Gospel Centered Knowledge Of Christ

Gospel Centered Knowledge of Christ

3 for our study this evening. It's a very well-known text. It's always a little bit dangerous to go to a well-known text because it's well-known. But I want to possibly make some application that we have not considered before.

And this is not a graduation speech. This is the graduation text, is it not? Beginning with verse 8. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, from whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count that but rubbish, so that I may gain Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, nor that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.

This particular text, again, very well known to us. I want to just briefly remind us of its content and then sort of ask an overarching question about what this text communicates to us as to what the early Christians understood and believed.

Be thinking about that in the background as we, once again, review the content, which, of course, I would suggest theologically one could probably, especially if you utilize the Puritan method of sermonizing, could probably get, I don't know, at least half a year out of these verses.

I've certainly seen some sermon serieses that were that long out of just a sentence, but there are so many things that are mentioned here that the Puritans would grab that topic and then cover every possible aspect of it, then move to the next phrase, and so you really could do a lot with it, but in a overview, survey idea, you have the Apostle Paul, of course, recounting his life in Judaism, but saying all these things, you know, that the great benefits that were mine and the physician was mine, I count as loss for the sake of the Messiah, the Christ.

I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Now, there is a theme here. You have knowing Christ Jesus in verse 8, gaining him, also at the end of verse 8, found in him, receiving a righteousness through faith in him, and then repeating again in the same sentence, knowing him, verse 10, knowing the power's resurrection, knowing the fellowship of his sufferings, and being conformed to his death.

So, there is a focus upon the knowledge of Christ in every aspect of the salvific work of Christ, even at the end, verse 11, in order that I may attain the resurrection of the dead. So, what is being communicated to us is this is not merely an intellectual knowledge of facts about Christ, but it is in no way separable from it.

I mean, I saw a video today, troubling video, of this, well, I didn't know really where this street preacher was coming from, to be honest with you, but he was trying to talk to some people outside of some word-faith meeting or something, I don't know.

But this woman, I don't think she was on something, as far as chemically goes, but she was acting like she was. And her whole thing was all about the love of God and the love of Jesus and knowing Jesus.

Well, knowing Jesus is a very important thing, but what was painfully obvious was her idea of knowing him was 1000 experiential. Here, when Paul talks about knowing him, oh, do not question the experience of the apostle, but what is so very, very, very, very clear is that he couches all of that within the context of the divine revelation of what Jesus Christ came and did.

Notice it's all attached to that I may be found in him, the righteousness, not having rights of my own derived from the law, that which is through faith in Christ, the righteous, which comes from God on the basis of faith here in the middle of this knowing him.

And I count everything lost in the surpassing greatness of knowing him. And right in the middle of that imputed righteousness, gospel, how made right with God, all that stuff that people like to tell you today.

Oh, you know, it's all that theology stuff. And I don't know. It's just sometimes it seems so complicated and everybody disagrees. And I don't know that I want all that theology stuff. I want, I want to feel something.

I want something that feels good. La la la la la la. There's nothing like that in the new Testament. And in fact, to try to have that kind of, of, of experience outside of divine revelation, that's not, that's not Christianity.

That's paganism. That's, that's, that's the unknown God. That's the ecstatic experiences of, well, every religion has its ecstatic experiences. Every religion has people that are just, you know, you know, dance in the fill in the blank type thing that, that there's nothing unusual about that at all.

The Hindus have that, the Muslims have that, the, the Sufi tradition in Islam and so on and so forth. Nothing unusual about that at all. What is unusual about Paul's experience here is that while he's talking about intensely personal things, his experience is defined by something outside of himself.

It's defined by what God has done in Christ Jesus. So he can talk about having suffered the loss of all things. This is intensely personal, but he counts them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ. And it doesn't go off into some ecstatic experience at this point.

Some, some kind of, oh, and he smelled like beautiful roses type stuff instead and may be found in him. So what, what does that presuppose? That presupposes the knowledge of there is a people of God. They have been united with their head, Jesus Christ, so that his death becomes their death, his burial, their burial, his resurrection, their resurrection.

And therefore you have the great exchange. Our sins are imputed to Christ. His righteous is imputed to us. And so to be found in him has a theological sense of truth around it. It's defined. I don't get to define it.

