Philippians. 3:1-14

HI 3:1-14{
WE saw the apostle, in the last chapter bringing our hearts in contact' with the Lord Jesus, giving
up His Divine glory on high, taking the form of a servant, and going clown; and then as man highly exalted. That is exactly what we are to do; we are to have the same mind.
" He has closed then, in the last chapter, the state and condition of soul we are to be in, and he now looks..before-onward to the glory. The things before will keep the soul from being hindered-Christ set before the soul so as to take complete possession of it. It is not the character of graciousness in the life here, and considerateness for 'others, as in the last chapter, which looked at Christ emptying Himself of glory and humbling Himself; but the energy of Divine life which presses forward to the goal. Sometimes we see a want of energy where "there is loveliness of character; or a great deal of, energy, on the other hand, when there is a want of softness and considerateness for others. But in the things of God you must get the whole that any part may be right. Satan imitates part, but you never get the whole_ in what he imitates. When you get both-when Christ is everything it delivers from selfishness, and shows itself in. seeking the good of others; but it will not-give way when giving up Christ is in question; I do not Mean silting Him up as to the soul's salvation, but in our path here. So the apostle says, "add to brotherly kindness charity," for if God is not brought in we have not power to walk according to him in graciousness. Christ has gone up and is everything-to us; He is before us as an object, and we cannot give Him up to please the flesh; but we can look for power to press on.
He then gives the starting point in rejoicing in the Lord. " Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, rejoice." The effect of the ending of self is that I rejoice always; and, if I rejoice always, it is in the Lord that I rejoice. Nothing separates from the love, we know; but there is danger when we are in the enjoyment of present blessing; we are apt to rest in the blessing, and not feel dependent on the Blesser. David said, " I shall never be moved. Lord, by Thy favor Thou Nast made my mountain to stand strong: Thou didst hide Thy face, and I was troubled." When his mountain was gone he found he had been trusting in his Mountain,. and not in the Lord. When he says, " The Lord is my Shepherd," there was no being moved, for he was resting in the Lord Himself. If the heart is emptied of self it does rest in the Lord; but the heart is so treacherous that a person experiencing great joy as a Christian often gets a fall after it, because of having got away from the place of dependence. He is restored again, we know, as in that Psalm: " He restoreth my soul."
Here Paul was just going to be tried for his life. He had been in prison four years, two of them chained to heathen soldiers, and he says he knew how to be full and to be hungry, how to abound and to suffer need. Pains, and sorrows, and joys and comforts-he had gone through all; and he was not discouraged as a man might be who was obliged to be with brutal, uncultivated men, and in constant suffering chained to a soldier, and four years in prison. And that was not all; he might have said, I am in prison and cannot do the Lord's work., No, he is with the Lord, and he says, all will " turn to my salvation." Even when Christ was preached of contention, he could say, "I herein do "rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." When we are weaned from everything we are cast on the Lord, and able to rejoice in the Lord, and that is when He leads us.
But what an object, what an energy-producing object there was in the Lord before him! He looks at everything beyond the wilderness-he a traveler across it, and on the way, always rejoicing in the Lord. Whether he was preaching in public, or quietly in his lodging receiving those who came in, he was rejoicing. It is a great setting aside of self to be always rejoicing in the Lord. He had hoped to go on into Spain after being somewhat filled with the saints' company; but there was now no more about Spain, or being filled with their company either, yet he was still rejoicing. You can never get inside the defenses of the one whose joy is in the Lord. " Nay, in all these things," he says, "we are more than conquerors." All these things are creatures-"angels, principalities, and powers;" but He dwells in us; He is near the heart, and that is the great secret; we get Christ between us and the troubles; we understand how unbelief hinders, but this is the secret that makes everything work for good. The love of God is reckoned upon; His love is shed abroad in the heart. - The great starting-point is, " Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord."
We see, too, the simplicity of looking to Christ. The religion of descent, of ordinances, and of works-the moment I get these three, morally speaking, I get a Jew. It was all works, ordinances, and descent. I could boast of all this just the same if Christ had not come. But where does it all end? “Beware of dogs." Dogs is a name for a perfectly shameless thing.
