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In the book of Philippians, Paul has been sharing with us his secret to the good life—demonstrating both what it is and how we can obtain it. In chapter 3, Paul lays out an important component in our quest for the good life: helping us identify what we think qualifies us for it.
Philippians 3 is, so to speak, Paul's résumé—what he believed before Jesus qualified him for the good life, and then how he sees things now after having met Jesus.
Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord... We are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. (Philippians 3:1–3)
A résumé, when you think about it, is essentially an argument. It's an argument for why you deserve something. If you're applying for a job, your résumé argues why you belong in that job instead of other candidates. If you're applying to a school, your application argues why you should be admitted instead of others.
I've heard it said that for most of us, the closest we will ever come to perfection in this life is our résumé. You may not overtly lie on your résumé, but you probably stretch the truth to its limits. One of my jobs in high school was mowing lawns—someone encouraged me to write that down on my college application as "architectural landscaping engineer." If you babysat, you might write "early childhood development supervisor." You didn't waste three hours every night playing Xbox with your friends—no, you were "founder and president of a strategic decision-making consortium."
A résumé is an argument for acceptance.
What Paul puts forward on his résumé would be different from what you put on yours. Paul lived in a different era that valued different things. But the point is that all of us carry around a little internal résumé that comprises our argument for why we believe we deserve a good life.
We are always subtly presenting that résumé to other people. We're always reviewing that résumé in our heads. This internal résumé is our source of personal confidence. Notice that three times in verses three and four, Paul calls this résumé our confidence.
Paul is asking you: Where do you find your personal confidence? Where's your self-esteem? Where's your confidence that you deserve the good life, that you will experience good things in the days to come?
One quick word of context. Paul's specific target in this passage—the ones against whom he is arguing—is a group in the early church known as the Judaizers.
The Judaizers were a sect of Jewish Christians who professed faith in Christ, but who also had a long list of things they believed made them more acceptable in God's eyes: regulations on dress, diet, and lifestyle. The very first thing on their list was circumcision. "You should of course believe in Jesus," they said, "but you must also be circumcised." Then they followed that up with a whole list of other Jewish laws and customs.
Paul is thinking about them in verse two:
Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh.
Paul does not mince words. People who teach that circumcision boosts your status with God are theological dogs, "body mutilators."
Here's the relevance for us. I would guess none of you have ever thought of circumcision as an important element in pleasing God. You've never talked to a friend who felt disconnected from God and responded, "Well, are you circumcised?" So you might get to a passage like this and think it isn't relevant.
But listen: Paul uses circumcision simply as an example of anything we look to in our flesh or about our person—anything we might put on our résumé that we think elevates our position above others or makes us more acceptable to God. You have your own list full of those kinds of things. So as I review Paul's very Jewish résumé, start thinking about what's on your very American one.
Circumcised on the eighth day. Exactly as the Mosaic law prescribed for all Israelite boys.
Of the people of Israel. The word for "people" means ethnicity—Paul was a true Jew, not a proselyte or convert. He was homegrown.
Of the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin had a special status because it was one of only two tribes (along with Judah) still fully intact. Most Jews in Paul's day were some mixture of Gentile and Jew. But Paul says, "I was pure blood." Furthermore, his original name was Saul—named for the first king of Israel, also from Benjamin—suggesting Paul may have been descended from royalty. Not just pure blood, but blueblood.
A Hebrew of Hebrews. Paul grew up in a Hebrew culture, in a Hebrew-speaking household. By this point most Jews were "hellenized," growing up speaking Greek. Paul said, "Not me. Our family was committed to the old ways."
As to the law, a Pharisee. In our day "Pharisee" carries the connotation of a self-righteous hypocrite. But in those days it was a badge of honor. The Pharisees were the moral and religious heroes of Israel. There was a common saying that if all Israelites lived like the Pharisees for even a single week, the Messiah would return immediately.
As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. You might think Paul is slipping in a negative here, shamefully acknowledging he'd killed some people. But in this context he presents it as a positive. There was a famous story from Numbers 25 about a man named Phineas. During an era when the men of Israel were corrupting themselves with pagan wives, Phineas got so angry that he took a javelin into a neighbor's tent and pinned him and his pagan lover to the bed. For that act of zeal, God stopped a curse on the people. The Pharisees used that story as an example of the kind of zeal that would bring God's blessing back. So Paul is saying, "I was Phineas—persecuting to the point of bloodshed any I saw bringing compromise to Israel. It was a messy job, but I was so committed to the law I was willing to kill for it."
