Philippians - Lesson 13

I. Historical & Theological Context

In our lesson now, we're going to look at chapter 3 of Philippians. We're going to look at the first 14 verses. There's a lot going on in these verses, so I might suggest buckle your seatbelts. Here we go. We will be looking at several key historical and theological points. We're going to ask, "Who is this group, the mutilation group that Paul talks about early in the chapter?" We're going to look at how Paul describes himself both before he knew Christ and was called as an apostle to the Gentiles, and now how he sees his life as an apostle to the Gentiles. We will also look at the theological impact of Paul's teaching here in four areas: the righteousness of God, works of the law, faith in Christ, and knowing Christ in resurrection and in suffering.

Lots to do, but we start with a call by Paul to rejoice. He starts, "Rejoice in the Lord." It's no trouble for me to write the same things to you again. This joy that he encourages the Philippians to embrace does not mean "be happy." Paul, I mean, he's writing from prison, so he recognizes life can be hard. His joy is rooted in the confidence that the day of Christ will come. It's rooted in the confidence that even now, at this moment, he is a beloved child of God and God is caring for him. So this joy is not only emotion, although I think it can, Paul can be upbeat or have a confidence not based on circumstances, but based on knowing the God who made all things. He may be thinking here, Paul may be thinking of the book of Nehemiah 8:10, where we read, "The joy of the Lord is my strength."

So today, I think when we read something like this, "Rejoice in the Lord," and we read, "The joy of the Lord is my strength," it might feel like we are either ignoring circumstances, but that's not what Paul is about. Nor should we take a moment here to think about what strength means or where Paul draws his strength today. We often equate strength with autonomy, having the ability to choose. The Philippian believers, many of them would have almost no autonomy in the way that we think of it today. They don't have political power. They don't vote for leaders. They don't have government safety nets like in the United States, Social Security. There's not a thriving community that has a middle class. There's not new jobs or free education up through age 18. Often they're living hand to mouth, and of course, many people today also experience that. Paul knows that—war, refugees, famine, hardships in a family.

So when Paul is saying, "Rejoice in the Lord," he's not ignoring any of those realities. He's living in those realities, as are the Philippian believers, but they are focused on God's provision and what God will bring. Paul writes, "It's not a trouble to write these things to you again, it's a safeguard for you." Probably in Paul's previous visit, he has talked about what he is going to be saying in verse 2. And he has also talked with them and exhibited, modeled for them this attitude of rejoicing confidence in the Lord. The safeguard that he mentions here, "This is a safeguard for you," what he is writing to them is something he's encouraging them to continue to go back to and remind themselves of—the truth that Paul is describing to them, the truth of the gospel, the truth of God's provisions.

II. The Opponent Group

And now let's take a look in verse 2 here, the specifics of what Paul is concerned about, that the Philippians, even if they don't face it with the kind of intensity that the Galatians do, nevertheless, Paul is still very concerned about some teachings and people who are teaching it, that he's alerting the Philippians to. Okay, I think I've set the stage. You're curious about who these people are. Let's take a look at that. Paul describes these people as dogs, evildoers, and those who mutilate the flesh. Now, what he means by that, that's a phrase, it's a play on words in the Greek, and it sounds very similar to the word in Greek "circumcision," but it means "mutilation." What he is referencing here is adult male circumcision, that there are certain teachers claiming to be Christian but bringing a gospel that Paul doesn't approve of, and they're coming in as part of their teaching. They're saying that these Gentile believers who are adult men need to also undergo circumcision to be full members of the church of God.

These people, Paul says, are actually dangerous because what they're arguing is that to be a full member of the church, you have to be Jewish. Probably this description here in verse 2 is describing a group that is also described by Paul in verse 18 of the same chapter. There, Paul says these people live as enemies of the cross. So not only are they evildoers, as Paul describes dogs, which we'll talk about in a minute, but they probably also do not embrace the cross. They don't see the cross as having a central role in their explanation of the Christian faith. I don't think that they are arguing that people need to earn their salvation. This is not a call for, quote-unquote, "legalism." Rather, it's a call for the church to call for the lifestyle of the community, the expressions of being holy, to include Sabbath rest, circumcision, and food laws, most specifically not eating pork.

