It’s Time For A Spiritual Audit – Philippians 3:7-10 Series

When we do the spiritual audit, we need to ask the question, what's the most important thing? Because some people put themselves, they honor themselves. I'm the most important thing. And so the solution here that Paul is saying is that we need to make it J.O.Y. Jesus, others, and you, that's the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I underlined the word knowing. We'll come back to that in a little bit as we understand it. This idea of making Christ the most important thing is important because it's different than saying, “I'm just going to put Jesus in my back pocket, I'm going to add Him to the rest of my stuff that I'm doing.” Really Jesus takes over our lives. We give ourselves 100% to Him, and everything else comes in balance.

He's going to make a real strong statement. In the next phrase he says – For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish. The word rubbish is a word describing garbage. It's a very strong word that he's using there. And he takes all the things he thought were really important and he counts them or he considers them as not important at all. They're like trash compared to knowing Jesus. In order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

And now we're going to come to this idea of righteousness. Because sometimes even when we come to our spiritual lives… So far we haven't really talked about our spiritual lives. We’ve just talked about the things we value. But if we talk about our spiritual lives, what do we start thinking about in terms of value? Do we value the good deeds that we do, the righteousness that we have? If you ask some people like the man on the street, you say to him, “Hey, are you going to heaven when you die?” “Oh yeah. Probably. I've done more good than bad in my life.” Well what that person is saying is I'm relying on my righteousness, and I think I've done a pretty good job of life. Or another person might say, “No way. Things I've done, they're never going to let me into heaven.” That person's got the same error, just on the other side. They're thinking God's going to somehow measure whether they've done more good or bad, and that's going to determine whether they get into heaven or not.

Well here's what Paul says. He says – In order to gain Christ (verse 9) and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. He used the word faith twice there. So we put this idea back into the context of the passage. We're seeing look, rejoice in the Lord, don't put confidence in yourself, consider all the things you value, set them aside for knowing Christ, and it's going to help you to rejoice in the Lord. It's going to put a more stable picture inside of your heart so you can rejoice every day. Because your relationship with Christ doesn't change. It's there continually. You're not relying on your own righteousness. You're not relying on the values that you have. It's all about Christ and your relationship with Him. Really a powerful statement that Paul is making here.