Intro
Every year I start out the fall at The Bridge Church with a mini-sermon series called “Where We’re Going”. The idea is to lay out the agenda for this upcoming season and re-orient us around what is central and primary. I have always felt that it’s an important thing to do, but I think it’s even more clearly important this year. Most of us have had this sense over the last year and a half that the ground is constantly shifting under our feet. The changes in society have been dramatic, almost as though we’ve endured a year and a half long earthquake with no signs of stopping. Have you found yourself asking the question at any point, where is this all going? What’s the direction our world is heading in? I mean, there is so much uncertainty and instability at the moment, isn’t there?
See, this is one thing that should mark out followers of Jesus in the world: no matter what is happening around us, we do know where things are going. This is true in an eternal, big picture way. We have this hope in a God who is on the throne of the universe and will make all things new. But it’s also true in a temporal, right-now kind of sense. Regardless of the circumstances of the world, God has given the church a direction. He has told us what we are supposed to be about. And so I can actually tell you where we’re going, because it’s the same place we’ve been going for 2000 years!
Think about it like this. Imagine a stony path cutting through the midst of a stormy sea. If you stay on the path, you get home. But all around you are raging, swirling rapids and currents. Winds are howling, threatening to knock you off the path and into the waters. The church has always faced the temptation to stray from the path, to get sucked into the raging currents, to live by the agenda of a rapidly changing world rather than by God’s agenda. And sometimes, it has fallen into that temptation, it has succumbed to the pressure, forgotten where it’s going, and been destroyed in the process. But whenever the church has remained faithful to Christ, it has been like a traveller steadfastly forging ahead on that stony path towards home.
About a year ago, I initiated a conversation with our board and our elders at The Bridge about expressing a new vision statement for our church. In the end, the statement we came up with was nothing new. It wasn’t groundbreaking or unprecedented. It was simply a restatement of the direction the faithful church has always gone. Here it is: we live to know Jesus Christ personally and to make him known. That’s where our eyes are set.
So this week and next, this is what I want to do. In the midst of all of the changes in our society and world, and in the midst of all the newness in our own church: a new building, a community we’re now rooted in, all the new people who have come to call our church home even in the couple of months we’ve been here, a new season represented by this grand opening, I want to orient us around the vision, the direction that has always been true of the faithful church. This is our rocky path through the swirling waters and howling winds. Today we’re talking about the first part of that vision, that stony path: knowing Jesus.
1. The set-up- Philippians 3:4-6
The text I want to bring you into from the Bible is from Philippians 3, and I need to set the scene a little bit for you. If you didn’t know, Jesus was a Jew, all the disciples were Jews, and the Gospel was originally understood as Jewish good news. One of the most surprising things that happened in the early church was that as this good news of Jesus spread, Gentiles believed and received it as good news for them too. But what was even more surprising for the early Christians was that when the Gentiles believed in Jesus as Savior, God poured out the Holy Spirit on them just as He had on the believing Jews. And God apparently didn’t require the Gentiles to become Jews to receive this gift. As in, they didn’t need to be circumcised or start eating kosher. Believe in Jesus and boom! You’re in.
Paul, the early missionary and church planter and author of about half the books in the New Testament, thought this was great. Others weren’t so sure. Actually, in a lot of the places Paul went, there were teachers encouraging Gentile believers to adopt the traditional Jewish identity markers to complete their salvation. In Philippians 3, Paul is alluding to this, and he says that those kinds of teachers put confidence in “the flesh”. That probably means they’re putting their confidence for salvation in what has happened to their flesh- meaning, for males, circumcision. But it also likely means that, in Paul’s eyes, they’re putting their confidence in human standards instead of God’s standards. With all that in the background, here’s what Paul says in Philippians 3:4-6.
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal,persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
Philippians 3:4-6
Again, Paul talks about confidence “in the flesh”, and he says that whatever these teachers have going for them, he’s got more. They went to UBC, he went to Harvard. They were the captain of their hockey team, Paul made the NHL. They volunteered for community service, Paul started his own non-profit. That kind of thing. The particular realm that Paul addresses here is Jewish identity and practice, because this is where their confidence lies.
The first four items Paul talks about have nothing to do with his choices. This is his legacy and heritage. He was born into this. I resonate with this a bit because I grew up in the Mennonite church. Mennonites are both an ethnic group as well as a church denomination, and the lines can get blurred a bit. Non-ethnic Mennonites might never feel quite at home in a Mennonite church. But me? I was born into it. I did my family tree for a school assignment once, and there were maybe three ancestors stretching back 400 years who married a non-Mennonite. I was a Mennonite of Mennonites, eating raul kuchen by the time I was eight days old and saying Low German phrases like “obayo!” as my first words. Only a small handful of you got that, and the last two are probably not true, but the point is, Paul was born into this. He didn’t come into it later in life, he’s not mixed up about where he came from. He can claim natural Jewish identity as well as anyone.
