Now, Then, In-Between

Now, Then, In-Between

Fourth after Easter

Collect of the Day: O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Epistle: 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:15 (KJ21)

4:13 We, having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written: “I believed and therefore have I spoken” — we also believe and therefore speak,

14 knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise us up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.

15 For all things are for your sakes, that, through the thanksgiving of many, the abundant grace might redound to the glory of God.

16 For this cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,

18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

5:1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tabernacle, were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed about with our house which is from Heaven,

3 that, being so clothed, we shall not be found naked.

4 For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not because we would be unclothed, but clothed about, that mortality might be swallowed up by life.

5 Now He that hath wrought us for this selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the pledge of the Spirit.

6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;

7 for we walk by faith, not by sight.

8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

9 Therefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted by Him.

10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

11 Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God, and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.

12 For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have something to answer those who glory in appearance and not in heart.

13 For if we be beside ourselves, it is for God; if we be soberminded, it is for your cause.

14 For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if One died for all, then all were dead;

15 and that He died for all, that those who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again.

You plan a trip. It involves a present, a future, and an in-between. Now you are in Roanoke. Your final destination is the Hawaiian Islands. In between you have a stopover. Your intermediate destination is Los Angeles.  

As Christians we on a journey like that. Our now is mortal existence. Our destination is resurrection life. Between mortality and resurrection our intermediate destination is to be spiritually present with Christ.

1. Now

Where are we now? In verse 1 of chapter 5, Paul says we have an earthly house, a tabernacle. “Tabernacle” is another word for “tent.” When the Israelites left Egypt they lived in tents. Even God had a tent, the tabernacle he had them build for him.

There are two important characteristics of tents. One is that they are temporary. They are not permanent places to live. The Israelites looked forward to living in houses when they got to the Promised Land. God, too, would live in a House, the grand Temple that Solomon built. The other characteristic of tents is that they are fragile. They can be blown over by a strong wind. Or consumed by a fire. If they survive sudden disasters, the cloth they are made of will grow weak and rot.

That is what our present life is like. We are mortal, something we experience most acutely in our bodies. When God created us humans to be embodied souls, a perfect and harmonious union of body and spirit, not meant to be separated. But when sin came, the eventual separation of body and soul became inevitable.

Our present bodies are temporary. I am soon going to need to start drawing on my retirement account. I have talked about this with a friend. He told me, “You need to plan to make your money last 25-30 years. I told my friend, “There are two problems with that: One is that I need enough to live till I die. The other is, ‘How many 98 year old men do you know?’” Life in our present bodies is temporary, no matter how well we take care of ourselves. And, however long we live, life is fragile.  Accidents and illnesses constantly loom, and if we avoid those, we decay and something will end our bodily lives.

Paul pictures the ending of life as an “unclothing.” Our soul are supposed to be “clothed” with our bodies. That’s what is natural. The soul is not trapped in the body waiting to be set free by death. The souls is meant to be “clothed” with the body. At death the body is stripped away, leaving us “naked.” For Paul the separation of the body and spirit is unnatural, not something to welcome.

This life is a life of groaning. When I was a little boy, one night the phone rang late, and my father got up to answer. There was bad news. His brother had been a passenger in car involved in an accident and had been thrown through the windshield. He was alive but badly hurt. I remember getting up and going to the living room. From behind I witnessed my dad sitting in a chair in the dark and groaning. That is a picture of life. Because of death and the threat of death, despite the many wonderful things to enjoy in this life, we spend our mortal existence groaning.

2. Then

Our “now” is mortal existence. What is our ultimate destination?

Paul calls it “a building of God not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” What does Paul mean? Does he mean heaven, the dwelling-place of God the Father where Christ now sits at the Father’s right hand? As we read on in chapter 5 Paul writes about being “clothed about with our house which is from Heaven.” If being unclothed is separation from the body at death, then being clothed must mean the resurrection body we will receive when we are raised and our lowly bodies made like Christ’s glorious body. In the 14th verse of chapter 4, Paul expresses his confidence “that He who raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise us up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.” God raised Jesus bodily. God will also raise Paul and all believers and bring us all together in his presence.

