Philippians 3:1-4:1, What Counts?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Philippians chapter 3 verse 1 to chapter 4 verse 1, hear the word of the

Lord. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh.

For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God in glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh, also if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh,

I have more. 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, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count 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 that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible

I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

I press on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.

Only let us hold true to what we have attained. Brothers, join us in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

For many of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their end is destruction, their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the

Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Therefore my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown stand firm thus in the

Lord, my beloved. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his

Holy Word. Well, do you like to shop? Shopping is all about what counts.

First you look at price tags and you count in your mind if this thing, whatever it is you're looking at, a video game, a sweater, a dress, a purse, is worth more to you than the money that they're asking for it.

If you count that it is, then you'll take it. If you count in your brain that no, you'll put it back on the shelf.

Now some get a sense of accomplishment for going through that, for seeing what counts and succeeding, maybe getting a great bargain what they think.

And if they're depressed they'll go shopping for the retail therapy. One good thing about shopping on a limited budget is that you learn what counts.

You're forced to calculate what is worth what. That sometimes you have to sacrifice one thing, like this money

I have, to have another, like this thing you're looking at. People who have never had to do that, who have never had to count any cost, never have any sense of how much anything cost.

You can have whatever you want, they think, with no counting. They even have a name for this disease, affluenza, because it only strikes affluent people who can afford to give their children whatever they want.

Like a young man named Ethan Crouch, who lived in North Texas, who was given a mansion to live in from a child, everything he could want growing up, and at the age of 16 stole two cases of beer and drove his father's

F -350 truck at 70 miles an hour with a blood alcohol level over three times the legal limit when he hit four pedestrians, killing them.

His lawyer argued that he was raised with no grasp on how much things are worth, how much things cost, and that there would be consequences for his actions.

And so, because of that, because he's raised like that, the lawyer said, he shouldn't be punished like someone who did understand that.

So, try to get into this logic here, to teach him that there's a price to be paid.

He shouldn't pay the price. Okay, there's the first successful case of defense by affluenza.

It's important to know what counts. Many people waste their lives on things that aren't worth their lives.

They don't know what counts. If they're short -sighted, they live every day just for the weekend, for the next thrill.

Or if they're more long -term, and this is what many people think, this is morality, but sometimes it's just being very selfish, but just long -term.

If they're more long -term in their view, they'll give their whole life to enhancing their resume, to getting an advantage, to get into an elite college, so they can get the career, so they can get the pay.

So, everything is done from, you know, classes they take, books they read, sports they're involved in.

Everything is done only for, will this help me toward that other goal, to get the things

I can count, the money. Nothing is ever done for love, or for joy, or for the Lord. They count making money, count growing the business as worth their life.

And when the life is over, all they have is cash, maybe a big house, maybe two big houses, and stuff, and no life.

All they have is things that can be counted. Albert Einstein said, what counts can't always be counted, and what can be counted doesn't always count.

What you count is worthwhile. Well, this chapter is all about counting. What counts is the most valuable.

What counts is nothing. What can you count on? We see that here in three parts.

First, the contrast, then the count, and finally, the contest.

Well, I should probably have included chapter three, verse one, with what we looked at last week. Actually, it properly belongs to chapter two.

Finally, rejoice, that sometimes hard work of working out your own salvation by rejoicing.

And now, suddenly, you notice that in verse two, the mood changes, like he took a break and started again.

He burst out from all these encouragements to rejoice, his gushing of affection toward them, chapter one and two, just so full of affection and joy, his lifting up the examples of honorable, self -sacrificing men like Timothy and Apophroditus.

And then, like a clap of thunder on a bright, sunshiny day, look out!

Three times he shouts it. Look out! Look out! Look out!

Like an urgent cry, like hearing, heads up, at a baseball game. It means that a hard ball might be dropping on your head any moment, so cover up, watch out.

There's danger. Look out for what he calls the dogs, the evil workers, the mutilators.

And these are all ways of describing the same group of people called, by historians, the Judaizers. They claim to be

Christians, they claim to believe in Jesus, but they believe that first, one had to become a Jew to become a true

Christian and a complete Christian. That is, that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and to really be his follower, you had to convert to Judaism, which means you had to keep all the law, you had to follow all those traditions, and if you're a male, you had to be circumcised.

