A lot can be done with a baseball bat. A baseball bat can be used to play baseball, get dizzy with in a race, juggle, beat someone, or put on display. A baseball bat can be used positively, negatively, and neutrally. But consider what a baseball bat is designed to do. It isn’t purposed to get dizzy with in a race, juggle, beat someone, or put on display. It is designed to be used to play baseball. In Phil. 3:4-16 the Bible says God’s Law has a principle, fundamental use and it is not what we would naturally expect.
Moving into verse 4, Paul has just said that he puts not confidence in himself; his confidence for salvation is completely in Jesus. Now you might respond, “Easy for you to want to think that way, Paul! You’re a spiritual loser so of course you put no confidence in your flesh.” But we’d be wrong to think that way because as Paul says, “though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more”. In other words, Paul had no reason to abandon his goal of being righteous in himself before God. He was spiritually and religiously elite. He was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people 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 righteousness under the law, blameless.” If anyone had reason to have confidence in themselves, it was Paul.
What changed? Why did Paul abandon such a great resume and stop trusting himself? Because the Law of God finally hit home. The Law of God finally did what it is principally purposed to do, like a baseball bat hitting a home run. The Law of God showed Paul was it is purposed to show him, not that he is righteous but that he is unrighteous, sinful, unworthy, and has no righteousness in himself before God. For a while Paul was, in his own words, “ignorant of the righteousness of God” and sought to establish his own. But then he learned that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:1-4). The principal manner in which God uses his Law is to convict us of sin, never to convince us that we are righteous and not in need of Jesus. The Law leads us to Jesus, not away from Jesus.
Only when we first respond to the Law by acknowledging all the ways we fail the Law will we be able to rightly attempt to do the Law. To not do the former and attempt the latter is to totally miss the mark; it is to sin big. Paul was using the Law to make himself righteous. Outwardly, he looked great. But because his motivation and purpose was wrong, everything was wrong. He was using a baseball bat to make music. That just doesn’t work.
Let’s illustrate this. Imagine two men doing the exact same thing: they arrive home from work and walk in the door with flowers for their wife. The wives smell the flowers, love the smell, and thank their husbands. Now, imagine hours later one of the wives is dead from an allergic reaction to the flowers and we learn that one husband performed the act to bless his wife and the other husband did the exact same act with the intention and purpose to kill his wife as he knew she would have a severe allergic reaction.
There was nothing wrong for Paul to be “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews”. What was evil was for him to think that being circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, made him righteous before God and not in need of the saving grace of Jesus.
When the Law hit home in Paul’s life he trashed his garbage resume. “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, 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”.
Paul once thought he was righteous before God in himself and realized that he was actually an enemy of God, seeking to establish his own righteousness, rebelling against God, and rejecting the Son of God himself. Then the Law convinced Paul of his sin and he counted his resume as garbage for the sake of knowing God, being reconciled to God, and being friends with God.
It is Jesus alone who has fulfilled the Law and he fulfilled the Law so this his righteousness would be counted as our own. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says it like this, “Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.” In other words, we are forgiven and accepted by God as righteous only because of Christ’s righteousness counted as our own, that we receive by faith alone, not by works.
Good news. Trash your resume before God. You do not need it and it only counts against you that you try to impress God. You don’t need to build a resume. Jesus’ resume is perfect and it is a gift for you to receive by faith alone.