We will find that the church had addressed this in Acts chapter 15. So I want to go to Acts chapter 15 here. Luke tells us at the beginning of Acts chapter 15 that there is a group, certain individuals that came from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers, "Unless you're circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." And we'll pick up Peter's words. He addresses the group here, the Jerusalem Council, sometimes called, and he says to them—and he's describing a story that actually took place in Jerusalem, took place in chapter 10 of the book of Acts. Three times Peter will describe the story, and if we hear it three times, we know it's like God underlining it for us. We should pay attention. So Peter here in chapter 15 says that God made a choice that you Gentiles would hear the message, the message of the gospel, and believe. God, he knows the heart. He showed us Jews that he accepted the Gentiles when we spoke that message by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us. He didn't discriminate between us and them. He purified their hearts by faith. So we believe that it's through the grace of the Lord Jesus that we're saved, and the grace of the Lord Jesus that they're saved just as they are.

The Apostle James agreed as the council was wrapping up. He concluded, "This is my judgment," based on—it was a group agreement—"that we should not make it difficult for Gentiles who are turning to God. So here's what we'll say, that they should abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. For the Law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." In other words, the Gentiles know the basic laws of God. They know that they must avoid pagan idolatry. Pagan idolatry at this time included offering meat sacrifices to the god or the goddess, and the Gentiles believed that the god participated in that meal. So eating foods polluted by idols is a way of saying that you're engaged in religious activity of paganism. The same would be the meat of strangled animals and blood, because that refers to how the meat would have been handled, how the animals would have been treated in the sacrifice at these pagan temples.

This raises just a historical note I should mention. Most people in the ancient world did not have meat from animals in their daily diet. It was too expensive. So maybe they would have bird, like a pheasant or a chicken or a dove or something like that if they were fortunate, and many of them would have had fish as their source of protein, but most would have gotten protein from plants. I mean, they didn't talk like that, getting protein and carbs and fat; just wanted food. But my point is that it would only be for most people, it would only be during citywide festivals that they would have ever eaten meat. And so it will have—these Gentiles who come to faith, they will associate pork or lamb, maybe cow, although less likely, goat, sheep, right? That's lamb. They will associate that pretty directly with pagan festivals. And this is what the church faces. This is why Paul will talk about meat sacrificed to idols in two chapters, 8 and 10 of 1 Corinthians. We find it also in the book of Revelation, in one of the letters to the churches, a note about eating meat sacrificed to idols, eating food polluted by idol worship.

So James is saying to the churches—and Peter agrees—we cannot insist that Gentiles take up Jewish practices of Sabbath, of food laws. The food laws were not connected—the food laws in the Old Testament, of course, are not connected at all to idol worship. They are laws that govern the Israelites and, in Paul's day, the Jewish people. So they don't need to follow Sabbath. They don't need to follow food laws like eating barbecue pork or a cheeseburger. And these Gentiles cannot participate in sexual immorality. The sexual immorality that they're probably referencing here is the Gentile real double standards, we would call it today. Gentile men did not have to stay in a monogamous relationship with their wife but could visit prostitutes. Often those were slaves, and that would not be considered adultery. And so when James mentions to abstain from sexual immorality, he's saying that because he wants to enforce the sexual values of God as laid out in the Old Testament, which were not followed by many, were not valued in the larger Greco-Roman world.

So how did this teaching manifest itself in the communities of Paul when he talks to the Galatians? And it's hard to know whether the Jerusalem Council happened before or after Paul writes the letter to the Galatians. That's a puzzle that scholars continue to try and solve. But let me just say that in Galatians, in the letter to the Galatians, Paul says that some in the church have been bewitched, that their mind has been captured by those who are encouraging Gentiles to be circumcised, in addition to confessing Christ. This is all in order to be full members of the church. It's not that you get circumcised in order to be saved, but rather circumcised so that you can express your holiness in that way. So as we get back to Philippians, Paul is arguing when he mentions circumcision, in fact, he will say to the church, "We are the circumcision." This is the beginning of chapter 3, verse 3. "We are the circumcision." And that, for Paul, means we are the ones who are a holy community. As Peter will say, "a royal priesthood, a holy nation." We who follow Jesus, the Messiah, can claim that title.

