Parents will often use a pacifier to quiet and calm their baby. Eventually, however, this means of pacification will lose its effectiveness as an infant’s hunger increases; he or she will become less satisfied with an artificial replacement for actual food. In today’s message, Dr. Evans challenged us to come face-to-face with our fundamental hunger for God and, like a baby, reject all means of spiritual pacification (religion, ceremony, self-righteousness). To assist us in meeting this challenge, Dr Evans directed our attention to one of the “hungriest men” of the Bible, the apostle Paul, pointing us to three crucial elements in Paul’s own hunger to “know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10). Paul’s hunger to know God can be understood by studying Philippians 3:7-11 and meditating on the following three important points:
1. Paul counted his accomplishments as loss in order to gain Christ (Philippians 3:7-8). Dr. Evans reminded us that we must be aware that our accomplishments--what we have achieved, what we have obtained, who we know--can become a means of pacifying our hunger for God. Paul possessed an impressive list of credentials: he was a “Hebrew of Hebrews,” a Pharisee, and a zealous man in his obedience to the law (Philippians 3:5). However, Paul counted all of these credentials as loss when measured alongside the glory of Christ and His work on the cross for humankind. In light of this event, Paul considered his own accomplishments as rubbish--dung or manure, Philippians 3:8--when compared to the treasure of gaining Christ.
2. Paul put on the righteousness of Christ instead of his own righteousness (Philippians 3:9). The genuine antidote for treasuring our own accomplishments is a right understanding of our sinfulness before a holy and righteous God. There is no place for “Home Depot Christians” or “Do It Yourself Christians” in God’s kingdom. We all come naked (stripped of our accomplishments) before the judgment of God, and our only hope is to be clothed in Christ’s righteousness, “The righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Philippians 3:9). Once we recognize our own poverty before God, we become hungry to know and to experience the work of God’s Spirit in our lives making us more and more like Christ.
3. Paul joined in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings (Philippians 3:10). Because Christ’s life was one marked by suffering and death, we must join in “the fellowship of his sufferings” to be conformed to His image and to come to know Him. When Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians, he was in prison; he was relying on the generosity of the church at Philippi to relieve his own poverty and provide for his needs (see Philippians 4:13-18). Paul’s sufferings had become an invitation to intimacy. They had also become an opportunity to know Christ and to “become conformed to his death.” Dr. Evans noted that Christians must realize that suffering cannot be ultimately viewed as random evil but as an opportunity to enhance our intimacy as we, too, join in the fellowship of Christ’s suffering. In the midst of our sufferings, we need to learn to ask, “How will God use this suffering to help me know Him more?”
Paul’s hunger to know God intimately allowed him to count his accomplishments as loss, put on the righteousness of Christ, and to join in Christ’s sufferings. It ultimately allowed him to experience the “power of the resurrection” (Philippians 3:10-11). Dr. Evans reminded us that this experience of resurrection is always preceded by suffering and death. As Christians, we must realize that, even in the midst of our sufferings, God is at work putting to death the old self in order to renew us (resurrect us) in the image of His Son.
