that web, we would quite probably find ourselves seeking the same sorts of solutions. If this is life, why bother? But it isn’t. It’s a walking death. And there is an answer. It’s Christ Jesus, Life Himself. It requires first off recognizing that I am not a good guy, that however well or however poorly I may compare to some other person, it’s never going to be good enough, and no amount of effort or delusion on my part is going to change that. It then requires recognition that God has Himself set before me the answer. Here is My Son. Listen to Him. And, Lord willing, He has sent the Holy Spirit ahead to begin that transformational process in me, that I might indeed see, might indeed listen, and might, having seen and heard, believe based on the evidence. Faith is not, after all, a matter of blind acceptance. It is acknowledging convincing evidence. It is thus a solid thing, not the whim of emotion.

Now, I can’t promise you that having come to faith you will spend every subsequent moment fully convinced of your place in God’s heart. I can, however, promise you that if faith has in fact come, your place in God’s heart is fully and firmly established, and has been since before the first moments of Creation. I can promise you this because He has already affirmed it. We need to recognize that depth of confidence as we read Paul’s response here. Otherwise, we see those maybes in the passage and suppose there is some real doubt to the matter. Oh, we may feel our doubts, especially when conscience convicts us on those occasions when we have slipped back into some old, comfortable sin yet again. Look at me. Honestly, have I changed at all? Well, yes, you have. For one, the old you wouldn’t have bothered looking, wouldn’t have noticed anything sinful. It had no definitions to work with, and if it did, it was so busy suppressing those definitions that it had not time to notice.

But hear Paul’s heart-cry in this. If I may be so bold as to echo my attempted paraphrase. “No! Let me be found in Him. Let my righteousness not be a thing of my own poor effort, as if I could ever account my obedience to the fulness of the Law sufficient to count as true righteousness. Rather, let my righteousness be that which is through faith in Christ, coming from God Himself on the sole basis of faith.” That’s the crisis weathered. That’s what had to be seen and addressed. Oh, how he had strived to be righteous, more righteous than any other. Let me show my zeal, God! I’d kill for You! I’ll not suffer these polluters of doctrine to breathe another breath. Just look at all my merit badges! And then, of a sudden, all of that was revealed for the corrupted work of sinful flesh, and another path had to be found. Praise God, another path was presented: Faith in Christ, coming from the Father, on the basis of faith granted by Him and provisioned in the Spirit. Yes, I am pulling from elsewhere for bits of that, but we need the whole picture.

Listen to it from Paul’s letter to Corinth. “By His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1Co 1:30). He did it! He does it all! You couldn’t start on this course under your own power, for you couldn’t even see the course was there to start. And you can’t make progress on this course under your own power, for every effort you make in your own power is tainted with your own corruption. Sorry. That’s just how it is. Your works stink. Your best is rubbish. It’s either by His doing or it isn’t getting done.

Now, don’t go making that an excuse to just kick back and let life proceed as it will. That’s not the point. It’s not the way. Sanctification requires God working in us, and praise be to His name, He is working in us. But He works where His children will come alongside Him and work together with Him. It is on this ground we have that marvelous doublet in chapter 2. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” which is surely a command to serious exertion in the pursuit of righteousness, but enter into that effort knowing that, “it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Php 2:12-13). Knowing it is Him working in you that renders the work both possible and pleasing is not some excuse to make no effort yourself. It is the assurance that your effort, guided by His hand, supplied by His power, is in fact pleasing in spite of your imperfections.

I’ll put it another way. We don’t presume upon God’s grace. Far be it from us! No, but we rest assured in God’s grace. He is our blessed assurance. If we were left to struggle on in the flesh, we should have no more hope than we had before Christ made Himself known to us, which is to say, no hope whatsoever. But that’s how it is. We weren’t left to finish under own steam that which was begun in the Spirit. That’s Paul’s grand message to the Galatians, facing these same Judaizers, and falling prey to their seeming validity. What? You think your flesh can complete what the Spirit began? Get out! That’s crazy talk. No, it’s Christ Jesus, first, last, and throughout. But our God, our Father Who art in heaven, works in us, calling us to come work alongside Him, to see what He is doing, how he does, and to join Him in that work. It is ever that way, whether we are talking personal progress in sanctification, or evangelism, or teaching, or any other aspect of ministry. We work alongside God, observing His direction, heeding His instruction, and following His example, or we labor in vain. Those are the options.

