Gospel Picture #1 - Paul - Philippians 3~3-9

8/14/2019 Gospel Picture #1 - Paul - Philippians 3~3-9

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Understanding and Embracingthe Gospel, Part 5:

A Gospel Picture of theApostle PaulPhilippians 3:3-10

Introduction

The plague of mankind is summed up in one hyphenatedword: self-righteousness. It is common to each andevery single individual on the face of the earth. Self-righteousness is defined in the dictionary as that state of mind in which you think you are more righteous thanothers. What this means is that in order for you to thinkyou are more righteous than someone else, you musthave a standard different from someone else. And whatmakes this a plague is that almost everyone has a

different standard from everyone else. So were all judging each other by each others differing standards.Its a plague because we never measure up to eachother and the result is strife, ambition, division, murder,stealing, cheating, lying, divorce, and every other vicethat plagues us so horribly now.

I recall one individual, a deacon in a Baptist church, whois a small-business owner. He actually stole the answersto a government-operated Pre-K screening test so thathe could drill his child beforehand to make sure his childwould grade higher and get into better Pre-K classes.When a believing employee asked him, do you think itsokay to cheat? he responded, if it helps.

Now at the same time, I am willing to bet that this man,who considers himself to be a follower of Christ, wouldabsolutely hate it if a customer cheated him. Why?

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Because cheating is fine to the business-owner as longas it doesnt hurt him. But cheating is wrong if he getshurt. If that happened, you can bet the whole townwould hear about the man who cheated him, yet you

would never hear from the business owner, and churchdeacon how he cheated the state government to get hiskid into better Pre-K classes.

You see, when the standard of righteousness isourselves, self-righteousness is born. When thestandard is us, we judge others by us. And when we dothat, we are sure to come out on top, arent we?Everyone one else pales in comparison to us. Theproblem is, God is looking down from heaven, mockingour self-righteousness. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:12,But they are only comparing themselves with eachother, and measuring themselves by themselves. Whatfoolishness!

It is foolishness because it like squabbling over happymeal toy. Have you ever seen kids fight over a happymeal toy in McDonalds? A happy meal toy is without adoubt one of the most useless things on the planet, andthey usually end up in our trash can. Yet my kids thinkthey are the most valuable thing on the earth and theywill squabble over them sometimes. The difference is,parents will look at their kids squabbling over a toy andconsider them so childish, while the mom and dadsquabble over something equally insignificant.

All humans are just like that. They have no sense of what is truly valuable. They put high value on thatwhich they themselves have considered to be valuableto them. And this, beloved, is the standard of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness will always have thestandard of what is most important to self. If what ismost important is getting your kid into better Pre-K classes, then cheating is okay. If what is most importantis getting your hands on that happy meal toy, then

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fighting is okay. And in the mean time youll look downyour noses at anyone who confronts you about yourbehavior because they have attacked what you considerto be important to you.

Heres the real problem though. If we step out of ourlittle world and step into the real world, Gods world, wefind that the reality of the situation is that every singlehuman being has a higher estimation of themselves thanGod does. There are different kinds of people who dothis.

1. Some are Pharisees. This was anotherdefinition of self-righteousness in thedictionary, by the way. Interesting, isnt it.Pharisaism is the practice of telling others tofollow your picky little rules and then notfollowing them yourself. It is not practicingwhat you preach. These are the worst of theself-righteous club, because they are soarrogant, and they think they hold the key toyour life and your future, so youd better watchout! You find these folks most of the time inleadership of churches pastors, deacons,elders, leading laymen, etc.

2. Some are genuine. What I mean by this is thatwhile they have constructed their own littlesystem of self-righteousness, they are at least

consistent with it. These folks consider thingslike schooling preferences, churchdenominations, parenting philosophies, datingpreferences, etc. to be the mark of righteousness, and they follow them to theletter of the law that is taught therein.

