The Greatest Treasure

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Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.

2 Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. 3 For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, 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— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

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There are moments in life when you realize the pursuits of the world don’t work and you look to God for answers. I have a few friends outside the church who call me when things in their own life are hard. They’re struggling to find joy, they think of God, and so they call me, the pastor. There is this instinctual notion that real joy, the joy they lack, can be found in God. It’s there, in the back of everyone’s minds, perhaps buried deep, that surfaces when the rest of life seems an uncertain mess.
What isn’t there, however, is an instinctual understanding of how to get it—of how to experience it. The assumption is, “I must not be doing something right. So if I can turn things around and do better, then joy will come.” They try, feel better for a time, but then fade back into old habits. Why is that? For starters, they expect Joy to look like better circumstances and way to God giving you those better circumstances is to do more good. Or they expect Joy to be a relief of guilt and the way to have that is to do better. Do you see? This is the nature of religion. It says, here’s what you must do in order for God to bless you; in order for God to forgive you. Hence, it leads to a very up and down relationship with God.
Paul wants you to rejoice in the Lord. He keeps saying that in this letter. Joy is on his brain and he is eager for the church to experience it with him. It’s in this chapter that he gets to the heart of it. We’ve already seen how it comes as a fruit of having our lives wrapped up in the good news and its progress. But here we dive deeper. We see how this is the case. What does this good news actually mean? How does it produce joy?
To answer this question, I want to focus on verse 8 as it brings this passage into focus.

8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, 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— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

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8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Be Found in Christ

One of the reasons people don’t find joy in the Lord is that they don’t know the worth of knowing Christ Jesus. Paul did and he expresses that worth by comparing it to all of the former things from which he had derived his identity. He counted them as rubbish compared to knowing Christ. Jesus described in a parable.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

The Parable of the Pearl of Great Value

45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

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So how do we realize the worth of knowing Christ Jesus?

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So how do we realize the worth of knowing Christ Jesus?

Be Found in Christ

The first is by understanding what it means to be a Christian. We see this in verse 9,

be found in him, 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

To be a Christian is to be found in Christ; to have a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, rather than being a better person. Until you get this, you’re not a Christian, plain and simple. This was the lesson Paul had to learn. Paul gives us his resume of righteousness and it’s a pretty good one.

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

If you lived in the first century and tried to think of someone who was close to God, Paul was that person. He had the pedigree, the training, the zeal, and the discipline. Often people will ask me to pray for them because of my status as a pastor. They think I’m somehow closer to God and have the inside track. They assume that my good works resume (which includes seminary and ministry) is better than theirs and so they hope that I can be their advocate. Paul throws all of this out the window. He recognizes that, although it stacks up higher than anyone’s, it isn’t enough. Jesus says some similar things.

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

If Paul was the Pharisee of all Pharisees here we find that even that isn’t enough. In his famous sermon on the mount, he summarizes how important it is to be righteous,

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The standard, in other words, is perfection. He doesn’t grade on a curve, comparing you against your neighbor and saying, “well, you did better than him, so you can join me.” He doesn’t say that.
So what must we have? We must have a righteousness that is not our own, that replaces our own, and the only way to have that is through faith in Christ. Through faith, God counts Christ’s righteousness as your own. As Paul explains in ,

It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

If you want to be able to rejoice, to know joy, as Paul keeps inviting us to do, then the first thing you have to understand is that a Christian is someone who is fully and completely acceptable to God because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. When Martin Luther understood this he wrote,
When I discovered that, I was born again of the Holy Ghost. And the doors of paradise swung open, and I walked through.
You will never know the Joy of the Lord until you get this. You might try religion, you might try to be better, you might actually overcome some of your guilt for a time, you might feel better about your life because you’re trying to be a better person, but you will not know the Joy that Paul invites us to know.
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Know Christ

There is more of course if you want to experience the Joy that Paul describes. There are lots of people who know this truth and yet suffer from all kinds of depression, who have highs and lows when it comes to their relationship with God. Look at verse 10.

