Philippians 3:8-21 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Philippians 3:8-21

• Philippians 3:8-9
• 8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith.
  • Paul has just said that he came to the conclusion that all his Jewish privileges and attainments were nothing but a total loss. But it might be argued that was a snap decision later to be regretted and reversed
    • So here he says; “I came to the conclusion and I still hold that view. It was not a decision made in a moment of impulse, but one by which I still stand fast.”
  • In this passage, the keyword is righteousness. The Greek word used is always difficult to translate in Paul’s letters. The trouble is not that of seeing its meaning; the trouble is that of finding one English word which covers all that it includes. Here’s what Paul had in mind when he spoke of righteousness
    • The great basic problem of life is to find fellowship with God and to be at peace and in friendship with Him. The way to that fellowship is through righteousness, through the kind of life, spirit, and attitudes to himself which God desires
    • Because of that, righteousness has the meaning of a right relationship with God. To paraphrase this passage and to set down not so much what Paul says as to what he meant, we get the following
      • “All my life I have been trying to get into a right relationship with God. I tried to find it by strict adherence to the Jewish law, but I found the law and all its ways worse than useless to achieve that end. I found it no better than skubala.”
      • Skubala has two meanings. In everyday language it means that which is thrown to the dogs; and in medical language it means excrement (dung)
      • So Paul is saying; “I found the law and all its ways of no more use in helping me to get into a right relationship with God than the garbage thrown in the dump. So I gave up trying to create a goodness of my own; I came to God in humble faith, as Jesus told me to do, and I found that fellowship I has sought for so long.”
      • Paul had discovered that a right relationship with God is based not on law but on faith in Jesus Christ. It is not achieved by any individual by given by God, not won by works but accepted in trust
      • So he says: “Out of my experience I tell you that the Jewish way is wrong and futile. You will never get into a right relationship with God by your own efforts in keeping the law. You can get into a right relationship with God only by taking Jesus Christ at His word and by accepting what God Himself offers to you”
  • The basic thought of this passage is the uselessness of law and the sufficiency of knowing Christ and accepting the offer of God’s grace. The very language Paul uses to describe the law—dung—shows the utter disgust for the law which his own frustrated efforts to live by it had brought him; and the joy that shines through the passage shows how triumphantly adequate he found the grace of God in Jesus Christ
• Philippians 3:10-11
• 10 My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, 11 assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
  • Paul has already spoken of the supreme value above all else of the knowledge of Christ. He now returns to that thought and defines more closely what he means. It is important to note the the verb which he uses for know. It almost always indicates personal knowledge. It is not simply intellectual knowledge, the knowledge of certain facts or even principles. It is the personal experience of another person
  • We may see the depth of this word from the way the OT uses it. The OT uses to know as sexual intercourse
    • Genesis 4:1 “The man was intimate with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.”
  • This verb indicates the most intimate knowledge of another person. It is not Paul’s aim to know about Christ, but personally to know Him. To know Christ means certain things
    • It means to know the power of His resurrection
      • For Paul the resurrection was not simply a past even in history, however amazing. It was not simply something which had happened to Jesus, however important it was for him. It was a dynamic power which operated in the life of the individual Christian. We cannot know everything hat Paul meant by this phrase; but the resurrection of Christ is the great dynamic, the driving force in at least three different directions
        • It is the guarantee of the importance of this life and of this body in which we live
          • It was in the body that Christ rose, and it is this body which He sanctifies
        • It is the guarantee of the life to come
          • Because Christ lives, we shall also; His victory is our victory
        • It is the guarantee that in life, in death, and beyond death the presence of the risen Lord is always with us
          • It is the proof that His promise to be with us always to the end of the world is true
      • The resurrection of Christ is the guarantee that this life is worth living and that the physical body is sacred; it is the guarantee that death is not the ned of life and that there is a world beyond; it is the guarantee that nothing in life or in death can separate us from Him
    • It means to know the fellowship of His sufferings
      • Again and again, Paul returns to the though that when Christians suffer, they are in some strange way sharing the ver suffering of Christ and are even filling up that suffering. To suffer for the faith is not a penalty; it is a privilege, for thereby we share the very work of Christ
    • It means to be so united with Christ that day by day we come more to share in His death, so that finally we share in His resurrection
      • To know Christ means that we share the way He walked; we share the cross He bore; we share the death H died; and finally we share the life He lives for evermore
  • To know Christ is not to be skilled in any theoretical or theological knowledge; it is to know Him with such intimacy that in the end we are as united with Him as we are with those whom we love on earth, and that, just as we share their experiences, we also share His
• Philippians 3:12-16
• 12 Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, 14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore, let all of us who are mature think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you. 16 In any case, we should live up to whatever truth we have attained.
  • Vital to the understanding of this passage is the correct interpretation of the Greek word teleios, which occurs twice. The word perfect in verse 12 and mature in verse 15.