This resurrection body the opposite of the temporary and fragile tent of our present mortal bodies. It is building made without hands because it is built by God. It is an eternal house in the heavens that God has prepared. In chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote about the resurrection body:

Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep (that is, die - some will live till the second coming); but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-54)

 

Paul makes it clear that his preference is to go right from this mortal bodily existence to immortal bodily existence - from a body that will die to a body that will not die. He writes: “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed about with our house which is from Heaven, that, being so clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not because we would be unclothed, but clothed about, that mortality might be swallowed up by life.”

He does not want to experience “unclothing” - the separation of the body and soul at death so that the soul exists without the body. This is not natural.

Now we groan as we experience all the troubles, stresses, anxieties, and sorrows of our present life. But this does not mean we want to die and be unclothed. We would prefer to bypass death and be clothed immediately with the resurrection body. We would like the mortal body to be swallowed up by immortality, so that we go directly from the present to our ultimate destination without any stopover in-between.

Going to heaven when we die is not the ultimate goal or destination of Christians. The ultimate goal not Los Angeles but Hawaii, the resurrection of the body.

3. In-Between

Our present “location” is as mortal creatures whose bodies will die. Our ultimate destination is resurrection to immortal life. But there is an in-between - between the death of the body and the resurrection of the body. At death our bodies and souls are separated. Our bodies go to  their graves. At the resurrection our bodies will be raised to new life and reunited with our souls.

But what will become of our souls between death and the resurrection. Paul tells us:

Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. (5:6-8)

Paul confidently knows that now, while we are at home in our bodies, we are absent from the Lord. He does not mean that we have no contact with with Lord, no fellowship with him. No, the Holy Spirit lives within us and he unites us to Christ in heaven. When we celebrate communion, “we lift up our hearts” to heaven where Christ is. But there is a limit to our communion with Christ right now.

Paul, however, is also confident about what will happen when he dies. He will be absent from the body, but he will be present with the Lord in heaven. He will be with Jesus, nearer to Jesus than is possible now. Through death he will pass into the life of heaven. Paul was thinking about death in this way when he wrote to the Philippians from imprisonment in Rome:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor; yet what I shall choose, I know not. For I am in a strait between the two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you (Philippians 1:21-24).

The reason Paul can say death is gain is because he knows that at death he will be present with the Lord Jesus. To live is Christ for Paul for if he lived he would serve the Lord and his people, but his personal preference is to depart this life and be with Christ, for the fellowship he would have with Christ would be far better than the fellowship possible now.

When we die, we will be happy and blessed, for we will be with the Lord. Yet the presence of our souls in heaven with the Lord, good as it is, is not our final destination or goal - because we were not created to be disembodied souls but embodied, our sinless souls joined to immortal bodies. That is the Hawaii, the final destination - raised to share the resurrection life of Jesus.

So, what?

1. We do not lose heart but live confidently because death means first to be with the Lord and in the end resurrection. Loss of the body brings us into the Lord’s presence. But loss of the body is only temporary, for we shall be raised with Christ.

2. While we live we seek to please and serve Christ. Our final salvation is not in jeopardy, but we will give account of the way we have lived and the service we have given the Lord.

Life is serving Christ. Death is entrance into the presence of the Lord. The second coming is resurrection to eternal live.

Pilgrims Progressing

Pilgrims Progressing

Third after Easter

Collect of the Day: Almighty God, who showest to those who are in error the light of thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness; Grant unto all those who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s Religion, that they may avoid those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Epistle: 1 St. Peter 2:11-17

11 Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;

12 Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.

13 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;

14 Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.

15 For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:

16 As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.

17 Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.

When we were in seminary during a Christmas break we were invited to lunch at the home of the interim pastor of our church. He had been born in Japan to missionary parents and, after coming to the U.S. for education, had returned to Japan as a missionary.

This missionary had spent so much time in Japan  he seemed to belong to two countries. But the reality was that he was an American who had lived in and adapted to Japan. That is our position as Christian believers in this world. We are pilgrims progressing through a world that is not our homeland.

1.  Strangers and Pilgrims. St. Peter addresses us as “strangers and pilgrims.” He opened his letter addressing it to “elect exiles.” The picture in his mind is that Christian believers are like the Jewish people who had been exiled from their home country by the Babylonians and now were  scattered throughout the Roman Empire. They remained ethnically, religiously, and culturally Jews. But they could not withdraw into isolated enclaves. They had to make homes, work, raise children, and live out their lives wherever they found themselves. It was a balancing act - to remain Jews while living in and adapting to life the cities and provinces.

