“…although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. 7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
LIVIN’ LARGE
Let’s just start right off, trying to get a picture in our own heads of what Paul had going for him in his life as Saul of Tarsus.
In saying he was circumcised on the eighth day he was telling them that right from the beginning he was a good Jew and that his parents were good orthodox Jews because they took him to have it done. So he was from good, faithful stock. “…of the nation of Israel” means he was a citizen of the homeland, so although he was apparently born in Cilicia, which is where Tarsus was, he considered himself an Israelite first, as did his parents.
He might have wanted to make that clear because he was now going by his Greek name, Paul instead of Saul, and his being born in Roman controlled gentile territory automatically made him also a Roman citizen which endowed him with certain rights that were now coming strongly into play in his life.
But yes, not only was he a citizen of Israel his lineage was traceable to the tribe of Benjamin, so he was definitely a Hebrew among Hebrews.
Then there was his religious status. He was a Pharisee, so his zeal for the Law was a given, and his zeal for his religion was marked by his fierce persecution of the church.
Now here is a bold statement for anyone to make because if it isn’t true there is certainly going to be someone around who can come forward and say, ‘Oh, yeah? What about this…?” “…as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless”. WOW!
Insofar as a personal uprightness that is marked by the dedicated and meticulous keeping of the Mosaic Law, Saul could boast that no fault could be found in him. Can you imagine? He might have qualified to be part of the North American Missions Board!
Now each of us could translate all of this into our own lives. I can’t do it for you and you can’t do it for me, because nobody sees us as perfect and wonderful as we see ourselves.
I’m not implying any hypocrisy on the part of Paul here. This is the Bible and Paul was an Apostle of Jesus Christ and every word he wrote is true and divinely inspired.
But just to get an idea, let me list what might be my credentials if I were to place all my trust in the flesh, for being right with God and acceptable with men.
Born and raised in a Methodist home with a father who was in the ministry all of my life until he passed on. An American. Not only that, but a white American. And if you think being white is not an advantage in our fine country in this new millennium, whether you want it to be an advantage or not, then you have not kept your eyes open.
I served in Viet Nam, I have served with distinction as a Police Officer in one of America’s fine communities, and for lo, these past years I have been and still am a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now someone might say, yeah, but you aren’t wealthy. And I would respond, ‘What is wealth?’ What is it to be rich? Donald Trump doesn’t have Lynnea.
So in my own estimation, in the flesh, I have everything going for me and I wouldn’t change a thing. If I were to put my trust in the flesh I would go before God and boast of all these things and hope He wouldn’t bring up the things I left out.
Isn’t that what people do? Isn’t that the attitude you hear expressed? “I’ve tried to live a good and honest life. I have not deliberately wronged anyone. I give to the poor through charities, I am politically and socially active, I am in a profession that offers a valuable service to mankind and I am faithful to my spouse and family. Sure, I don’t go to church much, but I go when the circumstances are appropriate, like to weddings and funerals and after September 11, 2001 and on most Easter Sundays.
So when I die if there is a God and I find myself standing at the pearly gates, if God is fair and just then there is no reason I can think of that He would turn me away.”
And folks, I will assure you that there are people strong in the church who have been there for many years, who with the exception of that line about not going to church much would cite all of these same qualities along with some made up ones as reasons why God should accept them. Jesus talked about them in Matthew 7:20-23.
“So then, you will know them by their fruits. 21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.”
So there you have it. Saul’s credentials, my pathetic credentials, your own that may be going through your own mind, and what Jesus has to say about those who think to gain heaven by their own merit; climb stairs of their own making to stand before the Throne.
The thing is folks, whatever fleshly credentials any of us thinks we can roll out for inspection, none of them even stand up to Saul’s!
His own fleshly boasts, applied to the time he lived in and his position in his particular society by themselves crumble our stairs to bits. And he of the speckless personal record says, “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.”
So let’s save ourselves further embarrassment and roll our lists up and put them away and go on to see where Paul the Apostle is going with this.
LOSING LOSS
First I want you to see that Paul did not technically lose much of anything. Remember his wording, “those things I have counted as loss”.
You don’t reverse circumcision. He was still of the nation of Israel and a Hebrew. He didn’t stop being a Jew.
Ok, he was probably no longer accepted in the “Paternal order of Pharisees”, otherwise known as “POP”s. “Or the Gentile Booting Glee Club”, otherwise known as CBGC. (For those of you who do not know, CBGC can also stand for the Colorado Baptist General Convention, but all similarities to that organization and the Gentile Booting Glee Club are purely coincidental.)
But let me tell you something friends. When a person comes to faith in Christ they don’t lose anything that is worthwhile in their lives. God doesn’t just say, “OK, now you’re a Christian so I’m stripping you of everything you have and all of your past and starting over.”