Paul argues with this play on words of mutilation and circumcision that Gentiles can be full members of God's people; they just need to be in Christ. And that's the same as what James and Peter also declared. Paul is not contrasting Christianity and Judaism here. The opponents, if we were to ask them what they are teaching, they would say, "No, Paul's wrong. The Messiah would want Gentile believers to be pure, to be blameless, to be clean in the ritual purity sense. And to do that," they say, "they have to be circumcised, they're going to have to eat kosher food, they're going to have to rest on the Sabbath. Isn't that what God wants?" And Paul says, "No because, just like Peter also said, 'God gives His Holy Spirit to any and all who are in Christ.' Our holiness then comes from being in Christ and the outworking of the Holy Spirit." Paul will say this then to all of his churches. We looked at Galatians, but he'll say that in Colossians and Ephesians and Titus. Paul is not arguing with opponents who say that we all need to work to gain merit in order to be saved. He is combating the view that holy or righteous living is based on particular, distinct practices of Jews at this time: circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath. Paul says "No, righteous living is"—Paul's argument—"righteous living happens through faith in Christ."

Let me just state this again: the early church, they differentiated between ideas of being clean and unclean, so ritual purity, which is not something that believers in Christ need to worry about, and moral issues like sexual immorality and idolatry. The whole of the New Testament is consistent, there's no debate: sexual immorality and idolatry are unacceptable for the people of God. So a Gentile in turning to Christ needs to give up their idolatry and they need to embrace the sexual morality codes that God established. But they can continue to eat their barbecue pork, they can continue to work on Sabbath—many of them as slaves would have anyway. Take a look at Romans chapter 14. There, Paul lays out the distinctions that I'm talking about. Here in Philippians, Paul says, "We are the circumcision." It's a rhetorical move, and again, Paul's not taking on Judaism as a whole here. He's speaking to those who are saying in this Messiah community, "We as Messiah followers, we have to follow certain Torah practices." And Paul says no. James says no. Peter says no. It's faith in Christ.

Before we move on, I just want to pause here for a moment to look at the rhetoric that Paul uses here. It's really strong. "Beware of those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh." When you look at the New Testament, let's take, for example, Jesus' preaching. Rarely, rarely, I think of one time where Jesus attacks an individual by name, and the name is Herod Antipas. He does this in Luke chapter 13. Otherwise, Jesus will speak broadly about the abuse of power. He'll speak against false teachings. He'll speak against those who don't care about other people. He speaks with broad brushstrokes. He addresses issues. He addresses character flaws that he sees in leaders. For example, he'll call a group of leaders hypocrites. You can see this in Matthew chapter 23. And he will speak directly to his disciples if they fail to understand his purposes. But he does not attack people by name, and he does not defend himself when his own person is attacked. That's the same with Paul, as we saw in Philippians 1:15 and 17. So today, how can we model Jesus' behavior here and Paul's behavior? Well, I think it's important to stick to the topic of the debate and not move into personal comments or a presumption of motives. I would say the fiery language that we see in this passage here in Philippians should be reserved for a very short list of ideas, and those ideas should be directly related to the heart of the gospel. For Paul, this would include on this very short list those who would necessitate that Gentiles become circumcised and thus a second requirement to live a faithful and holy life above and beyond faith in Christ, life in the Holy Spirit. And let me also add this. It's what Jesus calls us to do. We should be praying for our enemies. And Paul says this in verse 18—the people he mentions in 18, those who are enemies of the cross, which I think are the same people that he mentions here in verse 2—he says, "I'm telling you this even with tears." So there's no triumphalism in Paul. He's not happy that he might win an argument against these enemies. He's actually heartbroken that they aren't following the way of truth.

III. Paul’s Personal Journey

From this, then, Paul moves into his own story. We see this in verses 4 through 11, and he's giving this personal story in this context to help the Philippians better understand why he speaks as he does to those who are pressing for circumcision. You see, Paul maintains that followers of Jesus can claim a spiritual circumcision identity, and so the Gentile men in the group don't need to undergo physical circumcision. Jew and Gentile share in God's Spirit, and me as a woman, I'm invited to consider myself as part of the circumcision because it is a spiritual designation. It indicates, based on the ancient rite of circumcision given in the Old Testament, it indicates someone who is a member of God's family. So Paul shares his own story here as a way for us to better understand how Christ works in all of us. When Paul describes his life as having confidence, he calls it confidence in the flesh—his time before the Damascus Road experience, when he was called by Jesus to be an apostle to the Gentiles. There is a picture I think we have of Paul up to that moment as someone who is maybe trudging along with a huge weight on his shoulders, struggling with it.