But beloved, as I wrap up this section and proceed to the next, I do want to put this thought out there. What we see here is that a life of works leaves no place for rest. You can’t let up. You dare not. One lax moment, and the whole effort could come to naught, and once marred, well, there’s no recovery. But here in this place, resting in Christ, no place is left for works, not of that nature. That’s not to say we cease working, but we work from a place of rest. We don’t exhaust ourselves needlessly or otherwise. After all, if we are working alongside the Father, we are laboring in the strength and the power that He supplies. Yes, we may bear a burden, but His burden is light, His yoke easy. Hear it again. I know I need to. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. Then you shall find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden light” (Mt 11:29-30). Whereas the scribes and lawyers were busy creating all manner of burdens that must be borne by those who would be accounted righteous, Jesus does not. Where they pointed and insisted, you must do, you must carry, you must dispose, Jesus comes saying, “Here, let Me get that for you. Now follow Me.” Again, don’t presume, but rest. Don’t work to earn, but joyfully come alongside Him as He goes, as He works. Join Him in the pleasure of serving our God, and doing so in the assurance of His love.

To What Effect? (09/10/24)

Now, if righteousness has a cause, a source, it also has an effect, a goal. Paul states it in several clauses. The first aim of this righteousness is, he says, to gain this same Christ in whom we have our faith. After all, we can’t know Him except we gain Him. I will reiterate from nearer the start of this study, that the gain we have in view here is not a matter of acquisition, or of profit and loss statements. Jesus is not some asset for us to add to our portfolio. He is All! To gain Christ is very much to know Him. For none will know Him but those the Father has given Him. But as we have seen, this knowing is more than an awareness of the fact of His being. It’s more, even, than having an accurate assay of His character. It’s deeper than that. It’s experiential. And the experiential does not come without closeness and sharing.

Paul therefore brings us to a more thorough exposition of what this righteousness leads to. It leads to us being found in Him (verse 9). That’s closeness! And He, we must surely recognize, is found in us. This was His great prayer for those who would be His. “I in them, and Thou in Me, perfected in unity, that the world may know…” (Jn 17:23). What does this set before us? It sets before us a koinonia above all others. Fellowship! But this is fellowship with depths that exceed even that of husband and wife. Husband and wife are set as a parable in living flesh, to manifest something of this depth of fellowship, but it must remain a lesser echo of this fuller union.

We have fellowship with God. Does the enormity of that register at all? God, Who is seated high above all Creation, so wholly different in nature from every created thing as to have no peer, no rival, comes to have fellowship with us! Be clear on this. He doesn’t need it. God is all-sufficient in and of Himself. He depends on none. He has need of none. But He loves. He could love with perfect fulness amongst the Persons of His being, both fully satisfied in that love, and fully satisfying the full breadth and depth of love. But He chose differently. He chose to love us, whom He had created in His image. And He chose to love us in spite of the mess we’ve made of that image.

So, we have fellowship with Him. He comes to be with us. He cherishes us, the Scriptures say, as the apple of His eye. Great care is taken to guard the eye, and that’s rather the point. He will move swiftly to guard His children, because He loves them so. And that is precisely what happened in this working out of our redemption, this restoration of our righteousness. I speak of it as a restoration from the perspective of the whole unfolding of redemptive history, from the perspective of regaining what Adam had lost back at the start. But for us, it’s not so much a restoration as a first encounter. This is the force of rebirth. We are no longer stuck with the legacy of Adam. We have a new legacy, belong to a new lineage, and that line brings us back yet again to Christ Jesus, in whom our faith is set, and through whom it has come. And we have fellowship with Him! We can pause and chat with Him throughout the day. We hear from Him, if our ears are open, throughout the day. It may be through the filter of the Holy Spirit that these communications pass, but even so, it remains direct.

But if we have fellowship with Him, we have a share in Who He Is. We have shared experience of the same things. Think back upon your best friend when you were young. You had shared adventures together, things you two had done together, for good or for ill. There will be those happy memories of the fun had along the way. There may be somewhat darker memories of trials faced and overcome, of errors made, things done that came to regret. There is probably a list of things of which you’ve had to repent with the wisdom of age and the awareness that comes of this new birth. There may have been crisis points in that friendship, times when what one or the other had done threatened to break the bond between you. And maybe, with rebirth, you found just such a breaking of the bond had become necessary because while you were on a new course, your friend simply will not see, will not come along on this journey.

Well, here is assurance. Jesus isn’t giving up on this friendship. To be sure, we’ve given Him ample cause to break it off. But He is persistent. He cares too deeply for His own to let these offenses drive Him away. Instead, He undertakes to minister to our hurts, to address the issues that threaten to separate and so, to restore communion.

