Philippians
3:4b-14
Imagine.
You have worked so hard for years. You studied, and stayed up late, and
sacrificed. You got into a great school, and then landed a plumb job. And you
still never let up: you did everything it took to succeed and get ahead. You
acquired a hefty income, an affluent lifestyle, and an excellent reputation.
You are living the dream — and you walk away from it all, because you discover
something so much better. Or you have trained as a premier athlete, devoting
yourself seven days a week to being in the best possible shape. You have
punished your body, refused all indulgences, gone without drinking and
desserts, and pushed yourself to the limits. And there you are, in the final
lap of the big race, out in front, victory is within your reach — and then five
yards short of the finish line, you stop and walk off the track because you
realize you want something far greater than a gold medal.
Imagine.
If you can’t imagine, you won’t understand the Apostle Paul, and you won’t
fully get the Good News of Jesus Christ. Paul is a high achiever: super smart,
dedicated, and relentless. Among Jews, Pharisees were hardcore. And among
Pharisees, Paul was a rock star. He says as much today: If anyone has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:
circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe
of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a
persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. He’s
got the resume and the reputation, and he’s worked hard for them. And then he
walks away from all of it: Yet whatever
gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than
that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord.
If
we can get at this and understand what’s happening here, we will touch on a
mystery that matters to every one of us. We talk about Paul’s “conversion,” but
when he encounters the Risen Christ, he does not become religious: he’s already
religious — he’s obnoxiously religious. And it’s not just that he goes from
denying Jesus is the Messiah to believing Jesus is the Messiah: that would not
be totally surprising or even necessarily cause him to give up his life as a
Pharisee. After all, any number of devout Jews believed Jesus was the Christ.
N0, this is what happened to him and this is why it matters: Paul had a
complete change of heart and mind, and he realized that his whole way of being
in the world was upside down. He had spent his life scrupulously obeying the
Law to gain God’s love, and then with devastating clarity he saw that it was
all pointless: there is only way to gain God’s love, and that is to receive it
as gift, a gift which Jesus offers to everyone. And so Paul walked away from
everything he had devoted his life to because he found something so much
better.
Something
which changed his life far more than years of strict adherence to the Law ever
did. Paul had obeyed all the commandments and observed all the regulations. He
was technically flawless. Which means he was a wonderful person, right? Wrong.
He was filled with anger and hatred, and zealously hunted down Christians to
haul them off to prison and even kill them. He was there when they stoned
Stephen to death: he approved of it. He watched while the crowds threw heavy
rocks at that young man until he died from blunt trauma. And, sadly, it
shouldn’t shock us that meticulous observance of religious laws could lead to
that. After all, there have been — and probably still are — commandment-quoting
Christians in the Ku Klux Klan. Some of the guards who worked at Auschwitz went
to church every week. You can do all the right things and be totally wrong.
The
brutal truth is that obeying the law has never transformed anyone. Law is
certainly important: it points us in the right direction and keeps us in line.
But it’s not the reason we’re here. In Galatians Paul calls the law a paidagogos, a babysitter that guards us
until the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ so fills us that we no longer
need a babysitter. One might think this is irresistibly appealing, but it’s not
because we have egos, and our egos like following the rules because following
the rules bolsters our own sense of self-worth and our own need for control. I
keep the commandments (more or less), I go to church (most of the time), I give
money to worthy causes, I check off all the right boxes so therefore I deserve
whatever blessings I have and I have earned a ticket to heaven. Paul realized
that that whole way of thinking entirely misses the point. Do you understand
that?
We’re
trying to get a passing grade and get into heaven; God has already given us
heaven and wants us to go from glory to glory in this life and forever. We’re
worried about our report cards; God wants us to shine like the sun. Merely
following religious rules won’t get us there; it won’t even make us good. Only
love can transform us like that, only love can enable us to reach our full
potential as human beings created in the image of God. And love can never be earned:
it can only be received as a gift. But when we do receive it — oh my God, it
changes everything!. It certainly changes us for the better. That’s why we call
it good news. That’s why Paul regards everything as loss for the sake of
experiencing it.
Jesus
has already lived, died, and risen again to show us this love. God has already
poured his love into us through the Holy Spirit. We are about to eat and drink
Christ in a few minutes to take all that love in. If we are going to strive for
anything, it is just to let the reality of God’s love sink into us fully so
that we can fully come alive. We don’t even need to ask for it: we just need to
let it happen. So here is my recommended prayer for all of us this week: “Thank
you, God, that your love fills me. Thank you, God, that your Spirit flows
through me.” Accept the gift by offering thanks for it. Not once, but over and
over again, so that the love of God can begin to transform us in whatever way
that is going to happen in each of our lives. As someone who spent the first
part of my life desperately trying to earn and control everything, including
God’s favor, I know that nothing compares with just letting God’s love
fill me and God’s Spirit flow through
me. I want you to know that too, so that together we can experience, with Paul
and all the saints, the surpassing value
of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord.
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