In fact, I think maybe some of you have seen the movie was done in 1986 called The Mission. It's a beautiful movie, but it tells a very poignant and sad story of the slave trade along the Paraguay River. This is in the 18th century. And there's one particular scene that I often think of when I'm imagining, when I hear how some people describe Paul's life before he knew Christ or was known by Christ, called by Christ. In this scene, the former slave trader—Mendoza is his name, he's played by Robert De Niro—he's climbing up a rocky cliff. It's beside this waterfall, so he keeps slipping because the rocks are so wet. And he has this bulky, heavy load on his back, and it causes him often to lose his balance. But he finally reaches the top, and so he's there with the rest of his party. Most of the party is made up of Jesuit priests who are serving the local Paraguayans there. And when he gets to the top and he kind of stumbles to the group, one of the indigenous men walk over to him, doesn't say a word, but pulls out a knife and then slices off the pack, and it goes tumbling down the mountain. And Mendoza just looks shocked, and then he just begins to weep, sob. Carrying that pack was his penance for killing his brother in a duel years earlier, and in the film, that scene symbolizes the forgiveness of his sins. His burden is cast away forever.

I think at times we imagine Paul in a similar way, right? That he's bent double by the burden of the Law. That is not actually how Paul tells the story. Let's take a look at how Paul tells his story. I would say Paul had a lot of confidence as he was walking along that Damascus Road, confident in his understanding of what the God of Israel wanted. Instead—and so I want us to imagine as we enter into this text, I want us to imagine not someone burdened by trying to do the Law, but rather someone who feels confident. And I don't mean self-confident and arrogant, but just confident that this is what God has for anyone who is committed.

So let's take a look. Paul says he was circumcised on the eighth day, which just indicates that he was from a devout family, because the Old Testament asked that Jews circumcise their infant sons on the eighth day. He identifies himself as coming from the people of Israel. And I should just note that at this time, using the language of Israel—this is true also in the Gospels—is loaded with theological significance because in Paul's day, if you wanted to just identify who you were, you would say "Jew." You wouldn't say "Israel" or "Israelite" that was for the Old Testament time. So if you said, as Paul does here, "of the people of Israel," what he is saying is, "I am a devout Jew," but he's just saying it by using the word "Israel." He identifies that he's from the tribe of Benjamin, so that means he can trace his ancestry back to the Southern Kingdom. He's a Hebrew, which may mean that he knows the Hebrew language, or being a "Hebrew of Hebrews" just means he's—another way of saying, "I'm strongly committed to my Jewish heritage." He identifies himself as a Pharisee.

Now, we pause here for a minute. Let me just say that the way Paul writes it here, "as to the Law, a Pharisee," we tend to think of Pharisees as the bad guys because they are legalistic. But more recent research on this group called the Pharisees, as we reexamine, especially based on the findings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that we probably need to modify how we understand who the Pharisees are. Actually, the members of the Dead Sea community, they call the Pharisees "seekers after smooth things," like that they are lenient, which certainly shakes up our ideas of the Pharisees. The Pharisees are working with an assumption, I think, that we take the food laws and the expectations for priestly service that we find in the Old Testament and we try to apply them to our lives in the village, which could be a noble goal, but it's not actually what God had intended.

There are examples of Pharisees that do good things, like Gamaliel. Gamaliel in Acts chapter five, he shows mercy. Or Nicodemus, who's mentioned in John chapter three and then John chapter seven and then at the end of John, he helps bury Jesus. He is interested in talking with Jesus. He doesn't understand Jesus's words that you must be born again. And some people say that, well, Nicodemus goes at night, and so he's kind of secretive about his faith, and that may be what's going on here. But it is also the case that any public discussion that you have, two teachers publicly discussing, it can be a challenge to the honor, like you have to win in that. These two men, one goes away a winner and one goes away a loser. So if Nicodemus goes to Jesus at night, they can have a private conversation and it's not this competition. That's why sometimes the disciples will also ask Jesus privately, because they don't want to be seen as being in an argument with one winning and one losing.