As to righteousness under the law, blameless. "I kept all the laws. I was in church every week. I had all the books of the Bible memorized. I tithed. I double-tithed. I fasted twice a week. I never missed prayer meeting. I saved sex for marriage." Put whatever you want in that list. Paul was the best of the best.
People in Israel would have killed for a résumé like this. And so what Paul says next is absolutely shocking:
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.
Not only were these things ultimately unhelpful—they were actually harmful in his quest for the true good life. Paul then uses the next few verses to give us four things:
Let me make an obvious statement: the most important question in pursuing the good life is determining what it is.
Paul says his definition of the good life now is knowing Christ—"that I may know him and the power of his resurrection." That has "surpassing worth" to him. In fact, compared to knowing Christ, everything else in his life seems like "rubbish."
Our ESV translation says "rubbish," but honestly that word doesn't do justice to the Greek. The Greek word is skubalon—the closest thing to an expletive in the New Testament. Paul said, "Compared to knowing Christ, everything else in my life seems like garbage."
That's because for Paul, knowing Jesus was the essence of life. It's not that Jesus connected him to the good life, or could provide him the good life—knowing Jesus was itself the good life. Remember from chapter one: "For me to live is Christ." Knowing Jesus is life itself.
Everybody's into soccer right now because of the World Cup. There's a popular comedy—Ted Lasso—about a redneck American football coach who goes to coach a soccer team in England and can't understand the European fascination with the game.
There's one player named Danny Rojas who always has a huge smile whenever he's playing. The only line he really says is, "Football is life." He just loves playing—not for the money or fame, but for the joy of it.
For Paul, knowing Jesus—being assured of his love, trusting his promises—that was life. It was a source of joy that could lift him above any pain or disappointment. So even imprisoned unjustly between two smelly guards, he could say, "I've learned in whatever state I am to be content, because I've already got life. It's just knowing Jesus."
One question you need to consider in your pursuit of the good life is: how easily could whatever you've established as your source of the good life be taken away?
Even in Ted Lasso, there's a point where the team starts doing terribly, Danny misfires a penalty kick and inadvertently kills the team dog, and he starts saying, "Football is death." Here's the thing: most of the things we establish as life can turn into death.
Last week I listened to a podcast with a popular German biotech engineer who explained that real life is found in "human-maxing"—supplements, injections, enhancement drugs, psychedelics, eventually fusing AI into us. He said, "We can now prescribe things that tangibly increase people's quality of life by ten full years."
And I kept thinking: that's awesome, but is ten years really that long? What happens in your maxed-up life when your wife or one of your kids dies, or your marriage falls apart? Can human-maxing save you then? In fact, he talked about dealing with suicidal thoughts, and my heart went out to him. But if your maxed-up life still leaves you with suicidal thoughts, can you really say it's been that successful?
Paul says knowing Jesus gives a joy and fulfillment nothing else rivals—one that disappointment and death cannot take away.
You saw an incredible testimony of this right here at our church about a week and a half ago. Jacob Slavin, defender for the Carolina Hurricanes, is a member here. A week and a half ago Jacob became one of only two people in history to ever win a gold medal and the Stanley Cup in the same year.
When they won the final game, I texted him: "Congratulations. I just want you to know how grateful I am that you were stewarding this moment for Jesus." I didn't expect a response—I figured they were up to their eyeballs in champagne. But he texted back: "Thanks, JD. What a ride. Really makes you understand when the Bible says the things of the world are fleeting. Lay them at the feet of Jesus. GTG"—glory to God.
Notice the timestamp: this was 4:00 a.m. his time, just hours after winning the Stanley Cup. He hadn't even gone to bed yet, and already he's saying, "Even this—the Stanley Cup—it's not life."
And here's what I love most. I have a nearly identical text from him a couple years ago after they lost in the semifinals: "Man, I was disappointed to lose, but no big deal winning or losing. GTG—all glory to God." Take it from those who've gotten the gold medals and trophies: even the Stanley Cup is rubbish compared to the joy of knowing Jesus.
Some of you have been in church a long time but have never thought about Jesus this way. You've thought of him primarily as useful—you can't get into heaven without him, you need him for your family, your career, you want him on your team.
But there is a difference between something being useful to you and something being beautiful to you.
I have a tire iron in my car. I'm glad I have it—it's helped me in bad situations. But that tire iron, while useful, is not beautiful. I don't take it out and look at it. I don't carry a picture of it. If it breaks, I throw it away and buy a new one.
That's different from how I feel about my wife and my kids. They're not so much useful to me as beautiful to me. I don't love them for the great things they bring into my life—in fact, they cost me millions of dollars! I love them for them, because they are beautiful to me.
