laws
Counting It All Loss
By Linda Rex
April 6, 2025, 5th Sunday in Preparation for Easter or Lent—How hard are you working at being a good person? Do you ever find yourself performing hard in an effort to make sure you are okay with God and other people? Sometimes we do not realize when we are depending upon ourselves rather than fully resting in Christ. And too often, when we are sharing our life in Christ with others, we throw people back upon their own ability to get themselves where they feel they need to be in relationship with God and others.
The apostle Paul reminds us in our New Testament passage for this Sunday, Philippians 3:4b–14, that we need to quit depending upon our own ability, our family history, our heritage, or any of those things we humanly count on, and to rest completely in Christ. When you consider Paul’s story, you can see that he experienced a tremendous about-face in his life when he encountered the resurrected Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). Nothing was the way it used to be after that conversation with the Lord.
Later on in his life, as he reached out to the non-Jews in the Roman Empire with the good news of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul experienced severe opposition. Those who insisted that keeping the law of Moses was essential for salvation were strong and even vicious opponents, who sought a following. These zealous opponents counted on their merits as law-abiding Jews, along with their positions of importance, and their background of impeccable ancestry—all of which were valued in that ancient culture.
But the apostle Paul had all these merits—even more so than his opponents. There was a time when he had valued everything his opponents valued. But then he met the risen Lord Jesus Christ. After that, all of these things he had valued before became worthless to him. In God’s kingdom, our human pedigree, our observation of certain laws and rites and rituals, gain us nothing. Paul considered these things to be of no use whatsoever—in fact, he considered them to be garbage, the kind of filth to be thrown on the trash heap. Paul had come to see that in the long run, these items cherished by his opponents were valueless, and needed to be tossed out and replaced with Jesus Christ, in his life, death, and resurrection. What needed to be embraced was a new life in Christ given to us in the person and presence of the Holy Spirit.
Possibly, we may say that no one values things like pedigree, position, or law keeping anymore. But within the context of our own educational venues, spiritual communities, denominations, or religious cultures, we often venerate people with the appropriate pedigree or certifications, and give less attention to those who are not so educationally well endowed, or culturally accepted. We celebrate those with the degrees, those who are part of the religious elite, and others who have achieved great financial, physical, material, even spiritual success from a human point of view. It’s hard to admit, but we easily slip into focusing on the human aspects of our life in Christ, and forget to embrace the true humility of our personal need for Christ. We can easily forget that our efforts to achieve a right relationship with God and with others actually does us no good in the sight of God.
The apostle Paul reminds us to lay ourselves and our own efforts on the altar, and to pick up instead, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has done the hard lifting—our life is in him. And Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.” It is Jesus Christ, living in us by the Holy Spirit, we are to trust in, rather than counting on ourselves and our own efforts.
Our response to all Jesus has done for us is meant to be a visceral pouring out of ourselves in gratitude and devotion to Jesus. This was demonstrated by Mary as she poured spikenard lavishly and in free abandon on Jesus’ feet, and then wiping his feet with her hair (John 12:1–8), even in the face of criticism and condemnation. Our response to Jesus is an internally motivated pouring out of ourselves in worship of and devotion to Jesus, not a forced, for show effort to get a response from Jesus or to win the praise of others. It’s true that Mary made some effort to procure the oil, and took some action in applying it to Jesus’ feet, but what we see happen is not slavish devotion driven by fear or an attempt to win God’s favor or love. Rather, it is an internal response driven by deep gratitude for the Lord’s intervention on behalf of her and her family, in raising her brother Lazarus from the dead. This is an expression of deep gratitude and devotion to Jesus—this is what drove her actions. And this is our response to God raising our “brother” Jesus from the dead, on our behalf.
In our call to worship psalm, the psalmist declares that God has done all that is needed for our salvation, therefore we rejoice: “When the LORD brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with joyful shouting; then they said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’ The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad” (Psalm 126:1–3 NASB). The point is, Jesus has saved us, is saving us, and will save us. Therefore, in response, our life is a praise song of gratitude and joy, as we rest fully in Jesus’ finished work, and let go of all our human efforts to get ourselves right with God and each other. The Holy Spirit, filling our hearts and minds, unites us with Christ, and we are never the same, ever again. Our lives, our relationships, and our actions are never the same again, because we are “in Christ.”
Our Redeemer and Savior, Lord of all, thank you for your faithfulness and goodness to us. Grant us the grace to surrender all our human efforts to save ourselves. Enable us instead to trust in you completely, allowing you to transform our hearts and lives by faith. We celebrate your mighty and wonderful work of salvation with gratitude and praise. Amen.