Both of these men, Nicodemus and Gamaliel, are connected with the leadership of the temple, with those who interface with Rome, and that's important to note. Pharisees are not just some theological clique. They are connected to the temple state. They are connected to the powers that are running the Jewish community in light of and trying to keep Rome happy, right? The other thing to note is that Pharisees were not just people who had certain ideas, but they were trying to develop a whole way of life, if you could think of it maybe as a reform movement, but they were embedded in the power structures of the day. That's why at times you see them mentioned with the Herodians, who are also power brokers. And so the competition that we see between Jesus and the Pharisees, I think, are because they're both trying to meet the needs and work with the average Jew in Galilee and Judea. Jesus is bringing in the kingdom of God. He is preaching the kingdom of God. The Pharisees, to one degree or another, are trying to keep status quo, live holy, but also keep the status quo. So they are leaning more towards tradition, not upsetting the apple cart, whereas Jesus as Messiah is bringing in the reign of God.

So when Paul says, "as to the Law, a Pharisee," what we want to hear there is that he is connected in some way to the temple, is maybe like a retainer class. That's why, you know, we meet him in Acts going to Damascus with letters from the leaders in Jerusalem, right? That is what I mean when I say that the Pharisees have some relationship to those who are in real power in Jerusalem. Also, we would know with the Pharisees, they believe in the bodily resurrection of the dead, this in contrast to the Sadducees. So there's religious views that the Pharisees hold that might be nuanced and different from some of the other groups within Judaism at the time. They also hold kind of a middleman level in governing the Jewish people or speaking to the Jewish people at this time. And that's Paul. But Paul goes even more than that. Paul talks about that he is zealous. He describes himself as being very zealous, zealous to the point of persecuting the church. And this is not just a mere descriptor; the word "zeal" that Paul is using here draws on the history of Judaism. This is back a little ways in 167 BC, Jews revolted against Syrian overlords. Those Syrian overlords said, "You can't circumcise, you can't rest on Sabbath, and you have to eat a bit of pork to show that you are loyal to me." Antiochus IV Epiphanes, "the God with us," was the title he liked. He's the one that tried to make all this happen, and the Jews revolted. From their successful revolt in 164 BC, the temple was cleansed and Jews remember this every year in the festival of Hanukkah. So the Maccabean revolt, those who participated in it are seen as very zealous. But you can go back even further to Phinehas in the Old Testament, who, when faced with the episode of the golden calf, attacked a Jew who was committing gross sin against God, and was willing to kill a fellow Israelite who was an apostate. It's that kind of zeal, Paul says, "I was so zealous I would go after my fellow Jews because I thought they were apostates. I thought they were completely wrong in how they understood the Messiah. How dare they say that Jesus, the crucified one, was the Messiah." That's how zealous I was for what I thought was right.

Paul says, "as to the law, blameless." So we want to be clear here. Paul is not saying, "as to the Law, sinless; as to the Law, perfect." He's not saying that. He's just indicating that, "as I understood the Law," Paul says, "I did it." So if I sinned, I did what the Law required to demonstrate that I was repenting. You could, as an analogy here, say—I might say to you, "I'm blameless. I'm blameless in my driving because I follow all the traffic and speed laws." So that doesn't make me a perfect driver, just a blameless one. Now, if I said that to you, I'd be lying. So in that case, I would be sinning because I am not a perfect driver or a blameless driver. But that's another story. So in these three verses, verses 3 through 6, we get a picture. Paul draws us a picture of his life in Judaism—well, Judaism before Jesus.

IV. Theological Impact

And then his story makes a 180-degree turn as he says, "But whatever gains I had…" I think it's really important to pause for a minute and realize that Paul means it when he says the gains. He is grateful that he knows the one true God. He is grateful that he was raised in a family that followed after the true God. He is grateful to have sat at Gamaliel's feet and learned. He's grateful for all of that, and that shapes him. So he's not being sarcastic here and he's not denigrating his past. He remains a Jew. Paul, when he then is called by Jesus to be an apostle to the Gentiles, does not reject Judaism and turn to Christianity. He remains a Jew. He still holds to the Torah. I don't know that Paul ever had pork barbecue. He still attends festivals in Jerusalem; you can read about that in the book of Acts. He offers a vow; you can read about that in Acts 18:18. Paul was in Corinth, and then he left there and sailed for Syria with Priscilla and Aquila. And before he sailed, Paul says he had his hair cut off at Cenchreae, which is the port city there in Corinth, because of a vow he had taken. So Paul doesn't reject Judaism per se. Instead, he receives Christ as the Messiah, the fulfillment of the hope of Israel.

