Dr. Rodney Plunket

Chrysostom was a great church leader and preacher who was born in or around the year 347 AD and died in 407 AD.  In his “Homily on Philippians 2:3-6” he writes, 

     “If then it was because of my good breeding and my zeal and my way of life, and I had all the things that belong to life, why,” Paul says, “did I let go those lofty things, unless I found that those of Christ were greater and greater by far?”[1]

Chrysostom is referring to the Apostle Paul’s words in Philippians (Php) 3:4b-9.  Please look with me at that passage.  There Paul writes,

  If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.  More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through the faithfulness of Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

In the first paragraph (verses [vv] 4b-6), Paul declares his pedigree; and it is an impressive one.  He had been circumcised as an eight-day-old baby just as the Law of Moses commands in Leviticus 12:3,[2] and he was circumcised at that young age “because he was an Israelite by race . . . and not a proselyte.”[3]

There were twelve tribes that made up the nation of Israel.  Paul tells us that he was a member of the tribe of Benjamin.  A couple of reasons come to mind for Paul feeling pride in the fact that he was from the tribe of Benjamin.  As many of you know, Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel, had twelve sons from whom came the twelve tribes of Israel.  Those twelve sons were from four women, Jacob’s two wives and his two concubines.  The woman that Jacob loved the most was his wife named Rachel; but Rachel only bore him two children, Joseph and Benjamin; and these two boys were Jacob’s favorites out of all his children.  That was very likely a tribal distinction that the Benjaminites wore with pride.  In addition, the tribe of Benjamin was the only other tribe that stayed with the tribe of Judah when the nation of Israel divided into two nations known as Judah and Ephraim.  That was very important because, after that division, the nation of Ephraim quickly became extremely idolatrous; while Judah maintained for sometime the worship of the Lord at the Jerusalem temple as well as their allegiance to the kings who descended from the great King David.

The next item of Paul’s pedigree is that he was, to translate literally, “a Hebrew of Hebrews.”  This phrase may be intended to convey that Paul was “born of pure Hebrew stock,” that is both of his parents were Jews/Israelites/Hebrews; but it is also “possible that the phrase implies a knowledge of the Hebrew language, which few Jews any longer spoke”[4] during Paul’s day.

So far, Paul has told us that he was “circumcised on the eighth day, an Israelite by birth, of the tribe of Benjamin, [and] a Hebrew of Hebrews.”  These were what might be referred to as “inherited privileges”;[5] that is, he received these attributes because of his parents.

Beginning at the end of verse (v) 5 and in all of v 6, Paul lists the items that comprise another extremely important aspect of his religious pedigree.  He moves from the inherited privileges “to his own personal achievements”[6] as a Jew.  The first achievement is “as to the law, a Pharisee.”  Back of the word “Pharisees” is an Aramaic word that means “the separated ones, separatists.”[7]  The New Testament scholar, Morna Hooker, writes,

  Pharisees were renowned for their strict adherence to the law, and spelled out the implications of every regulation in the law in an attempt to avoid any accidental infringement.  They also believed that the levitical rules of purity for the priests should be applied to all Jews, since the whole nation should be holy to God.[8]

Another scholar describes Paul the Pharisee in this way, “Paul had . . . given himself to the service of the law, in order to walk in the way of holiness and perfect righteousness.”[9]  What we need to see is that Paul had been a Jew who took the Law of Moses very seriously.  He had not even the slightest tendency to be luke­warm relative to his sense of religious obligation.

Just being a Pharisee communicates religious earnestness, but Paul’s next statement communicates that earnestness even more strongly.  Paul writes, “as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.”  Paul had been so rabid in his defense of the laws and traditions of the Jews that he persecuted the church of Jesus Christ.  Jesus had challenged many traditions of the Pharisees.  He discounted their practice of washing their hands for fear of being made unholy by some impurity they might ingest.[10]  He challenged their view of the sabbath.[11]  Before crowds of people, He actually called the Pharisees “hypocrites.”[12]  And the church that arose after Jesus’ resurrection followed its Savior’s lead.  For example, Stephen was an early Christian who so angered the Jews with his words that “they became enraged and ground their teeth at [him].”[13]  Then they dragged him outside Jerusalem; and they stoned him; and those who stoned him laid their coats at the feet of a man named Saul;[14] and that Saul became a Christian who eventually came to use his Greek name, Paul; and that is the same Paul whose book, Philippians, we are studying this morning.  Yes, Paul had been an intensely devout follower of the Jewish faith.

Paul’s final pedigree statement might shock us.  He writes, “as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”  Many assume that a life of law keeping is always a dead end street.  Paul here affirms the exact opposite.  Paul’s scrupulous law keeping led him to a verdict of blameless.  Peter O’Brien surely is correct when he writes, “‘Blameless’ appears to describe an exemplary way of life that is in conformity with the [Old Testament] as interpreted along Pharisaic lines.”[15]  O’Brien also writes,

  Clearly this is no pessimistic self portrait or recollection of one tortured by an unattainable ideal, . . . .  Here is a man well satisfied, reminiscent of the rich young ruler in the Gospel story (Lk. 18:21) who claims to have kept all the commandments from his youth.[16]

These words from Paul make clear that, before becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ, Paul had felt confident about his stand before God.  Why?  Because he had been so zealous and so rigorous in his following of Jewish laws and traditions.