It's not my experience. The word of God defines it. The gospel defines it. The Christian faith defines it. And then I find my fullness of experience in being conformed to that truth, not in conforming the truth to what I want to experience.

It's a huge difference there. Huge difference that a lot of people just don't seem to get. And so when he says may be found in him and to be in him is to have his righteousness, a righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, justification by grace through faith alone, sola gratia and sola fide, two of the solas right there, is in the apostles experience central to the real experience of union with Christ and knowledge of him.

Let me tell you something sometime. Well, it's already starting to happen, but I'm making the prediction sometime over the next year and a half. Well, a little over a year and a half. That fella living over there in Rome, he's going to make some real odd statements, maybe even some official ones about the Reformation being over, about us all being one big happy family.

And there's going to be a bunch of folks there and go, isn't that wonderful? Isn't that great? Isn't that awesome? And never forget that the Reformation was about sola scriptura, which gives us a foundation for knowing these things.

Sola gratia, sola fide. And those are not negotiables. They are right here in the midst of one of the most intensely personal statements on the part of the apostle Paul. And the entirety of knowing that I'm being found in him, knowing him, knowing the power of his resurrection is all within the context of having an accurate understanding of what God has done in Jesus Christ and establishing the gospel.

And once you put that off to the side, once you start saying that's negotiable, doesn't really define things. You know, we have so many different views, and this scholar here says that, and that scholar says that.

Once you start doing that, um, don't quote just phrases of texts like this and sing songs about knowing him and the power of his resurrection, because for Paul to know him and the power of his resurrection was all in the context of an accurate embracing of the gospel, not a gospel I've edited, but a gospel that has been delivered, the once for all delivered to the saints faith.

And that's where he gets the assurance. And that's what ends up uniting Christians together. That's why we're not just all running around having our own little experiences and our own little clubs and things like that.

But wherever we go, when we're meeting with people who make the same confession of faith that we make, we are bound together. We are unified by the presence of the Holy Spirit who testifies of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so it's not that we create a unity. It's that that unity exists in our bowing to that once for all delivered to the saints faith. So with that in mind, notice what else he says that I may know him, but I do not know him outside of what he has done.

He's not just up there for me. I am his servant. He's not my servant. God determines the parameters of how we will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not up to us. We don't get to go, well, you know, I think for my personality type, I'd like to be like this.

And I'm not saying that God does not work with each one of us individually, or he did not make us individuals. I know that he did. What I'm saying is that there is a tendency in our day for, in light of this massive emphasis upon human autonomy, we get to determine our experience, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And as much as you and I look at Bruce Jenner and go, no, you can't do that. We are still being influenced by a, the worldview around us, whether we notice it or not. And there is a part in a lot of, especially Americans that sort of rebels against the idea that we are to submit ourselves.

We are to bend the knee. We are to submit ourselves to what God has revealed and that he is the one who determines what the parameters of our knowing him are and what the context that is to be. And from a biblical perspective, it is knowing him in a particular way and the power of his resurrection, the power of his breath.

Oh, everybody wants to talk about power, right? Everybody wants to talk about power. Isn't it interesting that from the Christian perspective, the greatest power, when we think of the power, I mean, defeated death, raised to life again, the greatest enemy vanquished.

And yet how is that power exercise in the midst of leaving the world thinking that Jesus had died a horrific criminal's death had been defeated by the power of Rome. See, if you and I were running the show, when the resurrection took place, there would have been the biggest fireworks display ever and angelic, uh, manifestations in heaven.

And, and somehow even back then, everybody in the world would have seen this and there would have been this massive demonstration. Well, he had 500 at once, but still that's not many. And when you think about how he died, small number of people, yeah, I was publicly witnessed, but still, you know, nobody in Rome knew anything about it.

Defeated by Rome, not how we would have done it, not how the political campaigns today would have done it. No, no. So the power of his resurrection, the very power that defeated death, God doesn't display it just simply to get people to go, Ooh, the way he displays that power is in changing hearts and minds.

And in then using that power to conform us to the image of Christ. It's not, you know, the world expects something different than that, but we are to seek to know him and the power of his resurrection.

