Fifth Sunday in Lent: Epistle, Philippians 3:8-14                        

Philippians 3:8-14

How do we view the work of Jesus for us sinners? It’s a question we should ask ourselves regularly. Paul, in Philippians 3 is contrasting what used to be of value in his standing regarding salvation with what he has now obtained in Christ. The gift of the righteousness of Jesus is Paul’s and ours by faith, not by the law. In fact, Paul lets us know that everything accorded him in his religious life before the Messiah, measures up to a pile of _____.  Well perhaps better unspecified here. But it is just what the text makes clear. 

And in contrast and by comparison, the gift of the righteousness of God in Christ has brought a level of joy, satisfaction, and the end of all merit-gaining on the part of the apostle. Now he lives, as we should, not to gain entrance into heaven, but to please the One who turned the cross-shaped key and swung open the gate. Paul goes on to simply declare that his great desire is to know Jesus more closely, with all the understanding we might receive from His hand. “...that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection of the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11).

Growing in the knowledge of Jesus attaining the goal of resurrection, not with means of our making, but rather with those given in Jesus which fit you and me for eternal life. This is what receiving true righteousness affords us. I would trade that for anything. There’s no comparison.