For some of you, Jesus is useful. You think he'll help you obtain heaven, avoid hell, provide a good marriage, help with your kids. You think Jesus is the gateway to the good life. But for Paul, Jesus was the good life—beautiful even when everything else was falling apart.
So which is it for you? Do you think Jesus can help you obtain the good life, or do you think knowing him is the good life?
Notice that Paul talks about his relationship with Christ with confidence: "I have gained Christ," "I know him," "I have been found in him."
That's a huge boast. "Christ is mine. I'm his. He is in me. I am in him. I will go to heaven when I die. He's on my side in every situation, always working for my good." What qualifies Paul to say that? Is it his impressive résumé, all he's accomplished as an apostle? No. Those used to be his source of confidence, but no longer.
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. (Philippians 3:9)
There is a righteousness God offers through the gospel that comes not from obedience to the law, not from any human accomplishment. It comes only through faith in Christ, given as a gift to all who receive it. This is what we call gift righteousness—and it is the heart and center of the Christian message, distinguishing it from every other religious message on earth.
Gift righteousness is when Christ's record, Christ's résumé, gets credited to your account. Paul calls this in Romans imputed righteousness. "Imputed" is a legal term meaning something gets credited to you, a status conferred upon you.
This is different from you slowly becoming more righteous in your thoughts and behavior over a lifetime, which is called infused righteousness.
Let this jar of water represent Jesus, the righteousness of Christ. And let's say this figure represents you—baby Yoda. When you put faith in Christ, you get put into Christ. That's Paul's language: "found in him." Now when God sees you, he sees Christ first—he literally cannot see you without first seeing Christ. That is imputed righteousness.
But something else is happening to baby Yoda in the water: slowly, the water of Christ's righteousness is seeping into him. That is infused righteousness—the process called sanctification. It's an important part of your spiritual growth, but it is not the same as imputed righteousness.
I take pains to explain this because our Catholic friends often confuse the two, which is why so many of them lack assurance of salvation. They teach that righteousness gets put into us little by little through the sacraments—like a medicine. The more you go to church, to confession, take the Eucharist, the more righteousness comes into you. But they never know if they have enough inside to fully belong to Jesus, which is why so many, when asked if they're sure they're going to heaven, say they don't know—and assume they'll finish the process in purgatory.
Martin Luther had a great way of expressing imputed righteousness. He said that when you're put into Christ, you are simultaneously righteous and a sinner—fully righteous in God's eyes even while still sinful on the inside. Even before I'm soaked all the way through, when God sees me, he sees Christ's full record as belonging to me. That gives me a confidence in him nothing else can.
Imagine you're applying to Duke University. The average SAT for incoming freshmen was around 1550, and Duke has a 5% acceptance rate. But you really want to be a Blue Devil—except you got straight D's and your SAT was so low that when you tell people, they think you're telling them your ACT score.
You turn in your application, nervous. But you find out the admissions committee has decided to consider Albert Einstein's résumé instead of yours as the basis of your admission. Suddenly you're feeling pretty good. Other applicants say, "I got a 1570." You say, "Yeah, but I came up with E = mc²." "I wrote a killer essay about my grandmother." "Yeah, but I developed the theory of relativity." Einstein's résumé makes everything else seem like rubbish.
This is what God invites us to do with the résumé of Christ. Christ's résumé counts as mine. Gift righteousness—Jesus in my place.
I often tell you I am sure of my salvation, sure I'll go to heaven. And it's not because I have an impressive résumé. That's the point—it's not about my résumé at all anymore. Christ's résumé is now counted in my place.
Paul said in verse 7 that his accomplishments were not just neutral to him anymore—they became a loss.
That's because one of the sneakiest things about our sinful hearts is how we use our accomplishments to elevate ourselves in the eyes of God and others—and how our pride in those accomplishments keeps us from receiving the grace offered only as a gift to those who know they can't earn it. That's why Billy Graham always said it's not people's sin that usually keeps them out of heaven—it's usually their good works.
In a few weeks we celebrate America's 250th birthday. We'll hear a lot about the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence. But more significant to me is that all of this happened in the wake of what historians call the Great Awakening—the greatest spiritual revival in Western history.
Christian scholars say Great Awakening preaching had basically only two points:
There was a man saved during the Great Awakening named Nathan Cole, a poor farmer who kept a journal you can still see in a museum in Connecticut. After hearing a famous evangelist preach, he wrote:
As I heard him preach, [it] gave me a heart wound. By God's blessing, my old foundation was broken up, and I saw that my righteousness would not save me.
