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.