Getting into Christ

Do you remember the conversation? Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

Now, what's the logic there? Saul wasn't, never thought of himself as persecuting Jesus. He was persecuting these followers of the way. But what did the first words Jesus spoke to him teach him? That every follower of the way was united to the way.

Persecute them, and you're persecuting me. Each of our conversion stories are different, some more or less dramatic than others. The Apostle Paul's conversion on the Damascus Road definitely falls into the category of dramatic, and in his conversation with Jesus, Paul began to understand the wonder of the believer's union with Christ. And that's our topic this week on Renewing Your Mind.

I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Yesterday, Sinclair Ferguson was in Ephesians looking at all the blessings that are ours in Christ. And as I mentioned yesterday, you can request the complete 12-part series, Union with Christ, with a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Well, today, Dr. Ferguson considers Paul's conversion and turns to Philippians chapter 3 to help us see that when you truly understand your union with Christ, you'll say with Paul, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.

Here's Dr. Ferguson. Now, for our second study, we're going to take the theme of getting into Christ. We began in our introductory study by looking together at the tremendous number of times the Apostle Paul uses this expression in Christ, or a variant of it, and how the whole letter to the Ephesians presupposes these tremendous blessings that are ours. And for a passage for our second study, you might want to turn to Paul's letter to the Philippians and to Philippians chapter 3. Paul is not the only Christian in the New Testament who speaks about being in Christ.

It's something believers learn from the teaching of Jesus, and other apostles speak about being in Christ. But Paul is the one who dominantly exposes the wonder of this privilege. And at the same time, interestingly, he gives us clues as to the way in which he discovered that this was the privilege of every true Christian. We know in many ways more about his inner Christian life than about any of the other apostles. Of course, we know the outside story. It's narrated three times in the Acts of the Apostles.

Luke records it early on. Saul of Tarsus is converted. And then on two other occasions, Paul gives his own testimony to how he was brought to faith in Jesus Christ. But in a sense, the story he tells us in the Acts of the Apostles is the external history. And in Philippians, in Philippians chapter 3, writing to this church that if it was possible for him to have a favorite church, it was probably this congregation.

Certainly, they seem to have given him least hassle of all the early Christian churches. He opens up his heart to the Philippians in chapter 3, and he gives us some very strong hints about how it was that he came to be in Christ, and how he discovered how significant this notion was for the whole of his Christian life. And I want us to try and walk through the steps that he leads us on to explore this great theme. Of course, he's concerned about false teaching. Often, the greatest passages in his letters are responses to false teaching. And he is concerned, as he tells us in Philippians chapter 3 and verse 2, about those who are the dogs. They are people who are insisting that if you're going to be a real Christian, you not only need to believe in the Lord Jesus, but you also need to be circumcised. And everywhere Paul encounters this notion that you need something in addition to Christ, he always resolves the issue by telling us what it means to be in Christ, and that in Christ we have everything that we need.

And here he feels it's appropriate to describe this in very personal terms. He describes himself over against these false teachers who are boasting in the flesh, who want to add something to the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he tells us he has all the credentials anyone could need to oppose them because he once was one of them. If they have something to boast in, he says, I have more. Have they credentials?

Then my credentials are even better. As to righteousness under the law, he says in verse 6, I was blameless. If anyone has reason for confidence in the flesh, then verse 4, I had confidence in the flesh.

If anyone sought a righteousness of his own, verse 9, then I sought a righteousness of my own and believed I had discovered it until I realized that my righteousness was as filthy rags, and I needed, verse 9, the righteousness of God that is given to us in Jesus Christ. Now, normally and rightly, we think about Saul of Tarsus' experience on the Damascus Road as the turning point. But it seems to me Paul gives us hints here, and there are hints elsewhere in the New Testament, that that was part of something larger that was taking place in his life. And I want us to try and think about this in the light of what he says here. He tells us, first of all, what he was outside of Christ.

Here are people who are, in a sense, persecuting his fellow believers. And he tells us how he once was a persecutor of the church. By heredity, he had an impeccable pedigree, and by performance, he was outstanding in his generation. He tells us that he was born from the tribe of Benjamin, the first king. He tells us that he was born into a strict Jewish home. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He tells us that he was circumcised on the eighth day.

As far as inheritance was concerned, the Apostle Paul had the whole package. Occasionally, you will meet somebody who says they are a sixth-generation Texan. Or as Dr. Robert Godfrey was telling me the other day, he is a fifth-generation Californian, and there aren't very many of them. Or you might say you're a hundredth-generation Scot. Or you might say, as a man I know well, a wonderful man who bears the name, once told me he is actually a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards.

Or you might claim that your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. And you don't usually say those things to express your humility. Or your modesty. You say them to tell people there's more to me than meets the eye. You need to treat me with respect.

I am somebody. And Paul tells us he was able to say this. He had every reason, he says, for confidence in the flesh.

