Philippians 3:1-11 Study Guide: Found in christ
Community Group Study Guide — Found in Christ
Philippians 3:1-11
Study Information:
Do you ever wonder if you’ve done enough to be saved? Maybe you know you’ve put your faith in Christ but you wonder if God is really happy with you or maybe he has saved you but “just barely.” Behind these thoughts is a struggle with putting our confidence in something other than the sufficient work of Jesus to save us. One core tenet of evangelical Christian faith is that we’re saved by faith in Christ alone. The work of Christ on the cross is sufficient and we do not need to add anything to the work of Christ. Yet, throughout history people have made it “Jesus plus something else” in order to be saved. In Philippians 3, Paul addressed an external threat, often referred to as the Judaizers in other letters. This group emphasized a need to be circumcised and keep the Old Covenant Law in order to be a follower of Christ. This was external righteousness focused on outward actions for God’s approval. Paul’s freeing and shocking response to this was, “I’d trade everything just to be found in Christ.” There is nothing in this world that would be worth putting our confidence in apart from Jesus Christ.
Followers of Jesus should take holiness seriously, but the warning here is not to look at external righteousness as a means of approval or standing in God’s eyes and to not put an external burden on others. In this passage we see the exceeding value of being forgiven, restored and found in Christ over anything this world can offer.
Resume Building and Self-Righteousness
Philippians 3:1-6
When you write a resume or update your LinkedIn you’re trying to highlight or boast in your work. We can often do that in a spiritual sense as well and put “confidence in the flesh.”
Philippi’s location along important trade corridors meant that they’d receive more visitors into their city than many places in the ancient world, and this made them a popular target for the Judaizers who emphasized the need to become more Jewish in order to become fully Christian. They would argue that Christians had to be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses fully as well as believe in Christ in order to be saved. This was a particular burden on the gentile Christians and Paul vehemently opposed adding anything to faith in Christ for salvation or validation from God.
Three warnings in our text come in the form of the repletion of “look out.” Look out for the dogs, evildoers and those who mutilate the flesh. Dogs weren’t warm and friendly pets in the ancient world, they were often roving scavengers and the irony is that term was often applied to Gentiles and now Paul applied it to them. This group were also called “evildoers” because of their adding obligations to being saved. Finally, Paul wrote that they mutilate the flesh which comes as a play on words with circumcision to emphasize that they were going too far in their demands on the gentiles. The word circumcision in Greek is the combo word of “around cut” and here Paul uses the turn “cut off” for mutilate. You can get a sense of the strength of what he was saying and how much he opposed to the idea of adding to the means in which one was saved and how this would unsettle the faith of the Philippians and divide the church’s unity.
To underscore his point Paul gave his robust spiritual “resume,” filled with all the things the Judaizers would have valued. Things like being circumcised on the eighth day like the law demanded, born as a Hebrew, he was a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church because of his zeal for the law, and that he was blameless meaning he kept the right sacrifices. Paul could have elaborated on his religious pedigree even further having been trained by the respected teacher Gamaliel and how he was a leader among the Pharisees during the first few years of the church.
Behind the Judaizers’s movement was a spirit of self righteousness. Paul referred to it as “confidence in the flesh” and we can either have confidence in ourselves or confidence in Christ. God created us with limits and designed us to depend on him. Part of that is our inability to save ourselves and our daily need for his grace. External righteousness gives people a false sense of approval or goodness and leads us towards comparison with others. This was Jesus’s point in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18. Jesus spoke often of the danger of self righteousness or works based righteousness and this made many enemies for Christ among the Pharisees and religious elites of the day. In that parable the Pharisee put his confidence in his flesh and thanked God for all the things he was doing right; the text even said that he “prayed to himself” which we can think of as “silent prayer” but the text indicates that he was rather lifting up his own name, not God’s. The tax collector came into the temple to pray with a sense of need for God’s mercy and kept his prayer short, “Lord have mercy on me a sinner.” Jesus shocked the crowd when he told them that the tax collector went home justified (Luke 18:9-14).
Comparing ourselves to others will lead to self righteousness or to crippling insecurity. Paul saw the danger of the Judaizers in the church and their ability to create division and factions and warned the Philippians as he offered them a better way.
The Goal of the Christian Life
Philippians 3:7-11
The goal of the Christian life is to be found in Christ. Look at the way Paul emphasized this in Philippians 3:7-11. First, Paul said he’d trade any sort of worldly gain in order to have Christ. This echoed Jesus’s call to discipleship from the gospels when he said, “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul?” When it comes to an exchange or trade, there is nothing that could compare to having Christ. Second, he wrote that he counted the loss of all things as “rubbish,” a term used for scum on the ground or feces. This is not to say that good actions are worthless, instead what Paul meant was that they’re terrible things to look to for validation or justification. Any sort of thing we’d look to for approval or righteousness couldn’t bear the weight of our true need and was worthless compared to Christ. Our need for redemption, forgiveness and approval are infinite and can only be met by an infinite God. Finally, our righteousness needs to depend on faith, not from the law. A righteousness that depends on faith is one that understands our deep need for something that only Christ can provide.
Paul’s goal in life was to know Christ and be found in him. This is more than just knowing about Christ, this kind of knowledge is dependent relationship with our God. Specifically Paul desired to know the power of his resurrection, share in his suffering, become like Christ in his death and to attain the resurrection of the dead. This was a desire to be formed into the image of Jesus and to experience the new life that only Christ could attain for us. The ultimate prize of the Christian life is reconciliation with God through Christ and the experience of resurrection fellowship with him. To know Christ begins with the power of his resurrection that defeated sin and death once for all (Philippians 3:10). Likewise, the path to knowing Christ includes sharing in his suffering. Suffering is a powerful tool that God uses to conform us to the image of Christ. Paul seemed to be warning the Philippians here to expect suffering just as Christ suffered to the point of death (Phil 2:6-11).
Are there things you’re looking to for confidence instead of Christ? Do you think God loves you more or less because of outward factors like how well you’re keeping the rules? It is tempting to put confidence in the flesh to find security, but the security offered to us when we are found in Christ is immeasurable and will never fade or change.
At your community group:
Take 15-20 minutes to share about how God has been at work in your life, prayer concerns and pray for one another.
How did God speak to you through the scripture and the sermon this week?
Discussion Questions:
Read Philippians 3:1-11
What does Paul mean by the term “confidence in the flesh?” What are some reasons people can be tempted to put their confidence in the flesh?
Describe Paul’s spiritual resume and how it related specifically to what the Judaizers would be looking for.
How does self righteousness, like Paul descried, lead us towards comparison? What are some dangers of comparison in this context?
Have there been things in your life that you needed to “count as rubbish for the sake of knowing Christ?” What kinds of things do people look to for righteousness that we need to reject today?
