The deepest moments of spiritual fellowship with the living Christ are the direct result of intense suffering. Suffering always drives us to Christ.
Why? Because we find there the sympathetic High Priest who cares. The friend who feels our pain, who knows our weakness and our infirmities. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. What do you care about most? What is the most important thing in your life? Well, if anything other than your relationship with Jesus Christ comes to mind, your values may change after today's broadcast. Because in a moment, John MacArthur will continue his study, The Road to Nowhere, with a look at why Christ is worth more than your greatest accomplishments, worth more than your closest relationships, worth more than all of your possessions, more valuable than, well, everything. So let's join John as he begins the lesson with a bit of review from last time, starting with an observation about religious people, one that might just surprise you. Philippians chapter 3, verses 8 through 11. Here Paul writes, "...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." You know the hardest person to reach in the world for Christ is the person who is religious.
And the more religious they are and the more sincere they are and the more stuck in tradition they are and the more ceremonial they are, the harder they are to reach. Why? Because all their confidence is in that stuff. And consequently, they count on that for their salvation. Paul says that is not just good and this is better, that is bad.
Why? Because religion damns the soul. False religion deceives the mind and damns the soul. So he said, when I saw the truth, that all of that wasn't good, it was bad, it was damning my soul, it was a false assurance, a false hope, a false salvation. I trashed it all and I took Christ. Now, what did He gain? Five things He gained. Knowledge, righteousness, power, fellowship, glory. Number one, salvation begins with the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
That's the first thing He gained. He gained the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Salvation is a relationship in which I know Christ. Not I know about Him, I know the facts about Him, I know when He lived, when He died, I know a few other facts about what He taught. Not that, but I know Him. Very different than knowing about someone.
There are a lot of people I know about that I don't know. And you can know about Christ and not know Him at all. So when Paul says, I would give up everything for the surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, he is saying it is a knowledge of love. It is a union of love that is intimate, that is supernatural, that is transcendent, that is mystical.
It is something way beyond anything you can experience in this life, in this world. And then to add warmth to it, he adds the personal pronoun, my Lord. He sees His Lord as Lord, that's sovereignty, that's kingship. He sees Jesus as Jesus, that's the Savior, that's the priestly role. He sees Christ, the prophet, the messenger of God. He sees Him as prophet, priest, and king, Christ being prophet, Jesus being priest, Lord being king, all three names emphasizing all three offices. And as He sees Him in that fullness, He yet sees Him in intimacy. He's my Lord, personal. That's what Christianity brings.
That's gain, see? Your race won't bring you that, your rank, your tradition, your ceremonies, your sincerity. The only way you'll ever come into deep knowledge and intimate love bond with Jesus Christ is through salvation by grace through faith. So He says, I count all that loss to gain the knowledge of Christ, a deep knowledge of love.
Salvation begins with the knowledge of Christ for which Paul says, I'll exchange anything for that privilege. What does he mean by that? How deep is the knowledge? How deep is it? Follow his thought.
Look at what he says. Verse 9, and may be found in Him. That's how deep it is. You are so intertwined in a bond of intimate love and knowledge with Christ that you are in Him.
Paul loves that concept. He refers to it at least 164 times in his epistles. We are in Christ. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live.
I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. In other words, it's not I but Christ. I don't know where I end and He begins and where He ends and I begin. We are inextricably intertwined. That's how intimate the bond is. That's how deep the knowledge is.
He moves through me. I have the mind of Christ. That's deep knowledge. So he says, I count everything in my life trash. I count all my religious achievements rubbish for that deep intimate love relationship with the living Christ. So, for Him I have suffered the loss of the all things. He puts in a definite article and count them but dung, manure, excrement, garbage, rubbish in order that I may gain Christ.
I've suffered the loss of all things. You see, knowing Christ, making Christ my own outstrips everything, absolutely everything. Second, salvation involves the knowledge of Christ, secondly the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Verse 9, it 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. You know what he spent his whole life doing?
All adult life. Doing what he says in the first half of verse 9, trying to gain a righteousness of his own derived from the law. That's what he spent his whole life doing. That's why he was a Pharisee. He was one of the elite 6,000 Pharisees, small number, who believed they could attain salvation by perfect adherence to the law of God.