But there’s more than this involved. There’s an active component on our part. You see, to have fellowship with is to have a share in. And to have a share in is to participate in. And with that, see where Paul notes this fellowship. It’s not in the glorified state of being enthroned in heaven. Oh, we have this assured hope of the power of His resurrection being a power we shall feel exercised in our own turn. But that’s not the fellowship Paul has in view. Rather, it is ‘the fellowship of His sufferings.’ What an odd thing to mark as a desire, don’t you think? “May I know the power of His resurrection.” Yes, we’re all in on that one. After all, that’s Life! That’s death defeated. But then, we hit, “and may I know the fellowship of His sufferings.” Hang on, there. Not sure I signed up for that part. Especially in our modern age, it seems that many a church is disinclined to take note of this part. It’s all about your best life now, right? We get the power to name and claim. If we just believe really hard, God has to bless us. He’s not God to such a mindset. He’s a genie to be manipulated and cajoled, tricked into leaving a blessing. Sorry. If that’s your thinking, if that’s your pursuit of God, then you don’t know Him yet. And if you don’t know Him yet, then don’t be counting on your righteousness yet, either. Indeed, repent and seek to know Him truly while yet there is time.

“I want to have the fellowship of His sufferings.” It’s hard to work up enthusiasm for such a position. And yet, if you’ve looked at all at the early history of the Church, you know that such enthusiasm was often to be found there. Faced with the threat of execution by means most agonizing, early believers counted it not a horror to be avoided, but an honor to be pursued. We hear of Peter, facing crucifixion in his own turn, and his only concern was that he be perhaps hung upside down lest he be found too much like his Savior in suffering. We read of Polycarp cheerfully going his way to execution, of those who practically sought to be outed to the authorities, in order that they, too, might truly share in the sufferings of Christ.

And I still recall vividly the time the pastor asked who wanted to suffer, and my dear brother Chris, who had played a part in my own experience of salvation, stood up with unfeigned excitement, to say, “Me! I want to.” It struck me as somewhere between amusing and astonishing at the time, and it still does. Me? I want to be found ready, if it comes to that, but I can hardly say I’m anxious to pursue such a course. Perhaps I’ve grown too comfortable. But I trust God that, should such a time of suffering be needful to my growth, or simply needful to His purpose, I shall be found willing, having been made willing and able by the power of God Himself.

This isn’t suffering sought out for some masochistic thrill. This is looking back to that exposition of Christ’s obedience in chapter 2. “He humbled Himself, being obedient even to the point of death on a cross” (Php 2:8). This is Paul, then, saying, “May I likewise prove obedient.” And for one soon to face Nero for judgment, that was no idle consideration. It was not a hypothetical exercise in which one could posit his best, most idealized response without fear of actually having to put it into practice. This was looking clear-eyed at the immediate future. That’s something of a tension running through this letter. Paul has confidence as to the outcome, but still, he must accept the possibility that it may turn out far different. “I am confident that I shall come to you soon myself” (Php 2:24), and yet, “to die is gain” (Php 1:21). The possibility is there. The possibility is ever there. We don’t know. Any day could turn out to be our last, though we live like the end will never come. We can take as much care as we like, or be as carefree and crazy as we please, and it won’t move the marker of our demise one bit. God has the schedule. We can seek every sort of life-lengthening treatment, or we can be utterly neglectful of our health, and the same holds. You may be perfectly healthy, physically set for length of days, but if it’s your time, and some terminal event comes along, physical health won’t alter the outcome. Sorry. Bit dark, that. But it’s there. And it can either crush you with nihilistic futility, or fuel you with brimming confidence to face every trial. It rather depends if you’ve got God in the picture or not.

So, yes, fellowship with His suffering; not because we’re keen to suffer, but because we hope to be obedient to Him as He has been to the Father. It’s the intent to obey, come what may, knowing that come what may, God is working things for our good, who love Him and have been called by Him (Ro 8:28). It is but the expression of one who wishes to be “conformed to His death.” That brings us to the other result of righteousness. Again, this is not a death wish per se. This isn’t Paul advising us to end it all. Far from it! How could we, who claim adherence to the God of Life, Who commands us to act towards the support and preservation of life, suppose the goal is to achieve an early exit? Length of days is a blessing. It may be that the practices of modern medicine have lengthened those days beyond the point of blessing, but then, I must revert to my former point: God numbers my days, not medical science.

No, this conformity isn’t a matter of seeking out physical death. Rather, it is to do with our relationship to the temptations of physical life on earth. Jesus, after all, did not stay dead. His death was a very temporary affair, and His life continues as it always has, from eternity unto eternity. That is not in any way to downplay the true experience and suffering of the cross. But He is God, and God does not change. God cannot cease, even for a moment, let alone three days. It was a true suffering, but it was a suffering to the purpose of establishing this path to righteousness for His brethren, for all those whom God has given Him. Romans 6 will be helpful here. “We have died to sin. How could we still live in it?” (Ro 6:2). We have been baptized into His death, buried with Him, so as to rise to newness of life in Him (Ro 6:4). We are united with Him in the likeness of His death. The homoiomati, the image, the representation, an identity with. Here, it is summorphizomenos, a granting or investing with the form, sharing the likeness of. It may feel a bit stronger in this phrasing, but I think it comes to the same thing. Conformity with His suffering consists both in facing the enticements of sin – think Jesus in the wilderness, unfed some thirty days, and facing the worst Satan could throw at Him, and submission to holiness, as He did in full on the cross.

