Remembering Who We Are

REMEMBERING WHO WE ARE

SERIES: The Surpassing Value of Knowing Christ

Scott Grant

We’re beginning a four-message series in Philippians 3 on the surpassing value of knowing Christ. This text has long fascinated me, and I have gone through it many times--studying it, translating it, teaching it, and leading Bible studies on it. This chapter fascinates me because Christ fascinates me. Knowing Christ is really the passion of my life, and my secondary passion is to share Christ with others and help them draw near to him.

Why did Paul write Philippians 3? To answer that we need to first understand why he wrote the book of Philippians. The book is concerned overall with the advance of the gospel. What Paul wants is for the church in Philippi to be unified in adopting the Christ pattern of self-giving love as expressed in Philippians 2:5-11:

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.”

This small group of believers in Philippi is being persecuted by Roman oppressors, and is therefore drawn to patterns of living other than the Christ pattern--perhaps Jewish patterns, which are safer, or Roman patterns, which they really came out of--anything but knowing Jesus and following him. Knowing Jesus at this point is dangerous.

Philippi is a Roman colony, and the gospel is now penetrating Rome, so the question is, who is Lord: Caesar or Jesus? Philippi is on the front lines as the gospel is moving into the power structures in Europe, and Paul is very concerned for the reputation of the gospel in this city. So if we are concerned for the reputation of the gospel where we live and work, then we would do well to heed the message of Philippians 3.

Paul’s method here is to tell his story, and it takes up a significant part of the chapter. Paul’s own story is patterned after the Christ story. He gives his story to the Philippians in order that they might see what they have to sacrifice to know Jesus and follow him.

Everyone throughout the ages is asking the question, “Who am I?” Paul answers that question in this chapter. He says that as followers of Jesus Christ we have an identity: we are children of the King, the people of God. But we get sucked into alternative definitions of who we are that our culture puts forth. Every culture has its own identity markers, and these are usually defined by the heritage and achievements of its members. These identity markers are a way of telling who’s in and who’s out, mostly for the sake of those who are in, so they can feel safe and secure. Paul warns against adopting these false identity markers and reminds us who we are.

Philippians 3:1-6:

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.

Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh--though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

The true people of God

Paul talks about those who think they are the people of God but in fact are not the people of God. They are quite obviously Jews; beyond that, there is much speculation about what form their Jewishness has taken. I believe that they are Jews who do not themselves believe in Christ and are clinging to their own ethnic and national identity markers. Perhaps they are also “evangelists” who are trying to draw Gentile believers in Christ away from him into Judaism.

What Paul does is turn the tables on these people. The terms that he uses to describe them are terms that Jews would use to describe Gentiles. It is the Gentiles who are dogs, workers of evil, and those who cut themselves in order to appease their gods. But Paul says that these particular Jews, in clinging to these ethnic identity markers over and against the Jewish Messiah, have become like the pagans in a sense, so he warns against them.

Paul has a definition for the true people of God. He says rather victoriously and emphatically, “We are the circumcision.” Now, circumcision was the outward sign of the covenant that God gave his people to show that they belonged to him. So this is a very Jewish way of conceiving of the people of God. But Paul takes this Jewish definition and expands it to include Gentile believers as well.

Throughout the Scriptures, what God has always been concerned about was circumcision of the heart. The outward circumcision was simply a sign, and what God really wanted was the hearts of the people (Deuteronomy 30). This is fulfilled as the Holy Spirit circumcises our hearts, and we belong to God by virtue of the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in our lives (Romans 2). The Holy Spirit is a seal marking or advertising us who believe in Jesus as belonging to him (Ephesians 1:13).

Paul describes the true people of God in three ways: they worship by the Spirit, they glory in Christ Jesus, and they put no confidence in the flesh. Let’s consider each of these.

What does it mean to worship by the Spirit? It means the Holy Spirit makes us worshipers. He calls forth worship that is genuine and deep, instead of fake or superficial.

The Holy Spirit leads us to glory in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit is concerned about bringing glory to Christ Jesus, showing the world who he is, and in particular, showing believers who he really is. Within us, through the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit shows us the sufficiency of the work of Christ on the cross as opposed to our own work, whatever that might be. He also shows us the magnificence and the utter awesomeness of Christ so that we might be drawn to him and exult in him, that we might literally boast in Christ. We are all looking for something to boast about, and we can boast in the greatness of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Finally, Paul says the true people of God put no confidence in the flesh. They put no confidence in ethnic or tribal heritage, observances, the gifts they were born with, or their own accomplishments. They don’t believe these things have anything to do with a true relationship with God in terms of commending them to him.

False identity markers

Paul goes on to tell a little bit of his own history. He says, “The false people of God are playing the game of ethnic heritage and observances, but if I wanted to play that game, I could beat any of them.” Now, we can’t accuse Paul of being anti-Jewish here, because he himself was Jewish. Paul describes his former manner of life in seven ways. The first three pertain to his heritage. The last three pertain to his observances and accomplishments. And the middle one is the key to the whole list of seven: he is a Hebrew of Hebrews. Both by heritage and by accomplishments Paul would be considered an elite member of the nation of Israel. No one got much higher than he was in terms of status and recognition and achievements. Paul says, “I used to find my identity that way, too.” But as he will go on to say in the rest of the chapter, he doesn’t anymore.

