Scripture: Philippians 3:8-21
As some of you know, every weekday morning I go running… early in the morning… while it’s still dark outside. I run from my neighborhood down Brown Road and turn into the vast Stonehaven neighborhood. I can run for miles in that subdivision, safe from traffic, and turn around and come back. But let me describe something that has happened probably five or six times since I started running on this path: I will see bright light coming from behind me—like headlights from a fast-approaching car. So, for safety’s sake, I turn around to look… I want to get out of the way if I need to! And when I turn around to look, I see that it’s not a fast-approaching car: It’s actually a young woman who has lights all over her—on her forehead, on a vest she’s wearing, in the front and the back… She shines brightly in the dark! She will never get run over, that’s for sure! Everyone can see her! Commercial jets flying over at 20,000 feet can see her!
But she passes me by, sprinting past me… until she becomes this tiny point of light off in the distance… and before long she’s out of sight.
She is fast!
To be honest, her speed wounds my pride a little. I tell myself two things to make me feel better: First, I’ve already been running a couple of miles at this point. Whereas she probably just pulled out of her driveway. I’m sure I was going much faster when I started… And second, I tell myself, “She’s thirty years younger than you, Brent!”
But who am I kidding? I didn’t run like her 30 years ago!
In fact, she runs like the Olympic athlete that the apostle Paul describes in verses 12 through 14: She presses on… forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead… with single-minded devotion toward a goal—and her goal, apparently, is to embarrass middle-aged Methodist pastors like myself. No, just kidding…
But I’ll say more about Paul’s image of a runner at the end… Most of this sermon will focus on one verse… verse 9… because what Paul says there is explosive… comforting… encouraging. And I want to encourage you with it: Paul says that he wants “to be found in him”—in Christ—“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.”
What does it mean to be “found in” Christ? Paul is speaking of the future, of Judgment Day, after the Second Coming. For anyone who has not yet availed themselves of God’s rescue plan for the world—which is God’s atoning death on the cross through his Son Jesus—Judgment Day should rightly be a terrifying prospect. And Jesus describes this in the gospels by quoting the Book of Hosea in Luke 23:30: “Then they”—by which Jesus means many people who are facing God’s judgment—“Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’”
In other words, they want to hide from God’s judgment and wrath. They want mountains and hills to “hide or cover them”—think of Adam and Eve’s lame attempt to cover themselves with fig leaves in the Garden. Of course, there will be no place for sinners to hide on the day of judgment.
But many people will want to…
But not Paul… He doesn’t want to hide from God; he wants to hide in God… in Christ. It’s the same sentiment that David and the psalmists express when they talk about God being their “refuge,” their “rock,” their “fortress,” their “stronghold.”[1] That’s what being found in Christ means to Paul.
So when Paul says he wants to be “found in” Christ, Paul is completely confident… completely secure… when it comes to standing before God one day in judgment.
During 2020, when most things were still shut down and sickness, death, and dying were still foremost on people’s minds, the city of Toccoa, Georgia, where I pastored, had an outdoor music festival downtown. It was “socially distanced”—remember those days; people were still wearing masks. And my associate pastor, April, the youth pastor, Josh, my son Townshend, and I walked around the festival and had meaningful conversations about Jesus with people. And let me tell you: in Toccoa, it was difficult to find anyone who didn’t say that they were Christians. And nearly everyone we talked toexpressed great confidence that they were bound for heaven when they died. And when we asked why, they inevitably said what? Because they were “good people.”
But you tell me? Should anyone feel confident if their prospects for heaven are based on their personal goodness?
By no means!
No one knows this better than Paul. Remember last week… We talked about Paul’s résumé of righteousness—his reasons for what he calls “confidence in the flesh”—in verses 4 through 6? In so many words, Paul, like so many of the good people of Toccoa, was counting on being “accepted” by God on the basis of his “goodness.”
To say the least, that is not a safe foundation for confidence! Apart from grace, we are all hopeless sinners who desperately he need a Savior!
