Keep on imitating me, my friends. Pay attention to those who follow the right example that we have set for you. I have told you this many times before, and now I repeat it with tears: there are many whose lives make them enemies of Christ’s death on the cross. They are going to end up in hell, because their god is their bodily desires. They are proud of what they should be ashamed of, and they think only of things that belong to this world. We, however, are citizens of heaven, and we eagerly wait for our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come from heaven. He will change our weak mortal bodies and make them like his own glorious body, using that power by which he is able to bring all things under his rule.
Phil 3:17-21
I left you in the previous Gem to look back over the last passage we have been investigating and after reminding yourself of the things we have covered, to ponder on this current passage before us. You may wonder about the title I have given this Gem. Those of you who know me well have realised I have had a problem with my eyesight over the last months. I have just had the second cataract surgery two days ago, delayed after the first because of Covid lockdown. The first op was in July and the second was to follow soon after, but was delayed because Auckland went into Level 4 lockdown. My grandson, Jaeden Moore, made an interesting comment some months back when the family were talking about eyesight and I made the comment about being able to get back to 20/20 vision after the op. Jaeden said, “Why do you say that Poppa? Why have outdated vision? You need 2021 vision not 2020 vision!”
I got thinking about Jaeden’s comment. Isn’t that exactly what we all need when we read the Bible? I need to look at the text of the Bible and its application to my life in order to understand what Paul was writing about back in his culture and time frame and then translate it into my culture and time frame. Jaeden is right. I need 20/20 vision from the perspective of the standard eyesight test, determined by the Snellen Chart. Viewed from 20 feet away ( 6 metres), can I read the print at a font size of 20? The second number in the pairing refers to the distance at which a person with ideal vision can see the letter clearly at font size 20. I also need to be able to adjust what I see (read) in the text of the Bible for my current situation in 2021. The Bible has to be relevant for 2021 in my culture here in New Zealand currently, or in Indonesia or Brazil at another point in time.
Photo to be added – still a work in progress. I need new glasses and there has been delay after delay between the opthalmologist and the optometrist. Finally they made up new glasses for me, but oops, they set them to my old prescription.
Pastor Marty has been asking me for an updated photo for the church’s gallery of members. I sent him a number of photos but he told me, those photos are of the old you. We need a new photo; one without your glasses. We all need to adjust ourselves for a new context while at the same time sticking to the truth of who we are in the time frame in which we live. If I can’t do that then we become anachronistic and irrelevant. I always want to be relevant; don’t you? Oh we can desire to know the Truth, that which sets us free; but it needs to be true for this generation in which we live. Jaeden hit the nail on the head. I need Biblical relevancy for 2021, not 2020, but I also need to see clearly (20/20) the principles of God’s Truth in an age of relativism. You may claim there is no absolute Truth; only my truth and your truth. What is true for me is not necessarily true for you, or so you might tell me.
I believe I have shown you in the Gems I wrote in the series Running the Race of Life that Paul had some true statements to make about life and about attaining to the Life of the Age to Come (Eternal Life). The way he set his new appreciation for the things he had been taught regarding the Jewish Law in the new context of having met personally the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus needed a new way of looking at things. We say he needed a paradigm shift in his thinking. He came to see all he held dear under the teachings of Judaism needed to be recalibrated in the light of the Resurrection. The resurrection of Christ from the dead changes everything. Paul had come to see the irrelevancy of his reliance on the Law as dung and the athletes competing for transient garlands of leaves and flowers from a similar perspective. We surely need to take the relevancy of that and bring THAT TRUTH into our 2021 world. A world desperate for truth and there is no better truth than the TRUTH of Jesus Christ who claimed “I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life.” There is so much to that single nine-word-statement (10 words in Greek) for us to understand that it takes a lifetime of walking with Christ to unpack it. We need to learn to interpret life from the other side of the Resurrection. There are many smart people who went before us who began to check out the claims of Jesus, who, in short, was either a madman or who He claimed to be, and ended up convinced that Jesus claims are true. Notice, I didn’t write were true. I wrote are true. There is a world of difference between those words. Paul wanted to know Christ, the power of His resurrection and to share in His sufferings so that he might attain to the resurrection from the dead. That dear friends is also what I want. That is what brought me out of my atheism and agnosticism and made me a follower of Christ and a student of God’s Word.
We now need to take the Truth of what Paul told us in these two passages in his letter to the believers in Philippi explaining the teachings of Christ:
That Majestic Passage (Phil 2:5-11) (27 Gems)
Running the Race of Life (3:10-16) (10 Gems)
Then we need to use the Truth contained in those parts of Paul’s letter to unpack for ourselves this next section and what follows. This next section of Paul’s letter is based on the truth of what he has told us of the relevancy of Christ – in his day and age which also applies in our day and age.
There are many questions which arise from this portion of Paul’s letter which I have given you above.
- Why does Paul now turn to the enemies of Christ?
- What does he mean by ‘the enemies of Christ’?
- Why does Paul suddenly turn from high and lofty thoughts to the enemies of Christ?
- Why then switch suddenly to the positivity of Chapter 4 after a brief interlude on two feuding woman in the church in Philippi?
- Tell me again Ian, how this letter written over 2 millennia ago by a Jew in Palestine is relevant to me in 21st Century NZ?
Now I have set the scene for what lies ahead of us.
Ponder the above passage some more before we begin to pull it apart and ask our questions.
You regularly trust power you cannot see to do work you cannot accomplish. Jesus invites you to do the same with Him.
Max Lucado
The human race crave the experience of awe and wonder. And there is no reality more breathtaking than Jesus Christ.
John Piper
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
C S Lewis
Give us a Christianity that helps us LIVE. We can all DIE without assistance!
Rick Godwin
Loved it great and inspiring introduction.
Thanks mate. Yes, this passage and what follows into the issues with Euodia and Syntyche and beyond has many little Gems contained within the major thrust of Paul’s overarching mindset theme.