Religious Credits that Don't Impress God A

Most of the people in the world believe they will attain eternal life by accumulating religious credits. Most of the world believes that. The only people who don't are Christians. The rest do.

They are deceived. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Imagine that you're standing at the gates of heaven and you're asked to hand over a resume.

That's right. In order to enter paradise, what if you had to spell out your qualifications for eternal life and for a place in heaven? What would you put on your resume? Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur is going to show you what a resume like that should not include, as he looks at religious credentials that don't impress God. It's part of John's current study titled The Road to Nowhere.

And now here is John MacArthur with the lesson. Philippians chapter 3 and verse 4. Paul writes, Although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh, 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 of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. But whatever things were gained 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 in order 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. Now in those marvelous verses is one of the great personal testimonies in the New Testament. It is also one of the most significant statements on the matter of salvation found in the New Testament. It is Paul's own testimony as to the dramatic attitude that occurred in his mind at the juncture at which he met the living Christ. It takes us into the very heart of the sinner's attitude in conversion. And you will notice, as we read, that Paul sees this matter of salvation from the viewpoint of a transaction or an exchange.

He even uses business and accounting terminology. The heart of the passage is in verses 7 and 8. And you will notice in verse 7 the word gain is used, kerdas, it means profit. And if you were an accountant, you would indicate this as the term to describe the profit column.

That's what its use is related to. You will also notice in verse 7 the word loss. Again, that word zamia is used in extra biblical Greek to describe a business loss.

And so this would be the loss column. So the Apostle Paul is talking about profit and loss. You will notice also in verse 7 the word counted.

That word hegemai means to count or account or reckon. So Paul here is talking about a business transaction that involved a profit column and a loss column. There were certain things which he felt were in the profit column which he switched over to the loss column when he met Christ. In fact, he says very clearly in verse 7, Whatever things were profit, those things I have counted as loss.

Now what you have here is a transaction. You have the Apostle Paul spending a lifetime accumulating spiritual profits and filling up a column of spiritual profit, banking on that column of spiritual profit to earn him salvation. That's what he means in verse 9 by the righteousness of my own derived from the law. So there he has his profit column filled up by which he hopes to earn salvation. But he encounters Jesus Christ. And upon encountering Jesus Christ he comes across, verse 9, a righteousness not his own, but righteousness which comes through faith in Christ. And instantaneously he counts everything that he once saw as profit as loss and gives it all up in order to gain Christ. He realizes that everything he had been accumulating to buy his way into the kingdom was rubbish.

That's the word he uses in verse 8, rubbish. And he gives it all up for Christ. Salvation then was a transaction. Here was a Jew.

Here was a pedigree Jew. Here was the ultimate Jew with all of the credentials who looks at all of his Jewish credentials and assumes that he has thereby gained entrance into the kingdom and impressed God greatly. Only to find out in confronting the living Christ that all of that which he assessed as profit was in fact garbage, loss, detriment, negative. And he willingly gives it all up for Christ, exchanging a righteousness which he thought he could earn but couldn't for a righteousness which God gave through faith. That's the theme of this great passage. And what Paul is saying is that I am willing to give up trusting what was once valuable to me as a means of salvation to trust Christ instead. It is an exchange and that's what salvation is.

It is self-denial. Jesus said, deny yourself and follow me. In other words, consider all that you have attained as useless, worthless, and follow me. This particular attitude is described most magnificently in the words of Jesus. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 13.

And here we have from the very lips of our Lord himself the clear insight into what Paul is saying in his personal testimony. In Matthew chapter 13 and verse 44, the Lord Jesus says this, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field. Now the phrase the kingdom of heaven means the sphere where God rules. That is the sphere of salvation. We could even use the word salvation so let's read it that way. Salvation is like a treasure hidden in the field. We could even say Christ the Savior is like a treasure hidden in the field. Which a man found and hid and from joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Now the idea is this. You have a man who has accumulated wealth. He's accumulated a certain profit. He has certain possessions. But he stumbles across a treasure that is so valuable that he will gladly give away everything that he has to get that treasure.

