03.09. LESSON 9

LESSON 9 In the first part of Php 3:1-21, Paul says the goal and prize of his strenuous race is to be dead to the world, as Christ was, that he may attain the Christian resurrection; says nothing the world can offer has any interest for him. Christ, even to Paul, who knows him so well, is as a fabu­lously rich mine, just opened. That the mine can never be worked unto depletion is a priceless asset, especially to elderly Christians. Whatever a Christian’s progress, he is but a novice. “Nothing can keep old saints out of heaven long.”

Paul thinks his is the correct attitude to which all Chris­tians should aspire. He knows that many do not have it up to his measure, but, since to become Christians without some measure is impossible, he says a Christian is on the right road, and if he but has the will to walk in it, God stands pledged to “reveal,” as he needs them, increasing knowledge and the strength to obey (Php 3:15). “Whereun­to we (Paul includes himself) have attained, by the same rule let us walk” (Php 3:16). This has direct bearing on the lack of unity among the Philippians: since they had reached fundamental common ground in being baptized into Christ, they should learn and grow together harmoniously until all “attain unto the unity of the faith, and to the knowl­edge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man . . . grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:1-15). May I add a personal note? I have been trying to teach the Bible for more than fifty years. To my knowledge I do not teach anything now that contradicts anything I have ever taught. What I knew at first has been supplemented, but it has been neither discarded nor discounted. Chris­tianity throughout is a self-consistent, expanding, mount­ing highway that opens out into eternity. No traveler need ever get lost, run into dead ends, remain on the same spiritual level (not even Paul), or be estranged from his brethren. It is the only way without blasted hopes and wrecked careers—the only way of gain.

“Who Mind Earthly Things”

“Brethren, be ye imitators together of me, and mark them that so walk even as ye have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is perdition, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things” (Php 3:17-19). In asking the Philippians to unite in imitating him, Paul alludes to their disunity again, and offers his example as a slip for resetting. Seemingly, this severe lan­guage is descriptive of a condition in the church at large rather than of the actual condition in Philippi. Though Paul has often warned them against such a condition, the Phi­lippians are still earthly enough, however, to need a stern warning and this intimate, tearful appeal. In this passage, Paul has in mind both Judaism and An­tinomianism. Judaism, declaring itself to be perfected Chris­tianity, was in reality an insidious disease eating out its very heart. Antinomians, arguing, “We continue in sin that grace may abound,” perverted Christian liberty into license, and, “turning the grace of God into lasciviousness,” de­bauched the church openly. “Whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame” fit, as gloves do hands, the ignorant, wicked boast of nominal Christians who say that God’s grace makes their morality and decency unnecessary. Jewish legalism and Gentile licentiousness were vipers that, had not God raised up Paul to do them heroic battle, would have, humanly speaking, destroyed the church in its cradle. Paul’s campaign against these twins, that per­petually “creep and intrude, and climb into the fold,” re­strained, but did not slay them. Ritualism and Carnality, in modern dress, are inexorable foes of the church still, exceedingly strong and perilous. Can you visualize the weeping Paul in his prison dictat­ing this letter? The emotional content of Paul’s soul is almost frightening at times, as when he writes that he had great sorrow and unceasing pain in his heart because of the Jews’ unbelief, and could wish himself accursed for their sake (Romans 9:2-3). Paul wrote with tears in his pen, and spoke with tears in his tone. Should not his “example” prime our hearts and dry eyes? How good that God, when he made us, did not forget to put in a heart!

Citizens of Heaven

After, in tears dooming worldly Christians to “perdition,” Paul says to true Christians: “Our citizenship is (not shall be) in heaven; whence also we wait for a Savior” (Php 3:20). On this subject Christ says to his disciples: “Take heed lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day (his return) come on you suddenly as a snare: for so shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of all the earth. But watch ye . . . that ye may prevail to escape all these things . . . and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:34-36). Either sheep or goats; no neutrality.

Beginning with Abraham, God’s people have always “con­fessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” for while occupied by Satan it cannot be a fit home. Peter’s appeal, “Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts,” has life in it because it turns on this pivotal truth. Since Christians cannot be heavenly minded unless they are conscious of their heavenly citizen­ship, that they be right at this point, indeed is pivotal. In­stead of sojourners settling down and accumulating prop­erty, they send things home and collect them to take back with them. Nor do they when sojourning among savages become savages. Of course, having citizenship in heaven does not make rebels on earth; or make people so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly use. According to Christ, they are the salt and the light of the world. As Father and Son and Spirit comprise the divine trinity, so “spirit and soul and body” comprise the human trinity, which is to be “preserved entire . . . at the coming of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 5:23). A Christian cannot lose: if he live till Jesus come, he, his body “changed” into “a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44-51), is “caught up . . . to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17) to be with him ever­more; if he die before Christ return, he, unbodied, goes to a “very better” life with Christ, to await the fashioning anew his body of humiliation like unto Christ’s glorified body. A disembodied spirit is not an “entire” man as God made him, and as he shall be again when his redemption from Satan’s ruin is completed. As Paul’s faith, “he is able,” satisfied him, like faith must satisfy us. Faith is the only coin we have that will buy this knowledge, hope and com­fort.

QUESTIONS

1.    What does the statement, no matter what a Christian’s ma­turity he is but a novice, mean?

2.    Dilate upon the statement that Christianity Is a self-consis­tent, expanding, mounting highway that opens out Into eter­nity.

3.    How did Judaism eat the heart out of Christianity?

4.    How did Antinomianism turn the “grace of God Into lascivious­ness”?

5.    What do you think of ritualism and licentiousness as perpetual enemies of the church?

6.    Comment upon the emotional quality of Paul’s soul.

7.    In what sense are Christians citizens of heaven?

8.    Name the essential parts of the indestructible human trInity.

9.    Upon what contingency may Christians miss the resurrection?