That's the power that is available to us to mortify the flesh. And the world doesn't care about that. The world wants you to mortify the flesh, but that power is available to us. Everybody wants to talk about power.

Even Christians talk about power, but notice the power of his resurrection and the part that gets skipped the fellowship of his sufferings. Because to see the reason we need the power of the resurrection is because it's God's will that it is through sufferings and trials and difficulties that we may be made like him and conform to his image being conformed to his death.

We would rather that said life, but it really is conformed to his death. In other words, all of our life is defined by the fact that we have died to self. What was Jesus' words? Take up the cross, deny yourself, follow me.

Conformed to his death, recognizing that we have died, died to our dreams, died to our autonomy, bowed the knee to the one who has raised us to spiritual life in order that I may attain the resurrection of the dead.

And that term attain in English sounds like by the stuff that I do. That's that's not really what the original language communicates there is more than I might be counted amongst those who will be there at the resurrection, because it says not that I've already obtained it or become perfect.

I'm talking about the completion of things here. I'm I'm pressing on so I may lay hold of that, which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. So Paul recognizes that God still has work to do in his own life, and that work is being accomplished by that resurrection power and that he's being conformed to Christ's death through the fellowship of his sufferings.

And he can endure all of this and he can have hope and joy in all this because he knows he has peace with God because he received received righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is by faith in him.

You see how it all holds together, how it's all, you know, we tear it up into parts and we put justification over here. We'll go have a conference on justification. OK, that's great. But you've got to see how that is directly relevant to every other aspect, being conformable to his death and pressing forward and all these things.

It's all one beautiful tapestry of divine truth. And here, as time fails me, I want to make quickly the application. Paul could not have spoken like this. This is not Paul saying, hey, I want to tell you all something that you didn't know.

That's not what this is. The way that this is stated makes it very, very clear that he expects, he's not explaining any of this stuff, he expects this to be a common body of belief with the church of Philippi.

What does that mean? That here in the earliest decades of the church, the apostle could assume that the one scroll delivered the saints faith would be understood by everyone there in the church of Philippi so he could make easy, non-explained references to such things as righteousness and imputed by faith and union with Christ and the power of his resurrection.

And all of these, what sadly some people think today are in-depth, deep theological issues that, you know, I don't know if we need to trouble everybody with that, you know, let's just let's just stick with the with the milk.

This is the earliest these Christians are experiencing persecution. The apostles experiencing persecution. The world is already opposed to them. And yet in the midst of all of it, the apostle can assume the church I'm writing to understands all these things, lives in the basis of all of these things.

The apostles were teaching these things. It's not the end result of development down the road, centuries down the road, they finally came up with this stuff. This is absolutely apostolic. It's what was there right from the start.

And so sometimes we'll get criticized for where the emphasis lies. But the reality is when you look at the apostolic witness itself, it's very, very clear. That if we had discussed these issues in the church at Philippi, those Greek speaking believers would have fully understood what we're talking about.

We talk about imputation. We talk about the gospel. We talk about justification by faith. They would have understood. They wouldn't have used the Latin phrase, sola fide. They weren't speaking Latin. But if we explained it in Greek, well, of course, it's it's right there.

The righteousness which comes from God and the basis of faith, not faithless works and and not not not a righteousness of my own derived from the law. Sure, that's it's right there. So sometimes we have to fight with the temptation thing that well, there's there's been this disconnection.

We've had to deal with so many things since then that that was then. This is now. No, we there is a once for all delivered to the saints faith, and that's where we're standing even this day. And even if we are the last people standing for that, we still need to do so.

We still need to do so. So I was just struck in considering these very, very, very well-known words, not only the depth of the theology, but it tells us that Christians have always recognized that in the gospel you have that hub out of which all these other divine truths, they're all connected together.

Don't ever let yourself get imbalanced and don't ever let yourself be convinced that, well, you know, there's these people over there and they're having this experience. Look, this is a deep spiritual text.

It's talking about knowing Christ. But what is the biblical parameters for that experience? It is knowing Christ in what he has done. And that is the only way the New Testament gives us for having a true Christian experience of who Jesus Christ really.