This “pilgrim outlook” is for God’s people in every age. It began with the call of Abraham. Though God promised Abraham he would give him a land, still Abraham and his descendants lived their lives as a pilgrims:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.  For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out,they would have had opportunity to return.  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one Hebrews (11:13-16).

It continues to be the outlook of New Testament believers. St. Paul wrote from imprisonment in Rome to the church in Philippi:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:20).

They lived in Philippi, a Roman colony where free people enjoyed Roman citizenship and lived under Roman law, but their true citizenship was in heaven, where their King, Jesus Christ, is. They are citizens from heaven, who live in Philippi, but are awaiting the coming of their King from their real homeland.

Whatever country we live in, whatever our citizenship, whatever privileges and blessings we enjoy as citizens, we are always strangers and pilgrims. Our primary citizenship is in heaven, and our primary loyalty is to the King who lives in heaven.

2. Two Citizenships

We Christians have dual citizenships. We are citizens of the United States and at the same time citizens of heaven. Our citizenship in Christ’s kingdom is far more important than our U.S. citizenship.

We do not withdraw from our citizenship in our country and our life in the world. We participate in the political process. We pay our taxes. We appreciate the culture. We enjoy the good pleasures of the world. We marry, have children, work at jobs, buy homes and cars, get educated, go to museums and theaters. Jesus does not call us to detach ourselves from the world or to withdraw into Christian enclaves. We are citizens of the U.S. who live in this world.

However, one of the big mistakes American Christians make is to think of the United States as though it were, like Old Testament Israel, the kingdom of God. They believe faithful Christians are supposed to call the U.S. to repentance so that our country can be returned to its special status as God’s kingdom. Christians who believe this quote God’s words to Israel at the time of the dedication of Solomon’s temple:

...if my people who are called by my name humble

themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

But the United States is not God’s kingdom. The better way for us to understand our standing as Christian citizens of the United States is the counsel Jeremiah wrote to Jewish people who had been carried off to Babylon as exiles:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29: 4-7).

We are exiles in a foreign land. But we are not hostile to the land where we live, nor do we withdraw into Christian communes. For the present age we settle where we find ourselves and live normal lives. We pray for our country; we seek its welfare. Our welfare and our country’s welfare are bound up together.

3. The Limits

But there are limits. How far can an American citizen alien go in adapting to and adopting the culture and customs of countries where he or she lives? We cannot go so far as to deny anything that would deny our essential identity as an American citizen. The missionary who invited us to his home for Japanese food loved Japan where he spent so many years. His wife told us that he had to be served rice at least once every day. But he never gave up his American citizenship, and when World War II came he left Japan for his homeland.

As Christians we cannot adopt the values, practices, and culture of our country if those are in conflict with Christ’s kingdom - if being citizens of our earthly country and culture puts us in conflict with Christ’s kingdom and culture.

“I beseech you...flee from fleshly lusts.” Fleshly lusts are sinful desires that we experience through the needs and desires of our human flesh - our bodies. There are two ways that fleshly desires and needs can become sinful lusts. One is when sin twists a desire or need in an evil direction.

Human sexual desire is itself good, a gift of our good Creator. But sin twists this good thing into something evil when we seek sexual fulfilment outside the man-woman relationship of marriage. A fleshly desire becomes a fleshly lust. One of the biggest challenges to Christian faithfulness at present is the availability of internet pornography. It is an awful twisting of a good thing into a bad which causes great damage.

Another way that a fleshly desire can become twisted by sin is when a desire or need that is good begins to exercise control over our lives. Take internet games. Many of them are fun and innocent entertainment. But for some they become obsessions that enslave a person. Wine in a good thing that the Bible says “makes the heart glad” but a person can become so obsessed with wine and the gladness it produces that the wine takes control of the life.

Fleshly lusts are not limited to matters of sex or drink. They can involve the tongue, the temper, money, material things - any need or desire that sin twists and perverts to evil use.  

Christians may not conform to or adapt the fleshly lusts approved and practice by many in our country and culture. This does not mean that we are called to self-righteousness, or belligerence, or unmercifulness in our dealings those who by choice or compulsion indulge in the fleshly lusts. Our responsibility is not so much to condemn others -  though we should compassionately warn those who think God approves of fleshly lusts. But our primary responsibility is to ourselves, to one another, and to the church to avoid  from fleshly lusts.

