Philippians 3

Philippians 3:1-21

Division 3. (Philippians 3:1-21.)Christ in glory the Goal and Prize. The apostle has already led us up to the blessed Object before him. What he has been just enlarging upon is the example of the Lord’s humiliation, but he is now going to enlarge upon the glory which is his strength for such a path as this; the light which now shines for us upon the path, and shines more and more unto the perfect day. It is beautiful to realize that the very thing that is wanting to him now, as we look at him here, is the very thing which makes him a pilgrim and a racer, -an Object outside himself, something which he has not yet attained, but to which, because of its glory for him, he gives his whole energy to pressing on for its attainment. This is what characterizes all that we have here. His look is forward only. A racer does not look at the road on each side.

He looks at what is before him; and so it is that in everything here, the principle is “forgetting that which is behind, and pressing on to that which is before.” This is true of all attainment and experiences by the way, as it is of other things. It is not merely the world which is left behind, -that surely; but he himself, whatever up to the present he might be, is still left behind. It is Christ before him that gives oneness of purpose and character to his present life.

1. The thing, therefore, that he would press upon them now, as if it was all he wanted to say, was, “Rejoice in the Lord.” He might seem to be insisting upon this in almost a needless manner, but it was not needless; nor for those who realized what Christ was to them, irksome either. There was opposition also. There were “dogs,” evil workmen, men of the concision, just, surely, the judaizing spirit that we have seen active in the other epistles. He gives them the same title that they would apply to Gentiles. They were dogs, unclean, ferocious creatures. They were workmen it is true, but evil workmen, and busy for no good end. They were the “concision,” the mutilators of the flesh, as we may say, but which left it still with real strength for hindrance.

After all, it was flesh they trusted in. The law, as we have seen many times, has to do with the man in the flesh and no other. Ascetic severity may be practised even to any extent, as the apostle has told us in Colossians, while the flesh gets real satisfaction by this. He will not call them the circumcision, the title they would have given themselves; for, now that Christianity has come, true circumcision is no more in the flesh, but is spiritual. There had indeed always to be what was spiritual in connection with it, to make it true for God; but now the characteristics of the circumcision are spiritual altogether. We are that, he says, who worship in the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who have no confidence in the flesh.

Manifest it is that this “no confidence in the flesh” applies as much to the flesh in the Christian as to any other. Confidence in self, of any kind, is confidence in the flesh.

The opposite to it here, the Object of all glorying, is Christ Himself. The knowledge of the new man is, as we have seen, Christ is all; and this it is that makes worshipers in the power of the Spirit of God, for Christ alone is He whom the Spirit glorifies, and with whom He occupies the heart. Beautiful it is to see how here the lesson of Romans, as already said, has been learned. There is no mention all the way through the epistle by the apostle, on his own part, of conflict with the flesh. His heart is there where the flesh can have no place. “The law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, has set” him free from the law of sin and death." This Object beyond himself has made him master of himself. There is a real attainment which is the very opposite of that self-conscious sanctification which so many are seeking now.

On the contrary, he sees self in such a way as that he can trust it no longer, and Christ, not self, (good or bad either,) is the One before his eyes. He does not turn back to tell you of his own experience.

He is not thinking of his own attainments. He has attained nothing yet, as it were, until he is with Christ in glory. This is the genuine Christian spirit, as far removed from the helpless misery of the bondage which some would persuade us is normal for the Christian, as it is, on the other hand, far from all Pharisaic self-satisfaction or comfort in one’s own condition. 2. He does indeed now tell us what ground of comfort he might have, if any, in the flesh; but only to dismiss it all as unworthy; as that which, if it were gain to him, were all the more, on account of the Christ before him, loss indeed. Anything which gave value and importance to himself would be but loss. It is in Christ that he finds all; and there is no separate interest, no treasure of any kind apart from Christ; but it is of use for him to show that he is not despising things which were not his. On the other hand, he had all that the proudest Jew could boast himself of, -a Jew himself, a circumcised man, circumcised. the eighth day, of Israel’s race, of the tribe of Benjamin, -not a descendant of one of Jacob’s handmaids, -a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a thorough, out and out Jew, unmixed with Gentilism in any way. As to the law itself; one of the straitest sect, a Pharisee; as to zeal, (the kind of zeal that goes with law keeping,) persecuting the Church of God; but as to himself also, with regard to such righteousness as could be found in man under law, blameless.

