Homily 11 — Philippians 3, verses 7 to 12

“But whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yes indeed, and I counted all things to be loss for the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them but dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, the one that comes from the law, but the one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that is from God.” [a]

In our contests with heretics we must go into the attack with minds fresh and vigorous, so that they can give close attention. So I will begin today’s sermon where the last one ended. And where was that? After listing every boast a Jew could make, both those that came from his birth and those that came from his own choice, Paul added, “But whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted to be loss for the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them but dung, that I may gain Christ.” Here the heretics leap to the attack. For even this comes from the wisdom of the Spirit: to hold out to them hopes of victory, so that they will take up the fight.

For if it had been said plainly, they would have done here what they have done in other places. They would have blotted out the words and rejected the Scripture, since they could not bear to look it in the face at all. But just as with fish, what catches them is hidden and not left out in plain sight, so that they will swim up to it, so it has turned out here too. “The law is called ‘dung’ by Paul,” they say. “It is called ‘loss.’ He says it was not possible to gain Christ unless he ‘suffered’ this ‘loss.’” All this led the heretics to seize on this passage, thinking it was on their side. But once they had taken it, then he closed his nets around them on every side. For what do they say? “Look, the law is ‘loss,’ it is ‘dung.’ How then can you say that it is from God?” But these very words are in the law’s favor, and how they are will now be made clear. Let us pay close attention to his exact words. He did not say, “The law is loss,” but, “I counted it loss.”

But when he spoke of gain, he did not say, “I counted them gain,” but, “they were gain.” When he spoke of loss, though, he said, “I counted.” And rightly so: the first was so by its nature, but the second became so by my judgment of it. [c]

“What then?” he says. “Is it not so?” It is loss — for Christ.

And how did the law come to be gain? Notice that it was not counted gain; it really was gain. Think how great a thing it was to bring human beings, who had become like animals in their nature, to the shape of human beings. If the law had not come, grace would not have been given. Why? Because it became a kind of bridge. When it was impossible to climb up on high from a state of such deep lowness, a ladder was set up. Now the man who has climbed up no longer needs the ladder. Yet he does not look down on it; he is even grateful to it, for it has put him where he no longer needs it. And for that very reason, because he no longer needs it, it is only right that he acknowledge what he owes it, since he could not have flown up. So it is with the law. It has led us up on high. That is why it was gain; but from now on we consider it loss. How? Not because it is loss, but because grace is far greater.

Think of a poor man who was hungry. As long as he has silver, he escapes hunger. But when he finds gold, and he is not allowed to keep both, he considers it a loss to hold on to the silver; he throws it away and takes the gold coin. So it is here. It is not that the silver is loss, for it is not; it is that one cannot take both at once, and one of them must be left behind. So it is not the law that is loss. What is loss is for a person to cling to the law and desert Christ. It is loss, then, when it leads us away from Christ. But if it sends us on to him, it is no longer loss. That is why he says, “loss for Christ.” If it is loss for Christ, it is not loss by nature.

But why does the law not let us come to Christ? It was given for this very purpose, he tells us. Christ is the fulfillment of the law, and Christ is the end of the law. It does let us, if we are willing. “For Christ is the end of the law.” The one who obeys the law leaves the law itself behind. It lets us, if we pay attention to it; but if we do not pay attention to it, it does not let us.

“Yes indeed, and I count all things but loss.” This is what he means: “Why do I say this only about the law? Is the world not good? Is the present life not good? But if they draw me away from Christ, I count these things loss. Why?” [e]

“For the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord.” When the sun has come up, it is a loss to sit by a lamp. So the loss comes by comparison, from the superiority of the other. Notice that Paul makes his comparison on the ground of excellence, not of a difference in kind. For what excels, excels over something of the same nature as itself. So by the very means he uses to draw the superiority out of the comparison, he shows that the one knowledge is related to the other.

