In chapter 3 Paul resumes his exhortation; but it was not burdensome to
him, and it was safe for them (danger being present and his tender love
watchful), to renew his warnings and instructions respecting the admixture
of Judaising principles with the doctrine of a glorified Christ. It was in
fact to destroy the latter and to reinstate the flesh (that is, sin and
alienation from God) in its place. It was the first man, already rejected
and condemned, and not the second Man. Yet it is not in the shape of sin
that the flesh appears here, but in that of righteousness, of all that is
respectable and religious, of ordinances which had the venerable weight of
antiquity attached to them, and as to their origin, if all had not been
done away in Christ, the authority of God Himself.
To the apostle, who knew Christ in heaven, all this was but a bait to draw
the Christian away from Christ, and throw him back again into the ruin out
of which Christ had drawn him. And this would be so much the worse, because
it would be to abandon a known and glorified Christ, and to return to that
which had been proved to be of no value through the flesh. The apostle
therefore spares neither the doctrine nor those who taught it.
The glory which he had seen, his contests with these false teachers, the
state into which they had thrown the assembly, Jerusalem and Rome, his
liberty and his prison-all, had gained him the experience of what Judaism
was worth as to the assembly of God. They were dogs, evil workers, that is
workers of malice and wickedness. It was not the circumcision. He treats it
with profound contempt, and uses language, the harshness of which is
justified by his love for theassembly; for love is severe towards those
who, devoid of conscience, corrupt the object of that love. It was the
concision.
When evil without shame, and labouring to produce evil under a disgraceful
veil of religion, is manifested in its true character, mildness is a crime
against the objects of the love of Christ. If we love Him, we shall in our
intercourse with the assembly give the evil its true character, which it
seeks to hide. This is real love and faithfulness to Christ. The apostle
had certainly not failed in condescension to the weak in this respect. He
had carried it far; his prison testified it. And now the assembly, deprived
of his energy and that spiritual decision which was full of love to all
which is good, was more in danger than ever. The experience of a whole life
of activity, of the greatest patience, of four years' reflection in prison,
led to these forcible and urgent words, "Beware of dogs, beware of evil
workers, beware of the concision." The doctrine of the epistle to the
Ephesians, the exhortation of that to the Colossians, the affection of that
to these Philippians, with the denunciation contained in chapter 3:2, date
from the same epoch, and are marked with the same love.
But it sufficed to denounce them. Elsewhere, where they were not well
known, he gave details, as in the case of Timotheus, who had still to watch
over the assembly. It was sufficient now to point out their well-known
character. Whatever Judaised, whatever sought to mingle law and gospel,
trusting in ordinances and the Spirit, was shameless, malicious, and
contemptible. But the apostle will rather occupy himself with the power
that delivers from it. We are the circumcision (that which is really
separate from the evil, that which is dead to sin and to the flesh), we who
worship God, not in the false pretension of ordinances, but spiritually by
the power of the Holy Ghost, who rejoice in Christ the Saviour and not in
the flesh, but on the contrary have no confidence in it. We see here Christ
and the Spirit in contrast with the flesh and self.
Paul might indeed boast, if needful, in that which belonged to the flesh.
As to all Jewish privileges, he possessed them in the highest degree. He
had outstript every one in holy zeal against innovators. One thing alone
had changed it all-he had seen a glorified Christ. All that he had
according to the flesh was thenceforth loss to him. It would place
something between him and the Christ of his faith and of his desire-the
Christ whom he knew. And, observe, that here it is not the sins of the
flesh which Christ expiates and abolishes that he rejects; it is its
righteousness. It has none, we may say; but even if the apostle had
possessed any righteousness of the flesh-as, in fact, he did possess it
outwardly-he would not have it, because he had seen a better. In Christ,
who had appeared to him on the way to Damascus, he had seen divine
righteousness for man, and divine glory in man. He had seen a glorified
Christ, who acknowledged the poor feeble members of the assembly as a part
of Himself. He would have nothing else. The excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus his Lord had eclipsed everything-changed everything which was
not that into loss. The stars, as well as the darkness of night, disappear
before the sun. The righteousness of the law, the righteousness of Paul,
all that distinguished him among men, disappeared before the righteousness
of God and the glory of Christ.
