Philippians 3 Part 2

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Skip Heitzig: Beware of evil workers. They think they're doing good, but they're doing evil. Why is it evil? Basically, when you're saying, "I'm saved by works," you're saying what Jesus did on the cross is not enough. I must add to what he did by what I do. That's very dangerous. That's legalism. Then, to get even harsher, beware of the mutilation. Do you know what he's referring to? Jewish circumcision. Every eighth day or the eighth day of a male child's life, a Jewish child is circumcised. That's the ritual of the law that has been going on since the Old Testament. Paul refers to circumcision, if you are saying you have to be circumcised in order to be saved, he calls it a mutilation. The word he uses for mutilation referred to Gentile pagan mutilation. The Gentile temples would have rites where the Gentile pagans would cut themselves when they would worship their gods. Remember when Elijah was on Mount Carmel and the prophets of Baal would cut themselves and dance around that little fire they were building? It's that kind of mutilation, pagan mutilation. He's saying if you are trusting in circumcision for your salvation and Judaism ritual for your salvation, he calls them a dog, but he's saying what you are doing is no better than pagan Gentile mutilation. How strong is that? Very, very strong. Why would Paul be so tough on them? Because legalists and legalism mutilate God's grace. It takes this beautiful free gift that God confers his righteousness upon you and tears it to shreds like a dog and mutilates the beautiful grace of God. That's why Paul is strong. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers. These are people who are saying you're saved by good works and beware of the mutilation. So you know he is talking about circumcision. Verse three, "For we are the circumcision." I would insert a word there. We are the true circumcision. He's speaking obviously of a spiritual cutting away rather than simply the ritual. We are the true circumcision who worship God in the spirit and we rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. When the Apostle Peter went to a Gentile's house named Cornelius, and Cornelius had gotten a vision, Peter came and shared the gospel with him. When Peter got back to Jerusalem, there were men within the church at Jerusalem who rebuked Peter. This is what they said, "You went into the house of a Gentile and you ate with him. Shame on you. You went into the house of a non-Jewish person." Peter said, "God showed me that I cannot call unclean what God has cleansed." Then a few chapters later in chapter 15, after Paul's first missionary journey, he goes back to Jerusalem. There's a conflict about what is going on in that northern city of Antioch. You remember when the apostles convened together? There's a group of people in the church. They're Jewish believers, but they say to the council in Jerusalem, "Unless a person is circumcised and keeps the law of Moses, he cannot be saved." That was the straw that breaks the camel's back. That's when Peter and Paul stood up and showed how God opened the door of faith to the non-Jewish world, the Gentiles, simply by believing. It was a huge pivot and it was a wonderful moment in church history. So we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit. We rejoice in Christ Jesus. That word rejoice, I would retranslate it. I don't want to mess with the text too much, but the idea behind this term rejoice in this verse is we are boasting in Jesus. We're bragging about him. We want to honor him. We're boasting in Jesus and what he has done rather than boasting in ourselves and what we have done. It's what he did for us on the cross that I am bragging about. I'm not bragging about anything that I've done. That's the idea. We're rejoicing or boasting or bragging or honoring Christ Jesus and we have no confidence in our flesh. I cannot earn my way to heaven. Legalism minimizes what Jesus did on the cross and maximizes what we do for him. Whereas the gospel minimizes what we do and maximizes what he has done. That's why it's good news. Doesn't mean we don't do good works, but the good works are not the basis of our salvation. The good works are the byproduct of our salvation. The basis is grace, faith. Once we come to him, receive his grace by faith, the byproduct of that relationship are good works. We don't trust in those works. Now he makes it very personal. "Though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so." Now he gives his background, his pedigree. He's like the who's who of Jewish leaders. He says, "Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews concerning the law, a Pharisee concerning zeal, persecuting the church concerning righteousness, which is in the law, blameless." "But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Indeed, I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and I count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ." Notice what Paul puts on the list as he is going through his testimony, his background. He's saying, "This is who I was." First of all, "I was circumcised on the eighth day." He mentions circumcision as the mutilation. I was circumcised and what he says is this: I'm not only Jewish, I was born into Judaism. I wasn't converted, I wasn't a proselyte into Judaism. I was born into it. I was a Jew by birth as well as ritual. Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin was one of the 12 tribes and it is a notable tribe because it was the only other tribe that was loyal to Judah when the kingdom split. Remember the northern 10 tribes? There was Judah down south. The only other tribe that sided with Judah in worshipping God at the place God chose was Benjamin. The first king of Israel was a Benjamite. His name was Saul. I'm guessing that Paul, aka Saul of Tarsus, was named after King Saul, both from the tribe of Benjamin. King Saul was the namesake for Saul of Tarsus. So he identified with that loyal tribe, circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel of the loyal tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. A Jew through and through, a true blue Jew. Hebrew of the Hebrews, that is a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. He says concerning the law, a Pharisee. This is on his resume. Now we who read and are familiar with the New Testament gospels, we come to the word Pharisee and we go, "That's not a good thing to brag about." Jesus got down on those dudes all the time. Yes, he did. But when they first started out, they were the most noble sect. They were considered the most ardent followers of the law more than any other brand of Judaism. Pharisee comes from the Hebrew word Perushim, which means separated ones. We are separated to do God's will. We are separating ourselves from the world, from the filth. We are completely devoted to God and to his law. He was completely devoted to the written law and to the oral law. Those were the Pharisees. Paul was born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but at a young age, he moved to Jerusalem and he was under the tutelage of a very notable Pharisaic mentor by the name of Gamaliel, who happened to be very anti-Christian. Even though he says some things in the book of Acts that seem like he might be siding with them, there are documents written by Gamaliel that show he was not at all siding with Christians. He was opposed to them, but he was diplomatic. Saul of Tarsus, Paul the apostle, Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee was trained by the great leader of the Pharisees, Gamaliel of Jerusalem. Then continuing in verse six, "Concerning zeal, persecuting the church." You want to know how zealous I was? Paul says, "I hunted Christians. I hated them so much." You know the story from the book of Acts. He got letters from the high priest in Jerusalem to go hunt them in Damascus, to drag men and women from the synagogues and be punished, be tortured, be beaten, be imprisoned. He was breathing out, Acts chapter nine, verse one, breathing out threats and slaughter against the church.
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Guest (Male): Now, here's more from Pastor Skip.
Skip Heitzig: This goes back not only to the fact that he was Jewish, but that he studied under Gamaliel. Now let me add a little bit of history that might help you understand that. There was a pretty notable prayer that Gamaliel prayed, and here's just a part of it. Gamaliel the Pharisee, the teacher of Paul, the mentor of Saul of Tarsus, uttered a prayer against the Christians that said, and I quote, "Let there be no hope to them who apostatize from the true religion." In other words, those who leave Judaism, may they have no hope. "And let these heretics, how many soever they be, all perish in a moment." Paul measured his love for God by his hatred for Christians. By the way, whenever you measure your love for God by hating some other group, you've got the wrong measuring stick. Paul is giving his background, his pedigree. This is how Jewish I was. This is my testimony. I was legalistic. I was into this religion wholeheartedly. "Concerning zeal, persecuting the church concerning righteousness, which is in the law, I was blameless." I lived by the book. Have you noticed that religious people are the hardest people to witness to? My wife was raised an atheist. People who have no religious background at all, they're atheists and you tell them they're sinners. They'll go, "Yeah, I know." They know their condition. They know they're without God, whether they believe in him or not. A lot of times religious people have just enough morality to keep them out of trouble, yet not enough righteousness to get them into heaven because they're trusting their own righteousness. As long as you are trusting your own good works and righteousness, you'll never have enough to get into heaven. When a person says, "I am bankrupt before God and I must receive his righteousness," then there's hope. So Paul had trusted once in his own righteousness, but he says this, "But," here's the great turning point. "But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ." "Indeed, I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and I count them, all those things I just