Noble Ambition #1

There is this preoccupation with Christ.

There is this preoccupation with knowing Him better. And this becomes the defining ambition of the Christian life. That's why we've titled today's message, Noble Ambition.

A heart and mind filled with a deep and abiding desire to grow closer to God and a life that is lived in anticipation of being with Jesus in heaven. Those are two unmistakable marks of a true Christian. Hello, I'm Bill Wright, and this is the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Today, Don will bring us part one of a message called, Noble Ambition, from our series entitled, That I May Gain Christ.

Let's join our teacher right now in the Truth Pulpit. We're going to begin in verse 8, reading through verse 11. The Apostle Paul says, Now, last time we focused on the first two verses in this passage, verses 8 and 9, and we answered the question, whose righteousness? In other words, we looked at the biblical issue of whose righteousness it is that entitles us, that gains us access into heaven and into a restored relationship with God. Whose righteousness is it that provides forgiveness of sin for us and makes us meet, as it were, to enter into the presence of a holy God?

Well, the Apostle Paul answered that question not only for himself, but for men of all time, in the words that he spoke in verse 9. He says that he wants to gain Christ, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law. It is not our righteousness that will gain us access into heaven. It is not our righteousness that can procure the forgiveness of our sins. We are fallen, we are apart from Christ, we are lost, and there is nothing that we can do to correct that situation on our own. There is no obedience that you can render to God that is sufficient for His holiness. There is nothing that you can do that can erase the stain of your past sins. Your hands are stained with the blood of the guilt of your sin, and there is nothing that you can do to wash them and get them clean.

You can pour lye on your soul, so to speak, self-righteous lye on your soul, and the stain remains, and there is nothing that you can do. And so it is not our righteousness, it is not our obedience, it is not our merit in accordance with the law of God that gives us what we need. And Paul rejects all of that and says, by contrast instead, look at it there in the middle of verse 9. He says, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. My friends, if we are in Christ, it is because God has graciously given to us a gift of His own righteousness that we have received by faith that we did not deserve and that we did not earn. Salvation is not a reward given to people who obey God, it is a gift given to people who are guilty of disobeying God.

It is a free gift and therefore received by faith rather than something that is earned by your personal merit. In verse 10, Paul is talking in a present tense sense, talking about what's happening in his human life as he was writing there in the first century, and what his desires were and what he was hoping for. And then in verse 11, he shifts to the future, he's looking to something yet to come.

And that distinction between the present aspect of his desires and that future desire helps us understand something about of what he is speaking about in this wonderful text. What is it that happens to a Christian once they have been justified, once they have been born again? What becomes of life for that person going forward? You see, a truly born again person is forever changed and never goes back to the prior unbroken pattern of sin in which he or she lived.

There is a change that takes place. Down in the innermost core of one's being, God has planted the principle of his Holy Spirit and a principle of life and a principle of spiritual affections that work themselves out in a way that is continually transforming during the remainder of life. Not spiritual perfection.

We've denied that and explained that in the past. It's not that a Christian becomes perfect, but there is an ambition, you might say, that takes over their life and starts to increasingly shape their desires and what it is that they want out of life. And it reflects in a transformed heart with transformed attitudes which then work themselves out in the external nature of life as well. And then the great culmination of that is when we enter into the presence of Christ and we are made perfect then, all sin is removed and we are glorified and we are with him forever and have been changed never to sin again, never to be tempted again. All sin removed and all desire for sin removed and we are made like Christ because we see him as he is. And in Philippians chapter 3 verse 20, look at it there with me, Philippians chapter 3 verse 20, you see this longing that Paul expresses. He says, our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly wait for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, future tense coming up here, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory by the exertion of the power that he has even to subject all things to himself. A future perfection coming while in this present life there is an ambition that is engendered in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So what happens after a man is justified?

Well, it's glorious. And this reflects the two-part aspect of our message today. You grow in sanctification and that ends in glorification. Sanctification and glorification. Paul in verse 9 has given us a principle of justification, how we are declared righteous by God. Now in verse 10 he's going to speak in a concentrated condensed form about the desires of sanctification. And then in verse 11 he's looking forward to glorification.

And that's what we want to see as we go through this text. So let's look first of all at verse 10, and if you're taking notes you can call this point the growth of sanctification. The growth of sanctification. And having said that, let me just say this, and especially for those of you that are either new Christians, this I think will be a great encouragement to you, or if you're new to Bible teaching, to understand that of what's being described here, it is high and it is lofty. These themes of desiring to grow in Christ, to grow in sanctification, and anticipating the goal of glorification, these themes are the noble ambition of the Christian life. These are the things that matter, these are the things that are preeminent.