  • Teleios has a variety of interrelated meanings. In the vast majority of them, it signifies not what we might call abstract perfection but a kind of functional perfection, adequacy for some given purpose
  • It means full grown as distinct from undeveloped; for example, it is used of a fully grown adult as opposed to an undeveloped youth. It is used to mean mature in mind, and therefore means one who is qualified in a subject as opposed to someone who is still learning. When it is used of offerings, it means without blemish and fit to offer God. When it is used of Christians, it often means baptized persons who are full members of the Church, as opposed to those who are still under instruction. In the days of the early Church, it is quite often used to describe martyrs. Martyrs are said to be perfected by the sword, and the day of their death is said to be the day of their perfecting. The idea is that a Christian’s maturity cannot go beyond martyrdom
  • So when Paul uses the word in verse 12, he is saying that he is not by any means a complete Christian but is always pressing on
    • He says that he is trying to grasp that for which he has been grasped by Christ
      • Paul felt that when Christ stopped him on the Damascus road, He had a vision and a purpose for Paul; and Paul felt that all his life he was bound to press on, in case he should fail Jesus and frustrate His dream. Everyone is grasped by Christ for some purposes, and therefore we should all press on throughout our lives so that we may grasp that purpose for which Christ grasped us
    • To that end, Paul says two things
      • He is forgetting the things which are behind. That is to say, he will never glory in any of his achievements or use them as an excuse for relaxation. IN effect, Paul is saying that Christians must forget all that they have done and remember only what they still have to do. In the Christian life, there is no room for those who want to rest on their achievements or titles
      • Then Paul says that he is also reaching forward to what is ahead. The word he uses for reaching is used of a racer going hard for the finish line. It describes someone with eyes for nothing but the goal. It describes the person who is going flat out for the finish. So Paul says that in the Christian life we must forget every past achievement and remember only the goal which lies ahead
  • There is no doubt that Paul is speaking to the antinomians. They were those who denied that there was any law at all in the Christian life. They declared that they were within the grace of God and that it did not matter what they did; God would forgive. No further discipline and no further effort were necessary. Paul is insisting that to the end of the day the Christian life is the life of an athlete pressing onwards to a goal which is always in front
  • In verse 15 he uses teleios again, and says that this must be the attitude of those who are mature. What he means is; “All who have come to be mature in the faith and know what Christianity is must recognize the discipline, the effort, and the agony of the Christian life.”
  • They may think differently; but if they are truly honest, God will make it plain to them that they must never relax their efforts or lower their standards but must press towards the goal, until the end
  • As Paul saw it, Christians are the athletes of Christ
• Philippians 3:17-21
• 17 Join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us. 18 For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame; and they are focused on earthly things. 20 Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21 He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.
  • Few preachers would dare to make the appeal with which Paul begins this section. Most preachers begin with the handicap that they have to say “Do as I say, not as I do”. (I like to say that part of my job is stepping on toes, and I step on mine just as much if not more so than others”
  • Paul could not only say “listen to my words” but also “follow my example”
  • German scholar Johannes Bengel translates this passage a little differently; “Become fellow imitator with me in imitating Jesus Christ”; but it is far more likely—as nearly all other interpreters are agreed—that Paul was able to invite his friends not simply to listen to him but also to imitate him
  • There were those in the church at Philippi whose conduct was an open scandal and who showed themselves to be the enemies of the cross of Christ. Who they were is not certain, but it is quite certain that they lived gluttonous and immoral lives and used their so called Christianity to justify themselves. We can only guess who they may have been
    • They may have been the Gnostics. The Gnostics were heretics who tried ti intellectualize Christianity and make a kind of philosophy out of it. They began with the principle that from the beginning of time there had always been two realities—spirit and matter
      • Spirit is altogether good, and matter is altogether evil
      • It is because the world was created out of this flawed matter that sin and evil are in it. If then matter is essentially evil, the body is essentially evil and will remain evil not matter what you do with it. Therefore, do what you like with it; since it is evil anyhow, it makes no difference what you do with it. 
      • So thesis Gnostics taught that gluttony, sexual promiscuity, and drunkenness were of no importance because they affect only the body, which is of no importance
    • There was another party of Gnostics who held a different kind of doctrine. They argued that individuals could not be called complete until they had experienced everything that life had to offer, both good and bad
      • It was everyone’s duty to plum the depths of sin just as much as to scale the heights of virtue
      • Within the church there were two sets of people to whom these accusations might apply
        • There were those who distorted the principle of Christian freedom
          • They said that in Christianity all law had gone and that Christians were at liberty to do what they liked. They turned Christian liberty into unChristian license and gloried in giving in to their passions
        • There were those who distorted the Christian doctrine of grace
          • They said that since grace was wide enough to cover every sin, people could sin as they like and not worry; it would make no difference to the all-forgiving love of God
      • So the people Paul attacks may have been the Gnostics who produced false arguments to justify their sinn, or they may have ben misguided Christians who twisted the loveliest things into justification for the ugliest sins
  • Whoever they were, Paul reminds them of one great truth; “Our citizenship is in heaven”
    • Here was a picture the Philippians could understand. Philippi was a Roman colony. The citizens were mostly soldiers who had served their time and who had been rewarded with full citizenship. The great characteristic of these colonies was that wherever they were, they remained fragments of Rome. Roman-style clothes were worn; Roman magistrates governed; Latin was spoken; Roman justice was administered; Roman morals were observed. Even in the most remote regions, they remained unshakably Roman
    • Paul says to the Philippians: “Just as the Roman colonists never forget that they belong to Rome, you must never forget that you are citizens of heaven; and your conduct must match your citizenship”
  • Paul finishes with the Christian hope. Christians await the coming of Christ, at which everything will be changed
    • As we are now, our bodies ore subject to changed and decay, illness and death, the bodies of a state of humiliation compared with the glorious state of the risen Christ; but the day will come when we will lay aside this mortal body which we now possess and become like Jesus Himself
    • The hope of all Christians is that the day will come when their humanity will be changed into nothing less than the divinity of Christ, and when the necessary lowliness of mortality will be changed into the essential splendor of the deathless life