3. Some are deceived. What I mean by this is thatthere are the group who have little if any self-esteem, the misfits, those who dont fit in with

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others, and they rightly identify self-righteousness in others around them who treatthem with such meanness and neglect. But atthe same time, these folks are deceived

because while they judge the self-righteousnessof others, they themselves have by defaultdeveloped their own self-righteousness becausethey do not consider themselves to be as big a

jerk as others are.

For all these groups, self-righteousness is sneaky andsubtle. It is rooted in pride which takes so manydifferent forms and shapes that it is almost next toimpossible to pinpoint it and get rid of it. Just when youthink you are free from pride, you are at that verymoment entrapped by it. Richard Baxter, one of myfavorite English Puritans of the 1600s said that pridewas the disease that leaves you thinking you dont havea disease.

It creeps in and somehow works it devilish little magic tomake you think you are better than you really are, tocount your upbringing, your income level, your job, yourreligion, your church denomination, your Bible version,your style of music, your financial lifestyle, your clothingtastes, your child-rearing principles, your schoolingpreferences, your drinking preferences, your hairpreferences, your worship preferences, etc. as thestandard by which God judges you and by which others

must approve or disapprove of you.

Yet we find that in Scriptures, and especially in the bookof Romans, and especially with the apostle Paul, none of these things really matter. Placing value and emphasison these things is what sends people to hell. It sendsthem to hell because they live by these things, trustingthat if they follow these principles and preferences thenthey will be pleasing to God. It sends them to hellbecause there is no Jesus Christ in any of it. There is

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only a day-by-day and moment-by-moment trusting inthemselves and their efforts and their principles andpreferences rather than in the person and work of JesusChrist.

This lifestyle, practiced by many who call themselvesChristians, is damning because it counts therighteousness of God as rubbish while clinging to a man-manufactured righteousness. The righteousness thatGod wants is that kind of righteousness which is inperfect submission and conformity to His holy standards.And since none of us measures up to this, God provideda way in which we can still be found in thatrighteousness even though we dont live like it. It is therighteousness of God provided through Jesus Christ.

He lived a life of perfect conformity to Gods righteousLaw, and He died to suffer the punishment for ourunrighteousness so that we could be recipients of Godsblessings. Therefore, the righteousness of God through

Jesus Christ must become the Christians only pursuit.

Transition

It was this mentality that led Paul to write what he did inPhilippians 3:2 and following as he battled those Jewishfalse teachers who continued to perpetuate the heresythat circumcision is what God really cares about. He wasbattling the false teaching that outward conformity to

external standards pleases God. In the end, Paul knewthat only Christ pleased God, and the main pursuit in lifethen was to be found in Christ and not in conformity toprinciples and preferences.

What I want to do this morning is to take the doctrine of the righteousness of God that I have preached to youthe last four weeks and illustrate it for you. I want toillustrate it using real persons who are discussed in theBible. This will bring the doctrine from the abstract to

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the tangible. I want you to be able to see what it lookslike when it is embraced in a persons life. The firstperson I will tell you about this morning will be theapostle Paul. This is only fitting since weve been

working through the doctrine of Gods righteousness thathe taught in Romans. After this one, I want to deal nexttime with the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18.In so doing, my aim is that you will be able to see reallife examples and have something by which to measureyour own experience.

So turn in your Bibles to Philippians 3 and we will beginat verse 2. Ill be reading from the New LivingTranslation .

Now, based on the reading of verse 3, Im going tosuggest two parts for the message this morning. Paulspeaks of putting confidence in human effort, and thenhe speak of boasting about what Christ Jesus has donefor us. Lets look at the first one which Ive entitled

I. God Doesnt Care About Who You Are orWhat You Have Accomplished.

Dont put any confidence in or take any delight in who you are or what you haveaccomplished.

When Paul says that he put no confidence in human

effort, or as some of your translations may say,confidence in the flesh, he uses the Greek wordkaukomai for our English word confidence. The wordmeans to take delight in, to rejoice or boast in. Inclassical Greek the word was use in tragedies andorations to refer to pluming oneself, much like a peacockwould strut its plume. It was further used in this timeperiod to refer to one who would vaunt himself againstsomeone else or treat them in a derogatory orcontemptuous manner.