Understand this: You will never know the power of His resurrection, except you know the fellowship of His sufferings, and conformity with His death. And again, that conformity consists in submission to holiness, submission to God’s plan and purpose, in full, come what may, having counted the cost, as Paul is doing here, and finding no price too high. Here, to shift the picture, is that pearl of greatest price, and there is nothing in all of life worth more, nothing worth holding onto if resurrection unto Life – Life in that purest, eternal form finally worthy of being called life – is ours in exchange.

What a potent expression of desire this is! What a cry of joy, though its terms are dark. “Oh! May I know Him – the power of His resurrection, my share in His sufferings, totally conformed to His death and thus attaining resurrection unto Life. I know that all this is mine in Him, for He has obtained it on my behalf.” So, then, the prayer of the righteous: I’m going to take from Wuest for this. May we, may I, be, “brought to the place where my life will radiate a likeness to His death.”

That’s not a desire to go through life dead. Far from it! Indeed, one could argue it’s the exact opposite. It’s the desire to walk this vale of death as one truly alive, for if we indeed radiate a likeness to His death, must it not be a radiating of resurrection already underway? Oh, our body is still decaying, no doubt about that. I seem to be feeling it a bit more of late, though I have no particular cause to think my days are nearing a close. But what do I know? God knows. No, it’s more a superseding of earthly desires and demands to take up a heavenward vision. Jesus lived a very real life in the very real temptations and sufferings of this world. He didn’t float over them like some spiritual hovercraft. He was in it, just as we are – except without sin. But as Hebrews reminds us forcefully, He faced everything we face, in order that He could be a merciful and faithful high priest to us in things pertaining to God (Heb 2:17). And this, He is. Forever.

So, then, let us join Paul in this prayer. May we be found sharing in His death, conformed to His submitted life, true disciples of true God, not merely laying claim to His love, but truly possessed of a deep-seated love for Him. May we come to a real experience of being dead to our sins, unfeeling towards the temptations of this world. May we walk free of the entanglements of desire and possessions, in order to more fully give ourselves to Him Who is worthy of all our devotion. It is, after all, our calling, to love Him with all that we are. Lord, may it be so! Lord, make it so! For it is beyond me, as it ever has been. Yet, it is in Your gift to me. Only let me be willing to accept the gift.

Checkup (09/11/24-09/12/24)

Well. We’ve had quite a journey through these verses. But now we have come to the hard part. It’s time to have a checkup. It would be easy to stop, say that I have understood the passage well, and get on to the next part. But there remains the challenging part of recognizing my own condition, of looking honestly at my own condition. It’s a message I hear often enough, and one to which I happily nod my head in agreement. Yes! It’s true! We are wired for works. It’s our default setting, to seek out the thing we can do, must do, to earn our position. If we are to be accounted righteous, surely, there must be something in our actions and our character to which we can appeal.

And the Gospel comes with the news, as we see here in this passage, that no, you can’t work your way to righteousness, not to real righteousness. You can put a gloss on your deeds, but you can’t attain to true standing. It’s rather like that oft-heard assessment of small-town New England. How long have you lived here? Oh, twenty years and more. Well, then, not long enough yet to be considered a local, eh? It’s a similar equation, but without the humorous overtones. How much have you been doing to be godly? Oh, I’ve been studying, praying, attending church regularly, taking part in all the various programs offered there. I teach my kids from the Bible. I spend time together with my wife reading and discussing Scripture. I disciple others after my fashion. I both contribute to and participate in missions work. We can keep going if you like. And still, the inevitable response. Oh, so still not righteous yet, then, eh?

We know this is the case. We’ve got it spelled out plainly in Scripture, as it is here. And it’s not just here. It’s all over the place. All your righteous deeds are as filthy rags (Isa 64:6). We know we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, strength, but we also know that however much we have managed to love Him, it’s not truly that much. We know we must love our neighbor as ourselves, but truly? We’re just as glad they’re at some distance. We tend to concur with Mr. Frost that good fences make good neighbors. And yet, knowing this, we continue to act as if we don’t.

So, there are several questions I need to ask of myself, and I need first and foremost to ask the Holy Spirit to grant that I may see the answers clearly, and not shy away from them. I know myself too well. I know, too, Scripture’s own diagnosis of this wickedly deceptive heart of mine. I can happily convince myself that my knowing means I have broken free of any propensity towards works-based righteousness, towards proving myself to God and man. But there’s a dual danger already, isn’t there? Let me suppose, for the sake of argument, that I am right about not seeking to prove myself, and I must immediately come up against the concern as to whether that’s truly an acceding to faith righteousness, or just me not being bothered to care? Let me suppose that I am wrong, that all those things I think are but expressions of my love for God are in fact trying to drum up recognition, whether from those around me or from God Himself, and I’m in real danger.