mentioned as my background, my pedigree, I count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ." Notice in verse seven, the words gain and loss. Those are accounting terms. Gain and loss are accounting terms that speak of the profit and loss columns on a financial ledger. Paul was doing the math. He was doing the counting and he discovered one day he's been working in the wrong column. All the things that he said were positive, plus, profit, profit, were actually loss and he moved them from one column to another column. He said, "All the things I bragged about, I realize were not good." So what he's basically saying is, "Now that I'm saved, I've learned how to count and I counted them as loss," past tense. Then verse eight, "Indeed, I also count all things as loss." I made a decision 30 years ago to get rid of holding onto my religious background, hiding behind my religious experience. Thinking that my religion was enough to make me go to heaven. All of that is in the loss column. I now know how to count and what's gain is that I have a relationship with Christ. You say, "Well, don't be so hard on people with religious backgrounds. Paul, you're being a little too hard on yourself. Why would you say all that?" Because though all of these things may be even good things, it's good to go through a ritual that speaks of God like circumcision. It's good to be raised in a religious background, a Hebrew background. Good to be separated like a Pharisee was. But listen to this carefully, here's the big principle: A good thing becomes a bad thing if it keeps you from the best thing. A good thing becomes a bad thing if it keeps you from the best thing. And it kept Paul from the best thing. So he says, "I've learned how to count. All those things that I thought were good, they're all bad because I trusted in them. I hid behind them and I now count them as loss like I did 30 years ago." The validity of any choice is its longevity. I made a choice in 1973 to follow Christ. I'm here that many years later to tell you it's the best choice I ever made. What I counted then, I still count today. That's Paul's idea. "I counted and now I count. I count them as loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord," that personal knowledge, personal relationship, "for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as," it's a very strong word again, "rubbish that I may gain Christ." You wouldn't get this from our translation, but rubbish is a softening of the term. The word in Greek, skubala, for rubbish can mean rubbish, can mean garbage, but it most often refers to the excrement of an animal. It's a vulgarity. "I count all of that religious stuff as dung," would be a fair translation. Rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Here's the beautiful exchange. "Not having my own righteousness, which is from the law," trying to keep the law, trying to be right with God by my works. "Be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith." Now notice in verse nine, the two little words, "in him." I'm slowing down and drawing your attention to that because what you need to know is that one of Paul's favorite descriptions of a Christian, of Christianity, is that phrase "in Christ" or "in him." 87 times in Paul's correspondence he uses this phrase "in Christ," "in him." It's one of his favorite terms to describe our relationship with God. It's a good description, but it's unique to Christianity. Jews don't speak of being "in Moses." Buddhists don't say, "I'm in Buddha." Muslims don't talk about being "in Muhammad." Mormons don't say, "I'm in Joseph Smith." But the New Testament says if you believe in Christ, you are in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? God identifies you as being in him. So when God looks at you, he sees him. You are identified with the life, the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's what it means to be in Christ. If you and I walk together to the parking lot and I watch you get in your car, when I look at you, you are in your car. If I'm at your house and I go inside and I speak to you, when I look at you, I see your house around you. You are in your house. I see your house. If you say goodbye to me and you say, "I'm leaving on the 5:15 PM flight to Los Angeles tomorrow on such and such an airline," if I look up with my binoculars, if I want to see you, I look up and I see a plane. You're in it, but I see a plane. When God looks at you, he sees Jesus Christ. Let that settle upon you. That's what it means to be in Christ. When God looks at you, he sees Jesus Christ. Now, you can't go 60 miles an hour by yourself, but in a car you can. You can't fly through the air at 500 miles per hour by yourself, but in a plane you can. You can't get to heaven by yourself, but in Christ you can. Do you understand now what it means to be in Christ? When God looks at you, God has taken the sinless nature of Christ—he committed no sin, you and I commit a lot of them—and he exchanged it. So God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be the righteousness of God in him. You're in Christ.
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