And if you do, you can count on that to be right with God. Now, for Paul, and for the

Holy Spirit, this is a direct threat to the gospel. If you have to have a religious ritual to benefit from Christ, it depends on this ritual you do, whatever it is, then it's not

Christ who counts, but the ritual that counts, the religion that counts.

Now, sure, they would claim, these teachers, these Judaizers, these dogs, they would claim that they believe in Jesus, too, but they say, we believe in Jesus plus religion,

Jesus plus our morality, or here, really, Jesus plus circumcision, maybe today,

Jesus plus baptism. No, he says, watch out.

Watch out for the plus signs after Christ. Watch out for the dogs. And here,

Paul flips how these people counted themselves. Now, in their eyes, they were the clean ones, right?

They kept all those rituals to keep themselves clean. Paul calls them dogs. Now, to us, we kind of lose the impact of this because to us, we think dogs are cute pets.

We can wash them and keep them in our house and adore them. But to most of the people in the Middle East, then, in that time, and still today, dogs are unclean.

They were, according to one scholar, the most despised, shameless, and miserable creatures.

Now, to call someone a dog is one of the, probably the worst insult that you could give to someone in that culture.

They are dogs because they count what is worthless, like bones, vomit, rotten meat, as worth eating.

They're disgusting, at least in their view. Watch out for the evil workers. Now, we may think, well, evil workers, that's got to be, what, pornographers, drug dealers, thieves, gangsters.

But he's talking about respectable religious people. They're keeping the rules. They're meticulous in their dress, and in their hand -washing, and they're not eating pork or shrimp, and they're memorizing

Scripture, and claiming with all seriousness how they only want to serve God.

And God says back to them and to us, no, they're evil workers.

They're evil workers because they tell people the way to be right with God is to count on your behavior, count on your religion, on your morality, on your rule -keeping.

Add up all the points that you can score, like you keep the Ten Commandments, you go to church, you come forward at an invitation, you say the right prayer, you get dunked, you do the rituals, you try to stay out of trouble.

Add up enough points, and you've made it. You can count on it. And maybe they teach that it definitely doesn't take that many points, that God has bought into great inflation, like a lot of teachers today, and you'll probably be passed along into heaven as long as you manage not to get expelled.

Telling people that is an evil work because it keeps them away from counting on the only way they can come to God, by counting on Jesus.

Watch out for the mutilators, he calls them. And now Paul is getting, he's getting personal.

He's taking the one thing they felt the most proud of. They have this mark of the covenant that set them apart as one of God's people.

And if you get it too, you can count on that setting you apart from the rest of the world, setting you apart for God.

It's the mark of the covenant God gave to us. If you have it, you're going to be proud of it, you can count on it.

But Paul is saying it counts for nothing. It's not even circumcision, he says, it's mutilation.

It would be like mocking Baptists as those dunkers. They say they're right with God because they got wet. And some

Baptists are that way. Some people are proud of their denomination. It's the true church, they're institutionalists. They should be institutionalized,

Paul would say. Some are proud of their grand building, maybe it's a Gothic cathedral. Maybe some are proud that they don't have a church building at all.

They're proud that they meet in homes. Some are proud of the rituals they do, the sacrifices they take, the liturgy they go through.

And they're proud that when they take the Lord's Supper, they really take the body of Jesus. Some are proud that they can trace the leadership of their church all the way back to the apostles, they think.

Others are proud that their leader is directly anointed by God, so he says. Some are proud that their pastor's a

PhD, can you imagine that? Others are proud that he has no education at all, or even that they don't have a pastor.

Some are proud that they don't join a church, just float from preacher to preacher as they like, or maybe watch some guy on TV or the internet.

People are endless in the ways they will find something else to count on, something that they can see and hold on to, other than Jesus.

And God mocks it. If it's circumcision, which really did originally come from God, think about that.

Circumcision is originally from God in the covenant with Abraham, and yet here he calls it inspired, inspired by the

Holy Spirit, he calls it the mutilation. Now think, he's calling what

God appointed the mutilation, think what he'll call all the lousy substitutes we make instead of counting on Jesus.