That's the exchange. He will sell everything, liquidate it to gain that true treasure. Verse 45, the same idea is given in another parable. The kingdom of heaven or the sphere of salvation is like a merchant seeking fine pearls. Here is a man who is going around seeking fine pearls. The assumption is that he has accumulated a lot.

He has many possessions. He may have many pearls. But, verse 46, upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

And again you have the same idea. Here is a man who has accumulated much but sees it as worthless when compared to the great value of the pearl that he discovers. A man with many possessions finds a treasure, gives up all his possessions for the treasure. A man with many pearls gives up his pearls for the one pearl of great price. This is the exchange. We accumulate a lot in our life and we assume that it has value.

And we tag it with certain value. But when compared with Christ, it is rubbish. Such was the teaching of Jesus and such was the experience of Paul. Of the experience of Paul, F.B. Meyer writes, he was a man with a rich religious nature, capable of an infinite hunger after God who passed from one stall to another amid the religions of the world seeking for the best. But finally when he came where the gem of heaven and earth and sea, the pearl of great price lay, translucent and glistening, he gladly sacrificed all he possessed to win it. That's exactly what Paul is saying here. That's exactly what Jesus said salvation was all about. The attitude of a man at the crux of salvation is, I will give up everything I have depended on to earn my favor with God for Christ.

I'll give it all up. The word rubbish deserves our attention. You will note it there in verse 8 at the end of the verse. He considers everything that was in the prophet column as rubbish. It is the word skubalon. The word refers either to human excrement or to garbage thrown away. Something useless, waste, rejected, filth, refuse. Some Bibles translate it dung, some Bibles translate it manure, some say rubbish, some might even say garbage, some might say waste. But Paul is saying all of my prophet column I saw to be manure, useless, waste, get rid of it. It has no value. That is a very strong statement when you consider what was in his prophet column.

What was in his prophet column is listed in verses 5 and 6 and there are some pretty heavy duty credentials there. But Paul treats them all as if they were manure, absolutely useless. Now listen, vice, listen carefully. Vice is not the only muck of life. Vice is not the only useless refuse. Vice is not the only garbage. Vice is not the only rubbish.

Religion is rubbish too. Any man-made effort to gain salvation is as much rubbish as vice is rubbish. And Paul is speaking out of personal experience. He said that Christ saved him and he said, I was the chief of sinners. And listen, he was the chief of sinners, not because he lived a vice-filled, lewd, licentious life, because he didn't.

He lived an eminently moral life. But he saw the deepest, vilest rubbish of life as religion, not immorality. It's one thing to act immorally, it's something else to believe that God is so low that you can earn acceptance with him. One desecrates God to one degree, the other desecrates God to a greater degree. One violates his law, immorality. One assumes him to be less than he is and violates his nature.

Thus religion is a rubbish. And the rubbish that Paul viewed in his own life was not the rubbish of vice, but it was the rubbish of religion, of trying to please God through self-effort and religious works. Now, Paul is giving his personal testimony starting in verse 4.

Why does he do that? Well at the end of verse 3 he said that true Christians put no confidence in the flesh. True Christians do not trust in anything they do to earn salvation. They put no confidence, zero confidence in the flesh. True Christians, those who have the true circumcision, which is a spiritual circumcision, they worship in the Spirit of God, verse 3 says, and their joy and their glory and their boasting is all in Christ Jesus. And they put no confidence in the flesh.

None whatsoever. The flesh provides nothing. Even when it acts religiously. There are people, plenty of them, the world is filled with them, who live under the deceptive illusion that they can work their way to God. That by religious duty and ceremony and all of that they can earn their way into God's presence. They can acquire the privilege of eternal life.

That's confidence in the flesh. Paul says true believers have none of it. Paul wants none of that illusion. Now remember, the Philippians were being assaulted and pelted by a group known as Judaizers. These were Jewish people or people in the Jewish religion who believed in Christ to some degree. But also believed that in order to be saved you had to be physically circumcised and keep all the laws of Moses. And so they came into the church at Philippi and they said, you people who are believing in Christ and thinking that's enough for salvation or wrong you must be circumcised and you must keep all the Mosaic law. And so they were imposing upon these believers this two-fold emphasis, circumcision and the Mosaic law.