I’m going to suggest that both are probably true at least in part, and quite possibly more than I’d care to discover. I mean, I can honestly tick off most of those things I listed out in my theoretical interaction above. Obviously, I’m here most every morning having these times of study. But what am I doing? Why am I doing it? Does it have more impact than simply to fill my head with data regarding religion? I know that I have developed a concern for Truth through these years spent, but have I arrived at it? I know I have learned much about my Savior from these times, but is it informing my being, or just giving me talking points when I’m in discussion with other brothers and sisters? Let me put it another way. Have I made this exercise more about pride of knowing than about being shaped by my Savior’s example? I fear it may be so in some degree. Certainly, coming to men’s study on a Tuesday morning, I can sometimes feel a certain lack of peer knowledge in the group. On the other hand, I can also experience some truly keen insights from my brothers that have escaped my notice for all that I’ve been examining the passages we cover.

I would also have to acknowledge that for all the time spent in these verses, talk to me in a week or so, and it’s likely that very little of what I have considered here will remain. Ask me what I learned from spending a decade or so in the Gospels, and while I know it was valuable time spent, I don’t know as I could list off any specifics for you.

So, have I made this study time an idol? Is it my bragging point? Probably to some degree, yes. I become rather boastful of how long it takes me to work through a passage. And that’s not a good thing. It suggests I am holding this up as my evidence of holiness. No good. It won’t suffice.

Prayer life? No. I am far from finding cause to boast in that. If anything, I find it a deep concern that my prayer life is so minimal. Oh, I’ll work up a prayer for Sunday, as I am called to offer the congregational prayer this week. And I’ll spend some time on it, seeking to reflect well a heart for God, and God’s heart for us. I don’t – Oh! I pray it’s not so! – think it’s a sham or a show. But I feel the responsibility and I want to exercise this small office rightly, to God’s satisfaction. And while it makes me a bit uncomfortable when somebody comes up to tell me how much they appreciated that prayer, or asking for a copy (since I generally have it written out at least in sketch), I can’t say it doesn’t feel nice to have that recognition. And at the same time, it leaves me questioning. Should I rather look at myself and say, “you hypocrite!” This is nothing like the prayers I offer at home, or even in these studies. Where is that care for prayer when there’s to be no public display? And if it’s not there, is this prayer I offered truly of value? Is it a true reflection of my heart and thought? I will say it’s a reflection, at least. But it’s probably polished up a bit.

What of this effort at missions that seems to have caught me rather by surprise? Had you asked me two years ago, I would have told you that’s not in my wheelhouse, not my calling. So what happened? Did God call for it, or am I just responding to ideas deposited by pastor? I don’t think it’s the latter. I’d like to think it’s the former. I do know that when the slides went up last Sunday, showing moments from last year’s trip, there was such a warmth of heart for me. Yes! That was worthwhile. That’s far more worthwhile than anything I’m doing for a living. That’s far more worthwhile than a Saturday spent doing chores or playing music or what have you. But is it for Christ, or is it for brownie points? Here, I think I can answer positively, that indeed it is for Christ. Honestly, rather like my time as an elder, it feels a calling for which I am ill-equipped by my own abilities and capacities. It’s a calling I can only pursue with any value by doing so in the power of my Lord.

What of worship ministry? I mean, it’s back to where it’s a rare week that I’m not serving, but am I serving with a heart to praise my God, or am I serving with a desire to play? I’m not sure I can assess that well enough. My love of music has always been strong, and I need only look about this room in which I spend most of every day to see how strong. I sit between the monitors pretty much all day. The keyboards are there, should an idea pop into my mind say, during my shower or something. My Saturdays largely consist in getting chores done (including practice and prep for worship service), while leaving enough time and energy to pursue some music for my own pleasure. Even, I should note, to the detriment of preparation for that trip to Africa, which I really need to get to. Oh. But would that then become a work as well? Does not Scripture tell me not to be anxious as to what I shall say? Yes. But I don’t suppose that means I can skip preparation entirely. It’s more a reminder not to suppose my preparations are enough to render it effective.