These lusts make war on our souls. They are our enemies. They want to defeat us and to take control of our lives. If we do not fight vigorously against them and, when we fall, repent of them, they destroy our souls. They are enemies God, of his kingdom, and of our temporal and our eternal happiness.

St. Andrew of Crete wrote:

Christian, dost thou see them

on the holy ground,

how the pow'rs of darkness

rage thy steps around?

Christian, up and smite them,

counting gain but loss,

in the strength that cometh

by the holy cross.

Christian, dost thou feel them,

how they work within,

striving, tempting, luring,

goading into sin?

Christian, never tremble;

never be downcast;

gird thee for the battle,

watch and pray and fast.

 

Paul's Profit and Loss Ledger

St. Paul’s Profit and Loss Ledger

Second after Easter

Collect of the Day: Almighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Epistle: Philippians 3:7-16 21st Century KJV

7 But what things were gain to me, those I counted as loss for Christ.

8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but dung, that I may win Christ

9 and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith,

10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death,

11 that if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

12 It is not as though I had already attained it, nor were already perfect; but I follow after, that I may apprehend that for which Christ Jesus also apprehended me.

13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended it, but this one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

15 Let us therefore, as many as would be perfect, be thus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.

16 Nevertheless, however much we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.

Homily Text: Philippians 3:7-9

St. Paul would not be a very good motivational speaker. Motivational speakers talk about turning losses into profits. St. Paul talked about turning profits into losses.

1. Profit

1.1. To understand Paul’s view of profits we have to go back to Paul’s description of his earlier life:

If any other man thinketh that he hath grounds to trust in the flesh, I have more:circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; according to the law, a Pharisee;concerning zeal, persecuting the church; as to the righteousness before the law, blameless.

Paul wrote about his earlier life because some Jewish Christians had come into the Philippian church and taught that, if they were going to be real and full Christians, they needed to add to their faith in Christ obedience to the Old Testament Law, and particularly to be circumcised. These teachers were proud of their Jewish heritage. They had confidence before God in their obedience to the Law, particularly their bearing the mark of circumcision in their flesh.

1.2. So Paul said, “If anyone has reason to have confidence in his Jewish heritage and achievements, I do.” He goes on to list seven things which used to give him confidence before God:

• Paul had been circumcised on the eighth day of

life, the exact day the Law prescribed for a 

newborn to receive this mark of God’s covenant. 

His family took their Jewish faith seriously.

• Paul was of the stock of Israel. He was an ethnic Jew who, a descendant of Abraham, a member  of God’s covenant people by birth, and an heir to all the promises made to Abraham’s descendants.

• Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin. The commercial website Ancestry.com exists because there are people interested in their ancestry. Southerners especially have great interest in their ancestors. Paul knew his family tree and knew not only that his family was ethnically Jewish but that his family belonged to the tribe of Benjamin.

• Paul was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Though his family lived in Asia Minor in the city of Tarsus, he grew up speaking Hebrew in a Hebrew speaking family. When he was a young man his family sent him to Jerusalem to study with Gamaliel, one of the foremost Old Testament scholars of his day.

• Paul was a Pharisee. This group developed after some Jews returned to Palestine after the Exile. They were concerned about the effects of secularization and about laxity in keeping the law. They were the “separated ones” who  avoided the corruptions of the pagan world. They were devoted to Old Testament standards of morality. They went above and beyond by adhering to rules beyond the law that would help them be holy.

• Paul was a persecutor of the church. We might  

     wonder why he would list persecution of the

church as a positive thing. But Paul is writing about his confidence before God in his earlier life. The point is that he persecuted the church out of zeal for God and the Jewish religion. He totally thought he was doing the right thing by suppressing Christianity as a false Jewish cult.

• Paul claimed to be blameless regarding the righteousness that could be obtained by law-keeping. That doesn’t mean he thought he kept the law perfectly. He thought that, when it came to following the moral code and observing the ritual rules of Judaism, there were no glaring defects in his life. He didn’t live a double life but a life of earnest, consistent obedience.

Paul put all these things on the profit side of his life’s ledger. These things gave him confidence before God.

1.3. Our time in history is one when not a great many people are not concerned about righteousness and acceptance with God, which presents us with a serious challenge to evangelism. Still there always are those who think that they gain God’s favor and acceptance by being good and doing good things. They try to be honest and upright and to follow the golden rule. They go to church and receive the sacraments. They believe their character and the conduct of their lives count as righteousness. Their confidence before God is based on the way they live. In this way they are like the Apostle Paul when he put such things in the profit ledger of his life.