There is a spiritual sense in which that takes place as you are made a new creature in Christ (2 Cor 5:17), but you are still you. Were you an American? Then you’re still an American unless you change that.
Your history is still your history for good or for bad. All the good things in your life are still intact unless you yourself have taken steps to change them, and that’s your doing, not God’s.
Yes, we know that God sometimes requires we let go of some things because both He and we know that we’ve idolized them in our heart; eg., the rich young ruler who Jesus told to go and give all his possessions to the poor as a requisite to following Him. But for the most part the basics and certainly the history of your life don’t change when you become a Christian.
But Paul is counting them, even the things that still exist, as loss? What does he mean by that?
Look at verse 8 and let’s talk about it?
“More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,”
Do you see the two ways in which he employs the word ‘loss’ in this verse?
Well, here we go again… they are two different Greek words. Very similar; in fact the second one is a slight derivative of the first. But they tell us more specifically what his attitude was toward his benefits in the flesh.
Put simply, the first has to do with damage to something and the second has to do with forfeiting or casting away that which is damaged.
I might say it like this. “The computer was damaged beyond repair, so I threw it away.”
Paul again. “I count all things to be damaged and useless, in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have cast all those things away from me in the rubbish heap in order that I may gain Christ.”
Now we’ve already said that he didn’t actually lose most of those things he listed, so what happened? He cast them away in the sense that they no longer held priority in his life. The prestige of them was gone, the power of them was gone, the position of them was gone. Cast away from his thinking like rubbish.
Why did he consider them a loss? Because faith in those things held him back from the infinitely greater value of knowing Christ. Hear the contrast? They are loss, knowing Him is value. More than that, they are a total loss, where knowing Him is of surpassing value.
“Surpassing” = higher, better, excellent, supreme.
Let’s see what it is about knowing Him that so far surpasses the benefits of the flesh and this world.
LOVING LIFE
In contrast to the things Paul listed as items upon which to place confidence in the flesh, the surpassing benefits of knowing Christ are things that must be given entirely from above and can never be attained to in the flesh; cannot even be attempted in the flesh.
James wasn’t talking about material things when he said,
“ Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” Jas 1:17,18
In saying ‘He brought us forth’ he means He gave us life and in saying ‘by the word of truth’ he means the truth of the gospel. That is the perfect gift that comes down from the Father of lights.
First there is righteousness. Now that is not a reference to an upstanding character or a self-rightness through human moral effort. That is why Paul clarifies his statement with ‘…not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law…’ as in, the keeping of the Law; even the perfect keeping of it were that possible.
No, this righteousness means the ‘state of a man as he ought to be; that which makes him acceptable to God’.
With only one exception this same word is translated ‘righteousness’ through the entire New Testament. It refers to right standing with God. It goes like this. God declares the person right with Him through faith in Christ. He sees belief and He says, ‘you are now right with Me. You now stand as you ought. You have righteousness.” We also call this ‘justification’. You are justified before Him. He finds no fault in you, as He sees you completed through the perfect work of His Son in the atonement.
By the way, as a point of interest you may want to go later to Romans 5:10 where that exception is that I mentioned, where a different word is translated ‘righteousness’ and meditate on what is being communicated there. The word pertains to a self righteousness – a right standing through human effort.
Consider its impossibility.
So that is the first step and it is God’s step. It is His work, bringing us into Christ and declaring us right with Him on the basis of faith, and we understand that to be a reference to a very specific faith, or a specific belief, which is in the good news of Jesus Christ; His atoning death and resurrection.
Then we come to verse 10, one of the most powerful verses in the Bible, and we note as we begin that again, it is all God’s doing that Paul has found himself in this position.
I want you to consider that all those things Paul has cast away as rubbish he cast away after all these things in verse 10 came upon him. He did not make some deliberate decision to deprioritize every important thing in his life and then come to Jesus and say ‘Ok, here I am, I’m going to believe in you now’.
No, he was still holding all those things, and himself for having those things, in very high regard when Jesus knocked him in the dirt and called him into belief and service. Actually, it would probably not be a stretch to assume that Paul’s reprioritizing of his life came progressively and as he learned from his Lord in the desert; just like the rest of us.
So there is the order of things and it is always that way, because of our own accord we do not seek for God. He calls us and when we respond to the call in faith He places us in a state of righteousness with Him and then with the help of the Holy Spirit our life gets reprioritized and as it does, joy and peace grow in abundant supply.
Now I may have misled when I said ‘first’ there is righteousness. I did not mean to imply that there is going to be a progression in the time/space continuum of these things listed in verse 10. I only meant that everything begins with God declaring us right with Him. That’s when the reprioritizing begins but that is also the moment we are given life from above and placed in the state that makes all of these next things true of us.
