Philippians 3:4b-14 Commentary

As I prayerfully contemplated this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, an old cliché kept coming to mind: “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” So, for example, my wife doesn’t enjoy eating beef liver. I, on the other hand, enjoy consuming a well-prepared liver. While I consider the Detroit Tigers baseball team to be the height of baseball quality, many friends consider the Washington Nationals or Baltimore Orioles to be far more excellent.

Philippians 3’s apostles offer another, though far weightier contrast. Paul, after all, contrasts “garbage” [skybala*] (8) with “the prize” [brabeion] to which God has called him “heavenward in Christ Jesus” (14). He essentially notes that what some people consider to be a treasure is what the Spirit has convinced him is trash.

In fact, the apostle claims that “whatever [hatina] were gains [kerde] to me I now consider [hegemai] loss [zemian]” for the sake of Christ” (7). It’s as if he feels so overwhelmed by this reversal that he reaches deep into the Greek lexicon to describe it. After all, the New Testament uses the words kerde, hegemai and zemian only two times outside of Philippians 3.

So what was it that once glittered to Paul, but he now considers so much zemian (“trash”)? It includes his impeccable Hebrew credentials. He wasn’t, after all, just a “Hebrew [Hebraios] of Hebrews [Hebraion]” (5). The apostle, in fact, hadn’t just been a Hebrew from birth, “circumcised [peritome] on the eighth day,” “of [ek] the people of Israel [genous Israel] … [and] the tribe [phyles] of Benjamin.”

Paul also grew up to build an impressive Hebrew resume. In verses 5 and following he says, “In regards [kata] to the law [nomon], a Pharisee [Pharisaios], as for zeal [zelos], persecuting [diokon] the church; as for righteousness [dikaiosynen] based on law [en nomo], faultless [amemptos].” The apostle was, in other words, in many ways what most Hebrew parents hoped and prayed their sons would grow up to be. To this day, many observant Hebrew parents’ fondest wish is that their son grow up to be such a Torah-keeper, if not rabbi.

Paul, in other words, didn’t just model what his Hebrew contemparories considered to be the epitome of Jewishness. He also invested a great deal of time and energy into rigorously keeping God’s law. The apostle took his faith so seriously that he even vigorously hounded and persecuted followers of what he considered to be heretical sects.

Preachers might let the Spirit guide us to explore how Jesus’ 21^st century friends naturally treasure what Paul might call garbage. We may not consider ourselves to be model Hebrews. But think of some of the ways we try to please God by being good folks. We believe that God saves us by God’s grace alone but sometimes suspect the belief that receives it is a kind of good work. Or Jesus’ followers assume that saving faith must be fully formed.

However, as Paul the model Hebrew was on his way to continue to zealously persecute Jesus’ followers, the Lord graciously knocked him off his high horse and into God’s kingdom. When God did that, God radically realigned his priorities. The Spirit graciously convinced the apostle that his impressive resume and zeal were worthless. As The Message paraphrases him as writing in verse 7, “The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash – along with everything else I used to take credit for.”

Why? Because of the Christ to whom Paul repeatedly refers in 8b-14. He describes in verse 8 “the surpassing worth [to hyperechon] of knowing [geneseos] Christ Jesus” his “Lord, for whose sake” he has “lost [ezemiothen] all things.” The apostle had lost virtually everything, including his status as a model Hebrew as well as, likely, many, if not all of his old friends. Yet he believes that God has given him everything he needs – and more. Now all of the time and energy he’d invested in observing Torah is like garbage in comparison to the wonder of knowing Christ, including who he is and what he has done.

At the heart of God’s gracious provision of everything Paul needs is what he refers to in verse 9 as “a righteousness [dikaiosynen] … which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God [ek Theou] on the basis of [epi] faith.” God has graced the apostle who’d once tried but failed to perfectly keep Torah with the status of one who has perfectly kept Torah. The Spirit has, in turn, equipped him to receive that new status with his faith in Christ. So all that time and energy Paul had once so passionately expended turned out to be one colossal waste. For Jesus’ sake God, after all, simply graced him with the status of a perfect God worshiper.