Paul is telling the Philippians, “These particular Jews are having an influence in the city of Philippi. Watch out for them. Don’t be like them.” Why might they be tempted in that direction? Again, because of persecution. Any time you are a persecuted minority, you are going to be tempted to retreat into safer definitions, to put up defenses against the rest of the world. So these Gentile believers could go in the Jewish direction, which would be a safer option at this point in the Roman Empire, because it really doesn’t expose them to persecution, and it is still monotheistic. But this is also a Roman colony, and many of these people would have Roman citizenship, so at the same time they would be drawn to cling to the status and privilege and rights that come with being a Roman citizen.

Now, of course there is nothing wrong with being either Jewish or Roman. There is nothing wrong with being a member of any tribe. But there is something wrong with every tribe: every tribe is comprised of sinners, and when sinners get together they come up with some bad ways of defining life. No tribe as a collective puts its trust in God. The tendency instead is to somehow put trust in the tribe itself to prop up its own sagging identity. A tribal consciousness develops, and each tribe tries to think of itself as being the best. Each member tends to take pride in membership.

Every tribe or ethnicity develops its own identity markers (there is some overlap, of course). For the Jews it was circumcision, adherence to the Mosaic Law, and in some cases zeal. All of these are good; in fact, God gave circumcision and the Law to the nation of Israel as a means for them to know him. Zeal is also a good response to God. But what some Jews did with these was take them as code words for exclusivity, a platform for national privilege and pride.

That’s the context of Philippians 3. What about our context? How can we identify ourselves as the people of God and move away from the false identity markers that we may be drawn to?

First of all, what are the “tribes” that we identify with? Again, there is nothing is wrong with being part of any tribe. We need to be concerned with this only when these other identity markers compete with allegiance to Christ in our hearts, when we put confidence in the flesh instead of in Christ. Now, we know this tendency is within us because we want to triumph. We want our team or our city or our nation to be victorious. We want somebody to look at us and say, “These guys are pretty cool. They’ve made it!” We are looking for some kind of validation that says we’re doing all right.

We cling to these identity markers in order to feel secure and significant. We want to feel safe in the sphere we belong to. And we are very good at figuring out the rules for the different tribes that we enter into. It’s kind of instinctive. You walk into a new group and just kind of sense how you could order your life according to its rules and make it in this group. Or if you don’t think it’s going to work, you find some other tribe whose rules are easier for you to follow.

We also want to distinguish ourselves in that sphere we belong to. The need for significance often takes precedence. Again, we are insecure and we want to outdistance everybody else in some way so that people will say we’re doing okay, so that we’ll feel good about ourselves. That is why on the one hand someone like Madonna can repulse us, because she breaks all the rules, but on the other hand we secretly admire her because she has distinguished herself, achieved a level of notoriety that we would love to achieve for ourselves.

What are the tribal identity markers that we might gravitate toward? Let me throw out a few: academic or athletic achievement, hard work and long hours, success, wealth, notoriety, home ownership, rugged individualism, self-assertiveness, expressing so-called freedom in any way that pleases you, pride in economic and military superiority, ability to speak in a certain way (being able to speak that “cool” language within a language), having a certain appearance, expressiveness, inexpressiveness, saving face, honoring the family.

If you are an immigrant or you come from an immigrant family, you may end up with conflicting identity markers now that you are living in America. There are family identity markers; each family has a certain way of doing things. And often if you run afoul of the identity markers in the family, you’ll hear about it, or you’ll feel it anyway. You may feel that you have become the black sheep of the family.

Then of course there are smaller “tribes,” the people you hang with, the friends you share a lot of life with. And these little tribes often develop identity markers. Not long after I graduated from college I hung out with two guys. We had a little tribe, and we thought we were cool. If I told you everything we did that we thought made us cool, you would probably laugh. If the truth be told, we were obnoxious. Let me tell you two stories.

At Los Altos High School there is a baseball field with a left-field fence that is only about 300 feet away from home plate. Every Sunday afternoon in the warm months we would have one guy on the pitching mound lobbing balls to the batter, and the batter would try to hit the ball over that fence. Sometimes there were tennis players playing in the courts on the other side, but we didn’t even care much if the balls came near the tennis players. We thought this was the coolest thing ever, and of course it was only for us.

And we had inside jokes. We had so many inside jokes that we couldn’t be with each other for a few minutes without busting up laughing because something would remind us of something. And we even joked that instead of having to trot out these jokes all the time, why didn’t we list them all and give them numbers, so then all we would have to do was say, “Sixteen,” and the others would start laughing, and everybody else would be wondering what we were laughing about. It was captivating. I was driving with one of these guys from Los Angeles to the Bay Area, and he said, “Okay, we’re going to make this list.” In seven hours of driving we didn’t even scratch the surface of all our inside jokes. We were obnoxious. Some people told us so, which was all the more reason for us to believe that we were in and they were out. Those things were our identity markers in our little tribe.