I must get the conscience with, God, and Christ from God, or I have got nothing. A Jew could bow his head like a bulrush and do all that without his soul being with God, and therefore God puts perfect contempt upon it all. He says, " My son, give me thy heart." " The cattle upon a thousand hills" is. mine. " If I were hungry, I would not tell thee." It is no use your bringing offerings; I want you, not your offerings. Cain had much more trouble in tilling the ground than Abel had about the lamb; but Cain's conscience had never been with God, nor seen the ruin that bad come in; we see the hardness of his heart as to sin, and his ignorance as to the holiness of God. He brings what was the sign of the curse-what he had got by the sweat of his brow. Abel brought a lamb, and was accepted. If we have got the real knowledge of the work of atonement and acceptance in Him, we are like Abel. The testimony as to righteousness refers to the person of Abel. What it was founded on was his offering, which was a type of Christ. God cannot refuse me when I present Christ to Him; He accepts me according to the pass I bring. I cannot think of going through a process to make my soul up in some way. In coming to God I must come in God's way, which is Christ and nothing else, and with my own conscience; not with ordinances, which are all outward things.
It is remarkable the way in which he treats the subject in this chapter. It is not the conscience with sin on it, but the worthlessness of all ordinances; so he calls it the "concision." Have your hearts circumcised-that is the true ordinance. "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit." Even as Jeremiah says, “Circumcise your hearts." It must be the flesh totally put down. The flesh has a religion as well -as lusts; but the flesh must have a religion that will not kill the. flesh; satisfying the flesh in mortifying the body - a voluntary humility, not sparing the body-that-is easy work; but it is not easy. work to be done with the flesh. Suppose I could say, "An Hebrew of the Hebrews," “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless," perfectly religious-who would be accredited by that? Paul; not God or Christ. It is not worth a farthing, this righteousness. It is giving me a good place. It is I all the while, not Christ. And it is in this that it is detected-the moment it accredits the flesh; it may be costly and painful; it may be things by which I punish myself, but it is utterly worthless. I have seen a person irritated to the last degree when told it was not worth anything. It is striking the way in which Paul takes it up. It is not as sin, but as something perfectly worth-less—legal righteousness', and-the true religion as
man can see it. "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ." He was an Hebrew of the Hebrews, and after the strictest sect he lived a Pharisee; that was gain to him.
Then he says, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count, them but dung, that I may win Christ." There was no question of sin; when he speaks of righteousness, it is not as meeting sins, but as contrasted with righteousness according to the law. We can always detect it; all it does is to accredit self-that is the mischief and the evil; for who would have filthy rags (that is what our righteousnesses are called) when he could have Christ for his righteousness? He had such a perception of the excellency of what Christ is in God's sight-what God delights in-that he says, I am not going to keep this wretched righteousness, or add it to that which is of God. The deceitful lusts are bad enough, but this religious flesh is worse. It was not real righteousness; it was self puffed up, not self judged; it was self eked out, and painted over. Now he wants to get rid of self, and have Christ instead of it.
That is the place, and now he unfolds it. Remark it is not when I was converted I counted all things loss. We find when a person is converted Christ is everything; the world is a vain show, vanity, nothing. It has passed from the mind, and things unseen fill the heart. But afterward as the man goes on with his duties and intercourse with his friends, though Christ is still precious, he does not continue to count all things loss; often it is only that he counted. But Paul says, I do count, not did. It is a great thing to be able to say it. Christ should hold always such a place as He did when salvation was first revealed to our hearts.
Allow me to add a thing which comes into my mind Of course if a man has not Christ at the bottom he is no Christian at all; but I mean even where Christ is in a man, and you may find him walking blamelessly, yet, if you speak to him of Christ, there is not an echo in his heart, though, his life goes oil smoothly. Christ at the bottom, and a fair Christian walk at the top, and, between these two, a hundred and fifty things that Christ has nothing to do with at all. His life is practically passed without Christ. This will not do. It is the terrible levity of the heart that goes on without Christ, until it becomes the highway of whatever the world pours into it.