So Paul is describing now his new blamelessness in Christ. Paul is not describing Judaism as a works-based religion and Christianity as a faith-based religion. He's talking about his journey within Judaism and then discovering—I should say, being discovered by, being invited by the Lord Jesus to continue following God, but now following God rightly. So sometimes we hear that Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, and at one level, that terminology is helpful because Paul does convert, that is, he changes his mind. His mind is changed on the matter of who Jesus is. Jesus is the one true Messiah who, through his death and resurrection, does forgive sins. We are now living in the beginnings of the end with the giving of the Holy Spirit on all who confess Jesus. But I like also talking about Paul being called, called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. That's what happens on the road to Damascus. And I want to emphasize that right now because Paul, in talking about Judaism here, at times in church history, we've looked at this as though Paul is condemning Judaism and condemning his past, and the rest of his letters in the book of Acts just don't show us that story. Paul had always worshipped the one true God. It's just that now in Christ, he is worshipping that one true God rightly. But every Gentile that he connects with, they will need to convert in a way that's more expansive than Paul. Not only do they see Jesus as the Messiah, but they also, as Gentiles, need to forsake their idolatry of their past.

So Paul continues in verse 7, "Whatever gains I had"—and those are legitimate gains, right?—"now I consider loss for the sake of Christ." It's interesting that he uses the language of gain and loss; those are business language, actually, and we'll find this language as well in chapter 4 when he'll talk about the gift that is received. This gain and loss, what is the loss? He can no longer use his ethnic claims of "Hebrew of Hebrews," "circumcised on the eighth day," the economic assets of his education, the social privileges, the political advantages—all that he had in his life before being called as an apostle to the Gentiles. All of those would have been seen as virtues in his circles. All of that would have been held as very valuable. But when placed beside Christ, Paul says, "all the advantages pale." In fact, ironically, they can even become toxic. 

So, for example, we'd be specific here: in itself, circumcision is not evil or toxic. As we saw earlier, Paul instructs Timothy to be circumcised; we can see this in Acts 16:3. Paul would never have asked Timothy to be circumcised if in and of itself circumcision was evil. But Timothy was circumcised because his mother was Jewish and with his father being Gentile, he never underwent the rite, the practice of circumcision. But now being folded into the Christian community and being able to celebrate his Jewish heritage, Paul is fine with Timothy being circumcised. Resting on Sabbath is not evil. Paul warns the Romans, for example 14:5-10, "Don't judge others based on Sabbath practices." But what Paul wants to say is that Sabbath rest, circumcision, food laws, Jewish ancestry, commitment to a cause like Pharisaism—that that all uses worldly currency. They're of secondary importance, and if they remain secondary, then they hold no danger. It's fine for a Jewish believer to rest on Shabbat. It's fine for a Jewish believer to have just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the picnic. But if those concerns like circumcision take center stage, if they become the basis on which believers build their public life in relationship with God, then Paul says you're just going to end up with a pile of garbage.

Paul continues, "I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things." Now, again, when he says, "I've lost all things," that doesn't mean he rejects his Judaism, but he rejects the social worth, the gain, the public adulation that came with his previous set of credentials. Verses 8 through 11 in Greek are one sentence; they're one sentence about knowing Christ. In this sentence Paul, one could say, is commenting on, in a way of fulfillment, Jeremiah's hope. Jeremiah in 31:33 and 34 promised, he prophesied when God restores the exiles, that there will be a new covenant made. And that covenant will include that "the Law, my Law is in their minds, it's on their hearts. They'll all know me, they'll all know me from the least to the greatest. I'll forgive their wickedness, I'll remember their sins no more." And I think Paul is describing here that fulfillment of the promise where with Christ in your heart, with having the mind of Christ, knowing the forgiveness by Christ's cross and resurrection, that you will know God then in this full and beautiful way.

