(Philippians 3: 4b-14)
As many of you know, back in one of the former phases of my life I was the elected Prosecuting Attorney of Jefferson County which, for many, was my identify in the community. And one of the roles in which I was identified was as the Drug Court Prosecutor. Drug Court was a real learning experience for me in that I learned a lot about not only addiction but the inner conflicts many of the participants were experiencing as they sought to escape the old life and embrace a new life, a life with a future free of guilt and shame where their past was not held against them. A common misconception held by many is that drug addicts come from broken and dysfunctional families where drug and alcohol use and abuse, unemployment, and a criminal lifestyle is a given. It’s in their DNA. Drug addicts don’t come from Christian families. They don’t come from educated families, families that have a strong work ethic, families that are well grounded in what is right and what is wrong. I won’t lie to you, many did come from unhealthy home environments and never had a chance, but I also can’t tell you how many conversations I had as both a defense attorney and a prosecutor with the loved ones of a defendant lost to addiction and now facing serious criminal consequences. Many would tell me how well their child or grandchild had done in school, how they shone out brightly as an athlete, how they were raised up in the church, and the plans they had for life after graduation from high school. And they told me how it all came crashing down after they had entered the downward spiral of drug addiction and drug seeking behavior. And, of course, there would be some who would offer up that that boy or girl would have never amounted to anything anyway. Failure was their future. And for the drug court participant that was their crisis of identity.
And for the Apostle Paul it was a crisis of identify that he was talking about in his letter to the struggling church in Philippi. He was happily writing about the joy in believing and having no confidence in the flesh. He had a new identity and was now very secure in who he was. But he is about to address directly an issue of false teaching that had infiltrated the Philippian church. The false teachers that were confronting the Philippian church were Jewish believers who were arguing that the Gentile converts to Christ needed to adopt some of Judaism’s practices such as male circumcision in order to reach full maturity in Christ. Practices that Paul now realized were no longer necessary and were actually a stumbling block for many. Paul understood where they were coming from as he had been there and was a true believer of the old covenant, a strict adherent to the Law of Moses. He says: If anyone else has reason to put their confidence in physical advantages, I have even more. I was circumcised on the eighth day. I am from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews. With respect to observing the Law, I’m a Pharisee. With respect to devotion to the faith, I harassed the church. With respect to righteousness under the Law, I’m blameless. These things were my assets, but I wrote them off as a loss for the sake of Christ. Paul is confronting the Judaizers who are holding themselves out as holy and righteous role models asserting that if the new converts want to truly become Christians, then they will have to adopt these Jewish rituals. Paul is saying “so what, take me for example, you can’t get anymore Jewish than me and I was wrong.” In fact, part of Paul’s crisis of identity comes from the guilt he experienced as a former persecutor of Christianity based upon his belief that Jesus did not meet his expectations of what the Messiah would look like or represent. Paul was so convinced that Jesus was not the Messiah that he held the cloaks of the men who stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr, to death. The Jews expected the Messiah to be like King David who would come in and vanquish the hated Romans in a great military battle that would restore the Nation of Israel to its former greatness, not some unemployed carpenter from Nazareth. Instead, he’s telling the Philippian believers that God cares nothing about their pedigree, their resume, or their lineage. God cares more about what’s in a person’s heart and it’s through knowing Jesus Christ that you know God.
Paul now realizes that his past life, though exemplary from the perspective of confidence in his lineage and actions, must be reckoned as loss in comparison with the superior value or surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus as his Lord. And because Paul knows Jesus personally, everything else that provided him with meaning, significance, identity, and purpose becomes loss, as worthless as trash. He says: In Christ I have a righteousness that is not my own and that does not come from the Law but rather from the faithfulness of Christ. He’s admitting that there was nothing he could have ever done to obtain this righteousness other than the faithfulness of Christ. He says that the righteousness he has comes from knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the participation in his sufferings, including being conformed to his death so that one day he may reach the goal of being resurrected from the dead.
Like Paul back when he was known as Saul, many of the Judaizers were motivated by spiritual pride because they had invested so much time and effort into keeping their laws and they couldn’t accept the fact that all their efforts couldn’t bring them a step closer to salvation. The new and improved Paul felt that they had it backwards. He came to realize during his conversion on the road to Damascus that if you first know Christ the rest falls into place. It’s what believers do as a result of their faith and not as a prerequisite to faith. And that’s a problem that is still pervasive in our churches today. We have our own Judaizers who insist that people must add something else to simple faith in order for it to be valid, righteous. That’s one of the things we do, intentionally or unintentionally, that drives people away. No person should add anything to Christ’s offer of salvation by grace through faith. Quite simply, God values the attitude of our hearts above all else. We must not judge people’s spirituality by their fulfillment of duties or by their level of human activity. We can never think that we will satisfy God by feverishly doing his work. God notices all we do for him, and he will reward us for it in due time, but only if it comes as a loving response to his free gift of salvation.
Knowing this Paul frankly admits that he may not have reached this goal or have already been perfected, but he pursues it nevertheless, so that he may grab hold of it because Christ grabbed hold of him for just this purpose. He says: Brothers and sisters, I myself don’t think I’ve reached it, but I do this one thing: I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me. The goal I pursue is the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus. He knows that with his new identity in Jesus Christ he is no longer conflicted. He has freedom in Christ and his past is behind him once and for all.
To do what Paul did, to take on a Christian identity means that you will have to make major changes in your thinking and lifestyle, a difficult task for those who have much to lose. But whatever you must change or give up, having Christ and becoming one with him will be more than worth the sacrifice. Like Paul, we all have our own crises of identity for the things we’ve done for which we are ashamed, and we live in the tension of what we have been and what we want to be. Our very own identity crisis. That’s the message of the cross. Because our hope is in Christ, we can let go of past guilt and look forward to what God will help us become through our new identity, one that is not in crisis. We can take on this new identity once we realize that we are forgiven, that God has forgotten our old identity, that he identifies us as his children, and move on to a life of faith and obedience as we live our lives in an identity with Jesus Christ.
Let us pray.
Gracious and merciful God, when we survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, our richest gain we count but loss, and pour contempt on all our pride. We praise you loving Father for the gift of your Son who lived among us and showed us by his example what it means to have a Christian identity where people can see firsthand the changes made in our lives, and the peace of mind we experience in our daily walk with you. Keep us from becoming vain and boastful in who we think we are and remind us of whose we are as we work to bring the lost and searching to you so that they too can create their own identity in you. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.