For Paul the life we are called to as Christians is a life lived
in community, together with people who live the love of God alongside one another;
a community of people who live with one heart, one mind, one focus in life. That
unity, that oneness is found in Jesus Christ and living out the kind of
self-giving love exemplified in his life, at all times to all people.
My guess is that most of us
here would agree we are all pretty
good people. I mean seriously if I had to pick some pretty good people, I would
pick you people. I would not have to look farther than the people here in this
room. We gather as the people of God whenever we can and most recently we have
gathered however we can, whether that be via live-stream, conference call, Zoom
and even the strange way those of us who are here this morning are currently
gathering. We are faithful to God, we are faithful to God’s Church and we work
to be faithful to those around us. We are kind, we are hard workers, we want
what is best for those we love, and we seek to do good whenever we can.
We are good Christians We do
all the things we have come to believe a good Christian should do. We read our
Bibles regularly. We are seek to live as Christ would have us live, at home, at
the grocery store, at work and everywhere else that we “go” these days. We are
all pretty good Christians. At least I know I am, and I assume each of you are
too.
We have much to be proud
about. I mean some of us have accomplished much in our lives. We have worked
hard to become the kind of people we are. Being a good Christian is not easy.
We have to live our lives by the laws of the land and by the laws of God, choosing the latter whenever the two
conflict. We have to be careful about what we say, what we think, what attitudes
we hold, what values we adhere to, and about everything we do. We have to treat
others with the love of Christ, and do our best to act with the same kind of
grace, mercy and compassion with which he would act, toward everyone who
crosses our paths, each and every day.
Sometimes being that kind and gracious
to those who don’t seem to want, need or deserve to be treated thusly is hard.
Living the in a way which exemplifies the heart, life and ministry of Jesus
Christ is hard work. Being a Christian is not always easy and some days living
as a Christian, at this particular point in time, using words which reflect
Jesus’ love instead of reacting to what is going on around us in ways which
come more natural to us, can be. . . difficult. But we are not at this alone.
The life we are called to as Christians is a communal life, one in which we are
called to live together, alongside of one another, helping one another,
encouraging one another and supporting one another all along the way.
Paul begins by telling the people
of Philippi everything that made him a righteous man of God, by the standards
of his day. Paul was not only a good Jew, he was the prime example of what it
meant to live life as a Jew, exactly what it meant to be living life the way
that a member of the nation of Israel, the children of God, should be living.
He was doing exactly what he needed to do in order be a child of God. He was
living life exactly how it was supposed
to be lived. He was doing everything right. He had worked hard all his life, to
make sure that everything was in order, that he had obeyed all of God's
commands and had accomplished much, with much effort. He had done it all right. In fact he had been very
well respected and most everybody thought highly of him. Everyone knew that
Saul of Tarsus was a righteous man of God. He had much to brag about. Not very many
Jews could boast of being as righteous as Paul.
As soon as Paul tells us about
everything he had done to make him a good Jew and a righteous person, he turns
around and says that it is all rubbish. (Using some pretty strong language what
we clean up bit in translation to make “church appropriate.”) It may sound,
from a Christian perspective that he is describing all the ways which he can be
seen to be living as a Christian, but he wants us to know the life he is
boasting of is not what it really means to be a true person of God, at all. For
all he cares, everything he had done to live the kind of life he had worked so
hard at living is fit for the dumpster; it is worthless; and it is not ‘good’
at all. Everything that he had done, all that he had worked so hard to
accomplish, to make him a righteous person was useless. He counted it as a
loss.
There is an episode of
Everybody loves Raymond. . . you all remember Everybody Loves Raymond? I know
it is super old and to tell you the truth even when it was on I never really
watched it, but there was this one episode, which it remember for some reason,
where Raymond finds out the diamond in the engagement ring he had given Debra
is a fake. He secretly steals her ring, he threw away the fake diamond and replaced
it with a real one. As soon as he gives the ring back to her after replacing
the diamond, Debra realizes that it is not her diamond and gets very upset.