The next three phrases show that Paul wasn’t just born into this, he lived it out without compromise. He says that he was a Pharisee. In first century Judaism, the issue was the occupation of the promised land by the Romans. The Pharisees were a sect of Jews who believed the solution to this was strict adherence to the law of Moses. They were the most devout, most studious, most seriously religious of all the Jewish people. Paul goes even farther. He was so serious about honoring God’s law that he persecuted the church. He doesn’t really say this with shame, because at the time this was an outworking of his zeal. He believed Christians were blaspheming God by worshiping a man, so he participated in their executions. He went from place to place rounding up Christians to throw them into prison. Say what you want about that, but no halfhearted person goes to those lengths. Paul was all in. And finally, Paul says that according to righteousness by the law, he was blameless. I’m going to come back to that word, righteousness, in a little bit. For now, let’s just say that this phrase doesn’t mean that Paul was perfect or sinless. It just means that he was totally committed to obedience to the law, and that if he ever messed up, he did what the law required in terms of forgiveness.
The bottom line is that according to these teachers, Jewish identity and practice was necessary for salvation. It was the basis for your confidence before God and others. And Paul is saying in these verses that he had it all.
Think about our culture- what do people intuitively believe is the basis for their confidence? What is the source of their salvation in the world? This is going to sound cliche, but for a lot of people, it’s money. It’s having certain kinds of jobs. It’s driving a certain car. It’s having a certain kind of spouse and kids. It’s having a certain body. It’s having the “good life” in the eyes of the world. Obviously, the context is vastly different, but it’s a bit like Paul being the jacked-up guy driving a Porsche with a supermodel wife and Ivy league kids.
For the next generation, maybe the dominant basis for confidence and salvation is aligning with the right social justice causes, always siding with the oppressed. In that case, Paul would be like the person leading the charge, the ultimate activist, the ultimate authority on what constitutes social justice. There’s a new reality show that pits social activists against each other to see who can advance their cause the most. People absolutely hate it, apparently, but in this scheme of thinking, Paul would be the champion. Bottom line, whatever confidence they had, Paul had more.
That’s the set-up. Then comes the turn.
2. The turn- Philippians 3:7-9
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law,but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousnessthat comes from God on the basis of faith.
Philippians 3:7-9
We’ll come back to what Paul says about Christ in a moment, but for now let’s just take note of the startling, drastic statement Paul makes. All the things that he once considered gain, everything that once was accounted for as an asset, Paul now has no use for. More than that, Paul considers them a loss. They’re not just assets, they’re liabilities. And it’s even more than that! Paul feels so strongly about this that he says all those former sources of confidence are garbage. Which is a polite translation. The Greek word, skubalon, is about as close to a profanity as you get in the Bible. It’s a word that was used to refer to human excrement. Biblical scholars tell us that there are some four letter words in the English language that would be a more accurate translation. Now, I’m a pastor up here, so I shouldn’t say those words. But you’re not up here, so I think it’s fine if you do. On the count of three, everybody just shout out the word you’re thinking about. Ready? One, two, no! We’re not doing that! But that’s how strongly Paul felt about this.
So Paul has set up the Philippians by saying whatever they’ve got, I’ve got more, and then he says, but now I have no use for any of that, it’s worthless. His values have completely reversed. Why?
When someone’s values shift so dramatically, it’s usually for one of two reasons. One is that something tragic has happened that gives you a new perspective. There’s a story out there about a wealthy woman who was on board the Titanic when it struck the iceberg. She only had a moment to grab something from her room, and as this woman looked at her cabin dresser, she saw two items. One was a box of jewelry, the other was a bowl of oranges. All her life, the jewelry was obviously more valuable. It’s the kind of thing she had lived for and the circumstances of her life had reinforced that belief. But something traumatic had taken place. Her life was on the line and she knew at this moment that oranges were now more valuable. They would be able to sustain her in what lay ahead far more than the diamonds. Death has a powerful way of doing that, of clarifying our values.
