Philippians 3:12-4:1 - Lent 2 - 2022

People who know me well know that I have no sense of direction. My mind does not work geographically. A few months ago, my parents graciously offered to watch Peter for the weekend - and if you know anything about parenting a two-year-old, that is an offer you can’t refuse. We were so excited for a weekend with just the two of us. So Friday afternoon, I pack up all of Peter’s stuff, I pick him up for daycare, and I start driving to the Racetrac on MacFarland Road, where we have always met my parents because it was halfway between our homes. I have made this trip half a dozen times already, but I had always mapped it in the GPS. This time, I felt confident I knew where I was going.

So I’m driving down this road, things are going great. Peter is happy, we’re singing The Wheel’s on the Bus for the fourteenth time. It’s been about twenty minutes of driving until I finally come to the conclusion that none of this looked familiar. So at the next red light, I put the rendavous point in the GPS, and sure enough, I’m almost an hour off course. What was supposed to be a thirty minute trip was now going to be an hour and a half trip, and oh by the way it was creeping up on 4pm Friday afternoon. All of that cheeriness and goodness I was feeling suddenly evaporated.

And looking back on it, I can’t help but think that I had been happily driving in the wrong direction for twenty minutes. But I wasn’t going where I thought I was going. In fact, I was no where near where I wanted to be. I was no where near the freedom of a child-free weekend.

In our text this morning, Paul talks about two roads. One road leads to joy and satisfaction and freedom and the other leads to destruction. We’re all running down one of these roads. We’re all running down a road in search for joy, and the question that we want to examine this morning is whether we are heading down the right path. Are we headed in the right direction?

In this letter that Paul writes to the church in Philippi, he relays a little of his own story - how God plucked him out of a headlong pursuit of destruction and set him on the road of life, and Paul urges us to follow him.

We’re all running a race in search of joy. Paul tells us that the gospel frees us to run after joy in Christ, and so the question for this morning is: are we running in the right direction? Are we running after joy in Christ?

In the first half of this chapter, Paul talks about his former life when we was amassing all kinds of accomplishments and accolades. He saw himself as better than other people. He was more intelligent, more religious, more culturally savvy, more put together. Paul was the guy that everyone wanted to be - and he found so much of his identity and worth and joy in that. And then Jesus met him. Jesus intervened in Paul’s life, and over a period of time, Paul recognized that his whole life up to that point had been built on things that did not really matter. In fact, they obscured his need for Jesus and restricted his access to the joy that Jesus created him to know. And so Paul says that all of it - all that he had spent a lifetime building for his own glory - all of it was garbage compared to knowing Jesus.

And so it became Paul’s all-consuming passion: he says it in verse 10, that I may know him. Paul’s life became consumed with one goal, one pursuit, one race: to know Jesus. He is going to run after Jesus, and he urges us to follow him and to run after Jesus.

Now in the rest of the chapter he will unpack what it means to run after Jesus in several ways. The one I want to focus on today is found in verse 12, where Paul teaches: the gospel frees you to embrace your own brokenness. Look at verse 12 with me.

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own.

The gospel freed Paul to own his imperfection, his brokenness, his weakness, and his need. There is sadly a perception that is held by people both inside and outside the faith, that the church is a community of put-together people who do the right deeds, say the right words, and think the right thoughts. But Paul would say, “You could not be further from the truth.”

The baseline of Christianity is brokenness, weakness, and need. This is not the community of the “put-togethered.” And you guys are like, well, duh - do you see who I am sitting next to? The church is a community of people who gather around Jesus and with one voice to say, “We need help. We need healing. We need redeeming. We need forgiveness. We need grace. We need mercy. We need to be rescued.”

But it’s important that we recognize that brokenness isn’t just the starting point for the Christian, it’s the road on which we walk. It is part and parcel to the journey of faith itself. Listen to what Paul is saying here. Decades after he encountered Christ, Paul has gone on to plant numerous churches. He has led hundreds if not thousands to Christ. He has written half the New Testament. So if anyone has earned the right to say that they’ve made it - that they’ve got their life together, surely it’s this guy. But what does he say? “I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. I haven’t attained my goal of fully knowing Christ, knowing the power of his resurrection, knowing the joy that he has sown into my soul. I haven’t obtained it yet. I’m still running after Jesus, because I still need him.”

Paul owns his brokenness, not just as the starting point of his faith, but as part of the whole journey of his faith. And here’s why it’s important that we understand this point. I am betting that some of you are plagued by a recurring discomfort. You feel like if people really knew what was going on in your life, if people knew the things that you struggle with, if people knew your doubts, if people knew your sin, if people knew your full story, they would never accept you. And the reality is: most, if not all of us feel that way. We’re all in that boat together.

We are a community of broken, compromised people. And we don’t have to hide that fact. We don’t have to pretend that we’re doing fine. Because let’s be honest, pretending that we’re fine is exhausting and frustrating and it robs us of joy in Christ. But we don’t have to lie about the state of our lives, because the gospel frees us to own our brokenness. Verse 12 again:

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

How does the gospel free us to embrace our brokenness? We find freedom because Jesus has paid our debt on the cross. He has taken our unrighteousness from us, and he has given us his righteousness - so now when the Father looks at us, He says, “You are my son. You are my daughter. All my delight is in you.”

Parents, isn’t this what you want from your children? That they never feel as though they must hide their failures from you, but instead, because of their certainty of your unconditional love for them, they own their mistakes in the confidence that your love is not dependent on their performance, but rather on the fact that they are your own?

Well so it is in God’s family. In Christ Jesus, God has made you his own, and so you are free to own your weakness and embrace your need and to celebrate the grace of God. Jesus brings the freedom to be honest about the worst part of our story, because he has emptied it of its power on cross, and he has made us his own.

In a few weeks on Easter Sunday, we will have the amazing opportunity to celebrate a number of baptisms. Baptism marks the beginning of our new life in Christ, whether we are baptizing an infant or an adult - the message in baptism is the same: By God’s grace, you are now a member of his family, the Church. As part of that ceremony, you will see me take some oil and anoint the head of each baptismal candidate, making the sign of the cross on their forehead while saying these words over them: “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever. Amen.” You are marked as Christ’s own for ever. From the beginning of your spiritual journey, before you have the chance to do anything to earn God’s favor or earn your place in his house, by grace through Jesus Christ it has been decreed that you are marked as his own. Forever. These are the words spoken over us at the beginning of our life in Christ.

And especially this week, with the death of our brother, Novice, I am mindful of the words that are spoken over us at the end of our earthly life. You’ll notice that it is the same promise:

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

A sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. From the beginning to the end, and everywhere in between - we are Christ’s own. We have been claimed by him. And because that is true, we know the joy that comes from owning our brokenness and celebrating his grace.

This is the road to joy in Christ that Paul knew personally, and the road he urges us to take ourselves. Brothers and Sisters, he says, join in imitating me. I pray we do just that as we embrace our sinfulness and celebrate God’s grace. Let’s pray.