Take the L

I am calling today’s lesson, “Take the L”. Now tell me, what does it mean if you take an L? It means that you lost right? But more than just losing, you are willing to admit that you lost and move on with your life. And what is the reason someone says that you should just “take the L”? It is usually because you are digging yourself a bigger hole the more than you try and convince yourself (and others) that you have not. In other words, taking the L now can prevent you from taking an even bigger L later.

But how many of us like to admit that we are wrong? How many of us like to give up any of our pride? None of us do, we like to prove ourselves to others.

But what Paul tells us in the passage that we are looking today that there is an L that we all should take, and more than just take it we should be willing to take it because it means that we receive something so much greater. In fact he tells us where we can gain our righteousness.

Does anyone know what righteousness means? Righteousness is to be found perfect before the law. Specifically the law of God. So what do you think it means that we cannot be righteous on our own?

-It means that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we try and do. We will never be able to have a perfect standing before God because we will not perfectly follow the law, we will fall short of God’s righteousness because God is perfect.

-So what do you think it means then that our righteousness is from God based on faith?

-It means that the righteousness that we have received is the righteousness that Christ gave us on the cross, and that we must believe that we have attained this righteousness in order to receive it.

Think about it this way. Let’s say that you had a math test, and you honestly just weren’t getting it. You were confused with what you were looking at and honestly you hadn’t studied enough. But then you are given a choice, you can either turn in the math test that you took, or you can turn in one that has been completed by Albert Einstein. Which one are you choosing? Now if you choose to turn in the test you took you are relying on your own “self-righteousness” rather than the righteousness of another. When you turn that in you have to throw away all the work that you had done on your own and you have to turn in the work of another and have faith that Einstein will get a better grade than you would.

This is the mindset that Paul says that we have to have. If you think of life as a “test” where in the end you will go before God and you will either have to give an account of all your sins that you have ever committed, every single one. If you imagine your whole life up to this point, every single day and you had to account for every single sin. OR, you could throw out your accomplishments and your possessions to take on the life of Christ and His perfection. Which do you choose? You would obviously choose the life of Christ, because Christ was perfect in every way.

So what Paul then tells us is that we should not have confidence in ourselves and in our accomplishments because our accomplishments mean nothing before God. We have no reason to feel confidence in our own accomplishments rather we feel confidence in the character of Christ and the Spirit of God living in us.

And he gives an example of his own life. He gives an example of his own life to say “if any of you think you could measure up to God’s standard, then look at my own life. Because I had every reason to feel confident in my own ability and my obedience to the law, and my awards, and my education, and the family that I grew up in. Paul came from a royal family, he had the best education with the most well known teachers, he had a 4.0 GPA, he had a high political office, he made lots of money, and he was not corrupt and was a perfect citizen under the law. So he tells them “I have no confidence in what I have accomplished, so why should you have any?”

So how do we do that?

Rejoice in the Lord

Paul reminds them that first and foremost that they should rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice that they have been saved, that they have this incredible hope in the Gospel, and that they are called to be children of God.

He puts this in contrast of those who they need to watch out for. He tells them to be very careful for 3 types of evil.

“The dogs” - people who will find anything to grab a hold of and to devour. These are people who are negative about everything, who are trying to take down others and use any opportunity they can for themselves.

“Evil workers” - These are people who pride themselves on what they have accomplished and consider themselves to be perfect and better than others. Even though they do all the right things they do it for personal gain rather than doing it because it is right. There are a lot of people who can donate to charities or can do community service or talk kindly to people when others are around. But behind the scenes they are doing it for themselves. Sort of like Ellen DeGeneres. She was applauded for being nice and having a fun personality and doing all these cool things. But when the lights weren’t on she was rude to others, she did things for personal gain not because she cared, and it was all about her image.

“those who mutilate the flesh” - Paul describes those who have been circumcised and took great pride in it. These are people who come from a church family, who know all the right answers in church, and who take great pride in having a right standing by the law. But inwardly they have no faith in God, they have faith in their own ability to be righteous.

And if you look at the language that Paul uses he is describing these people as angry, as looking out for themselves, at putting others down so that they can feel better about themselves. But in contrast to that Paul tells them to have joy, he tells them to find confidence not in themselves like these other people are but rather in Christ. He tells them “all these people put their confidence in what they have done, but you are to put your confidence in what Christ has done.

So while others try to find joy in what people think about them, about having a particular skill in a sport or in music, about how smart they are, about how much money they have, about how many friends they have, about how perfect they are as a son or daughter or as a Christian, about how many good things they do for others, about all the difference issues that they have awareness in and that they tell others about. Rather than rejoicing in any of those things he says rejoice and boast in Christ.

I heard it this way in one book I read “the first secret of a joyous life is this: if we are to rejoice in the Lord, then we must be certain that we are holding and practising the true religion.” And true religion is to consider everything a loss because of Christ. And in taking all of those “L’s” what you find is the surpassing value of knowing Christ and His death and resurrection.

And if you think about it, that is exactly what Christ did. Jesus took the biggest “L” of all time. From a human standpoint he was poor, from a popularity standpoint all those in positions of authority hated him, those who did follow him betrayed him before He died, he was embarrassed and shamed publicly, and he died a brutal death. But what everyone else thought was terrible loss, a waste of life, an idiot who called himself God, came the greatest victory.

Because the secret is that if we try and find joy in this world we will end up being disappointed. Because the things of this world make us slaves to them. so we have to ask ourselves the question “what do I need to lose in order to gain Christ?”

A few years ago I played this game on my phone called Marvel Strike Force, and if I am honest it was really fun. I enjoyed playing it. But the problem was that in order to improve you needed to play everyday, and you needed to upgrade players. And then you are trying to unlock new players and improve them. And then I found myself going to the bathroom and staying in there a little longer so that I could play, and I would play it when I was supposed to be doing other things, and it was becoming a distraction in my life. And you feel this happiness whenever you reach a goal, but when I stopped and thought about it I realized that the accomplishments on the game were not going to be of any real value. In the end I was not gaining anything that would benefit my life. And so in order to gain Christ I realized that I needed to lose this game.

To gain Christ sometimes we need to lose a friend that isn’t really a good friend. Sometimes we need to lose an activity that is taking over our life. Sometimes we need to lose a TV show that is not uplifting us but making us into a worse person. Sometimes we need to lose that thing we know is a sin but that is making us feel guilty about our lives. Sometimes we need to lose the humor and the attitude that makes us seem cooler.

I’ll give another example there. When I was in high school I was not popular, but when I got to college I was determined to change that. So I was super loud, and I was always looking for the next joke (not mean jokes but just not jokes that were necessary), I was looking for the thing I could do to get attention, I was talking to girls and disregarding real friendships that I had. And as I grew older I recognized that I needed to lose those things for Christ. I need to lose these things that had brought me some things that I wanted in order to gain the real thing that I needed.