Paul then is writing and saying beware verse 2 of those people. They are dogs. They are evil workers. They are the false circumcision. Beware of them. Don't let them push this off on you. True Christians worship in the Spirit of God, rejoice in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

That is in circumcision or works. And he wants it made clear. What he is saying here is Christians are the true covenant people and these Judaizers are not. Now, having said that in verse 3 he anticipates their reaction. What's going to happen? The Christians are going to say, boy, Paul, you've really made it clear here we're to have no confidence in the flesh. And the Christians are going to say to the Judaizers, hey, Paul says have no confidence in the flesh. And what are the Judaizers going to say?

Well, they're going to say something like this. They're going to say, ha, well you're a Christian. You don't understand the value of Jewishness.

You don't understand the privileges of Judaism because you're a Gentile Christian. And what does Paul know? Paul's a Christian too. What does he know about this? So Paul wants to settle that once and for all. So what he does is he recounts all his Jewish credentials.

And in effect what he is saying is, look, I can tell you put no confidence in the flesh as one who has every reason to have confidence in the flesh. And you can't say I'm a Christian so what do I know? I am first before I was a Christian a Jew and I am a Jew of Jews. I know the privileges of Jewishness. I know the benefits of Judaism.

I have experienced it all. And I am telling you out of that experience it is rubbish. He is not disparaging Judaism because he is jealous of something he doesn't have. He's not disparaging Judaism because he is envious of what someone else has. He is not depreciating Jewishness. In the sense that he couldn't have it so he's going to castigate everyone who does.

Not at all. He is saying I've been there. I've stood on that same ground.

I have impeccable Jewish religious credentials. And I can tell you put no confidence in the flesh. It is garbage. It is garbage. It is waste.

It is useless, profitless. For every advantage that these Jews could claim, he could claim the same thing. They could say, oh, it's a great thing, boy, when you follow the law. It's a great thing when you are zealous for the law of God. It's a great thing when you go through circumcision and all of that. It's a great thing. What do you know? You're Gentiles.

It's a great thing. Paul says I know and I know it very well and I know it firsthand and it's garbage. That's what he's saying. Now let's look at his testimony in verse 4. Although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. The end of verse 3 says Christians don't put any confidence in the flesh although I myself, that's an emphatic form there, might have confidence even in the flesh. I mean, it's not that I don't know what I'm talking about. Listen, if there was confidence in the flesh, I might have it.

I might have it. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more than anyone else. Now he's not saying this to build his ego. He's not saying this to convince people of his spiritual superiority. He is simply saying it for the sake of argument. He doesn't really want to boast in his flesh.

He doesn't really have any confidence in his flesh. In 2 Corinthians, read chapter 11 verse 16 through chapter 12 verse 1 sometime and he uses the same argument of boasting there but he calls it foolish. It's foolish to boast. I only do it for the sake of making a point.

Just for the sake of argument. He says if anybody might boast in the flesh, it would be me because of my impeccable Jewish credentials, my religious credentials. You see, he knew what it was to be a Jew. To be a Jew in the highest sense of the term and yet he deliberately, knowingly, willingly abandoned it all for the sake of Jesus Christ.

He counted it all as worthless. He sold it all to gain the true treasure, the true pearl, even Christ. Now in verses 4 to 7, he tells what was lost and in verses 8 to 11 what was gained.

And in the middle is Christ. He says this is what was lost, verses 4 to 7, and this is what was gained in Christ. I gave up all this stuff and this is what I gained.

Now keep this in mind. It didn't start out as loss. It was all in his prophet column. It was all his prophet, his credentials, his Jewish achievements, privileges and rights.

But he saw Christ and he understood the gospel and he realized it was useless. I'd like to entitle this message, religious credits that don't impress God. Religious credits that don't impress God. Paul is saying in every sense I am an authentic Jew.