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This particular understanding of the word was adopted inKoine Greek, which was the kind of Greek that the worldat that time spoke. Classical Greek would be akin to the

Kings English, and Koine Greek could be compared tobasic street English. Paul adopted the classicalunderstanding in order to convey his doctrine of righteousness and justification.

What you see going on Philippians is a response to Judaizers, a sect of Jews who claimed to be followers of Christ, but required their followers to be circumcisedbefore they could become a Christian. They would putconfidence in this act. They took gleeful delight intelling everyone that they were circumcised Christians.It impressed people because it meant that we follow theLaw of Moses and Christ at the same time. They taughtthat you could be a Christian and perfectly obey the Lawof God at the same time. The net effect of their teachingwas that man got the glory in salvation instead of God.

Their teaching became all about what they had done toplease God and this impressed people as you can wellimagine.

But in keeping with the meaning of the word, these Judaizers would not only vaunt themselves and theirtheology and teachings before everyone else, but theywould also treat those who disagreed with them on aderogatory or contemptuous manner. Thats just what

they did with the apostle Paul. In fact, these same folksfollowed him around throughout his entire ministrytrying to undo what he had taught new believers in newchurch plants, trying to kill him, trying to stain hisreputation. These were the group he referred to inPhilippians 1:15 who were preaching Christ out of

jealousy and rivalry, and those preaching without puremotives. Paul says in verse 17, They preach withselfish ambition, not sincerely

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So thats the kind of confidence Paul is referring to herein Philippians 3:3,4. And he says he wants nothing to dowith that kind of confidence. He says in verse 3 thatthose who have this kind of confidence are not truly

worshiping God. But what follows is a common form of argumentation known as accommodation. This is thepractice of accommodating your opponent by assuminghis argumentation, following it to its logical extent, andthen showing the false conclusion to which it leads.

This is just what Paul does in verse 4. He is basicallysaying here, If you Judaizers think youve got somethingto brag about with regard to your salvation, Ive got youtopped by a mile! Let me tell you about who I was andwhat I accomplished. He uses this form of argumentation to show that if God was really pleasedwith human efforts and accomplishments, surely Hewould have been pleased with Paul. But in fact, in theend, it amounted to nothing.

What I and other commentators, pastors and scholarshave seen in this text is a division of Pauls pre-conversion life into two parts. There are seven things inall that Paul lists for us here. The first fourcharacteristics he mentions are things he has inherited.

The last three are things he has earned. In verse 9 heends up describing these things as a righteousness of my own derived from the Law. He considered thesetwo categories of things to be his own righteousness

derived from the Law of God rather than Godsrighteousness derived from the Son of God. Lets look atthese briefly these two categories.

A. Who He Was The Righteousness He HadInherited

1. Circumcised on the 8 th day . See Genesis 17:11and Exodus 12:48. He was circumcised in keepingwith the covenant God made with Abraham and in

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keeping with the day God prescribed to Moses. Heas not the son of a proselyte. Proselytes werecircumcised later in life, but Israelites werecircumcised strictly in keeping with the law of

Moses.

2. Of the people of Israel. See Genesis 17:12.Israel, was of course, the covenant name of Godspeople. Paul is claiming to be a member of thecovenant people. Further, his family lineage didntcome by being grafted in as a proselyte. He andhis family had descended from original stock.

3. Of the Tribe of Benjamin. He shows thecertainty of his belonging to Israel by pointing towhich particular tribe he was from. This refers tothe nobility of his race, the first king of Israel beingfrom that tribe. See 1 Sam. 10:20,21. Further,this was the tribe that came together with the tribeof Judah and the house of David and to the trueworship of God at Jerusalem, after the revolt of theten tribes. When the northern tribes hadseparated from Gods revealed religion and hadset up schismatic altars where blood sacrificeswere performed in direct violation of Leviticus 17.