Plainly he was one in whom there was no conscious evil indulged to awaken the clamor of conscience in his soul. As he says in Galatians, he was no sinner of the Gentiles. The very things which made him afterwards to realize himself the chief of sinners were, in this way, to him, (in the state of which he speaks,) only things to be credited to him for good. As he has told us in Romans, he had not yet found the power of that commandment which brings about the full detection of man’s natural evil, “Thou. shalt not lust.” All this was gain to him, then. He felt and valued it; but Christ had been revealed, and where was the value now? He does not stop to debate about these things; he does not sift them to show that after all they were not what they seemed. Whatever they were, make them as much as possible, pile them. up mountains high, Christ in glory set them aside altogether. They were not merely slight in gain; they were loss. He wanted nothing but that Christ who had been revealed to him.

How blessed and wonderful to remember that this is, after all, not the picture simply of a great apostle. It is substantially the picture of a Christian in his normal character as that. The joy and the power of Christian life are found here, and the joy is the power. The life in its highest character, the spiritual condition in its fullest blessedness, are all found here. 3. It was not merely, however, for him the throwing aside of that which was religious gain to him. He had thrown all things aside. He had suffered the loss of all things and counted. them, not to be some valuable sacrifice that He had made, but mere defilement, for it was Christ who was before him to be gained. He is not, from this point of view, telling us that he has gained Christ, but that he is seeking to win Him. It is the actual possession of Christ in glory that he is thinking of.

When there, what would it be as to himself? From that point of view, he may be permitted to think of himself. What will the man find as to himself who has thus won Christ? Not, he says, his own righteousness: that would be the legal principle essentially. He would be found in Christ, in possession of the righteousness which is by faith of Christ, righteousness which, he repeats emphatically, is of God, of His bestowal, through faith, that humblest of principles, which necessarily turns its back upon all that is of self, to lay hold of Another. This is then the One he wants to know. He knows Him, but does not count this knowledge yet as the knowledge that he seeks. He cannot, of course, set aside this, as he has set aside other things. He would not mean to undervalue it; it was all of Christ that for the present he had; but what, nevertheless, would it be in that day when Christ Himself would be at last before his eyes, the goal of the race he had been running? He wanted to know Him after this manner, to know the power of His resurrection not, as many think, a present power, therefore of resurrection in his soul, -that he already knew. He was risen with Christ and knew it; but it is not a condition to be attained down here, still less a condition that he had attained, that he was thinking of, but that which will put him in the place in which he seeks to be; and as a prisoner of Christ in the Roman dungeon, he is entitled to think here of the sufferings attendant, and of the death which might so easily be before him.

What then? That would be his way through to the resurrection from among the dead. Thus, the sufferings themselves, the manner of death, whatever it were, if it were complete conformity to Christ’s crucifixion, he would take it as that which only the more assimilated him to Christ for the present, while it was the way which led on to the apprehension of the power of that resurrection which would at last bring him to Christ in glory. As already said we have to realize, for the apprehension of what is here, that it is Christ Himself before his eyes, an Object outside the world, that is filling them. It is this and not any intervening thing that he is pressing after. It is no spiritual condition apart from this.

He wants no halting place, no place to loiter in by the way, no present satisfaction, as it were, except that indeed which is derived from the blessed Object ever drawing nearer, and which is gaining upon his soul with every step he takes. 4. But he insists upon it that he has not attained, he is not already perfected. It is this that makes him pursue, with such stedfastness of aim and purpose, that which is before him. He wants to apprehend, that is, to lay hold of, that for which Christ has already laid hold of him. He is doing one thing, therefore, -how all our lives are spoilt by the desire to do more things than one! He is “forgetting the things behind, stretching out to the things before,” pressing ever to the goal “for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus;” not simply the high calling, but the “calling above,” the calling to a place outside the earth altogether.