Notice he did not say, "I got motivated to be a better man, a better dad, a better husband." He said, "My foundation was broken up, and I saw that my righteousness would not save me."
True gospel preaching wounds the very thing we're trusting in to make us good enough for God. True gospel preaching shreds your résumé.
That breaking up of our foundation isn't something that happens only once at salvation. This is the ongoing secret of the Christian life. Just as you look to Christ's righteousness to save you, you learn to look to Christ's power to sustain you.
Hear me: You don't have what it takes to live the Christian life. You don't have what it takes to overcome temptation or accomplish the will of God. The sooner you learn that, the better. The more you know of Christ, the more you'll say with Nathan Cole, "My old foundation is broken up." Just as my righteousness could never save me, my own power could never keep me.
All the gospel's blessings come not through accomplishing but through receiving—not through our impressive résumé, but through humbly receiving gift righteousness and gift power.
And that means there is hope for you. No matter how messed up you feel, it's not about your power for God—it's about his power in you. To the husband who feels he's made a mess of his family, I'm not saying "be a better man." To the drug addict, I'm not saying "look at what a mess you've made—try harder." I'm telling you there's an empty tomb in Jerusalem that's been open for you, from which the power of new life flows to all who receive it as a gift.
Maybe the most surprising thing is what Paul says at the end:
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. (Philippians 3:10–11)
The gateway to resurrection power, Paul says, is through weakness and suffering.
So my own failure helps me—it helps me trust in Jesus instead of me. When something blows up on me, falls apart, disappoints me, it gives me a chance to tell myself and others: "My hope is not in that thing. My hope is in Jesus. That Stanley Cup will rust, but Jesus is eternal."
What's more, when I suffer unjustly, when I'm persecuted, that becomes a gateway to spiritual power. Think about it: God brought salvation into the world through Jesus dying unfairly, in weakness and shame. God did not bring resurrection power through Christ's perfect résumé—he brought it through Christ's unjust suffering. So when I suffer unjustly, when I feel like I'm bearing a cross, when I feel weak, I have access to that same power.
That doesn't mean I seek out crosses or don't try to avoid them—just that when I can't avoid them, they're giving me access to God's resurrection power.
I was talking with a godly friend about a month ago. Both of us have gone through something similar that felt unfair and painful—involving lies and false accusations we just can't fully clear up. Not because the truth isn't clear, but because the lies are too widespread.
I asked him how he copes with people who continue to believe false things about him. He paused, then said, "You know, JD, this is one of those places where the Lord has said to me, In this one, you get to experience what Jesus experienced. You get to bear his shame—and that's the portal through which I'm going to pour resurrection power."
Nobody likes suffering, and God wants you to do all you can to avoid it. Let me make this abundantly clear: if you are in an abusive situation, I am not saying you should stay there. Contact us. Contact somebody. We want to help you.
I'm just saying that when you've done all you can to avoid suffering, to clear your name and stop the lies, and you can't—know that Jesus says, "Blessed are you when you suffer wrongly, even unfairly, because then yours is the kingdom and the power of heaven. If you share in my sufferings, you'll share in my resurrection power." When they put upon you the cross of false accusations, and you become like him in his death, his resurrection power starts flowing through you.
Here's what I've learned after 25 years in ministry: it's not J.D. Greear's impressive résumé that you need—it's resurrection power. You don't need a man up here showing off. You need a man who knows what it's like to be broken, weak, to suffer and fail, because he can point you to the power of an empty tomb.
Some of you are suffering right now. In a marriage. At your workplace. Friends are unkind to you. Do everything you can to clear it up—but I'm telling you, if you go through that suffering with faith, God is pouring resurrection power into you and through you to those around you. You share in his suffering as you partake of his power.
In one of the greatest passages he ever penned, the Apostle Paul asks you three fundamental questions. This is what I want to leave you with:
What is your ultimate goal? How do you define the good life? Do you see Jesus as useful for getting you to the good life, or do you see knowing him as the good life? If the good life for you is anything except knowing Christ, it's going to leave you empty and broken.
What qualifications entitle you to the good life? Are you still carrying around that old résumé in your heart, trying to prove yourself to God and others? Or have you accepted the gift righteousness of Christ, given to all who simply receive it by faith because they know they can't earn it?
Is there a failure or frustration you might see as an invitation to experience the power of resurrection? Maybe something you brought in here this morning. Right now the Holy Spirit may be saying, "I'm doing this because the world needs less of you and more of me." I invite you to submit to it this morning.
I'm going to put these questions on the screen and give you 60 to 90 seconds.
