Philippians 3:1-11
Everything I Had, Counted as Loss
1Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.
2Watch out for those dogs, those workers of evil, those mutilators of the flesh!
3For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—
4though I myself could have such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more:
5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee;
6as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to righteousness in the law, faultless.
7But whatever was gain to me I count as loss for the sake of Christ.
8More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ
9and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God on the basis of faith.
10I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death,
11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Berean Standard Bible
He tells them to rejoice in the Lord, and in the very next breath he turns and snarls. Watch out for dogs, he says, for workers of evil, for mutilators of the flesh. The people he has in mind put their confidence in the flesh, and Paul will not file that under differences of opinion. Then he explains why he of all people is entitled to say so, and he does it by listing what he used to have.
circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, persecuting the church; as to righteousness in the law, faultless.
Taken together it is a curriculum vitae rather than boasting for its own sake. Birth, nation, tribe, upbringing, training, record. Everything a man could inherit or earn in that world is on it, at the top of the range.
One item does not belong with the others. Persecuting the church sits between his training and his record because at the time it counted as evidence of how seriously he took God. He was not ashamed of it then. He is putting it in writing now, for a church that will hear the letter read aloud together.
Then the whole thing turns over. Whatever was gain to him he now counts as loss, and counting is what a man does with a ledger. He has gone down the column and moved every entry across, and not only the ones he was ashamed of. The tribe, the training, the spotless record, all of it goes.
I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him,
He is not throwing the list away for the sake of throwing it away. The sentence says what he is buying with it: to gain Christ, and to be found in Him. Nothing on that list came cheap to him. Birth, tribe, training, and a record he calls faultless. He is pricing his best assets against knowing Christ, and the price he puts on them is nothing at all.
What he wanted instead comes next, in two halves.
I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Most of us would take the first half and leave the rest on the table. Power, resurrection, the good end of the arrangement. Paul asks for the sufferings and the death in the same breath, without sounding brave about it. The whole of it is what knowing Christ had turned out to mean.
How We Know
Verse 6 puts persecuting the church on a list of credentials, and the account of what that meant is elsewhere. Acts 8:3 has Saul destroying the church, going from house to house and dragging off men and women to prison. Acts 22:4 has him persecuting the Way to the death. Acts 26:10 has him casting his vote against believers who were condemned to death.
So Philippians names it in one word and Acts fills it in, in three separate places, one of them a speech Paul gives about himself.
Keeping that on the record is costly. It is written into a letter that a church would read aloud, by the man it is about. Two sources touching the same fact, one of them against its own author's interest, give a little weight to the persecution itself and none to the rest of what either book says about him.
Questions
1 What sort of things did Paul put on his list?
AnswerBirth, nation, tribe, upbringing, training and record. Circumcised on the eighth day, an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, and faultless as to righteousness in the law. Everything a man of his world could inherit or earn, and he had it at the top of the range.
2 One item does not belong with the others. Which one, and why did he put it in?
AnswerPersecuting the church. The worst thing he ever did is sitting among his credentials, because at the time it was one. He was not ashamed of it then, and he writes it down now for a church that will hear the letter read out together.
3 What is something you are quietly proud of? Paul had a list of those, and he does something with his. What?
AnswerHe counts the whole list as loss. Not the bad parts of it, the good parts, the ones he earned. He calls them rubbish next to knowing Christ.
4 Paul asks to know Christ. What does he ask for besides the power of the resurrection?
AnswerThe fellowship of his sufferings, and to be conformed to him in his death. He asks for both halves in one sentence rather than the half most of us would put on a list of things we want.
What This Means for Us
Not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but the righteousness from God on the basis of faith. That is what Paul is trading up to. It is also why the ledger can be emptied without leaving him standing there with nothing in his hands, because the thing he ends up holding was never something he made in the first place.
Which is why he never calls the old list bad. He says it was not the point. He had spent a whole life treating it as the point, and most of us can picture handing God our failures, but the version Paul actually did is the harder one: taking the things you are fairly proud of, the ones you earned, and deciding they buy you nothing.
So name one thing you are quietly counting on. Not a sin. An achievement, a record, some way you come out ahead of the people around you. Then say out loud that God has never needed it, and that what he holds out instead is a righteousness you did not make and could not have.
Prayer
Father, we keep a private ledger and we like our own totals. Thank you that you never asked for it and never needed it. Take the things we are proud of as gladly as the things we are ashamed of, and give us Christ instead of both. Amen.