What a burden, what an unbelievable burden, what a guilt trip, what a deception. And he said, I give it all up, I'll give all that stuff of having a righteousness of my own derived from the law up gladly. What kind of righteousness is that? It's the righteousness of self-control, the righteousness of external morality, the righteousness of religious ritual and ceremony, the righteousness of good works. It's self-righteousness. It's the righteousness produced by the flesh. Righteousness simply means doing right. It's doing the best you can do.
Like the Army commercial says, be the best you can be. Well, from God's viewpoint, it's not good enough. You see, Romans 3 19 and 20 says, by the deeds of the flesh or the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified. By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified or made righteous. You'll never be righteous by what you do, but he spent his whole life trying, his whole life.
And he wasn't alone. In Romans 10, his heart breaks for Israel. It breaks for they are not knowing about God's righteousness and they're seeking to establish their own.
That's their whole problem. Life long effort to establish their own righteousness by works, tradition, sincerity, ceremony, ritual, going to worship. He says, look, I'll gladly exchange all that hassle of law keeping pharisaical righteousness which I've tried to keep up all these years for Christ.
Why? Because, verse 9, from him through faith in Christ comes the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. I'll take the righteousness which is through faith in Christ, not works.
For by grace are you saved through what? Faith, not of works, lest any man should both. See, it's a matter of faith. You say, what is faith? Believing, but more than believing, it's not just intellectual assent. It's personal trust and complete surrender.
That's what it is. Someone said it's the yes of the soul to God. It's placing all complete confidence and trust in Christ. That's how you're saved. And when you put your faith in Christ, God gives you His righteousness.
That's verse 9. I want the righteousness which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Not human righteousness on the basis of works that doesn't please God. God's not impressed. Because the best you can do is filthy rags.
The best you can do is dung. The best you can do is to come short of the glory of God. How are you going to gain righteousness? What is righteousness?
It's right standing with God. It means God accepts you. How are you going to be accepted by God? By your own effort?
No. You're going to be accepted by God when you take by faith the righteousness He gives you because Christ paid the penalty for your sin. When you take Christ, God gives you in Christ righteousness. In other words, He accepts Christ in your place. And since Christ perfectly satisfies God and you are in Christ, God is satisfied with you. See, Paul is willing to lose the thin fading robe of reputation for the heavy glorious robe of righteousness which comes in Christ. A right relationship to God is not by works, it's by faith.
Boy, that's the key to this whole passage. You say, what is this faith? Let me give you a definition.
Listen very carefully. Faith is best described this way. Faith is the confident, continuous confession of total dependence on and trust in Jesus Christ for the necessary requirements to enter God's kingdom.
Did you get that? Faith is the confident, continuous confession of total dependence on and trust in Jesus Christ to provide the necessary requirements for entrance into God's eternal kingdom. It's not just believing that Jesus lived and died. It's trusting in Him and depending on Him to meet the requirements in your behalf to give you entrance into God's kingdom. It's the surrender of your life in trust to Him, to do what you can't do.
It's saying I can't do it. Paul had a life of trying and for a while it was all on the asset side. Now he says it's liability, trash, garbage. I don't want a righteousness of my own derived from the law. I'll fall short of God's standard.
It'll damn me. Self-righteousness is so damning because it's so deceptive. It meets man's standard and exceeds it, but it falls infinitely short of God's standard.
That's the deception. So he says Christ has gained in me for two reasons. Because in Christ I have the knowledge of Him, deep, mystical, rich union of love with the living Christ in which our lives are intertwined. Secondly, I have the righteousness of Christ.
Oh, bless God. He became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He took on my sin at the cross that I might take on His righteousness. Thirdly, salvation provides the power of Jesus Christ.
What else has gained to me? Paul says the power of Christ. Verse 10, that I may know Him...this is an ongoing knowledge now. He already started in that direction, already with the deep knowledge of Christ from verse 8.
But there's a longing to know more and that's how it is in a deep and intimate love relationship. That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection. That's what he means by this deeper knowledge. Paul says, I give up everything so that I can know His power. What do you mean, Paul? The power of His resurrection. You see, because I know Christ intimately, because I have the righteousness of Christ, I have available the dynamic spiritual energy that comes from Him. Like in Daniel 11 32 where the prophet says the people who know their God will display strength and take action. Paul says, I take Christ because of the power.