Because in his own estimation, as he says here, as far as the law was concerned, I was blameless. What he didn't know then was that there was a young man who had come to the Lord Jesus who told him the same thing, didn't he? All these commandments I have kept from my youth upwards.

And Jesus penetrated that facade and showed him there was a commandment that he clearly had not kept from his youth upwards. The man was rich. And so Jesus said to him, just show me that you don't covet these riches. Just let them go. Give to the poor.

Come and follow me. And it was in that moment of meeting with Christ that the man who believed he had kept the law from his youth discovered he hadn't really kept the law from his youth at all. And something similar seems to have happened to the Apostle Paul. He had no real sin consciousness.

Now, I don't mean by that that he would have claimed to have been perfect. I think I know what this means. Most people have no real sin consciousness. They think of themselves as good as or usually better than others.

Apparently, about 90 percent of people think that they are better than average drivers and many other things. That's how we tend to think about ourselves in this kind of very horizontal way. And Paul thought of himself in that way as well. And of course, that was his basic problem. What he needed more than anything else was sin consciousness because without sin consciousness, one never seeks a Savior. And it was to this that he was awakened in what seems to me to have been an extraordinary way. Remember how we are introduced to him in the Acts of the Apostles? He's there with Stephen, with Stephen as Stephen is martyred, and then he's breathing out persecution against the early church. He is a man with a profoundly violent heart persecuting the church. We often think, well, of course he was persecuting the church because he was a Pharisee. It was not because he was a Pharisee that he was persecuting the church the way he was.

How do we know that? His theological professor, Gamaliel, you remember, the man who said, let's just let these Christians be and God will decide whether they are of God or not. So, here was Paul going way beyond his own professor of theology and persecuting the church. Now, the big question is, why was he doing this? And I think that there are indications in the New Testament of what was going on in his life and the way in which over a season he was brought, yes, it came to a climax, but he was brought to faith in Christ and in that moment of coming to faith in Christ, this understanding of union with Christ became crystal clear to him. So, how did this come about? How was he brought to Christ?

Well, let me try and fill in the clues. The first clue is in Romans chapter 7. You remember how he says, before I became a Christian, I felt I was blameless according to the law, but then the law came. He means much more than I read the law for the first time.

He means something happened in his soul. The power of the law came and exposed his sinfulness. But what law? Well, the Ten Commandments, of course, but he doesn't say the Ten Commandments. He tells us exactly the law that broke open his soul.

It was, you shall not covet. When that law penetrated his thinking, he realized that he was a sinner, and he tells us he died. He realized he was a spiritually dead man.

Now, here's the question. That would not be true of every person who comes to faith in Christ. There's a whole range of commandments that might penetrate our facade. My question is, why that commandment? Why did the commandment not to covet penetrate the soul of Saul of Tarsus? Because he tells us here in chapter 3 that he was such a model Jew, nobody had anything he needed to covet until he met Stephen. Luke gives us a very interesting hint as to what happened in the Acts of the Apostles when he tells us that Stephen, as he was preaching the Word of God, was opposed by a certain synagogue. It's very interesting to notice what he says because it's one of those details that you just read over and you think is totally irrelevant. But listen to what Luke says, Stephen, full of grace, this is Acts chapter 6 verse 8, was doing great wonders and signs among the people, and some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the freed men, as it was called, and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen. Now, why put that information in?

Because most of us reading it move on because it's irrelevant. Answer, because it's actually the most relevant thing in the story, because this is the synagogue undoubtedly to which young Saul of Tarsus would have been told by his parents living in the region of Cilicia, when you get to Jerusalem, make sure you go to the synagogue where our relatives are, our people are. You send your child to the United States from Korea, what are your last words if you're a Christian? Make sure you go to the Korean church. First of all, they'll welcome you there.

It was the same here. There were all these different ethnic synagogues in the faith capital of these Jewish people. And it's very interesting, it was in this synagogue, particularly in this synagogue, that they were debating with Stephen. And listen to what we are told, as they debated with him, they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.

Now, imagine Saul of Tarsus. He has outstripped all of his generation. He tells us that in Galatians chapter 1. He says, I was advancing beyond most of my generation.

He actually means, that's apostolic modesty. He was head and shoulders above his contemporaries, and then Stephen appeared. And Stephen possessed the very things that Saul of Tarsus didn't. He had the power of the Holy Spirit. He was filled with grace. His life manifested the wonder and the power of the kingdom of God that had come in and through Jesus Christ.

And what's the next thing we know? The next thing we know is that Saul is standing beside his dead body approving of his martyrdom. And it's all so interesting that in that martyrdom, there are echoes of the Lord Jesus, aren't there? He sees the Son of Man standing at the right hand. He's the only Christian in the New Testament actually who calls Jesus the Son of Man, isn't he? That's Jesus' way of describing Himself. It's unique to Jesus. But you see, Stephen sees Him, and Stephen is full of grace. Stephen prays the prayer of Jesus from the cross.

