Pastor Chris’ Corona Quarantine Epistles to the Flock of AIC Ngong Road, in Dispersion and Isolation. 31st Edition.
Dear Nation of People Belonging to God,
Yesterday we saw in Philippians 3:4-7, how Paul dismissed his earthly credentials in favor of being in Christ. He takes it further in today’s passage, verses 8-11. There are three thoughts in this passage:
Rubbish (verse 8). The word so translated here means dung. The use of the word brings to mind not only excrement, which is unpleasant enough, but also unburied corpses in a heap. The gruesomeness of the picture needs no further elaboration. For Paul, any human possession or achievement amounts to, not just nothing but a negative, in comparison to having Christ. This is where the rubber meets the road, friends. If our estimation of Christ does not surpass the earthly things we value, to the point of seeing them as undesirable trash, we have not quite fully appreciated the value of salvation.
Righteousness (verse 9). This ties in with the thought in verse 8. True righteousness does not come through keeping the law, which is what some Jewish people were encouraging the Philippians to do – no, that is dung! True and meaningful righteousness is a gift from God, which is given to us, when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. There is no other way to please God and be justified before him. Quit fighting and yield to Jesus by faith.
Resurrection (verses 10-11). Paul desires to be in Christ, to the point of experiencing Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. This is not the meditation on the suffering of Christ that some practice but surrender, to the point of aligning one’s whole life to Christ and the reason he suffered. Verse 11 has often been misunderstood to imply that even the Apostle Paul was not certain of the resurrection and needed to confirm it through his faithfulness. Nothing is farther from the truth! In verse 10 he has talked about conforming to Christ in his suffering and death, that he may know him, and the power of his resurrection. The uncertainty is not in the fact of the resurrection, since Paul is in Christ, but in the form. The nature of the resurrection body is not clear to us. It was not, to the apostles, either.
John addressed the same issue in 1 John 3:2, saying that the nature of the resurrection or transformation body has not been revealed. All we know is that it will be like the body of Jesus, “When He is revealed, we shall be like him.”Let us strive to please him, but not so that we can gain salvation and the hope of the resurrection. We already have that! We serve out of gratitude, not out of obligation.
Your loving Pastor Chris.