These mutilators boasted, we are the circumcision, we have the sign of the covenant, we are

God's chosen people. Paul says, you're mutilators, you're evil workers, you're dogs.

And in contrast to the dogs, there is in verse three, is us. We, the church, true believers, he says, are the circumcision.

We are the circumcision, not them. Even if you're not circumcised, that is, we are the people who now have the true mark of God's covenant.

And it's no longer a ritual done with hands, it's not even baptism. The Bible never says that baptism replaces circumcision. It's a new heart created by God even in the

Old Testament, even in the law. God said, you've got to circumcise their hearts. That's what's coming in the new covenant, and it has now already.

It is the new covenant and the new creation begun in our hearts. That we are the circumcision means that we're the true

Israel. We are, because of Jesus, counted as God's people. In contrast to the evil workers, we are those who are worshiping

God by the Spirit. That's how we worship. They, the dogs, they're worshiping by the law.

They're worshiping by their traditions. They're going through the motions. They're doing by the letter, and they're very proud of the letter.

They're proud that they got it right, but it's the dead letter. It's not the Spirit. They're not really worshiping

God at all. And Paul says, we worship by the Spirit. Just like Jesus said, we're to worship in spirit and truth, by the power of the

Holy Spirit in our spirits, not counting on the rituals that they do, we do. They are still, there are still people who tell us that we, what we need is something that we can do, that we can touch, something we can see, something we can control.

Those Church of Christ heretics I debated about four years ago said that what we need, what we can count on, is being baptized in their sect.

If you do that, you can count it, you can see it, you can control it, and once you have it, then you can count on it.

I've been baptized in the true Church of Christ. That's what they're selling. Their baptism is something they tell people you can count on, but it's not.

We need confidence in Christ alone. So the contrast here is between confidence in Christ alone or in the flesh.

We, at the end of verse three, put no confidence in the flesh.

That's not what we're counting on. The ritual we did, the invitation we responded to, the prayer we prayed, the church we joined, the morality we've kept, the religion that we followed, the family that we're a part of, that's all flesh in that it comes from us.

Flesh, if you want a definition, it's what comes from us, what originates from us. It's what we can do and see and touch and control and what we can count on.

But we, as true believers, do not depend on the flesh.

Instead, we count on Christ alone. Literally, the word translated here in verse three as glory in, with glory in Christ, means to boast in Him.

We're not tooting our own horn, that I kept the rules. I attended church so faithfully.

I was baptized. I'm part of the right denomination. I live right. I said the right prayer. I'm a good citizen, a good family person.

I can count on, I can boast and all that before God. No, we boast in Jesus that He lived perfectly for us after we had failed.

He bore the punishment we deserved. He took the lashes that we had earned.

He suffered the death that was the penalty for our sins. He rose from the grave when we had no power to.

We boast in Jesus. Second, what counts?

Supposedly, two thieves came up with the idea of how to steal without getting caught. Instead of shoplifting or robbing the store, they sneakily switched the price tags of expensive things with cheap ones.

Maybe today, this is supposed to be back like in the 70s sometime, maybe today they would take the tag off a new

HDTV and put it on one of those, you know, old movies and DVD for, you know, $5

DVD bin, put it on one of those and take out the $5 DVD tag, put it on a

HDTV and then they buy the HDTV for $5 and walk out scot -free. That was the plan anyway, leaving the management to wonder, who switched the price tags?

Well, the world has switched the price tags about what counts. And to that, in verses 4 to 11,

Paul says, here's how I switch the price tags, maybe switch them back.

In verse 4, make no mistake, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh,

I have more. Remember he said, we have no confidence in the flesh. But if anyone does, you think you got something about what you've done, your religion, your heritage, your upbringing that you have confidence in, well,

I have more. These dogs are selling legalism today, legalism with low standards, just moralism in place of the gospel, thinking that's what people need.

People need to know what they can do to have something that they can see and count on. Let me tell you,

Paul says, I have better credentials than they do. I am circumcised on the eighth day.

It wasn't something I got later as a convert, but I got it exactly as described by the letter of the law.

I am of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a real Israelite.

