Christ, Magnified in My Body
I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

I eagerly expect and hope that . . . always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. That was his spiritual aspiration; and he did something with it that prevented him and will prevent us from turning into religious maniacs. He tempered it with a welcome shot of realism.

It costs nothing to sit here on Sunday and say, whether by life or by death. But a very real barrier could have prevented Paul from realizing his aspiration. He might have lacked courage when push comes to shove. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage. We don’t face jail time and the threat of death for our faith; but in a world where we are free to do anything we can get away with we too might lack courage to live as people of integrity.

Paul had formulated a Christian rationale to reinforce his courage. Verse 21: For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. It’s hard to improve on that. I wouldn’t change a word. Missionary martyr, Jim Elliot, caught the spirit of what Paul wrote, when he said: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.” It’s hard to improve on that. I wouldn’t change a word.

Nevertheless, whether it was an apostle writing to a congregation he loved or a young college student confiding his deepest thoughts to a diary, his courage could fail once Caesar had him by the throat, or a Huarani Indian pointed his spear at him in anger.

None of us knows how it will go, should we be put to the ultimate test. Courage is not the greatest human virtue, but it is a very great, and it is fragile. The apostle acknowledged what every prudent person would acknowledge: the spirit is often willing, but the flesh is weak.

Martyrdom always makes headlines. In reality relatively few Christians become martyrs. God calls the rest of us to make lesser sacrifices: reputation, career, money, or friends. They may seem big at the time we make them. Years later, we wonder why they seemed so big.

This last week, I witnessed an example of what I am talking about. When I was asked to speak before the Delaware legislature about human embryonic stem cell research, I knew I had to become better informed. Over the past half decade I have benefited from the writings of Dr. Maureen Condic, an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

I found her e-mail on the Internet and asked her for links to articles that might help me. The next day, I received her return e-mail with several helpful links and an unpublished paper that she, a professor at Princeton and at Creighton University had written. They were most helpful.

This past week, I learned that the journal in her area of expertise, Nature Neuroscience, had published an editorial critical of her writings and accusing her of being unprofessional (<http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n4/full/nn0407-393.html>). The editorial did not find fault with her science but with her conclusions. The journal has so far refused to publish her written response to the editorial.

I wrote to her, expressing my support and my hope that her peers would not blackball her as unprofessional. The next day, I received a reply in which she said that she was due for a promotion, and it was now in doubt due to the editorial.

The question is: Why is sacrifice like this necessary to Christian experience? The Apostle Paul gives an answer in Philippians three.

 

Chains of Our Past
Philippians 3:4-6: 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.

There you have Paul’s résumé: an unblemished religious pedigree and an unmatched career path. People knew when he entered a room. He already had the ear of the chief priests in Jerusalem. Important people thought he had a bright future ahead of him. The fact that he could still rattle off that impressive résumé bears witness to the depth to which that pedigree and that path had shaped his soul. And what did the apostle think about all that?

Verse 7: But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. The experience of sacrifice emerges clearly in this statement. The intensity of the apostle comes through even more searingly in verse eight.

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. He wasn’t talking theory. His flawless pedigree, his unmatched career path, his access to the powerful, that electricity he generated among the elders of his people, when he entered a room, and the bright future important people predicted for him – all that disappeared as soon as he began to preach that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

And what did he think of what he had lost? I consider them rubbish. Why? I consider them rubbish. The translators of the NIV gave this verse a decidedly suburban, middle-class spin. Let me translate it in socially acceptable English that is truer to the apostle’s intent. I consider them dung. Why did the apostle think that? Listen!

I consider them dung, that I may gain Christ. Now we can say why sacrifice is necessary to Christian experience. Let those last five words take hold of you: that I may gain Christ. Except for persecuting the Church, everything else in Paul’s resume deserved honor, unless it hindered him from gaining Christ; in which case the credentials and career path a kudos amounted to a pile of cow chips that needed to swept away for the sake of Christ. Sacrifice is necessary to show where our true priorities lie.

 

Pressing On
At this point in sermon preparation I made a decision to leave out the white-hot center of Paul’s spiritual aspirations, verse ten. I made that decision, because if I were sitting where you sit listening to what I had to say, I would have some questions. I would say, “You have to be kidding! This is too much. It can’t apply to me, can it?

Paul encourages us to see that it does apply to us. Look at verse twelve. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect . . . The man who knew his courage might fail him also knew that he had not arrived.

I wonder how many people stop coming to church, because they don’t think they can measure up to expectations. I wonder how many people come to church, but they keep their distance, because they don’t think they can measure up to expectations. It’s okay to take three steps forward and two steps back – on our good days! We have not arrived. The apostle had not arrived. That’s no reason not to aspire to spiritual greatness.

Now, listen to the rest of verse twelve. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Spiritual aspirations are not our idea, as if we thought up something nice we could do for God. They are God’s idea for what we need in order to be fully human and fully free. God calls us to aspire for Christ to be exalted in your body and for that aspiration to define us as human beings.

Then come verses 13-14. First, he repeats his declaration of incompleteness at the beginning of verse 13. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. What he says next gives all of us the hope we need, if we are going to place Jesus Christ at the center of what defines us as human beings.

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind . . . Do you have people in your life that never let you forget your mistakes? Christian discipleship offers a better way. Do we fail and fall? Yes. Then, let’s acknowledge it to God, ask forgiveness and strength to get back on the straight and narrow; let’s make it right with any Christian brother or sister we have wronged; and then, let it be yesterday’s news. Forget it! And press on! If we aspire for Christ to be exalted in our bodies, we should expect a lot of ups and downs. We can learn from them, but we can’t dwell on them. Let’s do what Paul did.

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

If I were sitting where you sit, listening to what I am saying, I would point at the New Testament says, “But he was an apostle; I am just an ordinary Joe sitting on pew 13.” If only Paul had not written verse 17. Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.

Do these spiritual aspirations of an apostle seem beyond us? Yes. Do we fail and fall? Yes. Does that excuse us from pursuing our high calling? No. Christ has His hand on your shoulder. Don’t brush Him off.

 

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Let me give you two things to take away from this sermon. First, Paul’s experience of losing all that once brought him power and prestige and defined him as a human being may go beyond anything you will ever experience.

But we can be a congregation that imitates the apostle’s spiritual aspirations and his patient habits of pursuing them. As dear as is individual spiritual achievement, it is not anywhere near as valuable as the spiritual achievement of the Christian community.

The extreme makeover of the Church depends on our being that kind of Christian community. I don’t mean that we become that kind of community, because we achieve these aspirations. We become that kind of community, because we embrace these aspirations, define ourselves by them, and then never, never give up the pursuit of what Christ took hold of us for.

When we aspire for Christ to be exalted in our bodies and for that aspiration to define us as human beings, we know we will have failures. We don’t shame each other or ourselves for the failures. Instead, let’s come alongside each other and say, “Hey, friend, today you need me; tomorrow I may need you. Let me help you up, and let’s keep moving toward the goal.”

Second, can you imagine anything more different than the aspirations to exalt Christ in my body, whether by life or death, and to gain Christ on one hand; and on the other hand a church culture in which people give the impression that the Christian faith is all about what you don’t do and represent God as the One who looks for people who are having a good time, and puts a stop to it; and in which Pastors and other church leaders act as enforcers of this killjoy policy?

Those are two different universes. Which universe will we live in here? I know the one I will live in. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Come with me. Let’s aspire to become what Christ has taken hold of us to become!