“For whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them dung, that I may gain Christ.” It is not yet clear whether he is speaking of the law, for he probably applies this to the things of this world. For after saying, “The things that were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ,” he adds, “Yes indeed, I count all things loss.” Although he said “all things,” he means the things of the present. And if you want it to include the law as well, even so the law is not insulted. For dung comes from wheat, and the strength of the wheat is the dung — I mean, the chaff. But just as the dung was useful in its earlier state, so that we gather it in along with the wheat, and if there had been no dung there would have been no wheat, so it is with the law too.

Do you see how everywhere he calls it “loss,” not in itself, but for Christ?

“Yes indeed, and I count all things but loss.” Why again? “For the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of him, for whom I suffered the loss of all things.” And again, “That is why I also count all things to be loss, that I may gain Christ.”

See how, from every side, he holds on to Christ as his foundation, and never lets the law be left exposed anywhere or take a blow, but guards it on every side. “And that I may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, the one that comes from the law.” If the man who had righteousness ran to this other righteousness because his own was nothing, how much more ought those who do not have it run to him? And he did well to say “a righteousness of my own” — not the one I gained by labor and toil, but the one I found by grace. If then he who was so outstanding is saved by grace, much more are you. For since they would probably say that the righteousness that comes from toil is the greater, he shows that it is dung compared with the other. “Otherwise I, who excelled so much in it, would not have thrown it away and run to the other.” But what is that other? The righteousness that comes from faith in God — that is, it too is given by God. This is the righteousness of God; this is a gift through and through. And the gifts of God far surpass those worthless good deeds that come from our own effort.

But what does “by faith, that I may know him” mean? So knowledge comes through faith, and without faith it is impossible to know him. How so? Through faith we must “know the power of his resurrection.” For what reasoning can prove the resurrection to us? None; only faith can. If the resurrection of Christ according to the flesh is known by faith, how can the birth of the Word of God be grasped by reasoning? For the resurrection is a lesser thing than the birth. Why? Because of the one there have been many examples, but of the other never a single one. Many dead people rose before Christ, though after rising they died again; but no one was ever born of a virgin. If then we must grasp by faith what is lesser than the birth according to the flesh, how can what is far greater — immeasurably, incomparably greater — be grasped by reason? [g]

These are what make up righteousness. We must believe that he was able to do this; but how he was able, we cannot prove. For the fellowship of his sufferings, too, comes from faith. How? If we had not believed, we would not have suffered. If we had not believed that “if we endure with him, we will also reign with him” (Second Timothy 2, verse 12), we would not have endured the sufferings. Both the birth and the resurrection are grasped by faith.

Do you see that faith must not be bare faith, but must come through good works? For the one who most truly believes that Christ has risen is the one who gives himself up to dangers in the same way, the one who shares with him in his sufferings. For he has fellowship with the one who rose again, with the one who lives. That is why he says, “And be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, the one that comes from the law, but the one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that is from God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed to his death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

He says, “becoming conformed to his death” — that is, having fellowship with it. He suffered at the hands of men; so do I. That is why he said “becoming conformed,” and again in another place, “and fill up on my part what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh” (Colossians 1, verse 24). That is, these persecutions and sufferings shape in us the image of his death, for he did not seek his own good, but the good of many.

So persecutions, afflictions and hardships ought not to trouble you; they ought even to make you glad, because through them we are “conformed to his death.” It is as if he had said, “We are molded to his likeness,” as he says in another place, where he writes, “bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus” (Second Corinthians 4, verse 10). And this too comes from great faith. For we believe not only that he rose, but that after his resurrection he has great power as well. That is why we travel the same road he traveled; that is, in this respect too we become his brothers. It is as if he had said, “In this respect we become Christs.” Oh, how great is the dignity of sufferings! We believe that through sufferings we become “conformed to his death”!

For as in baptism we were “buried with the likeness of his death,” so here, with his death itself. There he rightly said, “the likeness of his death” (Romans 6, verses 4 and 5), for there we did not die completely: we did not die in the flesh, to the body, but to sin. So one death is spoken of, and another death. He died in the body, while we died to sin; in his case it was the man he had taken on, who was in our flesh, that died, but in ours it is the man of sin. That is why he says there “the likeness of his death,” but here no longer the likeness of his death, but his death itself. For in his persecutions Paul was no longer dying to sin, but in his very body. So he endured the same death.

