Paul here writes strongly against the Judaizers, the “circumcision group” who insist that circumcision is required for salvation. He is laying down a diss track up there with anything you’ll find anywhere today. He recasts them as “the mutilation” because he has seen the damage such beliefs can cause to a congregation.
Not just that, but he goes after them from a position of authority. “That’s not a knife,” he observes about these ethnically focused, legalistic opponents. “This is a knife,” he says, as he pulls out his heritage and zeal as an ethnically, theologically, zealously pure Jew. What these Judaizers aspire to is what Paul had accomplished while still young.
And yet, like a cargo ship in danger of sinking, all this precious cargo has become a liability. It isn’t just null, but is actively distasteful in comparison to knowing Christ. God’s act of allowing Paul to truly see and know Jesus has ruined Paul for everything else. It’s like a young man falling in love, with everyone and everything fading away in comparison to his beloved.
Against this ritualistic, ethnically-based righteousness based on works, Paul places the grace of God and the righteousness freely given to us by God. This grace, this opportunity to know Christ means that the suffering in account of Christ is worth it. “A crucified Lord results in cruciform disciples.” Knowing Christ happens in two phases: both now and in the future. Without being conformed to Jesus’ death now, there can be no participation in the resurrection in the future.
The same Jesus who hangs on a cross to justify us also calls us to come and die and be raised again with Him. Hanging on that cross is only Jesus, and Jesus-plus-nothing is what offers us this grace. We have a hard time with this – the statements of Christ throughout the New Testament are too hard for us to easily accept. So we create a religion of Jesus-plus-comfort, Jesus-plus-happiness, much like the Jesus-plus-circumcision righteousness of the Judaizers.
How do we live out this Jesus-plus-nothing righteousness in our lives? First, we must spend time getting to know Him, not just through church services one day a week. Second, we must spread the news of Christ and his work on the cross.
– Sermon Notes, Brian Bailey, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, September 23, 2018
Philippians 3:1-11
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