They are not things we work for one at a time like moving up the Amway ladder or something. Remember, the deprioritizing of the former things didn’t come first. So Paul isn’t telling us that he cast those away in order to attain these; he is saying that this is the purpose for which he was laid hold of, because God wanted them to be true of Paul and then He wanted Paul to go and call others in.
To know Christ and the power of His resurrection. How is that? How can we know the power of His resurrection? Is Paul talking about getting some divine power to use on others? Power to raise them from the dead, maybe?
No! He means to convey what he has and is experiencing. That life from above. Christian, the moment you believed you died. The life that you live now is by the very same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead. You now live in resurrection power. Listen.
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Gal 2:20
and
“…and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,…” Col 2:11-13
How did He make you alive? Resurrection power! You’re living in it! One day, in that great gettin’ up morning, He will resurrect and glorify your physical body. But you have been alive by resurrection power in the spirit since you first believed. Here’s another reference for later reading; Romans 6:4-11. It’s not talking about your future; it’s talking about your now.
Doesn’t that top anything on your credentials list?
“…and the fellowship of His sufferings…”
Oh, darn. We have to talk about that? Yep. Remember, this is part of what constitutes ‘surpassing value’ in knowing Christ.
“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” Rom 8:16,17
It’s part of the package, believer. Paul called it a fellowship. He kind of makes it sound like a privilege, doesn’t he? Well, it is. Another name for it is sanctification. He talked about righteousness, or justification, now he’s talking about sanctification. Purification. Making us more like Jesus.
He came into the world and the world hated and rejected Him. He was despised and rejected of men, says the prophet. He suffered, and He suffered ultimately unto death for you. Why, if we say that we are in Him, that we are heirs with Him, that we are dead and raised with Him, that we are right with the Father through Him, why would we then do an about face and say, ‘but we shouldn’t have to suffer with Him’?
The world hated and rejected Him but it can no longer get its hands on Him so it is going to go after those who identify with Him; those who look like Him. If you’re not suffering at all in this life, you may want to examine yourself and find out if you resemble Jesus at all.
Although in a very real sense, if you are a true believer, a true Christ-follower, you are suffering with Him. You are sharing in His sufferings. You’re still here. Think about it. You are a justified child of God, a citizen of Heaven, heir with Christ who is now glorified and sitting at the Father’s right hand, but you’re still here.
You are called to walk above sin in a sin-wrecked world, you are expected to endure the rain falling on you as well as your unsaved neighbor, you ache, you hunger, you tire, you keep a check on your peripheral vision for dangers because you live in a dangerous world, and so forth. You continue the sufferings of Christ in this world because you are not of this world. It’s a fellowship. Christ is the head of the fellowship and the rest of us are junior partners.
Ok, now here is the part where Paul definitely is talking about his future and ours, but this is something I want to make clear. His wording here, “…in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” does not mean that he is in some way working toward it by human effort. What he means is that the resurrection is dependent on his and our having been placed in this state of righteousness wherein we fellowship in Christ’s sufferings and are identified in His death.
Like Lewis said, ‘nothing in you that has not died can ever be resurrected’.
We’re going to go on and talk on this subject some more. For now let me wrap this up today.
Through all of this there is a ‘now’ element and a ‘later’ element.
You have to understand, true believer in Christ, that in God’s economy you are complete and your salvation is complete. That’s the ‘now’ element.
Hear the wording of these statements:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” John 5:24
“…and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.”
Rom 8:30
This means a number of very significant things. It means you are entirely acceptable to God and you will never be more acceptable to Him than the moment you were saved, because you were saved according to Christ’s righteousness which was already perfect.
It means you can never be less acceptable to God for the same reason.
It means your place in Heaven and your glorification is as good as already done because the eternal God already sees you that way.
Then there is the ‘later’ element.
There is the ‘attaining to the resurrection from dead’. That means there is a time still in each of our futures when we will fully realize the spiritual truth we’ve just been discussing. There will be a moment when we are bodily resurrected from the dead and transformed into His glorious state.
There will be a moment ‘later’ when all the things God says about us ‘now’ will come to pass as they must because He has already declared it, He has already seen it, and everything in the sanctifying process, including suffering, is working to that later moment when at last we will stand there, face to face with Jesus.
“Oh, that will be glory, be glory for me!”
This is the life of peace and joy, Christian; to finally realize that you are not who you were. You are God’s eternal child and heir with His Son. The things of this world do not define you any more. Not your position, not worldly prestige or material gain, not your physical heritage or the things that the world counts as worthy.
They are damaged goods. They are dung. Cast them away from yourself and place all your confidence in the One who called you, justified you, sanctified you, glorified you, and walk with Him hand in hand until you finally attain to the glorious resurrection from the dead,
“Made like Him, like Him we rise,
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies!
Alleluia!” - Wesley