You know something? There's no power in the law. There's no power to overcome sin in my flesh. There's no real power for spiritual service in my flesh. There's no power for victory in my flesh. There's no power for witnessing in my flesh. He says, I've been operating without power and now I see all the power in Christ.
You say, how do you see it? In His resurrection. Why does He say the power of His resurrection? Because it was in His resurrection that He most graphically demonstrated the extent of His power. What other work of Christ is as powerful as that?
None. Raising Himself out of the dead showed that He had power over the physical world and also over the spiritual world. He had power over the human realm and death and He had power over the demonic realm and all the demons who wanted to hold Him captive. You see, the greatest display of power Jesus ever accomplished was His resurrection from the dead. And Paul says, that's the kind of power I want to experience.
That's what he's saying. Why did I trash this stuff and take Christ? Because of His power. His power. He knew His resurrection power in two ways. The first way was it was resurrection power that saved Him. When He was saved, according to Romans 6, He was buried with Christ in His death and He rose with Christ to walk in newness of life. So He's already experienced resurrection power in His salvation.
Everyone who comes to Christ, in a spiritual sense, we die with Christ, we rise again, so resurrection power is in us. But more than that, He wanted resurrection power to continue to be His resource. He wanted that power that He talks about many times in the Epistles. The power, for example, to conquer temptation. The power for service to Christ. The power to overcome trials that makes you strong when you're weak.
The power for witnessing in boldness. He wanted to be strengthened by the Spirit in the inner man. He wanted to know Colossians 1-11, the great might of Christ. He wanted the expression of that power which He spoke of in Ephesians 3-20 when He said, Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask or think according to the power that works in us.
He said, Why did I take Christ and say no to this? Because in Christ there's power. There's power over sin. There's power over temptation. There's power for service, power for witness, power over trials. There's power in my otherwise impotent life. That's why I count it all loss for the power that's in Christ to the believing soul. The power of the life of Christ pours into us, rises out of us to give us victory in this life. Paul says, What am I going to exchange for that? That's the only way I can conquer sin.
That's the only way I can have an effective life. What did he gain in Christ? The knowledge of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, the power of Christ. Fourth, salvation also brought him fellowship with Jesus Christ. Fellowship with Jesus Christ. He says in verse 10, there's something else that I consider gain, the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death. He'd already been conformed to His death in the saving sense that when He believed in Christ, He was buried with Him in baptism and rose to walk in newness of life as we saw in Romans 6 or noted a moment ago. He'd already fellowshiped in the sufferings of Christ in a saving way.
And I don't want you to misunderstand that. When you're saved, somehow supernaturally God puts you in Christ and you die in Christ and you rise with Him. He'd already experienced that kind of suffering. But what He has in mind here is something more. Not a saving union with Christ in His death and resurrection, but a fellowship, a partnership, a deep communion of suffering. What do you mean, Paul? What are you talking about? I'm talking about this. I'm talking about the fact that one of the things I gain in Christ is somebody to fellowship with when I suffer.
Did you get that? Somebody to fellowship with when I suffer, somebody who has suffered far beyond any suffering I will ever know, far beyond any suffering I will ever feel or experience, and I need a companion in my suffering. Any Christian on the face of the earth will tell you that the deepest moments of spiritual fellowship with the living Christ are the direct result of intense suffering. No question about it. Suffering always drives us to Christ.
Why? Because we find there the succoring, sympathetic, merciful High Priest who cares. The friend who feels our pain, who is in all points temp-like as we are, who knows our weakness and our infirmities. And he is saying, how blessed I am to be persecuted and to know that I am simply following the One who was persecuted before me and in whose fellowship I find comfort. Christ was rejected. Christ was mocked and despised and hated and killed, and Paul went through that too. And he said, I tell you, the greatest thing about suffering is that I have a companion in my suffering. Paul says, you know, when I'm very weak, I go to Christ, 2 Corinthians 12, and I find in Him my strength.
And that's what he means. It's a sad world we live in, isn't it? It's only a question of when your pain is going to come and how intense it's going to be.