Let’s feel the joy and confidence that Saul the Pharisee derived from his religious pedigree.  He was respected and admired, and he knew it.  In fact, he had so much respect, influence, power, or something that, Acts 9:1ff reports, he had once received a letter from the high priest to travel 130 miles north of Jerusalem to the city of Damascus in the province of Syria to persecute Christians there.  It seems that Saul who was so committed to his pedigreed connections that he fought whatever detracted from it.  It is likely an understatement to say that Saul the Pharisee delighted in his pedigree.

With that awareness now clearly in mind, listen again to the relevant words of the fourth century Christian Chrysostom:

  “If then it was because of my good breeding and my zeal and my way of life, and I had all the things that belong to life, why,” Paul says, “did I let go those lofty things, unless I found that those of Christ were greater and greater by far?”[17]

Yes indeed, Paul “did . . . let go those lofty things.”  And the next paragraph makes clear that indeed he did so because he “found that those of Christ were greater and greater by far.”

In Php 3:7-11, Paul uses strong language to indicate how much greater he found “those lofty things . . . of Christ” to be.  Let’s look at the word that is the strongest.  It is found in v 8.  There our English versions have something like, “I regard them as rubbish.”  The word translated as “rubbish” does indeed refer to “useless or undesirable material that is subject to disposal” and therefore, is appropriately brought in to English as “refuse, garbage,” or “rubbish.”  But to feel the strength of this word we should know that some of the “undesirable material” that this word was used to designate were “‘excrement, manure, garbage, kitchen scraps.’”[18]  Paul would have to use some word from the gutter to be any stronger in revealing his absolute disdain for his pedigree than he does here.

And look with me again at the first half of v 8.  There Paul writes, “More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  Why does Paul now count his pedigree as “rubbish”?  It is because he now knows how little that pedigree is worth.  He knows how little it is worth because he has discovered the far greater value of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.  When he compares the knowing of Christ to his religious pedigree, his pedigree is such a loss, such a waste that it just must be discarded.  And that is what Paul did.  He rubbished his pedigree and put the entirety of himself into knowing Christ Jesus the Lord.

And Paul makes clear that this knowing of Christ Jesus the Lord is not some static attribute that is received in full with nowhere left to go.  Paul does that in vv 10-11, the verses read as our Scripture Reading this morning.  Please look with me at those verses again:

  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

When Paul lists “the sharing of his sufferings” as an aspect of knowing Christ, he is making clear that the kind of knowing that he is talking about is an experiential knowledge in this life.  Paul wants “to know Christ” in the sense of having the same kind of faithfulness that lived so brightly in Jesus.  And Paul knows that to have that kind of faithfulness he must “know . . . the power of [Christ’s] resurrection.”  It is Christ’s resurrection power that empowers the believer and transforms that believer into the image of Christ.  And, Paul makes clear, it is this kind of knowing that carries the believer all the way to “the resurrection from the dead” and the glorious return of Christ Jesus the Lord.

Scholars are agreed that the little phrase, “if somehow,” does not “introduce an element of doubt” as if Paul were unsure that knowing Christ would, in fact, ready a believer for the resurrection.

  The phrase is intended, rather, to remind the Philippians that Christians have not yet arrived at their final destination.  Christ’s resurrection has already occurred, but their own lies in the future, and it is necessary to go on “being conformed” to Christ’s obedience and death if they are to attain the resurrection.[19]

Paul was confident that knowing Christ ended in that “knower” being raised from the dead.  Paul’s words here are to keep his readers focused upon that knowing.

Broadway’s mission statement is “Discovering Jesus,” and the passage we have just studied is one of many that provide the biblical foundation for that mission.  Paul wanted to discover more and more of Jesus.  He wanted to experience Christ’s resurrection power more and more in his life.  He wanted to live a life of faith by the power of the faithful one.  And he wanted that so badly that the attributes and attainments that had together comprised his most precious possession were discarded like a sack full of crud.

Broadway, are we willing to “regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”?  As individuals let’s look at the things that we prize that came to us through our parents.  Do we maintain some status because of our appearance, our ability to put on muscle or easily to stay fit?  Is it our inborn intelligence or the personal confidence that our parents worked to create within us?

What achievements do we look to for our “confidence in the flesh”?[20]  Good grades?  Athletic successes?  Professional accomplishments?  The car we drive?  The house we own?  The clothes we wear?  The amount of money we have?  The influence or power we have?  Our knowledge of the Bible?  Our good attendance record at church?  Our involvement in the church?

Whatever forms our pedigree of good standing, it pales in comparison to the ongoing discovery of Jesus by the power of His resurrection.  Bible study and active participation in the life of a church are important only as they are part of our hunger truly to discover Jesus.  Sisters and brothers, let’s press on toward that goal.

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