That chapter says that sacrifices were to beoffered only at the great altar in Jerusalem.Benjamin resisted this and remained loyal to thehouse of David. Paul took justifiable pride in this

ancestry. Further, Benjamin was the only one of the twelve sons of Jacob who was actually born inthe promised land. In addition, it was by means of a Benjamite that Israel was delivered from Hamanin the book of Esther, and in which the feast of Purim is to this day celebrated annually. Finally, itis obvious that his repeated reference to hisformer name of Saul is reference to the first kingof Israel from whom he took his name proudly andwith marked emphasis in Acts 23:21. Some church

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fathers even saw a connection between Jacobsblessing of Benjamin in Genesis 49:27 and Paulscourse of persecution and division.

4. Hebrew of Hebrews. Shows his descent fromAbraham who was called the Hebrew in Genesis14:13. Also points to fact that there as no mixtureof blood by marriage with foreign nations whichmight be exactly known by their public registers,in which was marked the generations of particularfamilies (see Ezra 2:62). He was pure-blooded,born of Jewish parents, born a Jew from the cradle.

This also has probable reference to the fact thatthere was no Hellenistic influence. After the returnto Jersualem, many pure-blooded Jews, thoughremaining pure-blooded, began to adopt thelanguage and conform to the customs of thosearound them. This was the process known asHellenization and it was the crux of the Maccabeanrevolt in Israel during the 400 years of silencebetween the Old and New Testaments. There wasno Hellenist among them, for they were strictHebrews in blood and lifestyle and language. Justbecause a man was a Jew doesnt mean he was aHebrew. A Jew was known also as a Hebrew whenhe spoke the Hebrew language. So here, as in 2Cor. 11:22, Hebrew implies something which is notexpressed in the term Israelite. He was broughtup under a great Hebrew teacher in the Hebrew

metropolis (Acts 22:3). He spoke the Hebrewlanguage fluently (Acts 21:40; 22:20). He quotedfrequently from the Hebrew Scriptures which hetranslates for himself, thus contrasting with hiscontemporaries the Jewish Philo and the Christianwriter of the epistle to the Hebrews, whocommonly use the Hellenistic version of theSeptuagint .

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B. What He Had Accomplished TheRighteousness He Had Earned

1. As to the Law, a Pharisee. The moststrict profession, and one that a person enteredinto by choice. This profession constituted themost faithful of all Jewish sects in their adherenceto the law. They are the sect that constructed ahedge around the law, made of additionalcommandments, which they followed in order tomake sure they didnt break Gods Law. So Paul issaying here that he was strict in his obedience toall those man-made commandments in addition tothe Law of God. And he was probably part of thesect of the Pharisees that were more strict thanany other (see Acts 26:5).\

2. As to zeal, a persecutor of church.He was very fervent, without any respect forpersons, which is why he persecuted the church of God because he considered them to be destroyersof Gods law. He was, of course, present atStephens death giving consent to it.

3. As to righteousness under the law,blameless. As to his personal obedience to thelaw, his life was blameless. He could not justifiably

be condemned by men where externals are thestandard. Such righteousness as consists in law,in obedience to formal precepts, but not the truerighteousness: see ver. 9 (Lightfoot, p. 148).Blameless has reference to the fact that heomitted no observance of the law or the traditions,no matter how trivial it may have been.

C. What He Thought About His Righteousness

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When it all adds up, Paul pretty much thought of allthese things as amounting to a nauseating nothing. Hedescribes his own thoughts about who he was and what

he accomplished in five phrases.

1. It Was Rejoicing in the Flesh

Taking delight in these things and putting confidence inthem is taking an account of what you have done andwho you think you are and totaling it all up as if it allreally mattered to God. The usage of the phrase in theflesh here is intended to point to a mans life beforeChrist. This is how Paul uses it in Romans 7:5. He saysthere, For while we were in the flesh, the sinfulpassions, which were aroused by the Law, were at workin the members of our body to bear fruit for death(NASB). To be in the flesh is to be living in sinfulpassions. Thats why Paul says in verse 18 of Romans 7,For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in myflesh One chapter later, in 8:8, Paul writes again,those who are in the flesh cannot please God. This isfollowed by a clear line of demarcation in verse 9 withreference to those who are in the Spirit. Those who arein the Spirit are indwelt by the Spirit, and those who arein the flesh are indwelt by sin.