I'm not a Greek or an American or Chinese converted to Judaism. I'm 100 % pure -blood

Israelite. I am a Hebrew of Hebrews, pure.

I'm not lazy, too. It's not as though I'm too undisciplined to keep the law. So I decided, well, why not become a

Christian so I can skip the law? No, no, no, no. About the law, he says, I was a

Pharisee. Talking about keeping the law, I was the strictest variety. He was one of those giving a tenth of every herb growing in his garden.

If he had a little mint plant on his windowsill and it grew 10 leaves, he'd have to pluck one and he would tie that one.

So scrupulous, everything, hand -washing, eating only clean foods, going to the temple, offering sacrifices, keeping the 612 laws of Moses, and then the hair -splitting traditions on top of that.

And not just because he was raised that way, just duty -bound. He's going through the motions. He doesn't know any different.

No, he meant it. He was zealous. He's fiery about his religion. He was so intense that he helped persecute

Christians because he believed that they were offending the God that he was serving. He kept everything so precisely, so passionately.

If anyone could have their life counted as pleasing to God, it was him. As to righteousness, that is, living the right way under the law, blameless,

Paul says, if anyone can boast in their religion, in their life, it was him. You could not find anything in all the letter of the law of the

Old Testament to hold against him, nothing. Now, surely you think, that counts for something. But, in verse 7, one of those stark, startling, sudden changes of direction in Scripture, but whatever

I had, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. He is speaking here of that moment when he went from counting on himself, on his religion and his morality, to counting on Christ.

At that moment, he underwent a complete change on how he counted.

He switched the price tags. What he used to regard as trash, Jesus the crucified, he switched to regarding as treasure.

What he had counted as treasure, his religion, his morality, he switched to counting as trash.

And the terms are all marketplace terms, about value and pricing and loss and profit. It's about cost -benefit analysis.

What is worth buying? At one moment, he says, he flipped what he valued.

The losses became profits. The profit became losses. So, everything changed. In verse 8, it still changed.

Earlier, verse 7, he was talking about the past when he switched. Now, in his present life, present tense, indeed, or actually the word is but, a repeated, strong contrast.

Before, he was counting all things, his heritage, his religion, his rule -keeping as valuable.

Now, he counts it as loss. But I count now, present tense, everything, all that stuff, the stuff that so many religious people then and now are trying to make you proud of, trying to sell you.

If you buy into this, you'll be proud of something you can count on. He said, I had it all, and I counted it as loss.

I still count it now as loss. All of that stuff about me, it all got in the way of knowing

Jesus. So, I switched the price tags. I moved it from the profit to the debit column because this is the reason why he did that, the surpassing worth because of what counts more than anything else of knowing

Christ Jesus, my Lord. Knowing Jesus is what turned all his values upside down.

It's common sense. People value most whatever they think is most valuable.

Now, I literally saw people in Ethiopia who had nothing but the rags for clothes they had on. Those rags were the most valuable things they had, so all they had.

When people don't have Jesus, the rags of their religion, of their family devotion, of their success, those are the things that they think are the most valuable because that's all they have, and they will cling to those things.

The problem now isn't really those things. The church can be good. The morality is good.

The family is good. It's not really those things. It's that they count on them.

That's the problem. It's that they don't have Jesus, and when they finally really do, then they will be able to count those things as loss because of the reason, the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus, my Lord. Second, I have a verse 8, for his sake, for knowing him,

I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, as trash to be thrown away.

And the Greek word there for rubbish can be refuse, garbage, or even worse, dung, excrement, the filthiest thing.

He's saying that the things that I used to regard as the greatest, what I had worked for, that I counted on,

I now regard as the worst thing. Now, who does that?

John Sung was born in 1901. He's the son of a Methodist pastor in Fujian, China, growing up as a proper and obedient, say, filial church boy.

In 1920, he was sent to the USA to get a higher education in chemistry. He was awarded as an outstanding student at Ohio Wesleyan University, an

Ohio State University, earning medals and awards for his academic achievements, finishing his

PhD in chemistry in five years. And then he decided to get a seminary education also, probably to be a helpful son to his father, the pastor.

But he soon had a crisis. He became aware of his own sinfulness, that he was bound for hell.