“… If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:4b–14 NASB
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The Word is Near/In You
by Linda Rex
August 13, 2023, Proper 14 | After Pentecost—Lately I’ve been realizing how blessed I was to have parents who insisted I learn to observe what the Bible teaches, however misguided their efforts might have been. Granted, there are things I wish I had not been forced to do, which I would not inflict on any child today. But there were some benefits to studying the book of Proverbs and learning texts such as the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount.
However, as the years have passed, I have come to see that all of the Bible-learning in the world does no good whatsoever if it only goes skin deep or we turn what we learn into rigid rules and regulations to live by. Often, knowing the right thing to do is worthless when our flesh insists on doing it some other way. And when everything in our world is crying out to us to follow our flesh, doing the right thing is even harder to do. Even when do we want to do what is right it is a challenge to go down the path of living in right relationship with God and one another.
In our New Testament reading for this week, Romans 10:5–15, the apostle Paul contrasts a righteousness based on law with a righteousness based on faith. There were benefits to living according to the law Moses gave Israel—blessings rather than cursings, peace rather than being invaded by other nations, and a better life over all without the heartaches of painful consequences. Unfortunately though, so often, the people did what was right in their own eyes, as Joshua wrote, and paid the sorry consequences. What we come to see in what Moses wrote is that the issue was an internal one—a matter of the heart. All the legislation in the world is useless without a change of heart and mind—without an internal movement, ability, and desire to do what is right internally present within the person or people involved.
When we believe it is all up to us to get ourselves right with God and to live a good life (i.e., a righteousness based on law), then we are in a really unhappy, unhealthy place. The reason is that no matter how hard we try, we cannot get there from here, no matter how many laws or regulations we may impose upon ourselves from the outside. Nor did God intend us to. No, he knew from the beginning how it would be and planned before time began to enter into our physical flesh to reform it and make us what he always meant us to be—from the inside out. From the beginning we were formed to be creatures who were dependent upon him for his life and his love. He always intended us to be joined forever with him in union and communion—in right relationship.
Realizing that when Jesus, the Word of God, died, everything in this cosmos died with him, and everything rose with him when he came up from the grave, is essential to realizing that we were not and cannot be separated from God in any way, shape, or form. The Scriptures tell us that all things were created by God in and through Jesus in the Spirit. We are held in God, even though the blindness of our sinful flesh often makes us believe we are separated from God. How often I hear someone say they are all alone in a very dark place. What may be wrong is they simply cannot see the reality that below, or above, all that darkness is the light of Jesus—the very presence of God is near them and in them by the Spirit. What they have lost sight of is God holding them and loving them unconditionally, offering them acceptance and forgiveness.
Our experience of our connection with God is what is at stake when we turn away from Jesus and insist on going our own way. We can certainly act like we are self-existent deities if we wish, but it doesn’t at all make it true. And time will eventually make evident this reality as life’s experiences and eventually death will show how powerless we really are over this world and even ourselves. Our choices in this life and our rejection of God have consequences, and we certainly don’t like having to experience how tough life gets when we stubbornly go our own way. And we even tend to blame God or even others when the world gets to be impossible to live in. But none of this alters the reality that God took every possible precaution to ensure that we, everyone of us, would be included in his life and love.
When Jesus, the Word of God, the Son of God, took on our human flesh, lived our life, died our death and rose again, taking us home to the Father, he sent the Spirit so each and every person could participate in his own face-to-face relationship with his Father in the Spirit. In Jesus Christ—who is Lord of all, every one of us has the assurance of being included in the love and life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit now and forever. Do we believe this is true? If we don’t, we will continue to struggle to make ourselves right with God, living out a righteousness based on law.
If we do believe it’s true, we will live accordingly—living out the reality of a personal relationship with our Father through Jesus in the Spirit (a righteousness based on faith). We will allow Jesus to live his life in and through us, participating in what he is actively doing in this world, which includes sharing this good news with others. We will act as if we are full participants in Jesus’ own life in face-to-face fellowship with his Father in the Spirit. What does that look like? Well, that’s where all those descriptions of the Christian life in the Bible come in handy—they give us a clue as to what it looks like to live as God’s very own beloved children, in right relationship with him and one another. And that’s where a little Bible-learning comes in handy.
Heavenly Father, thank you for including us in your life with your Son in the Spirit, through his incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. By your Spirit, grant us the faith of Jesus, the One who trusts you completely and implicitly, that we may quit practicing the righteousness based on law and start practicing the righteousness based on faith, sharing this good news with others, as we confess with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus our Lord is risen from the grave. Amen.
“For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness. But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: ‘Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down), or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).’ But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feed of those who bring good news of good things!’” Romans 10:5–15 NASB
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