Beware of every threat to gospel joy
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 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 righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
At one time, to Paul’s spiritually blind eyes, all the things that he has just mentioned had been “to his profit.” He had considered them advantages that would help him gain eternal life. The Judaizers still thought that way. But, Paul said, by God’s grace he had now been led to see all these outward things in their true light and to discover that they had no value at all. All those physical things, all those supposed advantages did not gain real righteousness for him. They only led him away from the only righteousness that saves.
The Lord had led Paul to that great discovery. One day, as Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there, the risen and ascended Lord Jesus had appeared to him. In that moment Paul saw himself as the wretched, helpless sinner he really was. He experienced a complete change of heart and a total reversal of values. The Savior he had been persecuting became his Savior. The cause he had been bent on destroying became his cause. All the things that had been so precious to Saul the Pharisee became and remained forever useless to Paul the sinner saved by grace.
All the things he had formerly regarded as profit he now regarded as less than useless, not because all of them were wrong in themselves but because he had wrongly regarded them as tickets to eternal life. So, like a ship’s captain tossing baggage off a foundering ship so that the ship would not sink, Paul ridded himself of all the things that had been so important to him. In that sense, he lost everything. Yet in his heart he knew that his “loss” was really not loss at all. All the things he had discarded were nothing but dung, rubbish, a worthless mess, for they had stood in the way of his knowing and trusting in Christ.
In losing those earthly things as the object of his trust, Paul had, through the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart, gained Christ. During the 30 or so years that had elapsed between that experience on the Damascus road and the writing of this epistle, Paul’s knowledge of Christ had grown and matured. The more he knew of his Savior and the more deeply he came to rest his confidence on Christ, the more that knowledge eclipsed everything else in beauty and desirability, as the apostle realized that nothing in all the world can be compared with knowing Christ.
It is important for us also to realize that some of the things we might regard as advantage or gain can actually be loss for us if they stand in the way of our knowing and trusting in Jesus. Being born into a Christian home, being instructed and confirmed, receiving a Christian education, and being members of a Christian congregation are all great blessings and advantages in themselves, but we cannot regard them as tickets to eternal life. Likewise, other legitimate blessings of the Lord—like intelligence, money, charm, education, even our own personal moral victories—can actually become hindrances to our salvation, if for any reason we regard them as more important than knowing Christ or put our trust in them instead of placing our whole confidence in Christ.
Through Christ, Paul obtained a righteousness that enables sinners to stand before the judgment seat of God. Before he came to know Jesus, Paul trusted the righteousness that he thought he was earning by the kind of life he led. But once the Scriptures were opened to him, the apostle came to realize how worthless all human righteousness really is.
Gaining one’s own righteousness by keeping the law could be done only by perfectly fulfilling the law. In the law God demands perfect holiness in thought, desire, word, and deed. No sinful human being can be perfectly holy. The righteousness that Paul thought he was earning as a Pharisee, the righteousness the Judaizers still claimed they and their pupils could earn, was worse than worthless.
In Christ, on the other hand, Paul had found real righteousness. Jesus earned this righteousness for sinners by his work as mankind’s substitute. God freely gives that righteousness to sinners through the gospel. Individual sinners personally receive this righteousness by faith, which the Holy Spirit kindles in their hearts through the very gospel message that announces and offers this righteousness. From beginning to end, the righteousness that saves is God’s free gift to sinners. On the basis of this righteousness alone, God accepts sinful human beings as his children. Paul knew that in Christ he had obtained that marvelous righteousness from God. He was not about to give it up or again foolishly place his trust in the worthless human righteousness that had intrigued him before. Nor did he want the Philippians to be deceived by the Judaizers into giving it up.
Over 20 centuries later, the apostle’s inspired words also urge us to place our confidence in the righteousness of Christ alone. The apostle encourages us to count everything else as loss for the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ and finding in him the righteousness that avails before God. He encourages us to reject all righteousness apart from Christ as sham righteousness that cannot save.
Believers, who possess Christ’s righteousness and feel his love in their hearts, will, like the apostle, constantly want to grow in their knowledge of him. They will want to experience his love ever more deeply and respond to that love with lives of loving service to Jesus. The Lord blesses such growth in his believers through the gospel in Word and sacrament. As believers regularly find Christ in his Word, remember their baptisms, and receive Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit reveals the Savior’s beauty to them in ever clearer focus. He binds them ever more closely to that Savior, filling them more and more with the Savior’s love and the desire and power to serve him. Through the Spirit’s work in their hearts, believers experience the power of Christ’s resurrection. They receive from their risen Lord the spiritual strength to overcome sin and grow in Christian living.
They also experience, as Paul did, “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” and “becoming like him in his death.” Believers cannot atone for their own sins by suffering and dying, but they share in the fellowship of Christ’s suffering and become like him in his death. They share this when they endure the scorn and ridicule and even at times the physical persecution of the hostile world, when they daily crucify their own sinful and selfish nature with its lusts and desires, and when they joyfully and uncomplainingly follow their Savior on their path of suffering and trouble in this sinful world to the glory of eternal life with him. Toward that great goal Paul constantly strove; toward that great goal every believer, including each one of us, also daily strives.