When Ray had given her the ring, she had realized that it was a fake diamond
and did not want to tell Ray that he had been swindled so she had gotten the
diamond from her grandmother’s engagement ring and had put it into her
engagement ring. When she asked Ray where her grandmother’s diamond was, Ray
told her it was just like her grandmother, gone.
There are times when we lose something
and we are certain that it is somewhere it can be easily found, but there are
other times that we lose something, when we know that it is simply gone. There
is nothing we can do about it, it is just gone. We don't even bother to try to
find the item. We simply count it as a loss. It does not matter how much the
item were worth. It is gone.
This is what Paul is saying
here. Everything he has done to be a righteous person is trash. He counts it as
a loss. It might as well be gone. It is as if Paul had lost all those things he
had done to be a righteous person. It is as if he had laid them on the seat next
to him in an airport where he had a layover and had gotten on the next plane,
leaving them there. They were gone for good; he wasn't ever going to go back to
that airport to see if he could retrieve them.
Once something is gone for
good, it is worthless to you. It does not matter how much it was worth when you
had it, if you don’t have it anymore it might as well be worthless. My father
had a collection of priceless comic books that he had collected as he was
growing up; the very first Spiderman, the first X-Men, and a whole bunch of
others. They would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars right now, but
they are worthless right now. Why? Because, when he was in Vietnam his sister
cleaned out his room and threw the whole collection away. It is gone. It does
not matter how much those comic books are worth, none of us will ever see a
penny of that money, because they are gone. They are as worthless as an old
newspaper lining the bottom of a bird cage.
This is what Paul is saying.
All the righteousness he had, everything he had worked so hard to do,
everything that made him the wonderful example to all the other Jews, as to
what it meant to be a person of God, is as worthless a pile of priceless comic
books that had been thrown away, made their way to the city dump never to be
found again. It may have the appearance of being the right way to live, but in
reality it simply is not.
But why is it worthless? His
life seems to have every semblance of the life which should be lived as one who
has devoted their life to God. I mean all those things I told you about myself
at the beginning of the sermon would seem to be prime examples of what a life
lived as Christ would have us live, would be. The things Paul was telling the Philippians
about himself really showed what a good and faithful Jew he had been during his
lifetime. He was living life according to the commandments of God. I am living
my life the way someone would expect a good Christian to live his or her life.
But Paul tells us anything we have strived to do through our own efforts be
Christians is worthless, when you compare our striving to actually knowing
Christ Jesus.
Living the appearance of the Christian life, simply
doing and saying all the right things is not what it means to live in such a
way which exemplifies the life of Christ. The Christian life is not so much
about what you what you know, or even what you actually do; it is about who you know and how that knowing
changes everything about you.
Knowing Christ, actually
knowing Christ, challenges long held beliefs. It radically changes our
attitudes and values. It reveals to us how to love, how to truly love the
people around us. It changes what we do, what we say and how we act toward
everyone at in all circumstances.
Life lived as Christian is
about knowing Jesus. Knowing he is more important than living life in any way
which does not wholly exemplify Christ’s love, kindness, gentleness, patience
and compassion at all times. AND it in knowing the ONE who is Christ, we become
more and more Christ-like in all we are. In knowing Christ, we realized the
relationship we have with Jesus Christ is more important than working hard and struggling
to do everything right; more important than striving to be the kind of person
everyone would expect us to be as a Christian.
Paul tells us because of
Christ it is as if he has lost everything. He has nothing. His efforts are not
his own. His goodness is not his own. His righteousness is not his own. His
life is not his own. You see not only are all his efforts to be a righteous man
a loss, but all the good things that he has ever done, everything which made
him an upstanding citizen, everything that made him a nice guy, everything that
made him a child of God, everything that he is, is a loss. His entire life is worthless
compared to knowing Jesus Christ. He is telling us that there is only one thing
in this life that truly matters. The only thing that matters is Jesus Christ.