“If by any means,” he says, “I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” What are you saying? All people will have a share in that. “For we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed” (First Corinthians 15, verse 51), and all will share not only in the resurrection but in imperishability — some to honor, others as a means of punishment. If, then, all have a share in the resurrection, and not in the resurrection only but in imperishability too, how could he say, “If by any means I may attain,” as though he were about to share in something special?

“This is why I endure these things,” he says, “if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” For if you had not died, you would not rise. What is it, then? Something great seems to be hinted at here — so great that he did not dare to state it openly, but says, “If by any means.” “I have believed in him and in his resurrection. More than that, I suffer for him. And still I cannot be confident about the resurrection.” What resurrection is he speaking of here? The one that leads to Christ himself. “I said that I believed in him and in ‘the power of his resurrection,’ that I have ‘fellowship with his sufferings,’ and that I am ‘becoming conformed to his death.’ Yet after all this I am by no means confident.” As he said elsewhere, “Let him who thinks he stands take care that he does not fall” (First Corinthians 10, verse 12). And again, “I fear that somehow, after I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected” (First Corinthians 9, verse 27).

Verse 12: “Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect; but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold of that for which I also was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” [i]

“Not that I have already obtained.” What does “already obtained” mean? He is speaking of the prize. But if the man who had endured such sufferings, who was persecuted, who “had in him the dying of the Lord Jesus” (Second Corinthians 4, verse 10), was not yet confident about that resurrection, what can we say? What does “if I may lay hold of” mean? What he said before: “If I may attain to the resurrection of the dead” (Philippians 3, verse 11). “If I may lay hold of,” he says, “his resurrection” — that is, if I am able to endure such great things, if I am able to imitate him, if I am able to become conformed to him.

For example, Christ suffered many things. He was spit on, he was struck, he was flogged, and at the last he suffered what he suffered. This is the whole course. Through all these things a person must endure the whole contest, and so come to his resurrection. Or he means this: if I am counted worthy to attain the glorious resurrection, which is a matter of confidence, so as to share in his resurrection. For if I am able to endure all the contests, I will also be able to have his resurrection and to rise in glory.

“I am not yet worthy,” he says, “but ‘I press on, if so be that I may lay hold of it.’ My life is still one of contest. I am still far from the end, still a long way from the prize. I am still running, still pursuing.” And he did not say, “I run,” but, “I pursue.” For you know how eagerly a man pursues. He sees no one; he shoves aside with great force everyone who would get in the way of his pursuit. He gathers together his mind, his sight, his strength, his soul and his body, looking at nothing but the prize. But if Paul, who pursued like this, who had suffered so much, still says, “if I may attain,” what should we say, who have slackened our efforts?

Then, to show that the thing is a debt, he says, “For which I also was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” “I was one of the lost,” he says. “I was gasping for breath, I was near death. God laid hold of me.” For when we were fleeing from him, he pursued us with all speed. So he points to all of this. The words “I was laid hold of” show the earnestness of the one who wants to lay hold of us, and our great aversion to him, our wandering, our flight from him.

So we are liable for a vast debt, and yet no one grieves, no one weeps, no one groans; all have gone back to the way they were before. For just as we fled from God before Christ appeared, so we do now too. We can flee from God — not in place, for he is everywhere. Listen to the prophet when he says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139, verse 7). How then can we flee from God? In the way that we can become distant from God, in the way that we can be removed far away. “Those who are far from you,” it says, “will perish” (Psalm 73, verse 27). And again, “Have not your wrongdoings made a separation between me and you?” (Isaiah 59, verse 2). How then does this removal come about? How does this separation come about? In purpose and in soul, for it cannot be in place. For how could anyone flee from him who is present everywhere? So it is the sinner who flees. This is what the Scripture says: “The wicked flee when no one pursues” (Proverbs 28, verse 1). We eagerly flee from God, even though he is always pursuing us. The apostle hurried to be near him; we hurry to be far away. [m]

Are these things not worth lamenting? Are they not worth tears? Where are you fleeing, you wretched and miserable man? Where are you fleeing from your Life and your Salvation? If you flee from God, with whom will you take refuge? If you flee from the Light, where will you turn your eyes? If you flee from your Life, by what will you live from now on? Let us flee from the enemy of our salvation!