This is what gave him the stedfastness which was manifestly his. This is what made him the man he was, and this attitude is what indeed he calls “perfection.” If men would be perfect, let them be thus minded; and then, as to the details, whatever other minds they might have, God would make all plain to them.

Is not this that which we need so much, -not to seek, as it were, to be of the same mind with one another? As to the details of the path, the perseverance in the path is that which only aright can make all details plain. It is manifest that as we press along a road, (one of many roads, let us say, all tending to the same point at last,) we cannot see things where we are just as others see them from their own points of view. We see things from where we are. As we get on further, each one of us, we find of necessity that our view of things is growing to be the same; not exactly because we have sought to have this so, but rather that it is the necessary result of all pressing on together to the one place in which we shall at last see absolutely together, eye to eye. Here it is that the prize awaits us.

Christ is both goal and prize at the same time. What a perfect solution it will be of all the difficulties of the way!

How the light of the glory of God will make everything absolutely plain, and not merely plain, but bright also! 5. “Nevertheless,” he says, “whereto we have already attained, let us walk in the same steps;” that is, whatever may be our convictions at the present, let us act according to these convictions. Let us have truth practical. If we want it to be what the truth should be, we must walk in it to make it real. In this way, also, he could exhort them to follow him as he was following Christ, -to follow any others who were thus walking: not, as is evident, a following of man as man. We have to scrutinize the walk in order rightly to follow it. No man is altogether a model, and therefore Paul must say of himself, giving us the limit in this: “as I follow Christ.” This brings us of necessity, to Christ Himself after all, as the one perfect Example for us; while, at the same time, we recognize and are encouraged by the example of those who are following Him.

But he has now to warn them that already there were many walking, -of course with a profession, which is argued by the walk, and yet of whom he had told them often, and now even weeping told them, that they were the enemies of the cross of Christ. Not enemies of Christ Himself, exactly; that is not the thing of which he is speaking.

They take no place of open adversaries, clearly, and they may even make much of the cross of Christ itself, if it were to shelter themselves by the grace that is in it from the rightful judgment of their unholy ways. It was possible, even then, as we know, to turn the grace of God into fleshly license, but this could not possibly avert the end to which such a course would lead. We have seen again and again that there is a way which leads to a certain end, and which will always lead there, although the mercy and goodness of God are not restricted by this; and there is a way of death from which, if grace works, it must deliver the soul. It cannot save one in it. For these, then, their end was destruction. Their god was really their belly; that is to say, the fleshly craving in them had never been set aside by any satisfaction that they had found for themselves in Christ.

The craving of an unrenewed nature, -for he is not speaking of Christians, plainly, -led and governed them. These were their god, as he says, in strong, decisive language; and so deceived could they be as to glory in their shame.

Earthly things they valued and secured, -prided themselves upon securing them. How different from that which we have had before us as the apostle’s example! Here, then, was the awful contrast that could yet be found amongst professing Christians in that day; and they were not few, but many, he tells us, who walked thus. “For our citizenship,” he adds In contrast, “is in the heavens.” All our interests, all our relationships, all our rights, all our gains are there; and while it is true that that leaves us, in the meanwhile, as it were, perhaps, but scantily provided, we are waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall transform the very body of our humiliation into conformity to His body of glory, according to the working of the power which He has, even to subdue all things to Himself. That is a hope which clearly can never interfere with the pressing on in the path meanwhile, -the very opposite. The power of it is that the Christ who is a the end of the way is thus brought so near us, we may arrive there at any moment; like the disciples who, receiving Christ into the ship, were immediately at the land whither they were going. There is no necessity of so many steps upon this path of which we have been told. Divine grace may cut it short at any time. God may fulfil all our hopes in a speedier way than we can imagine.