This is priority number one and there is nothing in places 2 through 10. There is this preoccupation with Christ, there is this preoccupation with knowing him better, and there is this preoccupation with the anticipation of one day seeing him face to face, and this becomes the defining ambition of the Christian life. That's why we've titled today's message Noble Ambition. Yes, we live in the world and we go through life with work and family and all of those issues, but they are not an end in themselves. The things of earthly life are not an end in themselves and they're not the preoccupation of our mind. Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 to 4.

Go back there with me. This is a letter that Paul wrote in approximately the same period of time that he wrote the book of Philippians as he wrote from the Roman cell that he was being kept in. And in Colossians chapter 3, Paul is talking about with different terms, but he's expressing the same theme about the noble ambition of the Christian life and what it is that we set our hearts on, what it is that we hope in, what it is that we want out of life. And so he says in Colossians chapter 3 beginning in verse 1 there, he says, Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. And so as we take a little breath here to breathe in the atmosphere of Scripture, so to speak, we see what aspirations it is that define a truly Christian heart. And these are things that the unsaved man is not familiar with. These are things that many religious people know nothing about truly with power in their own heart, and yet Paul is expressing them as the essence of true Christianity.

It's incredible. And so let's just go through these two themes today, the growth of sanctification and the goal of glorification all too quickly in our exposition here today. The growth of sanctification, point number one. Sanctification, to define it simply, not technically, is the progressive spiritual growth of a true Christian. It's something that God does in our hearts, and it is something that we also pursue with the effort of our lives. In sanctification, the Christian dies increasingly to sin and grows in the righteousness of Christ.

You set aside, you put aside, you lay aside the things of the flesh, the carnality of the world and the carnality of your prior life. It increasingly becomes distasteful to you, and by contrast, the things of Christ and knowing Christ and His work in your heart become far more important to you. And in sanctification, God increasingly conforms us to be more and more like Christ as time goes on. Over the course of time, you know, from the point of your conversion, five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line, there is this growth, sometimes moving forward, sometimes receding back, but over time there is this direction of spiritual growth of becoming like the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that we can say, as one writer said, I don't have the source for the quote, but we can say, I'm not all that I should be, and I'm not all that I will be, but praise God, I am not what I was. Now look, if you're a Christian and you're honest with yourself, you're like me. I thoroughly, completely understand that I'm not all the man that I should be in Christ right now.

It grieves my heart that I still fall short of the glory of God like that. But that is not the defining aspect of the Christian. The defining aspect of the Christian is that God is changing us and sanctifying us and making us more like Christ so that we're not at all like we were before our conversion, and as time goes on, there is spiritual growth that is evident in our lives over the course of time. And yes, yes, we're not yet perfect, we're not yet glorified, but there is this evident aspect of the work of Christ in our lives, and we love that, and that's what we want, and we want more and more of it. That's what Paul's saying here.

I want to know him. And so what Paul is saying is that he wanted, if I can use theological terms to describe the essence of what he's saying here, he wants his justification of verse nine to produce sanctification in him in verse 10. And so look at verse 10 with me again and we'll just comment on it briefly. Having said in verse nine, I want to be found in him. He says in verse 10, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death. Beloved, the true Christian, the one who is actually justified in Christ and by Christ, wants to know these things.

Listen, the word know has different connotations depending on how you express it. And the know that Paul is talking about here is not simply the acquisition of more mental facts. It's not simply that he wants to become more intelligent and more refined in the minutia of theological jargon with no effect on his life. He's not simply wanting to become a, as one of my friends put it recently, he's not simply looking to be a fact checker as he listens to sermons and to sit in judgment of what has been spoken and did he get this point right and did he say enough facts about this, all in a mental, academic realm that is divorced from the desires and the emotions and the priorities of his heart.

That's not what Paul's talking about here at all. And it's so important for you to understand what he is talking about. What he is talking about is that there is this deep desire in his heart for an experiential understanding of Christ, for Christ to have a transforming impact on him so that his life and his desire and his experience is increasingly identified with, patterned after, reflecting something of the spiritual life of Christ himself while he was on earth. He says, I want to know Christ. I want to know the power of his resurrection. I want to know the fellowship of his sufferings. And beloved, it's just so vital for you to understand that this is more than, I'll repeat the phrase, this is more than a mental acquisition of facts. We are talking about a complete life transformation that enters into sympathetically with the experience of Christ. Paul is saying, I want to be even further transformed in Christ. And I want it to be personal.