I have a consummate pedigree. I have had it all, but I consider it worthless when it comes to Christ. Because none of it can gain salvation. Do you understand that's his point? He isn't saying it's of no value socially. He's not saying it's of no value educationally. He's not saying it's of no value historically. He's saying it's no value salvifically to borrow an old theological world. It can't save you. It can't redeem you. But if it could, I could boast in it. And he is saying how foolish it is to boast in your religious credits.

And by the way, listen to me carefully when I say this. Most of the people in the world believe they will attain eternal life by accumulating religious credits. Most of the world believes that. The only people who don't are Christians.

The rest do. They are deceived. And that is particularly true among Jews because there is Old Testament precedent for their religion. And so they believe if they live by that they are amassing in the prophet column the credits that impress God. And by which he will grant them salvation.

Paul says not so. It is manure, it is waste, it is garbage. It's worthless.

Because I have discovered, he says, in my encounter with the living Christ that salvation is by grace through faith. It has nothing to do with what you have received by way of heritage. It has nothing to do with human efforts. It has nothing to do with religious duties. It has all to do with Christ. All to do with Christ. Father, we thank you for your word.

Such a clear cut text. Such a great testimony from this marvelous man as you moved in his life. Father, thank you that you have shown us again the rubbish that most people count valuable.

And they are accumulating manure, waste, that will buy them nothing. When they could drop it all and turn to Christ and receive everything. Thank you for the gift of salvation which we can receive as you offer it to us. To that end we pray that many may receive it this day. That it might be to your glory in Jesus' name. Amen. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary.

The title of his current study is The Road to Nowhere. Now John, in this study you've talked about a theme in the New Testament that you said goes hand in hand with the Gospel itself. That theme is the need to assess the reality of our salvation to make sure that you truly are a Christian. Along that line, in your experience, John, what is the primary reason that people think they are saved when they really aren't? I think the main reason people think they're saved when they really are not is because they underestimate the essence of true saving faith.

I don't know any other way to say it. They think maybe if they just believe in Jesus, believe good things about Jesus, believe he was God, believe he died on the cross, believe that he's the Savior and that he rose from the dead, that's enough. Just sort of a superficial belief in the facts. Well look, demons believe the facts. The world is full of people who believe the facts. People in false religions can even believe the facts about Jesus. Yeah, the reason people think they're saved when they're not is very often because they have been given a superficial understanding of the Gospel, a truncated presentation of the Gospel.

This has been a concern for me through my entire ministry life. I believe that what our Lord said in Matthew 7 is a reality. Many will say to me in that day of judgment, Lord, Lord, we did this in your name and that in your name, and he's going to say, Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. And that's many, many will say. On the other hand, few in the very same passage, Matthew, he said, really come to true salvation.

Most people based on that, that think they're Christians, are not. How do you know whether your salvation is real? I'd love to send you a booklet that I've written to get at this issue. It's available free to anyone who asks.

Thanks, Jon. And friend, nothing is more important than making sure you know where you stand before the Lord. To help with that, Jon has written a booklet called Unshakeable Assurance, and we'd like to give you one free of charge. To request your free copy of the booklet, Unshakeable Assurance, get in touch with us today. You can email your request to letters at gty.org, or you can call us at 855-GRACE. You can also request your booklet from our website, gty.org.

The title of the booklet, again, Unshakeable Assurance, and it's a great resource to give to someone who may be questioning his or her salvation, and it can help give you confidence that your salvation in Christ is permanent. To get a copy at no cost to you, call 855-GRACE, or stop by our website, gty.org. When you visit gty.org, you'll find thousands of resources to help you dig deeper into Scripture. That includes the Grace To You blog, daily devotionals, more than 3,600 of Jon's sermons, all of them free to download. And if you're not sure where to begin, check out GraceStream. That's a continuous broadcast of Jon's verse-by-verse teaching. It goes through the entire New Testament. Dig into those free resources today.

Just go to gty.org. Now for Jon MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Here's a question for you. If your possessions lose value in your eyes, how can that be actually a good thing? Find out when Jon returns with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You!