Whenever we sin, we flee from God. We are like runaways. We go off to a foreign country, like the one who squandered what he had from his father and went off to a foreign country, who wasted all his father’s property and lived in want. We too have property from our Father. And what is it? He has freed us from our sins. He has freely given us power and strength for works of virtue. He has freely given us eagerness and patience. He has freely given us the Holy Spirit in our baptism. If we waste these things, we will be in want from then on.

Think of the sick. As long as they are troubled with fevers and bad humors, they cannot get up or work or do anything. But if someone frees them and brings them back to health, and then they do not work, that comes from their own laziness. So it is with us. For the disease was heavy and the fever extreme. We were not lying on a bed, but on wickedness itself, thrown out among our crimes as on a dunghill, covered with sores and foul smells, filthy, wasting away, more like ghosts than human beings. Evil spirits surrounded us, and the ruler of this world mocked and attacked us. Then the only Son of God came, sent out the rays of his presence, and at once scattered the darkness. The King who is on his Father’s throne came to us, having left his Father’s throne. And when I say “having left,” do not imagine any change of place, for he fills heaven and earth; I am speaking of the plan of salvation. He came to an enemy who hated him, who turned away from him, who could not bear to look at him, who blasphemed him every day.

He saw him lying on a dunghill, eaten by worms, afflicted with fever and hunger, suffering every kind of disease. Fever tormented him — that is evil craving. Inflammation lay heavy on him — that is pride. Gnawing hunger gripped him — that is greed. Rotting sores covered him on every side — for this is sexual immorality. His eyes were blind — that is idol worship. There was dumbness too, and madness — that is, worshiping blocks of wood and stones and speaking to them. And there was great deformity, for that is what wickedness is: foul to look at, and a most grievous disease.

He saw us talking more foolishly than madmen, calling blocks of wood our god, and stones as well. He saw us in such great guilt, and he did not reject us. He was not angry, did not turn away, did not hate us; for he was the Master, and could not hate his own creation. But what does he do? Like a most excellent physician, he prepares medicines of great price, and tastes them first himself. For he himself first practiced virtue, and so gave it to us. And first he gave us the washing, like an antidote, and so we vomited up all our guilt. Everything took flight at once: our inflammation went down, our fever was put out, our sores dried up. For all the evils that come from greed and anger and all the rest were scattered by the Spirit. Our eyes were opened, our ears were opened, our tongue spoke holy words. Our soul received strength. Our body received such beauty and bloom as one born a son of God would naturally have from the grace of the Spirit, such glory as the newborn son of a king would have, raised in the purple. Oh, how great a nobility he has given us!

We were born, we were raised — why do we flee again from our Benefactor? The one who has done all these things also gives us strength, for a soul bent down by the disease could not have endured it if he himself had not given us the strength. He gave us forgiveness of our sins; we devoured everything. He gave us strength; we wasted it. He gave us grace; we quenched it. How? We spent it on nothing fitting; we used it for no useful purpose. These things have destroyed us. And what is more dreadful than all the rest: when we are in a foreign country and feeding on pods, we do not say, “Let us go back to our Father,” and say, “We have sinned against heaven and against you” (Luke 15, verse 18). And this when we have so loving a Father, who eagerly longs for our return! If only we will return to him, he cannot bear even to bring up our past deeds; let us only leave them behind. It is defense enough with him that we have come back. Not only does he himself not bring them up, but if anyone else does, he stops his mouth, even if the accuser is someone of good standing. [p]

Let us return! How long will we stand far off? Let us see our disgrace; let us feel how low we have sunk. Sin makes us swine; sin brings famine to the soul. Let us come to ourselves, be sober again, and return to our former high birth, so that we may obtain the good things to come, in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom, to the Father together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, might and honor, now and always, and forever and ever.