What we see in Philippians 3:3,4 then is a person who isbragging about who they are and what they have

accomplished, and yet the things they brag about do notplease God. There is nothing good about themwhatsoever. There is nothing in them that makes Godsit up a take notice. Paul considers who he was andwhat he accomplished to be simply rejoicing in thatwhich is unredeemed, not indwelt by the Spirit, andbasically amounting to nothing. It is just that it is flesh.

This statement of boasting in the flesh or puttingconfidence in human effort stands in stark contrast to

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glorying in Christ Jesus in verse 3. We must glory andrejoice and boast in and put our confidence in JesusChrist Who He is and What He has accomplished rather than in ourselves. Christ is the only thing that

pleases God. He is the only one who is good. Oh, thatwe would be found in Him, and rejoice in Him, and boastin Him, delight in Him, trust in Him, and put ourconfidence in Him rather than in our good for nothingselves!

2. It All Amounted to Nothing

The next way Paul describes who he was and what hehad accomplished was with the word loss which heuses three times. He uses the word once in verse 7 andthen twice in verse 8. A. T. Robertson, the famousBaptist Greek scholar, suggested that in using this word,Paul was simply saying that whatever he thought was onthe credit side of his ledger was now on the debit side.

In verse 7, he uses the phrase counted as loss. Thisverb counted is in the perfect middle, for you Greekstudents. For the rest of you that simply means thatonce these things were put on the debit side of hisledger, they stayed there. That is, not only did Paulconsider all his assets to be spiritual liabilities when itcame to salvation, but he continued to consider them as

just that. What we learn from the usage of this Greekverb is that Paul never stopped considering who he was

and what he accomplished as amounting to nothing. They never meant anything to God and they never will. They never were assets to attain heaven, and they neverwill be. They will always remain debits, and if I desire tolive by them, then God will hold them against me and Iwill have to pay up for the rest of eternity.

Now, watch what Paul does next. This is a beautifulattestation to the need for knowing the originallanguages because in our English Bibles there is no trace

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at all of a change in the Greek tense for the wordcounted in verse 8. Same English word, same Greekword, but different Greek tense. Here the tense ispresent middle. He said in verse 7, I counted it loss and

it remains as loss to this day. And he reemphasizes itin verse 8, In fact, I still consider it all to be loss and willcontinue to think of it all that way.

3. Counting it All as Nothing Cost HimEverything

The next usage of the word loss in verse 8 is the sameGreek verb but in a different form this time. What yousee Paul doing is building forward with this word. Inverse 7 he counted it as loss. In verse 8, he still countsit as loss. And here in verse 8, he will continue to countit as loss no matter what it costs him. He absolutelyrefused to allow who he was or what he hadaccomplished to mean anything at all when it came tothe gospel.

The verb here is defined as giving up the point of injury.Paul gave up who he was and what he accomplished,and in so doing it ruined his reputation among his peers,and it ended up eventually costing him his life. Heforfeited all of that to get something far better,something eternal. He counted the forfeiting of hisinheritance and accomplishments to be worthy of suffering for in order to gain the person of Jesus Christ

for all eternity. Can the same be said of you?

As I said before, in verse 9 Paul refers to all of thesethings as his own righteousness, derived from the Law.

The problem is God doesnt determine righteousness bythe Law. If He did, Paul was in great shape, wasnt he?He had nothing to fear, if God judged people by His Law.But God doesnt judge people by the Law. He judgesthem by His righteousness in Jesus Christ. If you have

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the Law and have no Christ, youre condemned. Yourecondemned because everything you present to God inan effort to be justified before Him amounts to anauseating nothing. Look at how Paul describes these

seven characteristics about himself.