10 that I may know him

The New International Version (1984) No Confidence in the Flesh

10 I want to know Christ

The intellectual understanding of what the gospel means isn’t an end in itself. It is meant to lead us somewhere. It is meant to lead us into a relationship with Christ. When Paul says “I want to know him...” he’s talking about relationally. Think about it. He knows about Christ already. He knows the gospel. He teaches the gospel. He expounds the gospel. He’s given his life to explaining and teaching it to others. And yet, here he says he wants to know Christ. That can’t mean gaining an additional set of propositional truths about Christ. That’s not what he’s talking about. To know, in Biblical usage, is more than comprehension. To know something is to be impacted by it. It is to be shaped by it. To know a person is to have a connection to that person. When the book of Genesis says, “Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore a son,” it is evident that knowledge was of an intimate nature. It had life changing impact. That’s what kind of knowledge Paul is talking about. That of an intimate, life-changing nature.
He’s gotten the intellectual part down. He’s talking about knowing Christ like you would know a close friend. A close friend is close because you spend time together. You talk about life, you share life, you share your deepest secrets, both joys and sorrows. You share an intimacy in relationship. This is what Paul is talking about here. This is the reason for gaining a righteousness by faith, so that you might have a relationship with Jesus. In a relationship you feel love toward that person and you feel love from that person. The closer that relationship is, the safer it is to be honest and real. The more honest and real you are, the deeper that experience of love, the greater that show of support. This is what Paul wants to know and experience.
Think of a time in your life when you opened up with someone, when you made yourself vulnerable. It’s scary isn’t it? It either brought you closer and and knit you together or it hurt. Maybe you’ve experienced both. And if you’ve been hurt, then it’s all the harder to open up with someone else. Paul connects the gospel to a relational experience with Christ. You have a righteousness that is yours by faith. It is secure. The debt you owed to God is paid. It was paid on the cross. Thus, now, you are safe to go to God with all of your failures and problems and not be rejected or ridiculed. Instead, you find forgiveness and love.
Now, here’s something else that’s true about a relationship. You don’t want to do things that will hurt your friend. In fact, you find out what pleases him or her and you work on that. You do that, not because you want to be loved, but because you want to show that person your love for him or her. As you know Christ, this becomes a deeper passion in your life—to live a life that pleases the Lord. It becomes your brightest burning passion.
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Since we’re talking about the subjective side of knowing Christ, the relational side where we find our experience of joy, we have to bring life into perspective. In a relationship with someone, your joy ebbs and flows. It’s a great experience when you’re close; when you do things that your friend likes and appreciates. It’s a painful experience when you do something that hurts your friend. You experience highs and lows that are conditional upon how you live, true? The same is true in your relationship with the Lord. You can feel a great high when you pour out your heart in prayer, a reunion of sorts when you repent. You can feel close to the Lord when you seek to please him by seeing life through his eyes, and making choices that are in accord with his will. At the same time, you can feel pretty dark and down when you do wrong. While the relationship you have with the Lord is conditioned upon the finished work of Christ, the joyful experience of that relationship is conditioned upon your obedience.

Experience the Power of the Resurrection

This leads me to the last point. Paul continues in verse 10,

10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

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He writes about wanting to know “the power of the resurrection.” Again, he’s not talking about wanting to have an intellectual understanding of the resurrection. He knows that. He teaches that. He’s talking about wanting to know, as in have personal, experiential knowledge of this power.
What is this power? The simplest way to understand it is by considering what happened to Jesus. He was in the grave. He was dead and then made alive. That is a power beyond us. The power to bring the dead to life. Paul wants to know this power, to see this power at work in him.
What does that look like? he goes on to talk about sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and eventually attaining to the resurrection of the dead. Paul is talking about living a life like that of Jesus. He wants to know the power of God at work in him as much as it was at work in Jesus. He wants his life to look like the life of Jesus.
And when you think about what the life of Jesus looked like, you see a life of suffering and death. This isn’t exactly what we think of desiring. So why would Paul want to know this? The best way to explain this is by thinking of a person that you deeply desire to know. Maybe he’s not present with you. You don’t here his voice audibly. So how can he still speak to you? There are two ways. He can still speak to you in letters. You can go back and read his recorded words. This is one reason why we read the Bible—we hear God’s words speaking to us. But there is another way as well, and that is to follow in a person’s footsteps. If you want to know a person, to know what they felt and experienced, you go to the places they went, meet the people they met, do the things they did, experience the things they experienced.
Maybe you don’t have a friend like this that comes to mind, but perhaps you’ve read a book that so moved you that you wanted to visit the parts of the world that are written about in order to deepen your experience of the book. There is a sense in which Paul is writing that way about Jesus. He so deeply wants to know the heart of Jesus that he wants to experience the things Jesus himself experienced. It isn’t suffering itself that Paul is after, it is the experience of Jesus that he is after. He wants to pursue the path that Jesus walked that he might know him all the more.
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he wants to pursue the path that Jesus walked that he might know him all the more.
We began by talking about being found in him, that is, having a righteousness that is not your own. In the eyes of the law, you are righteous, that is, you have right standing. This is something else. Paul is talking now about living a righteous life, reaching the point where his life looks as righteous as his record in Christ does. This is his ultimate goal.
Being a Christian means you are moving ever toward Christ-likeness. Your passion for Jesus is growing out of your understanding of what Jesus has accomplished for you. Being a Christian means you are ever striving to live a life that pleases God—not so that God will love you, but because he does and you feel it, you know it, and it burns in you.
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