Finding our humanity

There are evangelical Christian identity markers. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11 that not only could he boast as a Jew, but he could, if he wanted to, boast as a follower of Jesus. Here are a few evangelical Christian identity markers: dutiful church attendance, regular quiet times, thorough Bible knowledge, doctrinal purity, involvement in ministry, consistent witnessing, adherence to a particular church system, raising your hands, not raising your hands, having a good marriage, raising godly children, affiliation with a certain political party, suffering successfully (not being too depressed for too long). And the list goes on. Now, again, there is nothing wrong with most of this. If the Holy Spirit is calling forth these activities, they have quite a natural and satisfying place. If, however, we are looking to derive our identity from these things, which we often end up doing, they can engulf us with guilt, pride, or exhaustion. Have you ever felt that way in your life as a follower of Jesus? Guilty, overwhelmed about not doing enough? Prideful? “I’m kind of doing okay right now.” Exhausted, because there’s so much you are supposed to do well?

Lee Knapp writes about how his evangelical church culture frustrated him:

“While nothing I had been taught was in any way contrary to Scripture, the church culture, one in which I rarely felt like myself, applied layer upon layer of conformity. Being insulated in such a culture either took away an honest estimation of sin, as people became spiritually proud, or it made them preoccupied with their sin in trying to eliminate it. I won lots of morality points and spiritual status this way, but in the end I lost my humanity.” (1)

The church is the place where you are supposed to find your humanity. Jesus Christ came as the truly human One, to show us how to live a truly human life, to give us his Holy Spirit to draw out our humanity, so we become free, real humans. I pray that no one comes to this church and loses his humanity. I pray that everyone who enters this church finds her humanity because she finds Jesus, and finds legitimate, deep, authentic worshipers of Jesus.

When we are drawn to all these false identity markers, we become hypersensitive. We’re always thinking about what other people are thinking about us, and we give other people the right to define us. We develop rabbit ears. We can be lifted up or crushed by one little comment. We give in to the tyranny of others’ expectations. We get so wired this way that we begin to imagine expectations that aren’t even there. We begin to have imaginary conversations in which we defend ourselves and triumph over somebody who just might be putting us down.

Paul has two categories for the flesh. One is heritage, or that which is obtained at birth, and the other is achievement and observances. What did you have to do with the tribe you were born into? How can you take pride in that? Some might say, “Well, I had nothing to do with the hand that was dealt me, but I played it to the best of my ability.” Where did ability come from? Not from them. It came from God. The performance ethic says who I am is based on what I do. The Biblical ethic says what I do is based on who I am. That’s why the question “Who am I?” is vital. Now, many of us who have come to Jesus have sought to distance ourselves from these false identity markers, but they keep calling out to us like the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey.

For Paul there is no future in the past, and neither is there for us. The future belongs to God. Our culture does not define us. Our family does not define us. Our husband or wife does not define us. Our boyfriend or girlfriend does not define us. Our friends do not define us. God defines us. Listen to him. What is he telling you? He’s telling you that you belong to him, that you are a son or daughter of the great high King, that you are beloved, cherished, adored. That’s who you are. You are a member of God’s tribe, and God’s tribe is comprised of members of every tribe. We worship by the Holy Spirit, we glory in Christ Jesus, and we don’t put our confidence in the flesh.

The following quote is from church historian Richard Lovelace. He talks about how we can actually freely enter our culture, having coming to Christ.

“Thus men who are not secure in Christ cast about for spiritual life-preservers with which to support their confidence, and in their frantic search they not only cling to the shreds of ability and righteousness they find in themselves, but they fix upon their race, their membership in a party, their familiar social and ecclesiastical patterns, and their culture as a means of self-recommendation. The culture is put on as though it were armor against self-doubt, and it becomes a mental straitjacket, which cleaves to the flesh and can never be removed except through comprehensive faith in the saving work of Christ. Once faith is exercised, a believer is free to be enculturated, to wear his culture like a comfortable suit of clothes. He can shift to other cultural clothing temporarily if he wishes to do so, as Paul suggests in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, and he is released to admire and appreciate the differing expressions of Christ shining out through other cultures.” (2)

In the children’s movie The Lion King, Mustafa tells Simba, “You are more than what you have become.” Are you more than what you have become? Have you settled for a reduced identity? When we accept a reduced identity for ourselves, we live reduced lives. We worship Jesus in reduced ways. We live out the gospel in reduced ways. What’s the answer? Remember who you are. You are the people of God, the sons and daughters of the great King, born not of the flesh but of the Spirit, dearly beloved, adored, cherished. In this identity, as the people of God, we find our deep human needs for security and significance legitimately addressed.

NOTES

(1) Lee Knapp, “The Making of an Original,” Christianity Today, December 27, 2000.

Catalog No. 4787

Philippians 3:1-6

1st Message

Scott Grant

January 26, 2003