It was a thorough change in his whole moral being. His gain was now loss to
him. Christ was become all. It was not evil which disappeared-everything
that belonged to Paul as advantage to the flesh disappeared. It was another
who was now precious to him. What a deep and radical change in the whole
moral being of man, when he ceases to be the centre of his own importance;
and another, a worthy of being so, becomes the centre of his moral
existence!-a divine person, a man who had glorified God, a man in whom the
glory of God shone out, to the eye of faith; in whom His righteousness was
realised, His love, His tender mercy, perfectly revealed towards men and
known by men. This was He whom Paul desired to win, to possess-for here we
are still in the paths of the wilderness-he desired to be found in Him:
"That I may win Christ, and be found in him." Two things were present to
his faith in this desire: to have the righteousness of God Himself as his
(in Christ he should possess it); and then, to know Him and the power of
His resurrection-for he only knew Him as risen-and, according to that power
working in him now, to have part in the sufferings of Christ, and be made
conformable to His death.
It was in His death that perfect love had been demonstrated, that the
perfect ground of divine and eternal righteousness had been laid, that
self-renunciation was practically, entirely, perfectly, manifested in
Christ, the perfect object to the apostle of a faith that apprehended it
and desired it according to the new man. Christ had passed through death in
the perfection of that life, the power of which was manifested in
resurrection.
Paul, having seen this perfection in glory, and being united (weak as he
was in himself) to Christ the source of this power, desired to know the
power of His resurrection, that he might follow Him in His sufferings.
Circumstances held this as a reality before his eyes. His heart only saw,
or wished to see, Christ, that he might follow Him there. If death was on
the way, he was only so much the more like Christ. He did not mind what it
cost, if by any means he might attain. This gave undivided energy of
purpose. This is indeed to know Him, as completely put to the test, and
thus to know all that He was, His perfection-of love, of obedience, of
devotedness-fully manifested; but the object is to win Him as He is.
Having seen Him in the glory, the apostle understood the path which had led
Him there, and the perfection of Christ in that path. Participating in His
life, he desired to realise its power according to His glory, that he might
follow Him, in order to be where Jesus was, and in the glory with Him. This
is what the Lord said in John 12:23-26. Who had apprehended Him like Paul
by the grace of God? Observe here the difference between him and Peter.
Peter calls himself "a witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker
of the glory that shall be revealed"; Paul, a witness of the glory as it is
in heaven ("as he is," as John says), desires to share his sufferings. It
is the special foundation of the assembly's place, of walking in the
Spirit, according to the revelation of the glory of Christ. It is this, I
doubt not, which makes Peter say, that in all Paul's epistles-which he
acknowledges moreover as a part of the scriptures-there are some things
hard to be understood. It took man clean out of the whole ancient order of
things.