He now tells us what 'is the power for this. He wants to win Christ, and it looks like a terrible sacrifice to give up everything for this. But it is just like a baby with a plaything. Try to take the plaything from it, it will hold it the faster; put a prettier before it, and it will let the other drop. He counted everything loss and dung; the things were gone. I shall have temptations, I know; but nine-tenths of the temptations that beset and hinder would not exist if Christ had His place. Things would not tempt and beset us, as gold, and silver, and pretty things, if "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus " had its place in the heart; that kind of conflict would be gone. We should then know the snares Of Satan, and suffer for others ' it would not be the struggle to keep my own head above water, but to keep others from being drowned.
Christ having got this place, other things have lost their value. His eye is single, and the whole body is full of light. He had suffered the loss of all things; but he says, "I do count them but dung." He was looking at Christ as such a blessed object that everything was given up for Him. And he kept this place for Him, so that he goes on to win Christ. He had not got Christ yet, but Christ had got hold of him; and he was running the race to get there, and looking at the end of the journey. No matter what the road is; it may be rough, but I am looking to the end.
There are these two things here; first, that I may win Christ; and second, that I may not have my own righteousness. A man with a threadbare coat, if he gets a right good one, is ashamed of the old one. Paul would not thank you for the kind of righteousness he had before. I cannot have my own and God's; I would not have my own if I could. This is blessedly brought out in the first of Corinthians: " Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.' What we are in life of God; Christ is of God towards me.
He then goes to the next thing: " That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection."
The first thing was winning Christ; the second, knowing Christ. There is the victory over the. Whole power of evil-death, and everything else. I want to know Him-His perfect love and life; to have Him as the object before the soul-occupying soul, and mind, and heart, and so grow up into Him; and to know the power of His resurrection, for then the whole power of Satan was set aside. He had spoken of the righteousness as that which he sought in Christ, not in himself and the law; and now he wanted to know the power of the life expressed in the resurrection of 'Christ. When he has known Christ as a person, and victory over death, he can take up the service of love as Christ did, and can know "the fellowship of his sufferings." How different to fearing, and dreading, and creeping on as the apostles did when told of His death, in the tenth of Mark: " They were amazed, and as they followed, they were afraid," instead of rejoicing because death was before them. But, if I know-the power of resurrection, death is behind me, all its power is broken. So, when He rose, He said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and 'in earth;" " preach the gospel to every creature;'' " be not afraid of them that kill the body; " they -have killed my body.
When I have got the power of resurrection I can serve in love. 'Paul was looking death in the face, and not speaking lightly. Satan says, You want to follow Christ?—Yes.—There is death in your way.—Very well; I shall be all the more like Christ for going through it.
"The fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death, if by any means I might attain unto the 'resurrection of the dead." Paul so came into this, that he uses words Christ Himself might use: " I endure' all things for lie elect's sake. It was all of grace-La totally new place-all pretension to righteousness gone, and what I am as man too, and Christ substituted as righteousness for me. And then Himself—to know Rim. That is where progress goes on to; the affections are 'now engaged. When I see suffering before me I get the power of His resurrection, and then the privilege of the fellowship of His sufferings. Paul had a large share of this; we have a little. He says, " If by any means I might attain; " that is, Cost what it will, if death is on the road, all right, I shall attain what t(Ile did-resurrection from among the dead.
This is a special' word, and very seldom found but here in the New Testament. When we look at the resurrection from the dead, we find it to be a matter of all possible importance. Christ was the first-fruits, not of the wicked dead, of course. What was Christ's resurrection? God raised Him from the dead, because His delight was in Him, because of His perfect righteousness and glorifying Him. And it is the same with us. Resurrection is the expression of God's satisfaction in those raised is His seal on Christ's work. Christ was the Son He delighted in, and now it is the same with us because of Christ. In Him it was His own perfectness; with us it is because of Him. He comes in in power to take His own out, while the rest are left behind.