About ten years ago, some internet atheist was trying to troll us Christians—to make fun of us for actually believing that Christianity is true. This atheist posted the following meme on social media. It included a photo of David Berkowitz, that infamous serial killer from the ’70s known as the “Son of Sam.” The meme included a present-day photo of Berkowitz in prison, smiling and holding a Bible. The caption on the photo reads, “My name is David Berkowitz. I was the most feared man in New York City in the ’70s. Known as ‘The Son of Sam,’ I was the serial killer that murdered six people and wounded ten others. Now in prison for life, I found the love of Jesus.
Then in large print—and with heavy sarcasm—it reads,“Guess Who’s Getting Into Heaven?”
This atheist obviously was offended—that the gospel of Jesus Christ has the nerve to say that even a former serial killer like Berkowitz—who is nearly the worst sinner that anyone could name—that even someone like him could become part of God’s kingdom, that even someone like him could have all of his awful, evil, ugly sins forgiven, that even someone like him could be given eternal life—all on the condition that he sincerely repent and believe the gospel!
“You mean to tell me that even David Berkowitz can make it to heaven?”
Provided Berkowitz has sincerely repented and believed the gospel, then I say, Yes… and Amen! I say, “If Jesus can save David Berkowitz, then there’s hope for me! And there’s hope for you!”
If even even someone like him isn’t excluded because of his sins, then I won’t be excluded because of mine. And you won’t be excluded because of yours!
But based on what Paul tells us in verse 9, it’s not simply that God forgives us of our sins—as incredible as that fact is. But we receive so much more than mere forgiveness!
When we believe in Christ, it’s as if a great exchange has taken place: On the cross, God took all of our guilt and sin and bore the penalty for them himself. God himself, through Christ, suffered, died, and experienced hell for the sake of sinners like us. Then, in return, when we believe in Christ, God takes the perfect righteousness of his Son Jesus and gives it to us, covers us with it, as a completely free gift. As in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
What does this mean? It means that now, when God our Father looks at us, he no longer sees our guilt and sin; he sees only the perfect righteousness of his Son Jesus!
Think about what this means…
Just yesterday, in my quiet time, I happened to be reading the last chapter of 2 Kings… 2 Kings mostly tells the long, sad story of the decline and fall of the two kingdoms of Israel—first the larger northern kingdom, which retained the name “Israel,” and later the southern kingdom, called Judah—where Jerusalem and the Temple were located.
The last several kings of Judah reigned when Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq, was the world’s superpower. In order for a far less powerful nation like Judah to survive, Judah was required to pay tribute money—a very expensive tax of silver and gold—which was like a bribe: we’ll pay you this exorbitant amount of money every year… on the condition that you don’t invade us and destroy us!
And these kings of Judah would bring great trouble on themselves whenever they decided that they weren’t going to pay this tax… including poor King Jehoiachin. The poor guy only ruled over Judah for—get this—three measly months… before the Babylonians invaded. He might have lasted longer, of course, but like so many kings before him, we’re told, he “did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.”[2]
But at least Jehoiachin sees the writing on the wall and surrenders to the Babylonians, who take him captive and deport him to Babylon, where it seems he will spend the rest of us his life as prisoner… in obscurity… forgotten… a complete failure of a man. The End.
Serves him right for failing to obey both his God and his human masters!
And then… in the final paragraph of 2 Kings, chapter 25, long after Judah has fallen, listen to what happens… Let me read it:
In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of King Jehoiachin of Judah [some Babylonian king with a name I can’t pronounce] ascended to the Babylonian throne. He was kind to Jehoiachin and released him from prison on April 2 of that year. He spoke kindly to Jehoiachin and gave him a higher place than all the other exiled kings in Babylon. He supplied Jehoiachin with new clothes to replace his prison garb and allowed him to dine in the king’s presencefor the rest of his life. So the king gave him a regular food allowance as long as he lived.[3]
That is actually the end of Jehoiachin’s story, and that is, I’m sure you’ll agree, the happiest ending imaginable!