Having then seen Christ in glory, there were two things for Paul-the
righteousness of God in Christ, and the knowledge of Christ. The first
entirely eclipsed everything of which the flesh could boast. This was "mine
own," the righteousness of man according to the law. The other was the
righteousness of God, which is by faith; that is, man is nothing in it. It
is God's righteousness: man has part in it by believing, that is to say, by
faith in Christ Jesus. The believer has his place before God in Christ, in
the righteousness of God Himself, which He had manifested in glorifying
Christ, having glorified Himself in Him. What a position! not only sin, but
human righteousness, all that is of self, excluded; our place being
according to the perfection in which Christ, as man, has perfectly
glorified God. But this place is necessarily the place of Him who has
accomplished this glorious work. Christ, in His Person and in His present
position, [see note #6]
is the expression of our place: to know Him is to know it. He is there
according to divine righteousness. To be there, as He is, is that into
which divine righteousness freely, but necessarily, introduces
man-introduces us-in Christ. Thenceforth, having seen the righteousness of
God in that Christ is there, I desire myself to know what it is to be
there: and I desire to know Christ. But in truth this embraces all that He
was in accomplishing it. The glory reveals the power and the result. That
which He suffered is the work in which He glorified God; so that divine
righteousness has been fulfilled in His exaltation, as man, to divine
glory. And here divine love, perfect devotedness to His Father's glory,
constant and perfect obedience, the endurance of all things in order to
give testimony of His Father's love for men, perfect patience, unfathomable
sufferings, in order that love might be both possible and perfect for
sinners-all in short that Christ was, being connected with His Person,
makes Him an object which commands, possesses, delivers, and strengthens
the heart, by the power of His grace acting in the new life, in which we
are united to Him by the all-powerful link of the Spirit, and causes Him to
be the alone object before our eyes.
Accordingly Paul desires to have that which Christ can give, His cup, and
His baptism; and to leave to the Father, that which Christ left to Him, the
disposal of places in the kingdom. He does not desire, like John and James,
the right and left hand, that is, a good place for himself. He desires
Christ, he would win Christ. He does not follow tremblingly, as the
disciples did in that chapter (Mark 10); he desires to suffer-not, that is,
for the sake of suffering, but to have part in the sufferings of Christ.
Instead therefore of going away like the young man in the same chapter,
because he had much that could profit the flesh, instead of clinging like
him to the law for his righteousness, he renounces that righteousness which
he had in common with the young man; and all that he had he counted but as
dung.
Here then we have the practical personal experience of the operation of
this great principle, which the apostle has set forth in other epistles,
that we have part with a glorified Christ. Also, in telling of the result
as to himself, he speaks of his own resurrection according to the character
of Christ's. It is not that of which Peter speaks, as we have seen, the
simply participating in the glory that was to be revealed. It is that which
precedes. Having seen Christ in the glory, according to the power of His
resurrection, he desires to participate in that: and this is the force of
his word, "if by any means." He desired to have part in the resurrection
from among the dead. If, in order to reach it, it was needful to pass
through death (as Christ had done), he would go through it, cost what it
might, be it in ever so painful a way-and death was at that time before his
eyes with its human terror: he desired fully to take part with Christ.
Now it is the character of this resurrection that it is from among the
dead; it is not simply the resurrection of the dead. It is to come out, by
the favour and the power of God (as it regards Christ, and indeed us too by
Him, by the righteousness of God), from the condition of evil into which
sin had plunged men-to come out, after having been dead in sins, and now to
sin, through the favour and power and righteousness of God. What grace! and
what a difference! By following Christ according to the will of God, in the
place where He has set us (and to be content with the lowest place, if God
has given it us, is the same renunciation of self as to labour in the
highest-the secret of each is, that Christ is everything and ourselves
nothing), we participate in His resurrection-a thought full of peace and
joy, and which fills the heart with love to Christ. Joyful and glorious
hope, which shines before our eyes in Christ, and in that blessed Saviour
glorified! The objects of divine favour in Him, we come forth-because the
eye of God is upon us, because we are His-from the house of death, which
cannot detain those who are His, because the glory and the love of God are
concerned in them. Christ is the example and the pattern of our
resurrection; the principle (Rom. 8) and the assurance of our resurrection
is in Him. The road to it is that which the apostle here traces.
But since resurrection and likeness to Christ in glory were the objects of
his hope, it is very evident that he had not attained it. If that was his
perfection, he could not be yet perfect. He was, as has been said, on the
road; but Christ had apprehended him for it, and he still pressed onward to
lay hold of the prize, for the enjoyment of which Christ had laid hold of
him. No, he repeats to his brethren, I count not myself to have attained.
