Loss is Gain

Series on Philippians

VI Paul’s Changed Life

B From Loss to Gain, Text: 3:7-11

Title: Loss is Gain

Introduction

Capitalism is a wonderful thing. Free enterprise encourages people to succeed and invent. It has blessed our country and it has dealt and is dealing a death blow to the communist lie. Capitalism is about the profit motive. The Bible supports industry and success. The problem is that when we apply this to our spiritual lives the ideal of the self-made man is a liability. Today we are going to learn how bad that is.

I The Profit

Look at verses 7 and 8, But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. In 1929 the stock market crashed. Many financiers committed suicide. They had no idea what Paul was talking about here. Their identity was tied to their financial success. Paul was not a financier, but he was a big success. He was the champion of the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin and the Jewish nation. This was his profit. His performance in this was one of surpassing greatness. And then in one split second on the Damascus road he met Jesus and he lost everything that really did not matter and gained everything that did. Let me put this into a modern context. Charles Colson was an attorney who became a mover and a shaker in the Nixon administration. Whatever you think of the politics, he ended up in prison after Watergate. Now he is the leader of an international ministry, Prison Ministries. He lost everything, but I know he would say what was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

II The Putrid

Still in verse 8 we read, I consider them rubbish. The King James Version says I consider them dung. Out of delicacy I will not comment further. So let me tell you about my experience. I think it was 1956 that a seminary classmate invited me to become a counselor at a Christian camp in upstate NY. I went to Camp Pinnacle to lead children and youth to Christ. My first job was to clean out a grease pit. My partner and I did it. I was a boy from the city that never even heard of a grease pit. It was the equivalent of cleaning out a septic tank, but we did it by hand. I proved my metal that day. Every time I think of that experience, I think of Paul’s words here. That grease pit is my righteousness. Isaiah 64:6 says all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags. They are nauseating.

III The Provision

Verses 8 and 9 show the provision that replaces the worthless profit, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ-the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. Now if everything that Paul ever did is rubbish, then what is his hope? If you want to be acceptable to God then you need to be righteous, but you don’t have righteousness, you have rubbish. Where can I find this righteousness that I need? Paul makes clear that it is through trusting in Christ. Long before Jesus was born God told his people that they needed his righteousness. In Jeremiah 23:5 and 6 God says, The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. in his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness. This leads directly to one of the clearest declarations of the gospel in the New Testament, II Corinthians 5:21 where Paul says, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Paul did not trust in his own efforts but in the free gift of righteousness through Christ that comes from God and is by faith. So you can either keep the rubbish, or you can trade it in for a free gift. I have been reading the automobile ads in the Newspaper. We’ll give you up to $10,000 minimum as a trade in. What does that mean? Trust me, I have a better deal. Trade in your own efforts and receive a totally free righteousness and the warranty is a lot better than a 100,000 miles.

IV The Passion

Who would not want the provision? But how many people want the passion that Paul describes in verses 10 and 11? I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. To the Roman Christians Paul writes, If we suffer with him we shall also be glorified with him. In II Corinthians 4:10 he says, We always carry about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in us. Who in the world asks for this kind of suffering? And Paul is passionate about it. Obviously he is persuaded that Christ will keep what he has committed to Him against that last day because he writes in I Corinthians, If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men the most foolish. You are probably thinking I have enough trouble already. Do I need more? The point is that you can only say this if you are persuaded of the glory to follow. It’s a choice that you make. Jesus said take up your cross and follow me. Paul made that choice. So when he says that he may somehow attain to the resurrection from the dead he ís expressing modesty and not doubt. He knows he must persevere, because Jesus said, He that endures to the end will be saved. The surest way to do that is to share in His sufferings. Sometimes we make decisions that lead to human regret, but then we see that God has called us to this trial so that we can share in Jesus sufferings so that somehow we can attain to the resurrection from the dead.