Think about it: bad old Jehoiachin, who did nothing but rebel against this far more powerful king, who “did what was evil in the Lord’s sight,” eventually surrendered to the king. After which he received a full pardon… Even though he did nothing to deserve this pardon!
This fact alone should bother us Americans… Whenever a president, for example, of any political stripe, pardons anyone, what happens? Inevitably, a lot of people on the other side of the aisle get angry… And what do they say? They say, “He doesn’t deserve a pardon!” “He’s not worthy of it!” “He is a bad dude who’s done nothing to earn it!”
This always happens no matter who is president…
Because we want the people we pardon to deserve it… to earn it in some way… or to have sufficiently “paid for their crimes.” In which case, of course, it’s not a true pardon. It’s just a matter of simple justice: This person doesn’t deserve to be in prison. So let’s release him instead.
That’s what we want pardons to look like!
But by definition, that’s not what a pardon is… a pardon means that we don’t deserve to be forgiven… that we are notworthy… that we are guilty people who have not sufficiently “paid for” our crimes!
You know… just like bad old King Jehoiachin, when he got pardoned for no apparent reason… and released from prison… for no apparent reason… And not only that: the king treated him kindly… for no apparent reason… Treated him like a friend—it says he “spoke kindly” to him. In other words, the king had a personal relationship with him… for no apparent reason… He showed him his favor—exalting him above other exiled kings… for no apparent reason.
And not only that… The king gave Jehoiachin a seat at the royal dinner table every day for the rest of his life… for no apparent reason… He gave him royal clothes to wear for the rest of his life… for no apparent reason…
New clothes, a seat at the dinner table, unlimited favor… unconditional love! You know what that means? It means that the king made Jehoiachin not only a forgiven former prisoner… not only a citizen of the kingdom… not only a friend… The king made him, essentially, a member of his royal family.
For no apparent reason… other than sheer grace!
This is nothing less than a preview—right here at the end of 2 Kings, right here in the Old Testament… It is nothing less than a preview of the gospel of Jesus Christ! It’s a preview of what happens to us when we repent and believe in Christ.
And the only thing that Jehoiachin did in order to receive all this grace, all this love, all this favor… was to surrender to this far more powerful king. That’s it!
Just like you and I must surrender to our King Jesus!
When I was a kid in the ’70s and ’80s, a place called Northlake Mall was nearly the center of my world… All the good stuff was there: an arcade at which to squander a lot of quarters… a record store… an electronics store that had all the latest Atari, Intellivision, and ColecoVision games on display… not one but two bookstores… a movie theater next door… places where I could happily while away the hours while Mom did all that boring clothes shopping that she enjoyed so much!
Best of all, however… Northlake had this place called Farrell’s. It was like… an ice cream parlor on steroids, whichspecialized in large chocolate sundaes… It had a big candy store when you checked out… It had a player piano—first place I’d ever seen one of those! The TV commercials had the jingle, “Farrell’s is fabulous fun for everyone.” And they weren’t lying: Farrell’s was fabulous fun for everyone. It was like heaven to an 8-, 9-, 10-year-old child. And some days, if we had an especially grueling shopping day in front of us—maybe back-to-school shopping—and Mom needed her children to behave for hours… she would dangle in front of us the prospect of a trip to Farrell’s.
And my sisters and I would ask her, frequently throughout the day, “Are we going to Farrell’s?” An hour later: “Are we going to Farrell’s?” An hour after that: “Are we going to Farrell’s?”
And you know what Mom’s answer to us was every single time… Those two little words, filled with both threat and promise… “We’ll see.”
But listen… Because we are covered with the perfect righteousness of Christ… when it comes comes to our Father’s love for us… there simply is no “we’ll see.”
Our heavenly Father now loves us as if we are completely perfect in his eyes… as if we could do no wrong… as ifnothing we do or fail to do could ever make our Father love us less than he loves his only begotten Son Jesus.