The other kind of event that can prompt a dramatic shift in values is that you come across something so much better than what you knew before. Like, degrees of magnitude better. It’s not so much that you’re scared out of valuing the things you cherished before, but that they have simply grown dull in contrast to what you now know. This is a really superficial example, but almost 15 years ago, I moved here to BC I was a bachelor, and I was getting a salary for the first time. So I splurged. I bought new golf clubs and I bought a TV, spent $1000 for a 32 inch flat screen. I thought this was the greatest thing ever, I invited friends over to enjoy it. I had that for about 10 years. Then a few years ago, somebody gave us a 52 inch HD TV. And suddenly, we couldn’t imagine watching on that puny little 32 inch. We had found something degrees of magnitude better. That’s peanuts compared to what had happened to Paul.
The big, central word in this whole passage is the word “righteousness”. That’s a church-y word, right? I think it was a word that hippies used. “That’s righteous, bro”. That was a thing, right? Anyway, most people are unsure about what it means. Even theologians argue about what it means! The way the Greeks used the word had the basic sense of conforming to a standard. Measuring up to a norm. So let’s say there was a certain family obligation, that a father should care for a daughter-in-law if the son passed away. The father is righteous if he conforms to that expectation. Which leads to how the word gets used in the Bible, which focuses on relationships. Righteousness is meeting the standards expected in relationships. It’s being in right standing with others. You know what that’s like. If something has happened between you and another person- you’ve done something or they’ve done something, and it hasn’t been resolved- you’re not in right standing. Someone has not been righteous, and the relationship is broken until that’s fixed. Righteousness can have to do with God or with people, but either way it’s about meeting the standards and expectations of that relationship.
Paul says that he had a righteousness “of his own” that came from the law. This was the basis for his confidence. He was doing everything the law of Moses said that he should do. In the eyes of others in his community, Paul was righteous, and he hoped that would be true in God’s eyes too. He believed that by doing certain things, he would measure up and be deemed righteous in the eyes of God and others.
Here’s a question: what does it mean to conform to a standard, to live “righteously” in our world today? To use the most controversial example possible at the moment, how about vaccination? Getting vaccinated is the thing deemed necessary for righteousness in our world. Anyone who doesn’t is failing in the eyes of society as a whole. Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau have been telling you that their patience for you is wearing thin with you. On the other hand, there are communities of people where not being vaccinated becomes a mark of righteousness, and to get vaccinated would mark you out as having failed the standards of that community. Either way, it’s about what you have or haven’t done in relation to the expectations of those you’re in relationship with.
But here’s the problem with a righteousness that is “your own”, that is based on your performance: you can never be sure it’s enough. There’s an inherent insecurity here. Righteousness is fragile because you never know when you might have triggered an unseen tripwire. And you’ll never be righteous in everyone’s eyes- at some point, someone will see you as “unrighteous”. I’ve been reading a book that recounts how this has happened on university campuses over the last decade (here’s the book review). You have these professors who have been politically liberal all their lives, and yet they say one thing to question woke culture and suddenly there’s a witch hunt to de-platform them, to get them fired. Liberal journalists report unfavorably about leftist politics one time, and suddenly they’re cancelled. Of course, witch hunts can happen on both sides of the political spectrum. Either way, you’re walking on eggshells. And if righteousness with God is what you’re pursuing, and it’s based on what you’ve done, it’s the same story. You work yourself to the bone, but you never know if you’ve done enough. You never know if you’re on the right side of his ledger, or if you’ve ticked him off to the point that you’re out.
But Paul says that in Christ, something very different had been revealed to him. He says that he had gained Christ and that he had been found in Christ. Suddenly, Paul wasn’t the subject. He wasn’t the point. Christ was. And Christ had lived fully up to God’s standards. In fact, Paul had been shown that God’s standard was not conformity to the law. It was to be in a believing relationship with Jesus. This is what Paul meant by a righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. Jesus had done everything necessary to establish a right relationship with God. ll Paul needed to do was to trust in Jesus. To be attached to Jesus by faith. It was not about him, it was about Jesus. Righteousness was not by his works, it was by grace from God. If Paul was alive today, I’m confident he’d say that in terms of righteousness, jobs and fitness and social activism and vaccination status are completely worthless and even skubalon compared to the righteousness of God through knowing Jesus.
When you even start to glimpse this, it’s the most freeing thing in the world. You’re no longer obsessed with meeting other people’s standards because God’s righteousness is the only thing that matters. And you’re no longer anxious about becoming acceptable to God, because you know you already are through Christ. Your good works are an expression of your love for Jesus, not a means of getting it. You are free. You are loved. You are a recipient of God’s grace. You are saved. Do you see why it’s orders of magnitude greater than what Paul knew before?