So, the question in all of this is to what degree I am putting confidence in my works as means to righteousness? Am I truly relying on His righteousness as my sole means to righteousness? Truly? And I think, for all that I have developed this habit and that, and for all that I find it truly bothersome if I have to miss a morning spent in these pursuits, or have to cut them short, it’s not because I think that somehow puts me at risk of losing God’s blessings on the day. I will confess that I can sometimes get into such a mindset when tempted by some besetting sin. Oh, Jeff. You know if you succumb to this the whole day’s going to be a mess because of it. Not that anybody besides you and God would know, but you know how it works. Now, as a bolster against sin, that might have some minimal value. Sadly, I cannot say it’s sufficient to guarantee steering clear of succumbing. But it’s magical thinking. It denies the God Who Is. I know His lovingkindness. And I know His love for me is not dependent on me keeping my nose clean, as the saying goes. He sees the finished work, not the momentary lack of progress or the momentary lapse. And still, I can find myself thinking that really is how it goes. Thinking that goes against knowledge. Seems like that shouldn’t be possible, but I know well enough that it is. Funny how I generally suppose that to be the case for those in the other camp, those of other beliefs. But yes. I am just as ready to enjoy a bit of cognitive dissonance without noticing. And here, I think, may be the place where it is most evident that I still want to put works where faith trusting needs to be.

I want to move to my second question. What am I still holding onto as being worth more to me than my Savior? Arguably, music must be put in that list. Oh, I am pleased enough to put my horns and my fingers in service to presenting worshipful sounds before my God, and to the degree it is able to do so, to let those sounds serve to draw others into a place of worship. On the other hand, I can also feel a depth of longing for how things used to be with other worship teams. It’s funny. I decry that (at least inwardly) when I hear others pining for the glory days when there were choirs and arrangements, and degrees of skill that now seem lacking. Oh. Come on. That’s not what has value. That’s just table dressing. And yet, I so often reflect on those Wednesday night services years ago, and the absolute, free-flowing worship we enjoyed in those times. It was just special. But it was for a season. This season is different, and while it may chafe at times, it is training me up to set God first and foremost, and style and skillfulness a distant, secondary concern. Yes, I want to give my best. Well, truth be told, it depends. Some weeks, I just want to be prepared enough not to make a mess of things entirely. But yes, I want to offer my best, whatever my best may be on any given week.

Yet, the care I would take in putting together my own music is clearly much greater. And, as there is only time for one or the other, guess which is likely to get the time? Is that right? Is it wrong? Is it idolatry on the rise, or idolatry simply being tolerated and coddled? There’s certainly the danger of that being the case. It’s a place for prayer at the very least, but I think it’s okay still.

What of work? I know my wife would say I give it more than I should. And at the same time I know I would say I don’t give it as much as I should. But there are clear lines drawn, at least on the end of my day, though it has seemed to start earlier in recent weeks. What can I say? This body wakes up, and it’s go time. So, I have these morning times to pursue my studies and my thoughts. And it seems anymore, it’s going to be 3-4 hours before I’m really at work, in spite of having no commute. But that may only get me to 6:30-7 in the morning. And I’ll go ahead and start in. After all, it’s much more peaceful in those morning hours, before my coworkers start showing up. But careful, Jeff! Don’t let it become your meaning. Don’t suppose it all depends on you somehow. Don’t suppose it’s on you to supply your provision. God is your provider. But yes, as I work, I try – fitfully, but I try – to remain mindful that I work for Him, that I work as His representative, if only by my diligence to the task assigned me. Or am I just justifying myself? These self-assessments are hard. Am I coming to set work before God? No. I don’t believe so. I barely set it before meals.

And there’s another one. Have I come to a place of serving my belly? Careful there! I mean, I do enjoy a good meal, and when it’s time for lunch or supper, I will cut off other matters, particularly work-related ones. Sorry. Well, part of that at least is their propensity for scheduling meetings during my lunch hour so, yeah, you want to talk to me after the meeting, that’s not going to work out real well. I’ll get back to you. And 5 o’clock? Sorry, mate. Kitchen’s calling. I want supper, and I have to cook it before I can eat it, and honestly, given these early mornings, it gets harder to eat it early enough to digest a bit before bed. But I’m rambling a bit. And I’m going to save the next few questions for tomorrow.

Well, let’s try a hard one. Am I still willing to suffer the loss of all things for Christ? You know, I find myself, rather like that lawyer confronting Christ, wanting to discern limits on that ‘all things.’ How much must I include in that, Lord? Are we just talking financial loss? Been there, at least to some degree. And I know You held me fast through that time. Now, You have set me in a comfortable house, in a pleasant and greatly convenient place, and I confess it would be hard to go back to what things were before. But yes, if it were needful for some reason of Your purpose to do so, I think I’m okay with that. Are we talking material comforts? I suppose that’s sort of the same thing, but perhaps it’s simply a question of scaling back, of being satisfied with basic necessities and not hungering for finer things. Tough call. Yes, I think I can still remember how to be satisfied with little, should the need arise. On the other hand, I do appreciate being able to enjoy items of better quality. And, in some cases (music again comes into the foreground), I enjoy the ability to enjoy quantity and variety. If that went away, would I stop following my Lord? By no means! Yet, I would have to confess a greater attachment to these things than is perhaps wise.