4. It All Amounted to Scraps and Crumbs

Paul continues to build forward in verse 8 describing whohe was and what he accomplished as skubala , which isGreek for dung, rubbish, trash, scraps, etc. He has backto the present middle here saying in effect, I counted atloss, I continue to count it as loss, I will count it as lossno matter what it costs me, and in fact I will continue tocount it all as scraps and crumbs.

Some scholars say that this Greek word refers to humanexcrement. While there are usages of this word inKoine, I dont think thats what Paul had in mind. Notbecause it is gross, but because it doesnt fit the contextand flow of argument.

A second usage of the word in Koine Greek had to dowith refuse, leftovers from a banquet, or food scrapsthrown away from the table and given to the dogs. Ibelieve that it is this meaning that Paul has in mind here.

The Judaizers always spoke of themselves as thosesitting at a banquet table feasting at the Fathers table,while the Gentile Christians were the dogs squabbling

under the table for the scraps and crumbs that fell to theground. In contrast, what Paul is probably after here isthat the Gentiles in reality are the ones sitting at theFathers banquet table and the crumbs and scraps thatfall from the table are the ordinances and traditions of the Judaizers, things like circumcision, which they valueso highly.

In essence, Paul is saying, everything you Judaizerscount as so valuable in all actuality amounts to a few

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crumbs and scraps that fall from the table, and you guysare the dogs squabbling under the table for thosecrumbs.

Skubala is not even something worth pack-ratting. Ima pack-rat. I save everything. And Im one of those guyswho does in fact eventually use it. Ask my wife. Shelltell you how Ive used the oddest things to fix the mostcommon things. But who I am and what Iveaccomplished is not even something that is valuableenough to pack-rat. It is a chewing gum wrapper on theside of the road. Better yet, it is a cigarette butt. Whatcan you do with a cigarette butt. Absolutely nothing!And thats Pauls point with reference to who he was andwhat he accomplished. Who you are and what you haveaccomplished, beloved, is absolutely useless to God. Itis like offering God a handful of cigarette butts! As onescholar put it:

All such things which I used to count up as distinctitems with a miserly greed and reckon to my credit these I have massed together under one general head asloss (Lightfoot, p. 148).

5. Its All Self-Righteousness

The fifth and final phrase Paul uses to describe who hewas and what he accomplished was one that we havealready referred to in verse 9. He saw it has a

righteousness of his own. It seems that there is thecomparison here. He doesnt want his ownrighteousness because, as one familiar with the prophetIsaiah, he knew his own righteousness to be like filthyrags.

He has compared his righteousness to loss andnothingness. He has compared it also to scraps andcrumbs. He doesnt want to be found on that day of

judgment to have worthlessness to present to God as

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justification for entrance into heaven. That earnsimmediate damnation in hell. The righteousness hewants is something outside of himself, yet something hewishes to possess for himself. It is what theologians

have appropriately called an alien righteousnessbecause it is found only in Christ, thus those who belongto him possess not only Christ but His righteousness aswell.

This is the righteousness you need, beloved. You musthave a righteousness which is outside of yourself. Youcannot please God with your own works, your ownstatus, who you are or what you have accomplished.God cares only about Christ, and if you wish to unityourself to Him, He will care for you too.

Transition Illustration

Its amazing how many people will find themselves at the judgment seat on the last day and present what theyhave done and who they are as justification for gettinginto heaven. It is as if they think who they are and whatthey have accomplished is the divine currency.

I recall my first exposure to monopoly. It was thrilling.Grabbing up property and collecting rent, buying housesand hotels, it was everything that promoted the greedand covetousness in a childs heart! I was old enough toget the point of the game, but I was young enough to

miss a very important feature. It was only a game. Ifigured this out one day when I tried to go to the toystore and spend my monopoly money. Its fake. Thereal world requires a different kind of money. And in thesame way, God requires a different kind of righteousness. He requires real righteousness, notmanufactured or fake righteousness. Monopoly moneyin the real world is absolutely useless. And myrighteousness before God is absolutely useless.