We don’t sing many hymns here at The Bridge, but lyrically, those old-timers often had it going on! The Wesley brothers in the 18th century had come to the same realization that Paul did in the first century. They had once pursued a righteousness of their own. They even formed a Holiness Club. That’s actually what they called it. Obviously, they were the fun guys you’d invite to all the frat parties. No, they were all in, like Paul. But this self-driven righteousness was oppressive and enslaving and miserable, until one day John Wesley came to understand the Gospel. He understood that righteousness was a gift from God through faith in Jesus. Here’s how the Wesleys put it in one of their more famous hymns. Listen to these words and tell me that this isn’t the greatest news ever:
“No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in Him, is mine; Alive in him, my living Head, and clothed in righteousness divine, Bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown, through Christ my own.”
Charles Wesley
4. The way home: Phil. 3:10-11
Paul could have said the same thing. And Paul’s dramatic re-evaluation of his confidence, his righteousness, led to a new orientation for the entirety of his life. He sets the Philippians up, he makes the turn on them, and now he brings it home by talking about the way home.
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:10-11
That’s Paul’s one desire: to know Jesus. And I’ve always been astounded by what Paul says here. I get that you’d want to know the power of Christ’s resurrection. To experience the blind gaining their sight, the lame walking, the sick healed, the dead raised? Sign me up! But Paul says that he wants to also know the participation in Christ’s sufferings, to become like him in his death. Come on, Paul, really? But this is where he gives the game away. The knowledge he is seeking is not a head knowledge. It’s not accumulating facts about Jesus. If you think that the point of this morning is that you should read Jesus’ wikipedia page, you’ve missed the whole point! And it is also not a knowledge that results in Paul’s comfort and prosperity in this world. He’s not after this knowledge for instrumental reasons. If he was, he’d leave out the suffering part. It’s a relational knowledge driven by love of Jesus.
And when this is your desire, then every experience becomes one more opportunity to grow in your knowledge and conformity to the character of Jesus. The breaking of a friendship hurts. But it becomes a way to experience the love of Jesus and know a bit more about his heart when people are unfaithful to him. The loss of a loved one stings. Undeniably. It can be the hardest thing you ever endure. But it becomes a way to dwell more securely in the hope that comes through faith in Jesus and his resurrection. The mistreatment and abuse of others is no fun. But it becomes an avenue to grow in Christ-likeness, because he knew a thing or two about enduring mistreatment. A temptation to do wrong becomes an opportunity to know Jesus by following the one who resisted temptation at every turn. Everyone suffers. But in Christ, suffering can be redeemed as one more contribution to a whole-life orientation around knowing Jesus.
And ultimately, Paul says, knowing Jesus and having a righteousness that comes from him will result in the greatest thing of all: resurrection life with Jesus forever. This relationship that He has established with us will only get better in eternity. The peace and the freedom we have through Jesus will only grow stronger. The sense of being loved by God will only become more real. That’s why for Paul, it’s all about growing in knowledge of Christ. It is one thing that will last into eternity.
Conclusion
In the 2004 Olympics, an athlete named Matt Emmons was competing in the rifle event- an obscure event to be sure, but hey, Tug of War was once an Olympic event. He was one shot away from winning the gold medal. He was in such a favorable position that he didn’t even need a bulls-eye, all he needed was to hit the target. Anywhere on the target. Not a difficult thing for a world class rifleman to do. On his final shot, Emmons was standing in lane two and in the pressure of the moment, with what I can only assume were upwards of 9 people watching around the world, fired a perfect shot at the target…in lane three.
The same shot at the right target would have earned him a gold medal. But his shot earned him a score of exactly 0, dropping him to eighth place. It was an unbelievable mistake and goes down in the annals of rifle shooting, if there was such a thing, as a catastrophic collapse.
Here’s the point: it doesn’t matter how accurate you are if you’re aiming at the wrong target. It doesn’t matter how much of something you get if that something is worthless. You’ve got to aim at the right target. At The Bridge, we’ve got this amazing new building, all this great technology, all kinds of exciting things going on. But if this is what we’re aiming at and living for, we’re done for. We’ll miss the mark. Because compared to Jesus, all of this is actually as good as skubalon. That’s how good Jesus is. He is life, he is love, he is freedom, he is righteousness. He is the way to God, He is salvation from sin, He is victory over the tyranny of living for the approval of others. He is hope in hopeless times, he is home in the swirling, raging winds of our world, he is the stony path in the midst of the stormy sea. He is where our eyes are set as a church, and knowing Him is our one heart’s desire. All other marks of confidence and righteousness in the world are worthless, they are loss, they are garbage compared to the righteousness of God that comes through knowing Jesus Christ!
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