Pearl
of Great Price
Philippians
3:1-16
(Mat
13:45-46 NIV) "Again, the
kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. {46} When he found
one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
Have
you ever wondered just what Christ was driving at in that statement?
Paul gives us an excellent example of it in this section of Philippians:
(Phil
3:1-16 NIV) Finally, 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. {2} Watch out for those dogs, those men
who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. {3} For 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-- {4} though I myself have reasons for
such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the
flesh, I have more: {5} circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel,
of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;
{6} as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness,
faultless. {7} But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of
Christ. {8} 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. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ {9} 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. {10} 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, {11}
and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. {12} Not that I
have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press
on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. {13} Brothers, I
do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, {14} I press on
toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in
Christ Jesus. {15} All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.
And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
{16} Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
What Paul Gave Up
It’s
interesting to see what Paul has had to surrender in order to be an Apostle of
the Living Christ.
Heritage
Have
you ever wondered whether or not you were switched at birth – you really were
born to a set of fabulously wealthy parents, and some other kid got all the
money? Paul was the other kid.
·
He was “born right.”
He had the right heritage as a Jew, in a prominent family who diligently
carried out the law
·
He was “raised right.”
His parents turned him into the strictest of Pharisees.
Track Record
But
we all know that kids with good parents can go wrong. Not Paul!
 | He had diligently kept
the ceremonial law all his life. |
| His belief came out in
action – see how he persecuted the church, thinking it to be
righteousness. He was a zealot
about it. |
The Law Itself
We
sometimes think that the Old Testament Law is, as you might conclude here,
“rubbish.” That’s not what
Paul is saying. He assumes you
understand the great worth of that law. He
is sure that you know how holy and sacred it is, for indeed God did mighty works
to bring it to the people of Israel. It
is indeed a great thing, valued in our own day.
How many of you would like to see the Ten Commandments posted on the wall
of every court and classroom in America?
Therefore,
consider how great a sacrifice Paul makes in Christ. All this must be put aside – for something infinitely
better.
Paul
is a man who was born with a spiritual “silver spoon in his mouth.”
He gave up all that to obtain Christ.
He did not give up rubbish; he
gave it up as if it were rubbish, because Christ is so much superior to it.
What Paul Gained
We
need to see what Paul traded for:
Righteousness through faith
| As Paul points out,[1]
righteousness through faith is a cardinal principle in the way God deals
with men, and has been ever since the time of Abraham.
So this is not something new and different, but rather a completion
of what went before. |
| This righteousness is
not only complete, but unlimited – for it comes from the infinite God. |
| This righteousness has
one basis: the Atonement.
Without the atonement of Christ, righteousness in man cannot be made
complete and final. Therefore,
it is something received, not earned. |
The power of the resurrection
What
does Paul mean by this? I submit
these three things:
| First, this is the
power that God used to declare Jesus to be the Son of God.[2]
Therefore, it is the power behind the central evidence of the faith. |
| As such, it changes
our view of death. Without the
resurrection, death is final. With
the resurrection, death is but a door. |
| And it changes our
view of life, too! If death is
not the end, then our life here must be viewed as a “preliminary round”
– qualification for the title. |
Fellowship of his suffering
How
does Paul (and how do we) join in the fellowship of his suffering?
And why would we want to do so?
| We do so when we are
entitled to something but are not receiving it – and we accept that for
Christ’s sake. Christ as King
was entitled to a royal reception and received the Cross.
Let us imitate him. |
| We do so when receive
suffering and return blessing for cursing. This is in imitation of the one who said, “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.” |
| We do so because it is
a mark of glory, a badge of honor. Satan
does not assault the nobodies. |
| As we do, we must
consider that our sufferings are, by and large, light.
Most of us are not to die for the faith.
It’s worth asking: are
our sufferings really all that great? |
| Even if they are, as
suffering flows, comfort overflows.[3] |
To attain to the resurrection
It
might seem on first reading that Paul is trying to work his way into the
resurrection. The word translated
here as “attain” means “to arrive at.”
It is not a question of “earning” but “arriving.”
You may not have paid for the ticket, but you have to ride the train to
the end to get to the destination. There
are two key concepts about this “attaining” that we must understand:
| One view is that we
are perfecting an instrument for God’s purposes. We should not be satisfied with our accomplishments, but
keep on becoming what God wants us to be. |
| Another view, and
simpler, is that we must persist to the end. It is no use saying, “I was a devout Christian
once.” You must persist to
the end, or you have abandoned the faith.
Your actions will change with your abilities and experience, but you
must press on to the end. |
These
views are complementary, not contradictory.
So how do we “attain?”
Recognize that you haven’t
We
need to recognize those two views above! First,
we should be comfortable with the idea that “God isn’t finished with me
yet.” He may yet have a task, or
he may simply be shaping me for life eternal with him.
Next,
we must recognize – in the words of that great theologian, Yogi Berra –
“it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Life
is a marathon, and as most marathon runners will tell you, the real objective is
to finish.
Look forward, not back
Christ
talks about this in one of those cryptic phrases about putting your hand to the
plow.[4]
What Paul is getting to is this:
| We have set our minds
forward in Christ. So we no
longer have the same objectives that we did before we were Christians. |
| Likewise, we no longer
have the same view of the world. We
see things the way Christ sees them. |
| And – to come to the
practical side – we don’t dredge up the sins of the past and put them in
front of us as a road block. We’re
over that. |
Press on
It’s
called maturity. It’s the
transition from the starter motor to the V-8.
We need to look at ourselves in a different way than we did when we first
became Christians.
| This is a mature point
of view. When I was a child, I
was amazed at my father’s patience with things mechanical.
How could he keep tinkering with them, for hours sometimes, before he
got them right? Now I realize that he was looking at them in the mature
way: I know this will work,
it’s just a matter of patience. So
it is with us; God will provide
in all things – if we will press on. |
| As Paul notes, God
enlightens the mature. This is
not usually in a blinding flash of inspiration, but the slow dawning that
says, “Ah – that’s what God was doing all along.” |
| We must live up to
what we have already done. We
are not going backward, nor in circles, but forward. That implies we know the good we have done, and now we
want to improve upon it. |
The
kingdom, the power of the resurrection, the resurrection of the dead – these
things are attained by giving up all in the world to obtain the pearl of great
price, and then pressing on in maturity. The
end of the race comes when you hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