Paul talks about having a righteousness of my own and contrasting that with the righteousness from God based on faith. This righteousness of my own comes from the Law, and that which is by faith, it comes by faith in Christ, a righteousness from God based on faith. Let's take a look first at this term "righteousness," and then we'll look at "faith," and we'll think about this in terms of reference to Paul and reference to God. Is this righteousness a legal declaration about who Paul is or a moral transformation? I think that Paul would like to embrace both of those ideas in as much as for Paul, God has committed and will do the work of forgiveness of sins and will give the Holy Spirit for a transformed life. Having a righteousness of my own or a righteousness based on faith—what is this term "faith" mean in Paul's wider, in the larger Greek world? It tends to mean trust, loyalty, being faithful to another person. It doesn't mean a mental assent to a list of doctrine. It's not instrumental, it's not a means to an end; it's a virtue, it's a good.

Again, looking now that we've seen righteousness and we've seen faith, I want to focus on how Paul puts that together: "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ." Now, that phrase "through faith in Christ" can also be translated "through the faithfulness of Christ." The ambiguity centers on whether Christ is the object or the subject of faith. I think what Paul is getting at here, because we'll read to the end of the verse to be able to see, is this Christ's own faith or is it Paul's faith in Christ? Look at how Paul writes the passage: "that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." Most likely here, Paul is arguing that it's the faithfulness of Christ that he accepts by faith, Paul accepts by faith. That's the basis of his righteousness. Try and say that again: not having a righteousness of my own based on the Law, but that righteousness which is through Christ's faithfulness, that righteousness which comes from God that I receive by faith, by my trust, by my loyalty to God in Christ. We read this passage best when we say, "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but that which is through the faithfulness of Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of"—and I'll add it—"my faith." So we have Paul emphasizing the faithfulness of Christ that gives righteousness, and Paul receives that righteousness by faith.

Before we go to verse 10, where Paul says, "I want to know Christ," I want to spend just one moment on Paul talking about having a righteousness of his own that comes from the Law. What does he mean with that phrase "from the Law"? He's contrasting "from the Law" and "from God." Are these two types of righteousness? Are they two types of gaining righteousness? I think you could say that these are two types of righteousness in as much as the one type of righteousness is that which includes under the Law, Sabbath observance, food laws, circumcision of male infants, other markers of Jewish practice. And so this righteousness, this way of being daily faithful to God, being obedient to God under the Law, that's what it looks like. 

But in Christ, of course, it's by faith being energized by the Holy Spirit. But there are also, I think here, imagined two sources of righteousness: human and divine. The righteousness that is from the Law is powered by human energy. Now, I want to be careful here; I don't mean that it's human energy of pride or human energy of arrogance. I simply mean that the righteousness that comes from the Law—the Law itself has no power in and of itself to help those who want to do it actually do it. Think of Romans 7:7-14, that I might agree that the Law is good, but just because I say it doesn't mean I have the power to execute it. But the righteousness that comes from God, that's established by the power of Christ's death and resurrection, it has the power of life itself in it. And when you have this righteousness from God, it's powered now by the Holy Spirit living in each believer; we're sealed by the Holy Spirit. We have Christ living in our hearts. This is eternal power that is ours. That's what our righteousness now is energized by.

So we come now to Paul, the crescendo really of Paul's discussion here, his claim that he wants to know Christ. Now, Paul already knows Christ—I mean, he's already a believer. "I want to know Him. I want to know Christ." What does that mean? It's not in relation to salvation; it's in relation to how do I live a holy life? How do I daily walk in a way that honors God and honors the church and helps lead others to Christ? He wants to know. It's interesting that he says, "I want to know the power of the resurrection and participation in suffering." And I would think that those should be reversed, like as he looks forward to resurrection, he now participates in Christ's suffering. 

But the way that Paul organizes verses 10 and 11 is in a—we call it a chiastic structure, it's like an X. He stresses the power of Christ's resurrection: "I want to know the power of his resurrection." And then he moves to two points about suffering, and then he returns to resurrection again at the end of verse 11, "attaining to the resurrection of the dead." So in between his reference to resurrection—"I want to know the power of the resurrection, I want to attain the resurrection"—he then in the middle talks about participation in Christ's suffering, becoming like him in his death. So you have this emphasis on connecting the participation in Christ's suffering and his becoming like him in his death that frames or helps us understand what Paul means by suffering, and then you have his claims about resurrection, that there is power, the life that brings the dead to life, that's the power of the resurrection. And Paul is looking for attaining that resurrection.