And so he turned to the story of the cross. It wasn't just dead letters on a page, ancient history.

But in it, he saw Christ Jesus, his Lord. He wanted to know him and the power of his resurrection.

Now, so vivid was the sight of Jesus dying for his sins that he seemed to be there at the foot of the cross.

And so he pleaded that his sins would be washed away because of the cross.

And finally, he felt, your sins are forgiven. And so he finally, truly counted on Jesus alone for his salvation.

He counted on Christ alone, not his family or morality or religion or academic excellence or accomplishments.

On the ship back to China, he's coming from a culture that puts so much value in scholarly achievement.

He threw his academic awards into the ocean, into the

Pacific, dumping them overboard like garbage, refuse, rubbish, keeping only his doctorate diploma to give to his father because he would be proud of it.

And then he had counted it all, loss. And instead of a career in chemistry, he became an evangelist known for his passion.

Once placing a coffin at the foot of the pulpit and shouting, I wish I knew Chinese because it's supposed to be a play on words in Chinese.

But in Chinese, it was translated in English as, get rich, get rich, get the coffin. They gave a play on words in Chinese, that getting rich will get you dead.

He became popular in China and Southeast Asia to spread the gospel. In Singapore, he was key to the early growth of the church there among the

Chinese. Although he died young at the age of 43, it's estimated that 100 ,000 people were converted to Christ through his ministry.

His life counted. Paul says in verse 8, he counts all the vain things that charm him most as rubbish.

In order that, that is for this purpose, to achieve this goal, like Jessie is going to the airport tomorrow, in order that she could go to China is the means.

Here he counted those things he used to be proud of as rubbish in order that he can get this, get

Christ. Unless you count all the vain things as rubbish, you can't get

Christ. In order that I may gain Christ, to be with God, you can't count on anything but Jesus.

You must count on Jesus in order to be found in him. In verse 9, talks about God will find you in Christ, that is that God will see you as dressed in the righteousness of Christ or in holy garments, like we saw in Psalm 110, verse 3, rather than in the filthy rags of your own religion or morality.

We can be found in him with a right standing with God that comes through faith in Christ.

Only in that way, by counting on him, which is what it means to believe in him, you count on him, you believe in him, can we know him, the power of his resurrection, what we experience first in salvation when we are raised from spiritual death.

And then in chapter 1, verse 29, we get to share his sufferings with him. We get a little taste of his death, like the little pieces of bread, a little piece, a little bit of juice we take in the

Lord's Supper. What he had taken in full, we get a little taste of his sufferings now.

So we get a little understanding of what he went through. So we'll become more like him, so that we'll know him.

And finally, if possible, and it is only possible because of Jesus, we can join him in the resurrection.

Then third, finally, there's the contest in those last nine verses.

In verses 12 to 16 is a contest of a long -distance run. The hardest part of a long -distance race is not the beginning, when you still feel fresh.

It's not the end, when you can see the finish line. It's in the middle. You think you've come so far, maybe you think

I've come far enough, I'll quit now. But as far as...but as in verse 12, you have to press on through the middle.

Forget what's behind because you're not yet complete. You haven't reached the end yet. If even

Paul, the great apostle, so he's...imagine now here, he is so mature, God works through him to give us much of the

New Testament. He's that mature, he's that close to Christ, but even he says he has not reached the goal.

Now, if that's true for him, as he's even inspired by the Holy Spirit to give us the word of God, how much more true is it for us?

How much further are we away from the goal? If we think otherwise, we think, man,

I've arrived. Look how spiritual I am, how perfect I am. That's the way we think, he says in verse 15.

You'll see. God will teach you otherwise. He'll humble you.

So, like a runner never content, past best time, we press on. Now, pressing on to make perfection our own because already

Jesus has, notice this at the end of verse 12, say, past completed action.

He's not just making us our own, or he will make us our own if we do this. So, now, he has made me,

Paul says, his own, and so we strive to attain perfection now because Jesus has already attained us.

Straining forward like a runner never content with his past times, always striving for perfection, knowing he'll never really reach it here and now.