What if it goes beyond things, though? What if it starts to expand into the realm of relationships? Am I willing to suffer the loss of children, of family connection, or of my spouse? Don’t suppose those are off the table. Jesus spoke rather directly to exactly that sort of loss for those who are truly going to follow Him. And to be clear, following Christ is rather more than liking Him on Facebook, or reading His latest blog post. It’s a committed, giving my life over to, heeding every command following. He leads, I go. He raises a hand, I stop. My direction is for Him to indicate, and my inclination is to His direction. That’s all well and good on the surface of the thing. Yes, I want God directing my life. I’ve seen the result, and it is good. No surprise there. God is good. But I also recognize that oftentimes God’s good doesn’t look so good to me. My sense of good is occluded by sin and self-interest. His is not. Think of the obvious example in Joseph. Here was the favorite son of the patriarch, clearly destined for great things, and well aware of it. And behold! His own brothers almost kill him, and do in fact sell him into slavery, hoping to be rid of him, so that maybe they can have his future. And yet, he does not abandon faith. He decides to be the best slave he can be, and he is quite good. His master comes to trust him implicitly because he has proven himself trustworthy. But his master’s wife has ideas, ideas he cannot entertain, and she, stung by his rejection, accuses him of exactly what he refused to do. Off to jail with no hope of parole. And still, he does not abandon faith. He decides to be the best prisoner he can be, and he is quite good. You know the story. Here is a man who truly suffered the loss of all things. He lost his family. He lost his citizenship. He lost his liberty. He lost, in some sense, even his reputation, though that proved a thing harder to lose in reality than in appearance. And through it all, he trusted God, that God would care for him, and that God had some purpose in all this trouble.

Job would be another obvious example, who lost everything in a day, his children, his goods, his health, the wisdom of a loving and godly wife, and even the support of good friends. He was sorely tried as perhaps no other we can name, apart from Jesus Himself. And what does he testify? “I know my Redeemer lives. He will take His stand. And even if my skin is destroyed, and my body shot, still I will see God in my flesh. My eyes will see Him. My heart faints within me at the prospect” (Job 19:25-27). I think I’m with him on that. I pray that, should such trials come, I would respond like Joseph rather than like Abraham. I know, however, how readily I can move into maneuvering, seeking an out, and not necessarily the one God provides. There is call for care here. And call for more than just a self-check, but even for repentance where the stuff of this life has too great a hold.

I was drawn to that message Jesus delivers in Luke 14:33: “You can’t be My disciple if you don’t give up all your possessions.” It’s a thing to draw you up short, isn’t it? It’s got to cause a sharp intake of breath, particularly if you thought yourself His disciple already. Does this mean, Lord, that every disciple of Yours is assuredly going to lose all earthly goods? Does this mean that we all must, as the monks of old, take a vow of poverty, and determine to dispose of all we own? I honestly don’t think so. It’s the readiness that matters. It’s the business of holding lightly to that which He entrusts into our care for a season. If I am hording wealth for little more reason than to see the numbers grow, and feel more secure in my old age, well, there’s a problem, isn’t there? First, who guarantees that wealth will stick around to see my old age? It wouldn’t take much at all for all that accumulation to disappear in a flash. And honestly, it wouldn’t matter whether you account your wealth in bank statements and stocks, in gold bullion squirreled away in a hole in the cellar, or in survivalist food packs and ammo. None of that is going to supply a guarantee. For all that, even if wealth persists, who’s to guarantee that I’ll see my old age? That is beyond my control. And, to be clear, it’s equally beyond the control of any supposed cabal of elitist manipulators looking to control the world. There is One Who has say as to the length of my days, and He has already spoken. As He has spoken, so it shall be. Do I know what He said? No. But I know I am in His hands. I know that one day, my physical life and my physical possessions shall be parted from one another, one way or the other. If I live past my supply, then God will provide. If my supply outlasts me, then may it bless those who remain. And if Christ returns before either event transpires? Well! There’s an end to all such concerns.

Still, though, that saying of Jesus is indeed a hard saying. I pray, then, that I am still willing. That’s not to say I wouldn’t feel regret at the loss. That’s not to say that I don’t have strong preferences for letting those things remain in my possession. But not if they are holding me back from following my Lord; not if they keep me from pursuing the course He intends for me. I think I am okay here. And if I am not, may God be so kind as to both point out where I am fooling myself, and also to stir in me a real repentance from anything that is holding me from Him.