But one thing at least he could say-he forgot all that was behind him, and
pressed on ever towards the goal, keeping it always in sight to obtain the
prize of the calling of God, which is found in heaven. Happy Christian! It
is a great thing never to lose sight of it, never to have a divided heart,
to think but of one thing; to act, to think, always according to the
positive energy wrought by the Holy Ghost in the new man, directing him to
this only and heavenly object. It is not his sins properly which he here
says he forgot-it was his progress that he forgot, his advantages, all that
was already behind. And this was not merely the energy that shewed itself
at the first impulse; he still counted everything but as dung, because he
had still Christ in view. This is true christian life. What a sad moment
would it have been for Rebecca, if, in the midst of the desert with
Eliezer, she had forgotten Isaac, and begun to think again of Bethuel and
her father's house! What had she then in the desert with Eliezer?
Such is the true life and position of the Christian; even as the
Israelites, although preserved by the blood from the messenger of judgment,
were not in their true place till they were on the other side of the Red
Sea, a freed people. Then he is on the road to Canaan, as belonging to God.
The Christian, until he understands this new position which Christ has
taken as risen from the dead, is not spiritually in its true place, is not
perfect or full-grown in Christ. But when he has attained this, it is not
assuredly that he is to despise others. "If," says the apostle, "they were
otherwise minded, God would reveal" to them the fulness of His truth; and
all were to walk together with one mind in the things to which they had
attained. Where the eye was single, it would be so: there were many with
whom this was not the case; but the apostle was their example. This was
saying much. While Jesus lived the peculiar power of this resurrection life
could not be revealed in the same way; and moreover while on earth Christ
walked in the consciousness of that which He was with His Father before the
world existed, so that, although He endured for the joy that was set before
Him, although His life was the perfect pattern of the heavenly man, there
was in Him a repose, a communion, which had quite a peculiar character;
instructive nevertheless to us, because the Father loves us as He loved
Jesus, and Jesus also loves us as the Father loved Him. With Him it was not
the energy of one who must run the race in order to attain that which he
has never yet possessed; He spoke of that which He knew, and bore witness
of that which He had seen, of that which He had forsaken from love to us,
the Son of man who is in heaven.
John enters farther into this character of Christ: in his epistle therefore
we find more of that which He is in His nature and character, than of what
we shall be with Him in the glory. Peter, building on the same foundation
as the others, waits however for that which shall be revealed. His
pilgrimage was indeed towards heaven, to obtain a treasure which was
preserved there, which shall be revealed in the last time; but it is more
connected with that which had been already revealed. From his point of
view, the morning star on which Paul lived appeared only on the extreme
horizon. For him practical life was that of Jesus among the Jews. He could
not say with Paul, "Be ye followers of me." The effect of the revelation of
the heavenly glory of Christ, between His going away and His reappearance,
and that of the union of all Christiansto Him in heaven, was fully
realised in him only who received it. Faithful through grace to this
revelation, having no other object which guided his steps, or to divide his
heart, he gives himself as an example. He truly followed Christ, but the
form of his life was peculiar, on account of the way in which God had
called him; and it is thus that Christians possessing this revelation ought
to walk.
Accordingly Paul speaks of a dispensation committed to him.