It does not matter who you
are, it does not matter what you have done. It does not matter how good a
person you are. It does not matter how often you pray, or read your bible. It
does not matter if you are the Pastor of a church or the best saint who walked
this earth. Everything that makes up the appearance of who we are is worthless
compared to simply knowing Jesus. The only thing that matters in this life is
being in relationship with the one who died so that we all might live. Knowing
Jesus is what it is all about and knowing Jesus changes everything; how we see
the world, how we see each other. It changes what we do and what we say. It changes
who we are on a deeper more intimate level than simply “doing the right things”
ever could.
Now, Paul is not saying that
people who are in relationship with Christ should not live their lives a
certain way. Quite the contrary, Paul firmly believes knowing Jesus is the root
of all we do as Christians. We are who we are because we live in relationship with Christ. We live with one
focus, one heart and one mind because the
center of it all is Jesus Christ. We are who we are not only as individuals but
as the body of Christ, as the church, as a community of faith because we live
communally in relationship with Jesus. Through faith in Jesus Christ we can do
all the things that one would expect of children of God, but we do not do it on
their own accord, through or in our own efforts. It is not those things that
make any of us righteous people. Those things are not even ours. We are only righteous
because daily we submit to Christ Jesus, and because daily we renew our faith,
because we join together and live relationship with Jesus Christ. The things we
do to live the way God would have us live, our character, our goodness are not possessions
of ours for which we can be proud or count as belonging to us, they are not the
things that make us the people of God. They are not ours. They belong to Jesus
Christ.
Based on our actions, we very
well might be the most righteous Christian who ever lived on the face of this planet,
but as far as we are concerned that is only worth as much as my father’s comic
books rotting in the city dump. Our righteousness is not ours, it belongs to Jesus.
These lives we live, we do not live so they can be declared by those around us
as “good.” For the goodness of our lives is not truly ours at all.
We do not care about
righteousness for righteousness sake; we only care about knowing Jesus Christ.
Nothing is worth more than that. Paul is telling us there is only one thing
that matters in this world; there is only one thing about us that is worth
anything at all and that is our relationship with Jesus Christ. Compared to
Jesus Christ everything else in this world is worthless, because it is Jesus
Christ who gives everything in our lives any worth at all.
It is not that righteousness
is not something for which we should strive. Paul tells us we should strive for
it until we die, but he also tells us that righteousness is not what matters.
What matters is relationship with Jesus Christ and it is through faith in Jesus
Christ we are able to be righteous. He is the one who makes us righteous and
give us the ability to live righteously. For any righteousness we obtain or
gain, is not ours, it is the righteousness of Jesus Christ given to us by the
Father through Christ. Righteousness is not something we can have on our own, it
is not something that belongs to us. If we begin to think the things we do make us righteous, the way we act makes us righteous, then we are wrong. The
things we do not do make us righteous.
When we begin to think this way, we often find ourselves boasting in something
that is worthless. Any righteousness which may be lived out in our lives is
rubbish if it belongs to us. The only thing in our lives that has any value is
Jesus Christ and it is when all we are, and everything we believe belongs to
ourselves, is given over to Jesus Christ, that anything we do, or say, has any
worth at all. For the only person who can give anything any value is Jesus
Christ.
One of my favorite choruses in
the world sums up this sermon well. It goes like this: – Graham Kendrick
All I once held
dear, built my life upon
All this world
reveres, and wars to own
All I once
thought gain I have counted loss
Spent and worthless now,
compared to this Knowing you, Jesus Knowing you, there is no greater thing
You're my all, you're the best
You're my joy,
my
righteousness
And I love you,
Lord Now my heart's desire is to know you more
To be found in
you and known as yours
To possess by
faith what I could not earn
All-surpassing
gift of righteousness
Oh, to know the
power of your risen life
And to know You
in Your sufferings
To become like
you in your death, my Lord
So with you to
live and never die
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