I want it for myself. And this is a great problem for children who are born into a Christian home. Whether you're young and preteen or a teenager or a young adult in a Christian home, this is another thing that causes me to lose sleep is that I lose sleep over people like that because it is so easy for you to accept an external morality and to just kind of acquire more knowledge without any desire or any taste of this kind of spiritual transformation that true Christianity produces. And all I can do is plead for the Holy Spirit to work in your hearts because I can't make you be like a true Christian.

I can't make these desires take root in your heart. But what you find often in the next generation of Christians that come up, what you find is a creeping arrogance of, I've heard this stuff before, and it shows up in a worldliness and a preoccupation with the things of the world rather than the things of the Spirit, and it's just laughed off that you're not godly. It's just ignored as something that's not important to you. And I just want to tell you, as part of fulfilling my own responsibility before Christ as a pastor and as a preacher of the Word of God, is that that's a place of great, great danger to know the truth externally but not to own it personally and to become a skeptic, to become a scorner, to become a mocker of the very things that the home of your mother and father stand for. And real Christianity never goes there. See, real Christianity is expressed.

This isn't just Paul. This is what true Christianity produces. In the heart of one who's truly been born again, I want to know Christ. I want to know the power of his resurrection. I want to know the fellowship of his sufferings.

And yeah, I get animated. It's not because I'm upset or angry with anybody. I'm just concerned for the state of your soul. What can we say about the Apostle Paul? The Apostle Paul, think about this. Think back to his conversion in Acts chapter 9 when he met the Lord on the road to Damascus. And the Lord appeared to him in glory.

Paul fell on his knees. Who are you, Lord? I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting. This was one great, phenomenal moment in human history and in the life of the Apostle Paul. Christ appeared to him personally, intervened as he was heading to Damascus in order to persecute the Church of Christ.

Jesus Christ appeared, stopped him in his tracks, and he was converted in that very moment. Now, in today's Christian culture, a guy would write a book about that, talk about his great experiences that he'd had. For Paul, he had that, and he didn't want to rest on what his past experience was. He didn't want to rest on his laurels, so to speak. He was not satisfied with what had happened in the past and living off some kind of past experience. And if anybody was going to do that, if the Lord had appeared to you personally and struck you down by a vision of his glory, you know, that would be a pretty ripe candidate for somebody who'd say, you know, I'm just going to keep thinking about that. Paul wouldn't have it.

Paul didn't want it. That wasn't enough, because he knew that there was more to know. He wants even more in his walk with Christ, in his union with Christ.

Now look, there's a personal way that we can all understand this. You meet somebody for the first time. Maybe you think back to when you first met your spouse.

A little spark there and light of interest and how engaging it was. You meet someone else that you find interesting, someone who charms you. Well, what happens after that initial exposure, that initial introduction? What happens? Well, in your heart, you want to build on the acquaintance.

Don't you? You want to know more. That was such a great conversation. I'd like to get together with that person again. I want to know him better.

I want to know her better. There's more to know there. There's more to drink from that well. And you desire more, and you're not content with just that initial introduction. Well, beloved, multiply that common human experience by infinity, and you have something of what it is like for Christian conversion to produce a noble ambition for Christian growth.

You know, you come to Christ, especially in your adult years, and your life has changed, and that sweet joy of conversion comes upon you, and the Word of God opens and explodes on your mind with all of its truth and transforming impact, and those blessed early days of conversion are so sweet. Well, when that happens, you want more. It's like drinking salt water. You know, I drink this water, and it makes me thirsty for more, and I just keep drinking, and it just makes me more and more thirsty. That's the way it is with a true knowledge of Christ. You know Him, and it makes you thirsty for more. You know Him better, it makes you thirsty for more. That's how great and infinitely glorious He is.

He satisfies the human heart completely, and then He makes you want Him even more. Well, we hope you've been encouraged today in your firm reliance on the righteousness of Christ alone for your salvation. It's a free gift from a holy God. Well, friend, we pray that this message has built you up in your faith. Don Green will have more edifying teaching from Scripture next time on The Truth Pulpit, and we hope you'll join us. But before we close, here again is Don with a special word for you. As we close today's broadcast, I just want to thank the faithful staff and generous friends who make this broadcast possible. I may be the voice of The Truth Pulpit, but the teaching would not reach you without the partnership of many others behind the scenes. So I say thank you to them, and thank you to you who listen.

It is a privilege for me to serve Christ by serving you in the teaching of God's Word. Thanks, Don. And friend, remember, you can find all of Don's teaching in one place at thetruthpulpit.com. That and much more, all at thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.