But straining forward in verse 13, like races I ran where I felt like I had no strength left, it was all I could do to command my legs, to keep churning onward, to keep going, counting the finishing of the race as worth pushing yourself beyond what you thought you could do.

That's the mature way to think, he says in verses 15 and 16. You haven't arrived yet.

You'll have to keep pouring yourself out. This isn't a casual walk in a garden.

It's a contest. Some are running with you, like Paul invites them to join him in verse 17.

He encourages them to join with each other. He says, keep your eyes, keep looking on each other, especially the mature, the good examples.

One thing I learned in running, to run at your best, it takes a team.

People don't know running very well, they see people doing it individually and you think it's not like basketball or football, you can just do it all by yourself.

Not if you want to run at your best, you can't. You need others running with you. You can't run competitively training by yourself and you can't run your

Christian life by yourself. You need a team and that's what the church is. Notice in verse 17 that the church isn't a preaching station where you go to for pointers on how to run or motivational speeches on why you should run faster.

No, go out there and run all by yourself. No, it's a group of people who are examples to each other. Keep your eyes on the good examples, he says.

We aren't just co -audience members at the same preaching and music show.

We should know each other and see each other's lives and keep our eyes on those who help us to keep going.

They are members of the same body, the same team, running together. So run with a team, the church.

But not everyone running is running with us. Some are running against us.

There's ways to run with somebody and there's ways to run against somebody. In verses 18 and 19, he takes us back to where we began this chapter, warning us.

He says, with tears, watch out. Some are enemies. Some are dogs.

They are our enemies because they are trying to get us to count on other things besides Jesus. Again, back to the beginning of the chapter.

Trying to get us to count on ourselves, on our religion, our decency, our fine theology. But ultimately, they are enemies.

At the end of verse 18, they're enemies of the cross of Christ. They're telling us, we don't have to cling only to the cross.

You can hold on to your church. You can hold on to your rituals. You can hold on to something you did, something about you, something you can boast in.

It doesn't matter what. They're endlessly creative in what they will try to get you to cling to.

As long as they can get you to count on something other than what Jesus did on the cross.

They're enemies of that. These are our opponents in the race.

And they don't come clearly marked out in the uniform of a rival team. They're only exposed by their opposition to counting on the cross.

He describes in verse 19, their end is destruction. That's where the course they are running will take them.

So don't run with them. They'll take you to destruction. Their God is their belly. That is their appetites for food, for money, for sex, for glory, for things.

Dictate their lives. They get their glory and what they should be ashamed of. They only think of earthly things.

The opposite of John's son. They only think of degrees, awards, cash, luxuries, wealth, pleasure, houses, cars, only what can be counted or only in being counted as someone big here and now.

Because here is where they belong. But, Paul says, for us, our citizenship or the circumcision, our citizenship is in heaven, not here.

Far beyond what is merely here and now. From heaven, we await a savior. There's a rescuer, the

Lord Jesus. He will rescue us finally even from death. He's sitting, like in Psalm 110, on the throne, putting all his enemies under his feet, and the last enemy he stamps on is death.

He will transform these conquered bodies into triumphant bodies that are like his now.

We are now between resurrections. We're after his, after Jesus's, and before ours.

And he will raise up every one of his people, finally, with eternal, immortal bodies like his.

And he will do that by the same power that enables him to rule the entire universe right now.

The power he has, given by the Father, invited to sit at my right hand, come sit at my right hand, the

Father says to him, in verse 21, that same power by it, he subjects all things to himself.

And that power is able to transform our bodies, which are now subject to death, but he will transform them.

Therefore, because of all that, chapter 4, verse 1, because he will subject all things, including our bodies, so we have raised glorified bodies, because of all that, that almighty power, because you are beloved, look at chapter 4, verse 1, twice you're loved.

You're loved, you're longed for, a joy, a crown, and loved again, at the end of the verse. In case you forgot, he just said it at the beginning of the verse, stand firm.

Don't be lured away from standing on Christ. Don't be lured away by dogs, by evil workers, by mutilators, ritualists, moralists, religionists, telling you that you can count, you can count on something you did.

You can have Christ, but plus this. No, watch out for that, and count on Christ alone so that you can sing.

Nothing in my hands I bring, only to the cross of Christ I cling.