We all suffer it. And where do you go? Where do you go when you want real comfort? When you want partnership in suffering?
Where do you go to have somebody feel what you feel? You go to Christ, don't you? That's the fellowship of sufferings.
One last thing. Salvation results in the glory of Jesus Christ. In the glory of Jesus Christ. Verse 11, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
You know what else I can't gain? The attaining of resurrection. I long for the glory of Christ. The resurrection from the dead. He uses the word for resurrection, never used anywhere else in the Bible. It's the out-resurrection. It adds the preposition, ek. It's the out-resurrection. It's graphic. Then the phrase from the dead, it means from the corpses, from among the corpses.
This is the way it reads literally. I want to attain the out-resurrection from among the corpses. What's that? It's a rapture. That's the time when He goes to be with the Lord and He gets a new body. That's what He's talking about. He's talking about that moment, that twinkling of an eye, when the dead in Christ shall rise and be changed into incorruptibility.
He talks about it in verse 20, our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory. That's what He wanted. He hated the flesh's weakness. He groaned with those in Romans 8, who groaned waiting for the glorious manifestation of the children of God, which meant the resurrection, the out-resurrection from among the corpses. That's what He wanted. He wanted the end of the conflict of the flesh and the spirit that He wrote about in Galatians 5. He wanted the end of the groaning of Romans 8, the redemption of His body.
That's what He wanted. And He said, I get that in Christ. I gain that in Christ.
Ask yourself a question. What will you give in exchange for your soul? You see, Christ offers you union with Him, righteousness, power, fellowship, glory. What are you going to hold on to that's equal to that? And what good is it going to do if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?
That's the question. What do we gain in Christ? The knowledge of Christ. Theologians call that identification.
Identification. We gain the righteousness of Christ. Theologians call that justification. We gain the power of Christ. Theologians call that sanctification. We gain the suffering with Christ.
Theologians call that participation. And we gain the glory of Christ and we all call that glorification. That's the pearl. That's the treasure.
The wise people sell all to make it theirs. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, continuing a study of Philippians chapter 3 titled, The Road to Nowhere, here on Grace to You. John, from what we know from Scripture, far more people are on the road to nowhere than aren't. And that should give us a sense of urgency to proclaim the gospel, but also to step back and examine ourselves and make sure we really are on the right road. I think the saddest possible scenario is what our Lord lays out in Matthew 7. Many, many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, we did this and that in your name. And I will say to them, Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.
I never knew you. That has to be the worst imaginable scenario. To think you belong in heaven only to find out you belong in hell. That is the most tragic of all realities. And it is so that the world today and even churches are full of people who think they're on the road to heaven. But they're on that road to nowhere. And nowhere is not nowhere.
It's really hell. This is the lesson that we've been trying to communicate in this very important series. This isn't a popular thing to say to people, look, you may not be saved, you may be deceived, you may be deluded, you may be living in illusion, but how important is it?
Even Jesus pointed it out. Don't be among those many who think they're in when they're not. Examine yourselves. Be sure. This study, The Road to Nowhere, is so important. I'd like to encourage you to get a copy of it.
You can download the MP3 files on the gty.org website. That's right. Thank you for that, John.
And friend, it's true. There is no more important matter than the question of where you will spend eternity. If you need help to be sure that you know the differences between counterfeit faith and genuine faith, or if you want to help others know where they stand with Christ, I would encourage you to download John's series, The Road to Nowhere, when you get in touch with us today. You'll find all six sermons from The Road to Nowhere at our website, gty.org, and those sermons are available to download free of charge in both audio and transcript format. Remember, you can download all of John's sermons from 56 years of his pulpit ministry at our website, so start downloading today when you go to gty.org.
That's our website. While you're there, gty.org, keep in mind that you can access thousands of other free Bible study resources at our website. You can read daily devotionals, you can watch videos from John's conference appearances, and you can dig into the Grace To You blog. At the blog, look for the series called Repentance and Assurance. It's a helpful supplement to the radio series John just wrapped up.
The website, again, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making our broadcast part of your Friday, and remember to watch Grace To You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378, or you can watch any time on gty.org. And then be here Monday when John shows you the type of love God hates. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on the next Grace To You.