Yet the Spirit has shown Paul that the depth of that gift is almost unfathomable. After all, in verse 10-11 he says, “I want to know [gnonai] Christ – yes, to know the power [dynamin] of his resurrection [anastaseos] and participation in his sufferings [pathematon], becoming like him [symmorphizomenos] in his death and, somehow, attaining [katanteso] to the resurrection [exanstasin] from the dead.” It’s as if the apostle admits that what Christ has done and wishes to do for him is beyond his power to completely comprehend them. He can only hope to understand their incredible extent increasingly fully.

Paul points out that part of the depth of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection is its ongoing impact on God’s creation and its creatures, including God’s dearly beloved people. It’s a historic fact that Jesus suffered, died, and rose again from the dead nearly 2,000 years ago.

But the ripples from it still spread two millennia later. Jesus’ friends participate in his sufferings, in part as we allow the Spirit to crucify our sinful desires and actions. We also become like him in his death as we surrender ourselves to God’s plans and purposes for us. God’s adopted children, what’s more, experience the power of Jesus’ resurrection as we allow the Spirit to raise to life within us Christ-like words, actions and even thoughts. And to top it all off, Christians look forward to God resurrecting us from the dead at Christ’s return at the end of measured time.

But Philippians 3’s preachers will want to note that Paul sees most of this as ongoing. He, after all, admits in verse 12, “Not that I have already [ede] obtained [elabon] all this, or have already arrived at my goal [teleleiomai].” The Message paraphrases him as confessing there, “I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made.”

Even Jesus’ closest friends remain “a work in progress.” Even the most faithful Christians don’t yet let the Spirit help us fully participate in Jesus’ sufferings. Neither preachers nor our hearers have yet perfectly become like Christ in his death. We don’t yet know the full power of Jesus’ resurrection. And we certainly haven’t yet attained the resurrection from the dead.

So those who proclaim the gospel during this Lenten season preach both confession and patience. We humbly summon each other to confess our failure to wish to learn the full impact of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. In this season we remind ourselves and each other that we still have much sin to confess.

However, preachers also invite Jesus’ followers to remain patient with God’s Spirit and us. After all, God’s not yet finished with God’s remodeling project that is God’s adopted children. So even as we confess our failure to fully participate in Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, we let the Spirit keep us going.

In fact, with Paul in verse 12b we profess, “I press on [dioko] to take hold of [katalabo] that for which Christ took hold of [katalempththen] me.” The apostle’s language is striking. He longs to seize that for which Christ seized him. He realizes that Christ claimed him in part in order to make him increasingly like his rescuer.

Paul is, in the paraphrase of The Message, “reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for” him. So is it too much to imagine that as Jesus dangles from the cross, the arms the Romans have cruelly stretched out are the arms that are also reaching for not just Jesus’ friends, but also the entire world?

Of course, Paul’s reaching out for the Jesus who reached out for him is another ongoing process. “I do not,” he writes in verse 13, “consider [logizomai] myself yet to have taken hold of it.” The apostle is continuing to reach out for that for which Christ reached out for him.

Paul is, in fact, “Forgetting [epilanthanomes] what is behind [opiso] and straining [epeketeinomenos] toward what is ahead [emprosthen]” (13). While he remembers what once consumed him but he now considers garbage, it’s not the focus of his attention. He doesn’t let his former waste of time and energy keep him from following Jesus. The apostle’s eyes are not looking back, except to contemplate Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. They are, instead, looking to future that God has in store for him.

Paul’s “goal” [skopon],” he concludes in verse 14, is to “win the prize [brabeion] for which God has called” him “heavenward [ano kleseos] in Christ Jesus.” He has felt God’s call to pursue the ultimate goal that is emotional and, ultimately, physical nearness to the Christ who has graciously taken hold of him. That’s God’s invitation to him that has become his goal in life – and in death.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

[Note: In addition to these weekly sermon commentaries on the CEP website, we also have a resource page for Lent and Easter with more preaching and worship ideas as well as sample sermons on the Year C Lectionary texts.]

Illustration

In his book, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York, Thomas Kessner writes about the former mayor’s brand of “righteousness.” He writes, “As a rule, those administrators who disagreed with La Guardia were fired ‘absolutely and permanently.’ No one he cared enough about to argue with escaped being fired dozens of times, only to have a secretary call the next day to assign the same work as if nothing had happened.

“‘You’re fired’ was just another of the many colorful epithets that Fiorello used to let off steam . . . La Guardia rebuilt municipal integrity in a hard cast. His righteousness was hard-centered, a ruthless righteousness, able to do hard battle in the name of its goals.”