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But how do you tell the difference between myrighteousness and Gods righteousness? Let meillustrate once more, yet still with my youthful ignoranceregarding money. The same sort of thing happened a

few years later, when my grandfather gave me someconfederate money. It looked like real money, and it feltlike real money. So I tried to spend it to. I suppose Itried to spend pretty much everything when I wasyoung! But when I gave it to the man at a novelty shopone day, he laughed and said, that money isnt anygood here. It looked like money, but the man who wastaking the money said it wasnt real money. He was theboss. And God is the boss. I can tell the differencebetween my righteousness and Gods righteousness bylistening to what He tells me. And He tells me that JesusChrist, His Son, is the only righteousness that isacceptable to Him. Jesus Christ is the only genuinecurrency of heaven, so to speak. Christ has alreadybought Gods forgiveness against my sin, and if I dontspend what Christ has bought, Im buying forgivenesswith my own works and my own righteousness and myown efforts. I must use His currency. My goodness, myaccomplishments, my family lineage, my fathers role asa pastor or my granddaddys position as a deacon allhave no value in heaven.

II. God Only Cares About Jesus Christ and What HeHas Accomplished.

What is desired is Jesus Christ and everythingthat comes with Him. Its not about usIts all about Him.

Listen to how Paul describes what it is he wants sobadly.

V. 3 glory in Christ Jesus

V. 7 for the sake of Christ

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V. 8 because of the surpassing worth of knowingChrist Jesus my Lord.

V. 8 For his sake V. 8 in order that I may gain Christ. V. 9 and be found in him V. 9 having a righteousnesswhich comes through

faith in Christ V. 10 that I may know him V. 10 and the power of his resurrection V. 10 and may share in his sufferings V. 10 becoming like him in his death

For Paul all he wanted was Jesus Christ. He wantednothing to do with Himself any longer because he knewit was worthless. This mindset was expressed by theScottish preacher David Dickson who on his deathbed at80 years old in 1663 said,

I have taken all my good deeds and all my bad deeds,and cast them through each other in a heap before the

Lord, and fled from both, and betaken myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him I have peace.

III.How to Obtain Gods Righteousness in JesusChrist

What is desired is Christs righteousness and it is obtained through faith, through believing inthe work God has done in Christ and not through believing in yourself.

Look at verse 9 closely and youll see two phrases of eternal significance for you this morning. The firstphrase is, not having a righteousness of my own thatcomes from the law, but that which comes through faith

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in Christ. The second phrase is the righteousness of God that depends on faith.

God has never been and never will be satisfied with any

kind of righteousness which you may try to conjur upand present to him. God has always been and alwayswill be satisfied only with His own righteousness,because it is genuine righteousness. And while thisstandard is unreachable, God knows that and yet stillmercifully provided something that is presented to everyperson Jesus Christ and His work on the cross and inthe grave. Through Jesus Christ God offers His ownrighteousness freely to all who believe in Christ.

When Paul uses the phrases,through faith in Christdepends on faith, he knows that the faith referred tohere is the only thing that will please God, as Hebrews11:6 teaches. Faith is the instrument through which weare saved, according to Ephesians 2:8. But we mustidentify and define this faith on which our eternityhangs.

A. What Faith is Not

James Montgomery Boice has made three observationson what faith is not ( Philippians , pp. 207-209).

1. It is not a delusion. This is believing insomething that you know is not true. This is

pictured today by many word-faith healersand those who follow them. They know thatmerely speaking something into existencecannot really happen, but they teach it andfollow it anyway. Thats not faith.

2. It is not credulity. Credulity is believing thatsomething is true despite the lack of sufficientevidence. It is believing in something simplybecause you wish it were true. I can personally

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relate to this one in recent weeks. It is amazinghow people will desire to believe somethingabout you, despite the lack of evidence, simplybecause they want it to be true for some

strange reason. Thats not faith at all.