Forgive them. And you see what's happening? Saul of Tarsus doesn't yet understand, but what is happening to him is that in Stephen, he is encountering the Lord Jesus Christ. And when that happens, you have experienced this.

People do it in sophisticated and unsophisticated ways. When people encounter the Lord Jesus Christ in the first place, encounter the Lord Jesus Christ in the life of a believer, they have only two options. Whether like Saul of Tarsus or in some much more sophisticated and gentile way, you have to destroy this. And so, they persecute, they demean, or you have to join. And so, what does Saul do? Saul chooses the first option.

I am going to destroy this. And he makes his way. He has these letters that give him authority to persecute the church. He is…he calls himself the chief of sinners, not because he was super pious, but because he was the one person in history who seemed to have been capable of destroying the entire Christian church. And then on the Damascus Road, Christ stops him.

And you remember the conversation? Who are you, Lord? I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.

Now, what's the logic there? Saul wasn't…never thought of himself as persecuting Jesus. He was persecuting these followers of the way. But what did the first words Jesus spoke to him teach him? That every follower of the way was united to the way.

Persecute them, and you are persecuting me. He had already taught the apostles this, hadn't he, in Matthew 25? Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you have done it to me. And of course, it took Paul many months, perhaps years, to work out in full detail what this really meant. But from the very beginning of his Christian life, the seed was sown. If you are a Christian like Stephen, then you are united to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that union with Jesus Christ transforms the whole of your life. And this is why in Philippians chapter 3, he says, you know, this is all I want to know. All I want to know is who this Jesus Christ is to whom I am united and to experience the outworking of that union so that my life is transformed until ultimately I'm actually conformed to the likeness of God's Son, Jesus Christ. He puts this in a single sentence, doesn't he, in Romans 8, 29?

God has destined us to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And you see, he had seen something in Stephen. He saw in Stephen that Stephen's death produced life in him, that in Stephen's own life there was a kind of reformation of that life to be like the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, who as a seed that was planted in the ground and died bore much fruit. And Saul then was brought to see that this was the meaning of what had happened to him. This actually was the meaning of what had happened to Stephen. I'm sure the early Christians didn't think that they buried Stephen with much mourning, and you can fully understand that. But what God intended them to see was that Stephen had been like Jesus, and Stephen had experienced the very things that Paul speaks about in Philippians chapter 3. He wanted to share in the fellowship of his sufferings and be made like Christ in his death, and then be made like Christ in his resurrection.

And Saul had seen that already appearing in Stephen. And when Christ met him on the Damascus Road, and in those few words hinted to him that every believer is united to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul committed himself to working that out in the whole of his Christian life. Now, my friends, that's great theology. Does it really make any difference to our lives? Well, actually when you look at Philippians chapter 3, you'll see that it makes a profound difference to our lives. For one thing, says Paul, it produces a new spiritual accountancy.

We count everything loss for the sheer value of knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord. And not only so, he says paradoxically it creates a kind of holy dissatisfaction. He says, essentially he says, I'm absolutely satisfied with Christ, but while I'm satisfied with Christ, I'm not satisfied with how much I know of Christ.

And so, I'm driving on to pursue this. In a sense, he's like a young man who's fallen in love with a young woman. He doesn't just want to make an appointment with her for next month at the same time. He finds himself so satisfied with what he has discovered in her that he wants more. And then Paul says, being united to Christ does this.

It creates a wonderful, wonderful simplicity. He says, this one thing I do, the only thing I do is pursue the knowledge of Christ. I think if I'd been there, I might have tapped him on the shoulder and said, come on now, don't put it that way. I've never seen you do just one thing. You're always doing a thousand things. And I think he would have smiled and said, you know, when you know that you are in Christ, you're not doing a thousand things. You're doing one thing, pursuing the knowledge of Christ in a thousand different things.

And that makes all the difference to the whole of your life. That's what it means to come to union with Christ. You and I have different callings, but whatever our vocation, you'd likely agree that your plate is full with school, with work, with family, with church. So what a great reminder from Sinclair Ferguson that when you know you're in Christ, you're not doing a thousand things, you're doing one thing. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind as we spend a week with Sinclair Ferguson, considering our union with Christ. You'll hear five messages from this series this week, but you can request access to all 12 along with the study guide by visiting renewingyourmind.org. Your generosity helps keep Renewing Your Mind freely available to countless Christians around the world, and also supports the translation and free distribution of our trusted teaching into the top 20 languages.

So give your gift at renewingyourmind.org, or by calling us at 800-435-4343. Thank you for helping serve the global church. As Sinclair Ferguson will remind us tomorrow, our union with Christ is not merely a theological idea. It's reality, and it should change the way that you and I live. So Dr. Ferguson will continue our study of our union with Christ tomorrow, here on Renewing Your Mind.