Which means our Father isn’t withholding from us even the smallest fraction of his love, grace, mercy, and favor…
Which means our Father isn’t waiting for us to get our act together before working powerfully in our lives.
Which means our Father isn’t “keeping score,” like, “Sorry, Brent… You were doing so good for a while, but now you’ve really blown it. And I’m disappointed in you.”
Everyone else we know in our lives—because they’re human and sinful… everyone else we know may be keeping score in some way… everyone else may be withholding some measure of love from us based on our performance… even if they don’t mean to—maybe our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our children, our teachers, our friends. And maybe we have a hard time loving or forgiving ourselves because we also are keeping score, and we’re constantly disappointed in ourselves. Regardless, the sad reality is, human love, whether we want it to or not, often comes with strings attached!
Human love, even at its best, often falls short!
Not so with our heavenly Father. His love isn’t like that. True love isn’t like that. As Paul famously says in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love keeps no record of wrongs.”[4]
Jesus himself makes this point with the reassuring words of John 6:37: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” I will never cast out.
Author and pastor Dane Ortlund, in his best-selling book Gentle & Lowly, says that John Bunyan, the 17th-century pastor and author of Pilgrim’s Progress, wrote an entire book on this one verse. In it, Bunyan imagines a conversation between himself and Jesus after he spoke these words, “I will never cast you out.” Bunyan has a hard time believing it because it just seems too good to be true:
“No wait”—he says, cautiously approaching Jesus—“you don’t understand. I’ve really messed up, in all kinds of ways.”
I know, [Christ] responds.
“You know most of it, sure. Certainly more than what others see. But there’s perversity down inside me that is hidden from everyone.”
I know it all [Christ says].
“Well—the thing is, it isn’t just my past. It’s my present too.”
I understand.
“But I don’t know if I can break free of this any time soon.”
That’s the only kind of person I’m here to help.
“The burden is heavy, Lord—and heavier all the time.”
Then let me carry it.
“It’s too much to bear.”
Not for me.
“You don’t get it. My offenses aren’t directed toward others. They’re against you.”
Then I am the one most suited to forgive them.
“But the more of the ugliness in me you discover, Lord, the sooner you’ll get fed up with me.” And to this, Christ says,
Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.[5]
I hope you can see how incredibly reassuring this is…
But let’s not misunderstand: Am I saying that our Lord doesn’t want us to change and grow and overcome sin in our lives and become holy?
By no means! Of course the Lord wants us to change… Sin hurts us and others. We need to be healed of our sin as well as forgiven for it. And by the power of the Holy Spirit God will change us. In fact, this process of change—which can often be painful and take a lifetime—is called sanctification.
In verse 12, Paul says that he himself is still a work in progress; even he is still being sanctified. He hasn’t arrived yet.
I’ll have more to say about sanctification in the next couple of weeks of this series.
But for now, consider this: If our Father loves us with this kind of love I’ve been describing—a love which becomes ours the moment we surrender to him and believe in his Son Jesus… If our Father loves us like that… what does this kind of love inspire within us? What does this kind of love inspire us to do?
What would we do or give or sacrifice for someone who loves us like that?
Literally anything or everything he asks of us!
After all, many of us are fans of college football… What do players on our favorite teams, or their fans, often say of beloved coaches that love and inspire their players? They say, “I’d run through a brick wall for him!” Have you heard that? “I’d be willing to run through a brick wall for that person!”
Or… Another way of saying this is what Paul says, I’d press on for him!
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers [and sisters], I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Amen. [invitation to altar…]
[1] Psalm 2:12; 16:1; 18:2; 31:1-2; 46:1; 62:6-7; 91:2; 94:22; 118:8
[2] 2 Kings 24:9
[3] 2 Kings 25:27-30 NLT
[4] 1 Corinthians 13:5, i.e., NIV, NLT, CSB
[5] Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 63-4.