It was not to turn their eyes from Christ; it is on having the eyes
constantly fixed upon Him that he insists. It was this which characterised
the apostle, and in this he gives himself as an example. But the character
of this looking to Jesus was special. It was not a Christ known on earth
who was its object, but a Christ glorified whom he had seen in heaven. To
press ever forward to this end formed the character of his life; even as
this same glory of Christ, as a testimony to the bringing in divine
righteousness and to the assembly's position, formed the basis of his
teaching. Therefore he can say, "Be followers of me." His gaze was ever
fixed on the heavenly Christ, who had shone before his eyes and still shone
before his faith. The Philippians were thus to walk together, and to mark
those who followed the apostle's example; because (for evidently it was a
period in which the assembly as a whole had much departed from her first
love and her normal condition) there were many who, while bearing the name
of Christ and having once given good hope, so that the apostle speaks of
them with tears, were enemies of the cross of Christ. For the cross on
earth, in our life, answers to the heavenly glory on high. It is not the
assembly at Philippi which is the subject here, but the condition of the
outward universal assembly. Many were already calling themselves
Christians, who joined to that great name a life which had the earth and
earthly things for its object. The apostle did not acknowledge them. They
were there; it was not a matter of local discipline, but a condition of
Christianity, in which even all were seeking their own interest; and,
spirituality being thus lowered, the Christ of glory little realised, many
who had no life at all might walk among them without being detected, by
those who had so little life themselves and scarcely walked better than
they did. For it does not appear that they who were minding earthly things
committed any evil that required public discipline. The general low tone of
spirituality among the real Christians left the others free to walk with
them; and the presence of the latter debased Still more the standard of
godliness of life.
But this state of things did not escape the spiritual eye of the apostle,
which, fixed on the glory, discerned readily and clearly all that had not
that glory for its motive; and the Spirit has given us the divine judgment,
most grave and solemn, with regard to this state of things. No doubt it has
grown enormously worse since then, and its elements have developed and
established themselves in a manner and in proportions that are very
differently characterised; but the moral principles with regard to walk
remain ever the same for the assembly. The same evil is present to be
avoided, and the same efficacious means for avoiding it. There is the same
blessed example to follow, the same heavenly Saviour to be the glorious
object of our faith, the same life to live if we desire to be Christians
indeed.
That which characterised these persons who professed the name of Christ
was, that their hearts were set upon earthly things. Thus the cross had not
its practical power-it would have been a contradiction. Their end therefore
was destruction. The true Christian was not such; his conversation was in
heaven and not on the earth; his moral life was spent in heaven, his true
relationships were there. From thence he expected Christ as a Saviour, that
is to say, to deliver him from the earth, from this earthly system far from
God here below For salvation is always viewed in this epistle as the final
result of the conflict, the result due to the almighty power of the Lord.
Then, when Christ shall come to take the assembly to Himself-Christians,
truly heavenly, shall be like Him in His heavenly glory, a likeness which
is the object of their pursuit at all times (compare 1 John 3:2). Christ
will accomplish it in them, conforming their bodies of humiliation to His
glorious body according to the power whereby He is able to subdue all
things to Himself. Then the apostle and all Christians will have attained
the end, the resurrection from among the dead.
Such is the tenor of this chapter. Christ, seen in glory, is the spring of
energy to christian life, to win Christ, so that all else is loss; as
Christ making Himself of no reputation is the spring of christian
graciousness of walk: the two parts of christian life which we are too apt
to sacrifice one to another or at least to pursue one forgetful of the
other. In both Paul singularly shines. In the following chapter we have
superiority to circumstances. This also is Paul's experience and state; for
it will be remarked that it is the personal experience of Paul which runs
all through his (humanly speaking) faultless experience-not perfection.
Likeness to Christ in glory is the only standard of that. As to this third
chapter, many have inquired whether the thing aimed at was a spiritual
assimilation to Christ here, or a complete assimilation to Him in the
glory. This is rather to forget the import of what the apostle says,
namely, that the sight and the desire of the heavenly glory, the desire of
possessing Christ Himself thus glorified, was that which formed the heart
here below. An object here below to be attained in oneself could not be
found, since Christ is on high; it would be to separate the heart from the
object which forms it to its own likeness. But although we never reach the
mark here below, since it is a glorified Christ and resurrection from among
the dead, yet its pursuit assimilates us more and more to Him. The object
in the glory forms the life which answers to it here below. Were a light at
the end of a long straight alley, I never have the light itself till I am
arrived there; but I have ever increasing light in proportion as I go
forward; I know it better; I am more in the light myself. Thus it is with a
glorified Christ, and such is christian life (compare 2 Cor. 3).
