Thursday Sep 12, 2024

Philippians 3 (4): Not Having Our Own Righteousness

One of the greatest frustrations to our knowing of Christ is our effort to establish our own righteousness (cf. Rom. 10:3). In fact, the more we live in our own righteousness, the less we will know Christ.
While many Christians realize our own works could never be sufficient for God to forgive our sins, we fail to realize the exact same principle applies in terms of our daily living; even in this regard, we cannot please God or be acceptable to Him by our own doing. And because we don’t realize this, we try, after we first believe in Jesus to have our sins forgiven, to live the Christian life by being good and helping others.
In fact, God is not interested in our doing, but in our dying. That is, He wants to bring us into the real experience of the death of Christ so we can live a life before Him in the glory of resurrection, just as Christ Himself did.
Even in the Old Testament, we see an illustration of this in how God dealt with Job, one who God Himself said was “blameless and upright, one who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). He allowed Satan to tear down Job’s righteousness, but at the end of the book, Job was one who had a real experience of God (Job 42:1-6).
Then we see this principle established at the very beginning of the New Testament, in the baptism of Jesus Himself to “fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:13-17). Next, in Romans 6:1-5, the apostle Paul sets forth the great truth of our having been baptized into the death of Christ so we can walk in newness of life (cf. Gal. 2:20). And finally, in Philippians 3:7-9, we see what this means in terms of our practical experience.

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Bible Verses for this Episode

See Episode #105: “Philippians 3 (4): Not Having Our Own Righteousness”

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