So participation, this participation in the suffering of Christ, that language, we've seen it before: koinonia. Paul's using this in a slightly unusual way here in the letter because typically it's participation of Paul with the Philippians, and he'll use it that way as well in Galatians 2 or in Acts—we find it also Luke uses in Acts 2. But here, this fellowship is related to Christ. This is related to Paul's relationship with Christ. Paul says that he wants to attain to the resurrection of the dead, but he hasn't already yet attained that.

V. Practical Application

We're going to take a look at verses 12 through 14. And in verse 12, Paul uses five verbs, and two of those verbs are actually related to a third verb. Said this way, Paul writes he's not already obtained all this, but "I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me." And all of those verbs share commonality. That first verb "obtain" is actually a compound of "take hold." So by adding this prefix, the compound verb is intensified. Paul declares he's not obtained; he wants to take hold. Christ Jesus took hold of him; that's the action that we have in this passage. Paul desires a deep understanding of Christ, and that's from his side, but he's also confident that Christ himself has grasped hold of Paul.

One of the ways I think of this to use an analogy here is think of a parent who is picking up her toddler. Now, even as the little one is raising her hands to be picked up, so the parent, she's—she's got the baby, right? She's got that toddler. But as the toddler wraps her arms around the mom's neck, from the child's point of view, she's reaching out for her parent. So just as Christ grasps us, so too we can lean forward and cling to Him. Paul makes it clear here by using language of maturity or arriving at his goal that he—some translations might use the translation of "perfect." Paul doesn't mean perfect, as in 100% on your test grade, but rather just that "I've arrived at my goal." Paul's not claiming that he's arrived; he's pursuing, right? Striving for an ever deeper experiential knowledge of life in Jesus. And Paul says, "In order to do that and to keep my momentum going," he says, "I focus ahead. I don't look behind," forgetting what's behind, focused on the future. So he repeats this particular verb of "pursuing" to really emphasize a movement, you know, in grasping and obtaining and moving forward. There's a lot of action in these two verbs, and in these verses, Paul is relentless in his determination to be faithful, but he doesn't always, right? So he pushes forward. He doesn't dwell on past sins or mistakes. I mean, he confesses the mistakes and the sins—not the mistakes; he realizes the mistakes, he confesses the sins, but he moves forward.

As we think about Paul's injunction to the Philippians, I think we can take away at least three things for our own lives today. First, keep your eye on the finish line. Right? Keep your eye focused on the finish line. I know—and I don't do it much—but if any of you do foot races, you know towards the end of the race, I know in my case, I was quite tired and the tendency is to just look a few feet in front of you, maybe even look down at your feet. When you do that, your pace slows. But if you keep your eyes on where that finish line is, it keeps you motivated and you get one step closer with each stride. Secondly, Paul encourages us to participate in the sufferings of Christ, recognizing that the Christian life is a life that sees needs around that can break our heart, but also can encourage us to godly action. And third, stand firm. Over and over again, Paul will say this to the Philippians and to other of his congregations, "Stand firm. God is working, so don't lose heart."

Student: You mentioned that when Paul came into relationship with Jesus, that he was still a Jew and that his background and his training and all those things stayed with him. And isn't it remarkable that his primary ministry was to Gentiles? And so he was constantly challenged in how to bring the faith of Christ into a context that was totally different from what he was raised in. So doesn't that speak to us, too, about how we relate to people, how we call people into relationship that are from totally different backgrounds than us, and to see Paul as a model of how to do that? 

Dr. Cohick: Yes, I think Paul models for us the ability to reach across social, cultural, political, economic—all of those. He can reach across that line, kind of talk the language of the other or find out, you don't know enough about the other person, that he's able to present Christ in a way that is meaningful to them.

Paul was raised in Tarsus, so although his family was Jewish, he was raised in a nice-sized town, probably similar to the size of Philippi. And it was known to be a town that valued philosophy, not to the level of Alexandria that was sort of the most famous city at this time, kind of like the Athens of the ancient past. And so Tarsus would have had a lot of the Stoic or the Epicurean, those ideas floating around, and Paul would have grown up in that space. So in some ways he's comfortable in a Philippi, but in other ways he's not. One could say that maybe he was uniquely prepared, given his upbringing, to be an apostle to the Gentiles in a way that Peter, who grew up his whole life on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, would not be. And I think that you often hear even people today who, when they look back on their lives, they can see how this experience and that situation and that job prepared me now in unique ways for the task that God has called me to today.