The Paradigmatic Christian
One of the passages I often revisit is Philippians 3-4.
Sometimes, my soul is murky and clouded, like a city stream after a big rain, and these two chapters offer a settled clarity about what matters most.
Halfway through his letter, Paul says, “Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.” The NIV and NET add an exclamation to this sentence: rejoice! They do the same when Paul repeats himself doubly in 4:4:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!
Contentment and peace are coming in chapter four. But first we need to learn the paradigmatic Christian life in Paul.
He was “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.” This is quite the list of mostly positive attributes. Paul believed both before and after he became Christian that there was something special about being a Hebrew (see Romans 9-11). In his time, the Pharisees were best at obeying the law of God, which again, Paul saw as good (e.g. 1 Tim. 1:8). Being a persecutor of the church was obviously a negative attribute after Paul joined it, but his point is that he was not lazy in following God’s commands. According to the Old Testament law Paul says he was blameless.
Two of the most common mantras in our day are: “as long as you try your best,” and, “be true to yourself.” Paul was something like that. He was working hard. He was rigorous. He was zealous. He was born into an identity and he lived up to it. He did not waste time on video games, social media scrolling, and Netflix. But all this “good” was muddy toilet water under the bridge. Paul says:
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Some things lose value over time. I once imagined how happy I’d be getting to eat a whole bag of chips when I became an adult — or staying up late or playing video games for days and days. These lose value over time because they were not all that valuable in the first place.
But Paul is talking about positive virtues — good reasons for having confidence in his flesh. And he counts even these things as “rubbish.”
The solution is not simply to “find your identity in Christ.” There has been some pushback recently on this phrase, and for good reason. The problem is if you don’t know what “finding your identity in Christ” really means, or if you turn it into a subjective self-creation exercise rather than something more fundamental about God and what He has done for you. My humble suggestion is that I think we should use the language Paul uses.
Paul’s goal is that he “may gain Christ and be found in him.” What does it mean to gain Christ? One aspect is what Paul says in the following verse: “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.”
Further, Paul wishes to be found in him. One of my favourite questions that God asks is that of Adam: where are you? Why this question? Why not a question about who Adam is?
The story of Scripture is a story of place. For example, consider Deuteronomy. As the sermonic retelling of the law, Deuteronomy teaches how God’s people ought to act in a certain place (e.g., Deut. 4:1, 8:1, 11:8, etc.). From the garden, to the Tabernacle, to the temple in the promised land, to the promised city of Zion, to the new Jerusalem, God has always cared about the where question.
For Christians, where are we? Those who trust in Christ are found in him. We need to pause for a moment and appreciate this. He is our place. He is our home. With this residence, we have eternal security and everprotected borders. We have God’s right hand, his almighty power, and his trumpet of salvation.
When we are in him we are united to him, so that, as Paul says, “I may know him and the power of his resurrection… [that] I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
This power from being in Christ allows for us to grow a new life. Paul is striving in this, he says, and is not yet perfect. And that’s okay. That’s the Christian life. We should follow the paradigm of Paul and others like him. As he says, “join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.”
Paul’s union in Christ (through righteousness from God) is necessarily tied to Christ’s power in resurrection (whom God raised from the dead). In other words, when you die with Christ you live with him, imitating his character and love.
Where are we, fellow Christians? Where are you?
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.
In my next post I’ll continue into Philippians 4, and the context surrounding “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”