2. Loss

2.1. You know that voice that comes from your GPS whenever you fail to execute an instruction? “Recalculating, recalculating.” Even when you make turns to try to get back on track, it keeps says, “recalculating.” There came a point in Paul’s life when he performed a radical and massive recalculation of the things that gave him confidence about his standing with God.

He always thought that all seven things that he possessed by birth, heritage, and effort were on the profit side of his life’s ledger. But then there came the point when he realized he had been all wrong. These things were not profits but losses.

2.2. Many of us do our banking electronically now. We have direct deposits into our accounts, and we authorize certain recurring expenses to be deducted. We check our accounts from time to time to make sure we know the state of our finances. Suppose you do that one day and to your horror discover that all the deposits you think have been made to your account are in fact debits. This is not an error, but reality.

That is what happened to Paul. He had spent all his life confident that he had all these credits with God. Then he saw clearly that the whole way he had been thinking about his life was totally wrong. All these things he thought were to his profit - all these things others admired and agreed were positives - were losses. So he had to move them from the profit side to the loss side of his ledger with God.

2.3. Paul goes further. He counts all these things as dung. It’s a very strong word Paul uses. It is not just rubbish or garbage; it is dung, excrement. All these good things Paul had thought smelled delightful in God’s nostrils and looked beautiful in God’s eyes. This is the way Paul thought of them. But now realizes that to God these things stink and  are repulsive. As Paul explained to the Romans, “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”

We tend to think that there are good things about us that God credits as profit. We are sincere. We try. We are as good as the next person. Better than most. The good outweighs the bad. We think that God must see us this way. But the reality is that the things we put our confidence in, that we think make God see us as good, are not good in God’s sight but bad.

3. Gain

1.1. What led Paul willingly to give up all that the things he had thought good about himself?

In one word, it is Christ.

1.1.a. It is the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, which is excellent because it leads to salvation. The knowledge of Christ is knowing about Christ - who he is and all he has done for our salvation. But this knowledge about Christ is not an end in itself but the means to a relationship with Christ. What we know about Christ enables us to know Christ.

1.1.b. It is winning or gaining Christ. When you gain Christ you gain what is more valuable than anything else. Jesus told a parable about a pearl merchant who one day found a pearl that was more valuable than all he owned. So he went and sold everything he had so that he could own the one thing that was worth everything. That is what it is like to gain Christ.

1.1.c. It is being found in Christ. To be found in Christ is have a relationship of such fellowship with him that all that he accomplished by his life, death, resurrection, ascension is yours. In the English marriage service the husband traditionally said “with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” So when we are united to Christ he endows us with all he gained by his saving work.

1.2. Our being united to means first “not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is by the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” What Paul describes as “mine own righteousness which is of the law” includes all those things he previously had confidence in -  the things he inherited by birth and the things he achieved by zeal and effort. When he was confronted with Christ, he saw that salvation cannot be attained by human merit or performance however sincere the effort or how great the accomplishments in comparison with other people. When it comes to righteousness our best is never good enough.

1.3. The righteousness God accepts is the “righteousness which is of God.” There is the “righteousness which is of the law” - the righteousness which comes from the law and is produced by human obedience to the law. Paul once had confidence in this righteousness, but now  sees it cannot be relied on for his standing with God.

Then there is “the righteousness which is of God” - the righteousness God which comes from God and which he provides in Christ, the righteousness that God approves because it is the perfect righteousness of Christ. The contrast is clear - righteousness which is of the law, which is produced by human obedience, and the righteousness which is of God and is produced by Christ’s obedience.

The righteousness which is of God is received by faith in Christ. Faith is not an easier work than obedience to the law. Faith is receiving what you do not have, and it is relying on what you did not produce. The object of faith is Christ - his righteous life, sacrificial death, victorious resurrection, and glorious ascension. By faith in Christ and his righteousness we receive the righteousness God accepts. What makes us acceptable to God is not faith, but Christ to whom we are connected by faith. Again the contrast is clear - the righteousness produced by human obedience to the law, and the righteousness provided by Christ and received by faith.

Thy works, not mine, O Christ,

speak gladness to this heart;

they tell me all is done;

they bid my fear depart.

Thy righteousness, O Christ,

alone can cover me;

no righteousness avails

save that which is of thee.