3. It is not subjectivity . This is the worst of all. This is what drives religion today, for most. Iremember talking to a gentleman some weeksago about an area of his life where he wasstruggling. When I pointed out what theScriptures said about what he was doing, andwhen I stated to him that he could not be afollower of Christ and act like this, he closed myBible and responded, the Word of God is in myheart. What he meant was that it didntmatter what he read. All that mattered waswhat he felt. And if he felt that Jesus was in hisheart, then he was a Christian. His faith wasgrounded solely and completely on feeling.

Thats not faith either.

B. What Faith Is

Jim Atkinson left me with a wonderful illustration of faithlast week, based on the definition I gave you. Last weekI defined faith for you as believing, and I defined belief as acting like Gods promises are true, even when youdont feel like it. Marriage is like that. You promised to

love your wife no matter what, men. And you must keepthis promise even when you dont feel like it. You mustact like the promise you made was true, because it wastrue, even though you dont feel like it was true. Wedont live our lives based on feeling, yet this is whatChristians do far too much, including me. What if I wokeup one morning and didnt feel like I was married. Well,as Jim Atkinson said last week, thatd be fineas long asI didnt start acting like I wasnt married! And you getthe point. As Christians we must act and behave and

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talk and think based upon what is true and not basedupon what we feel.

The only difference between the kind of faith that menexercise every day and saving faith is that saving faith isabsolutely certain, for it is faith in the only One in theuniverse who is absolutely faithful and who never breaksHis promises (Boice, Philippians , p. 209).

C. Elements of Saving Faith.

If faith is believing Gods promises, what are thepromises you must believe if you are to be saved.

1. First, as Paul referred to in Phil. 3:9, you mustbelieve that you have no righteousness of yourown. And you must also believe that if youcontinue to hold on to your own supposedrighteousness you will go to hell. God promised inRomans 6:23 that the wages of sin is eternalcondemnation.

2. Second, as Paul referred to in Phil. 3:9, you mustbelieve that Jesus Christ is the only righteousnessGod will accept. Only Christ was good enough toplease God. And this means you must believe inthe promise that if you put your faith in Christ you

will have eternal life, as Jesus Himself promises in John 3:16.

3. Third, you must believe that God loves sinnersdespite their sin, and that He has acted to removethat sin and offer forgiveness and reconciliation.Paul referred to Gods promise in Romans 5:8which says that God showed his love for us in that

while we were sinners Christ died for us. And

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again in John 3:16, God loved the world so muchthat He gave His only Son that whoever believes inHim wont die but will have eternal life.

Again, this belief is thinking and acting like these thingsare true. If you really believe these things are true, thatthese promises are true, then you are a Christian. Themoment you stop believing you are good enough toplease God and the moment you decide to trust only inthe goodness of God in Christ to please God, that is theprecise moment at which you become a Christian.

Conclusion

Paul came to the point where he opened his ledgerbook. And after he had looked at all of the things thathe had accumulated by inheritance and by his efforts, hereflected that these things had actually kept him fromChrist. He then took the entire list and placed it where itbelonged under the list of liabilities. He called it loss.And under assets he wrote, Jesus Christ aloneIs thattrue of you? Have you exchanged your assets for Christ?Or are you trusting in the kind of goodness that willnever be accepted by God? If you are, let me give you awarning. That goodness will take you to hell. Hell is fullof it. But if you lay your goodness aside, counting it loss,God will credit Jesus Christ to your account who of God

is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, andsanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). This hasalways been the heart of Christian experience, and it hasbeen embodied in many of our hymns. One of themsays:

Nothing in my hands I bring,Simply to the cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress,Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

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Foul, I to the fountain fly;Wash me, Savior, or I die.Rock of Ages, cleft for me,Let me hid myself in Thee.

Will you pray that prayer? If you do, God will provide thewashing, and Christ will be reckoned as your onesufficient asset forever (J. M. Boice, Philippians , pp. 198-99).

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Gospel Picture #1 - Paul - Philippians 3~3-9

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Transcript of Gospel Picture #1 - Paul - Philippians 3~3-9