The Goal of the Gospel

The Goal of Christian is to rejoice in the Gospel and in the knowledge of Christ.

Paul starts off this passage telling them to “rejoice in the Lord”.

Paul has talked about the troubles he has faced as a believer, they know he is in chains. But one thing that should always be true of Christians is that they rejoice in the Gospel.

-This word rejoice is not about how we feel or our emotions. It is about action, that we rejoice in all circumstances.

Rejoicing is about God being our greatest pride in life, the thing that we express most.

-Rejoicing is to act as if a future thing has already happened. To celebrate something as if it has happened even though it hasn’t.

-We live in a world where people “celebrate” things. They celebrate when their team wins, on someone’s birthday that they have lived another year, they celebrate when it is the weekend. But “rejoicing” is living as if the future has already occured.

Everything Paul says in this passage is in the context of “rejoicing”, He calls them to rejoice in the Lord despite the circumstances Paul is in, no matter what circumstances they might find themselves in the future, no matter the “enemies” they may face”.

In fact, Paul is going to give them at least 3 reasons to rejoice.

Rejoice that they have been chosen

Rejoice that they have been freed from the law

And rejoice that they are found in Christ

So the first

Rejoice that you have been chosen

When we first read this it doesn’t feel like a rejoicing. He tells them to “watch out” for certain people. The language Paul uses is intended to be striking to the readers, because what he is stating to the church is that these opponents are unclean. Paul uses language that reveals them to be “unclean” according to the law. He is stating this about those who are calling the Gentile believers unclean because they haven’t been circumcised, doesn’t follow Jewish food laws, and are not following the add-ons to the law that were put on them.

Paul calls these people dangerous.

-They boast in all the “good works” they have done

-They boast in their wealth and health while saying those who don’t have the same as they do aren’t blessed by God.

-They boast that they have been chosen by God through circumcision

But Paul says

-They only do these works to look good before people

-Their works are evil because they are for their own gain

-They perform grotesque acts that do not save them

Then Paul makes an odd statement. “We are the circumcision” What does this mean? It means that through Christ that those who believe by faith in Christ are those who are chosen by God, not those who perform the right signs.

-Circumcision started with Abraham when God used it as a sign of His covenant with Abraham. It distinguished them as His covenant people.

-Throughout the OT, this covenant was at the center of God’s future promises to His people, that God would bring blessing to His people. But now, in Christ, we are those who receive the promises, we enjoy this salvation.

-Paul is saying that the church is where God’s inheritance lies. The church are the elect, those chosen by God to be His people. God has sealed us for redemption.

Martin Luther

What Martin Luther saw was that these “signs” were in fact anti-antithetical to faith. Our salvation comes only because we have been chosen by God.

-We rejoice that our salvation is not because of the family we are born into, the amount of money we have, how good looking we are…but only by God’s choosing and because we worship in Spirit and in truth believe our salvation is through Christ.

-We can end up putting false boundaries around the Gospel as well. If our church is only filled with well-kept, middle-class people then we are not a church filled with the Gospel. Because that means we haven’t told those who need to hear the truth that God is calling them to faith as well.

Rejoice that you have been freed from the law

This is also a reminder that believers do not need literal circumcision for faith. Why? Because our faith is not in outward signs but in inward faith in Jesus. We don’t boast in these actions believing that they will somehow allow us to receive salvation. But our salvation is in Christ alone, we put all our confidence in Him.

-When we go before God and we are asked to give an account of our lives. We might be tempted to discuss all the good things we have done, to discuss the church we were part of, to discuss how our kids turned out and that they went to church. But every single one of these falls short of God’s glory.

-Before God we boast not in ourselves, but in Christ who has covered us. And this eternal boasting we will do in Christ should also extend to this life. We boast in the power of Christ in us.

We can try and boast about our own works as well

Boast about our jobs

Boast about our possessions

Boast about or family, kids, and grandkids

Boast about how often we serve

Boast about how long we pray and read our Bibles

But Paul reveals to us just how silly this is from his own life

You remember the song “anything you can do I can do better”...that is what Paul is saying! That “if anyone thinks that they have reasons to believe they can make it to heaven on credentials than it would be me.”

It would be like saying you gave your life to Christ to 5 at your church, were baptized, you are from a family of pastors, you read your Bible and pray every morning, you serve at your church Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, and Sunday night, you were taught by Billy Graham himself, you studies with the greatest Bible professors, and you went around the globe bringing others to Jesus.

-Yet Paul says “if I have all of that but I don’t have Jesus than I have nothing at all”

-This does not make a single one of those things before a bad reason, but they are not for our confidence.

When Paul looks at his life he starts to re-evaluate what is valuable to him. There is a divine reversal that happened when he became a believer. Those things that were at one point the most valuable, of the most advantage to Him, he now considers loss. But those things that at one point he thought were a loss to him, a disadvantage, he now see’s as a gain. It isn’t just that he feels like he HAS to lose the things he once had, but that to him those things are in fact a disadvantage to him. To many people in the world they will look at what we enjoy as Christians as loss.

Jeremiah 9:23–26 ““ ‘This is what the Lord says: The wise person should not boast in his wisdom; the strong should not boast in his strength; the wealthy should not boast in his wealth. But the one who boasts should boast in this: that he understands and knows me— that I am the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things. This is the Lord’s declaration. “ ‘Look, the days are coming—this is the Lord’s declaration—when I will punish all the circumcised yet uncircumcised: Egypt, Judah, Edom, the Ammonites, Moab, and all the inhabitants of the desert who clip the hair on their temples. All these nations are uncircumcised, and the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.’ ””

Rocky saying “Then they will know that I am not a bum”

Christian in Pilgrims Progress taking off his “burden”, but how ridiculous it would be for him to put it back on

Rejoice that you are found in Christ

“If we are satisfied with Christ for salvation, we will not rest until we are like the One who satisfied us so?” - Motyer

Sometimes your kid has a lot of toys that they enjoy playing with. But then there is that toy that makes them drop everything else they were playing with and to spend all their time with this other toy. That is how the Gospel should be to us.

Paul shares at least 3 gains in “finding” Christ

1. The surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord

The deeper we know Christ the more we enjoy His glory

“nothing is truly known until it become part of daily conduct” - Motyer

We must learn to be satisfied in Jesus alone and seek to grow like Him.

2. Sharing in the sufferings of Christ

He lost the things of burden he couldn’t remove on his own

Sometimes my wife gets rid of things I didn’t know I needed to get rid of but probably should have left behind a long time ago

Through sharing in His sufferings we are able able to be “conformed” to Christ and we share in His resurrection that was on our behalf. This means we rejoice in our sufferings because we know our future hope.

“Rejoicing” in suffering only makes sense in a world where we know that Christ has risen from the dead.

3. The Righteousness found in Christ

4. The power of Christ in the resurrection