“The Problem with Being Good”
Philippians 3:1-11
It has been said that there are really only three ways to live in life. One is the way of the rebellious. The second is the way of the religious and the third is the way of the redeemed. We see all three of these being played out in the parable of the prodigal son. A story Jesus told about two brothers. The younger brother was impatient. Both of them knew that their father was leaving an inheritance for them but the younger brother wanted his and he wanted it now. So he went to his father and asked him for his share of the estate. Took the money and ran. He ran as far away from home as he could and not only did he spend it all, he wasted it all. He practically threw it away. He is perhaps the single best example the Bible gives us of the way of the rebellious.
The older brother was the exact opposite. He stated home, worked hard and always seem to do what he was supposed to do. But he was not very happy. And he is an example of the way of the religious.
Now when I use the word religious I want you to understand how I am using it. Religion can be defined as man reaching up to God. For many this is what they believe they must do for God to be able to stay in his good graces. For many religion is all about following all the rules, carrying out certain rituals, going through the motions. It’s about works. They do all the right things but they do them for all the wrong reasons. They are fulfilling obligations but their heart is not in it. And that’s how it was with the older brother in this story. It probably will not surprise you that the older brother didn’t really like his younger brother. Perhaps not at all. That’s the way religious people can be-they can be smug and self-righteous and they often look down on people they think are not as good as they are.
Now in case you don’t know, both of these types, the rebellious and the religious-both are actually separated from God. When it comes to the rebellious types, what separates them from God is how bad they are. How sinful they are. When it comes to the religious types, what separates them from God is that they depend on their own goodness and works to put them in a relationship with God. The problem is how good they are or perhaps we should say how good they think they are.
The real issue of course is where we place our confidence. The way of the rebellious says “I don’t obey anyone’s rules, I have my own rules-I don’t need God to accept me”... The way of the religious says I will obey every rule and as a result I expect God to accept me... After all I’ve earned it. So both the rebellious and the religious place their confidence in themselves.
Paul puts himself forward as a prime example of this. It’s like he says you need me to illustrate this point to make it clearer? You need an object lesson. Look right here. I am the example.
Verse four. Paul says if anyone has a reason to be confident in the flesh-if anyone has a reason to think they are good enough-I have even more reasons. Then it’s like he says if anyone has a reason to brag I have even more reasons. And here they are.
• I was circumcised on the eighth day. Jews believed that if they were circumcised they were automatically in a relationship with God. This teaching goes all the way back into the OT book of Genesis. But if a man is going to be in a relationship with the father certainly more is required that a mark on the body. By the time we reach the OT book of Deuteronomy we have a fuller understanding of this as the writer makes it clear that it is our heart that actually must be changed. He says the Lord will change our hearts to make us love him more. In other words, he will remove the excess, the things that are unnecessary in order to please him.
• Next point in his argument. He was of the race of Israel. When Jacob encountered God in Genesis 32 he struggle with God’s purpose throughout the night-the Scripture says that he and God wrestled until daybreak. And Jacob said to God, I will not let go until you bless me. And it was because of his persistence that God gave him a new name-your name is no longer Jacob-your name is Israel. Paul claims that standing here.
Now one of the things Paul pauses to describe to us is the difference in circumcision and what he refers to as mutilation. There are three differences he mentions.
(1) We worship in spirit. It is not about rituals. It’s about the heart.
(2) The only bragging right we have is what Christ has done for us. Never what we have done for him.
(3) We can never place confidence in human things. Our confidence cannot be in what we have done is what he has done. The Jew trusted himself. The believer puts his trust in Christ
• He was of the tribe of Benjamin. The first King of Israel was Saul. No doubt this man Saul was named after King Saul. Now is the apostle Paul. Paul was saying I’m not just an Israelite, I am named after the King.
• He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. What does this mean? The Jews were being dispersed all over the world. But many refused to learn the language of the people where they were sent. They refused to follow the customs. On occasion culture would take over and they would forget their own language and become Greek speaking. Now a Hebrew was a Jew who chose to keep the Hebrew language and never lose it. They learned to speak the Greek but they would never lose the Hebrew. Paul could still speak Hebrew. He was a trained Pharisee. This is a claim Paul makes more than once. You may not know that there were not that many Pharisees at that time-never more than 6000-these Pharisees separated themselves from the rest of the population and their primary goal was to keep the law and every detail of the law. Paul said I was one of them.
• He was a persecutor of the church. This was a thing Paul never forgot. He mentions it on numerous occasions and Paul was never ashamed to confess that once he hated the Christ whom he now loved and that he tried to destroy the church he now served.
• He was the ultimate legalist. In this sense, Paul was blameless. There was no area of the law he did not fulfill.
And it is as though Paul then says let me lay all of these here on the credit side. My balance sheet. Then he says, but actually I need to write them off like a bad debt because all the things that I used to do for credit were actually useless.
All my accomplishments... Toss them out
All my ancestry... Doesn’t matter
All my words... Throw them in the trash
All are useless-I put them aside some so that I can accept the free grace of God. And basically Paul is saying as a result I have the right to speak because I am nothing and he is everything. Verses 8-9. Now everything has been shifted from the profit column to the loss column. And in case you think this was some rash decision, a snap decision he gave little thought to, Paul says I came to that conclusion and I STILL stand by that decision.
The key word here in these two verses is the word righteousness. We see it four times here. It is a difficult word to translate from the Greek, not because we don’t know its meaning; the trouble is finding one English word which covers all it includes. Listen. Paul is saying here, all my life I have been trying to get into a right relationship with God. I tried to find it by keeping the law; by sticking to every detail. But in doing so I found it to be useless. Something I would throw in the garbage. So I gave up trying to create a goodness of my own and now I’m just going to do what Jesus tells me to do. This relationship with Christ will never be achieved/earned; we will never win God over by our works; we will win him by our trust. Trust is the only way we can enter a right relationship with the father.
In closing he says, versus 10-11. This matters so stay with me. Paul speaks again of the value of the knowledge of Christ. The Greek verb here means to know. But there is a difference in knowing about something (intellectual knowledge) and what we call personal experience. Is not Paul’s aim to know about Christ; it is his name to know Christ. You see the problem with being good is that we can never be good enough.
We can only learn so much from the experience of others. We need to experience it also to fully understand. How much of God do you know for yourself? Someone else cannot experience the resurrection for you. Illustration. Lemon. For Paul that experience is wrapped up in the resurrection. The resurrection was not just an event in history; not just something that had happened to Jesus. It was a guarantee of Paul’s future. And of ours as well. It is a guarantee that this life is worth living. It is a guarantee that Jesus is with us in every area of life-every day is a guarantee that death is not the end. It is a guarantee that nothing; absolutely nothing can ever separate us from Jesus Christ.