"From among:"-in that lies the whole force of the expression. So at the transfiguration; He charged them not to speak of it “till the Son of man were risen from the dead;" they questioned among themselves. "what the rising from the dead should mean." What astonished them? It was "the rising from among the dead." It was this very thing. God stepped in in power, and raised Him up, and set Him at His own right hand; and when the time is come He will raise His saints too. It is an immense act of divine power, for divine righteousness is there. In the fifteenth of the first of Corinthians there is no reference but to saints; it is not a general resurrection, for the wicked are not raised in glory. I do not know anything that has clone more harm to the church than the notion of a general resurrection. If all are raised together, the question of righteousness is not settled; but it is, " if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." The whole character, and nature, and meaning, and purpose of this resurrection is entirely distinct. “From among" is the expression of divine delight in the person raised, and we are all raised because of it; else there would be no sense in the expression “attained."
He says, "if by any means "-if it cost me my life it is all nothing: “That I may win Christ " is the first thing. But, in winning Him at the close of the race, it is also as a present thing "-that I may know Him." It has been asked whether this' refers to the present effect, or to the future glory? I say it is present effect by future glory.
" I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling." The high calling is the calling above. We see the immediate connection of the object with the present effect. He wanted to be like Christ now, not only when he should be dead in his grave and his spirit in Paradise. If he were to die he would be then like -Him; but that was not what he was looking for, namely, to be conformed to the image 'of the Son of God in glory. That he would be of course, but that I never shall be till Christ comes and raises the dead; that I wait for, I am conscious of never attaining, but I wait for it, and every day I am more like Him, suffering in the power of the love in which He served the Father; and there is a continual growing likeness to Christ inwardly from looking at Him in the glory. The only thing I care for is to be like Him in glory, and with Him.
The whole of Paul's life was founded on that, and completely formed by that. The Son of God was forming his soul day by day, and he was always running towards Him, and never doing anything else. It was not merely as an apostle that he entered into the fellowship of His sufferings, and conformity to His death, but every. Christian ought to be doing the same. A person may say he has forgiveness of sins, but I say, What is governing your heart now? Is your eye resting on Christ in glory? Is the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus so before your soul as to govern everything else, and make you count everything loss that is in the way? Is that where you are? Has this excellent knowledge put out all other things? not only an outwardly blameless walk, and able to say you love Christ; but has the thought of Christ in glory put out all other things? If it were so, you would not be governed by everyday nothings.
If a laboring man has a family, he does not forget the affections of his children because of his work. On the contrary, when his labor is done, his tools are thrown down, and he returns home with all the more joy because he has been absent from it. His labor did not hinder or enfeeble the affections of his heart.
To be in our daily occupations as to Christ, we have also to watch against another danger; when there are not other objects, there are distractions. We must watch the distractions as well as the objects, and have habits-of jealousness of heart for Christ, else there is immediate weakness. And then when we go into God's presence, instead of rejoicing in the Lord, the conscience has to be talked to. It is sad. indeed when the walk in the world has been such, that, on going back to Christ, we find He had not been thought of in it.
Could you say, as Paul to Agrippa, Would to God you were not almost, but altogether such as I am? Are you happy enough to say that? Can you say, I am so rejoicing in Christ, and see such excellency in the knowledge. of Him, that I would to god you were like me? 'What we have to look for in hearts is, not I have counted, but I do count. Do your hearts count, as a present thing, all things loss? Two things we have to watch against, having another object, and, what is even more subtle, distractions.
The Lord give us to have our eyes so anointed with eye-salve, so to see Him, as to detach our hearts from other things; to have no other object than Himself before them. Perhaps we shall have the cross to take up; but mark, then it is not merely suffering, nor always exactly for Him either, but it is always with 'Rim. The Lord give us (for we have to pass through a place where people do not care about Christ,) to have the eye thus fixed on Him,, having Him as a sanctuary, as the power and energy which carries -us through. The Lord give us-and it is in His heart' to give us-to say, " This' one thing I do." The Lord give us truth of heart, and diligence of heart too.