Last set of questions, and these are ones I need to be asking myself throughout each day – especially, I think, when I find my patience grown short, and frustrations mounting. What am I reflecting upon? Where am I focused? Now, I cannot possibly escape the notice that when I am engaged at work, it gets pretty much my full focus – to the degree that focus remains possible. And I no doubt expend more energy than I should reflecting upon various knotty problems faced in that arena of life. There are, after all, deadlines to meet, dependencies others have on me doing my assigned tasks, and also – perhaps more frustrating to me – dependencies that my tasks have on others doing theirs. And then, there are the demands of wife and family that press in, and want their slice of my focus. And honestly, though perhaps it was ever so, it feels as though the pace and tendency of the modern world lead to a shattering of focus. No matter what it is you seek to concentrate on, something else will interrupt, and then, another thing will interrupt that interruption, and on and on until you feel like you’re swimming against a whirlpool and losing badly.

That sense of drowning in obligations will tend to get my focus. And having done so, it will tend to produce a bit of despondency, a sense of futility and being so overwhelmed that well, I don’t wish to deal with any of it. So, perhaps, I’ll go reflect on whatever news or amusements the web has on offer at the moment. Perhaps I’ll go focus on funny cat videos, or some game or other. Or perhaps I’ll take it as cause to just up and get out of the house, take the wife, and hit the shore, maybe have a bit of dinner together, do something, anything really, to get free of these obligations for an hour or three. And then I have to ask, do I take that same propensity for distraction into my pursuit of this life of godliness? When I am in these times of study, my focus seems well enough. I have to say, though, that sometimes the reading of Table Talk that precedes feels like an exercise undergone on autopilot. This morning, for example, I could briefly lose sight of which book those devotionals are actually considering. But I do sense that a few points held on, at least long enough to be in mind as I pursue these more considered efforts. And what of reading Luke for men’s study when this is done? Is it a rush job, or am I going to really pay attention?

Expand. Where are my thoughts when in church of a Sunday? When serving in worship, am I truly geared towards expressing my love for God, and on serving by His power to draw my brothers and sisters just that bit closer to His throne room? Or when I pray, is it from the heart? I think I’ve already looked at that here. What about the sermon? Am I seeking to hear from the heart of God as I sit there, or am I sitting more like a film critic, sifting out what I find valuable and what I find wanting? Or, for all that, am I just watching the clock and waiting for it to get over, so I can get on to the next thing? I know that many is the Sunday that, rather like these last weeks, I’ve simply been waking up too early, and sitting still for the forty-five minutes or so of the average sermon without falling asleep can prove a challenge. Shoot. Of late, it’s hard for me to sit on the couch and remain awake through my own prayers in the evening, especially if we’ve dimmed the lights. Sorry. Body just gives out after sixteen hours or so. But even when I feel engaged with the sermon, for how long does its content get retained? Ask me Tuesday what the point was on Sunday, and can I retrieve it? Doubtful. Is that healthy? Doubtful. Do I have any idea how to solve that? Doubtful.

The one thing I know is this: Unless the Lord builds the house, he labors in vain who builds at all (Ps 127:1). This includes the house of memory, the house of perception and wisdom. That’s not an excuse for just letting things slide. It’s not a sufficient argument for saying yeah, it’s okay, Jeff. So you don’t retain and focus as well as you’d like. It’s okay. Nobody else does, either. Well, when was that ever an excuse that worked? No. It’s not an excuse, it’s a smoke alarm, or maybe a CO2 alarm, given the aspect of spiritual torpor. Here is the place that needs work. Here is the place that needs the Spirit to come to my aid. Here is the place for prayer.

Lord, it’s taken me rather a long time to arrive at the issue, hasn’t it? And yet, it’s so obvious once it comes into view. I would lay it down as a two-fold problem. The first is that my prayer life is simply not sufficient to keep me strong in faith. Yet, when I consider that, my thoughts rise up with instant objections. Where will I find the time? I can barely manage what I do now. But You, Lord, are the creator of time, and if this is Your desire, You will supply the time. It remains for me to seek it, to seek You, and to spend that precious time restoring myself in You. And as to focus? As to what I’m reflecting on? Help me, Holy Lord! I am too readily distracted, let alone too easily. Keep me conscious of my habits, and grant me the desire and the wisdom to break free of those that are counter-productive. I know, for example, that come the end of this time of study and reflection, there will come another cup of coffee and some time spent wandering various favored haunts on the web. Let that stay in check, though. I know I can tend to allow that to expand and fill any extra time in the morning. Perhaps, with these early wake-ups of late, there is the time You are providing? Perhaps I should avail myself of what You are supplying? And as to focus, especially during times of worship and study and preaching, grant that I might truly adhere to what’s going on, to what You are doing. And grant, I pray, that I might hold more of it in mind as I go about these other facets of my life. Grant me a hunger, my God, for all that You provide, all that You seek to impart. Grant me to have that desire for You that will indeed fire a willingness to give up all in order to gain You. Where that desire has cooled, fan the flame. Where I am wanting, my God, fill me with You. Reshape me, that I may reflect You. Refurbish me, that I may be Yours in full.

© 2024 - Jeffrey A. Wilcox