Fight For Your Life

We’re in a battle for our lives.  The apostle Peter tells us, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8).  Likewise Paul says, “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires … be made new in the attitude of your minds; and … put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness…. do not give the devil a foothold.  We must recognize the evil and sin in and around us and declare war on.  We must fight the good fight.

Paul teaches us, in Philippians 3:4-14, that this fight involves confronting pride – pride in one’s past, one’s pedigree and one’s performance. 

      First of all, one’s past.  Paul looked back on everything he formerly took pride in and considered it rubbish.  He says in v. 4, “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.”  ‘Flesh’ can refer not only to immorality but also to self-righteousness.  And though many saw Paul (in his Pharisee days) as a monument of moral and spiritual development, he considered what he was to be worthless.  And this is not self-deprecation or Paul struggling with poor self-esteem.  It’s just honesty before the living God.  God’s holiness makes our attempts at righteousness look pathetic, and God’s grace makes our efforts to appease Him superfluous.  Everything is a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ.

      Secondly, Paul confronted pride in his pedigree.  v.5: “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee.”  Paul was kind of a spiritual ‘blue blood’.  He was born into the right family, a Hebrew of Hebrews.  He was from Tarsus, a metropolitan city and one of the academic centers of the Roman empire.  He was also trained by Gamaliel, one of the leading rabbis of the day.  Paul was well bred and educated, but all that had only led him to persecute the very God he was trying to serve.  When he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, God wiped out all his pedigree points and saved him by grace.

      And so Paul had to confront the pride of performance.  He says in v. 6, “as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless”.  Paul was zealous for his cause only to find that he was mistaken.  He was faultless, in terms of legalistic observance only to find that his legalism could not save him – he could never be good enough.  Only the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith in Christ can save.  And so, in Paul’s life, legalism was replaced by grace. 

Fighting for the Gospel to win in our lives also requires a radical reassessment of what really matters.  Paul states, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”  Jesus eclipses everything else.  I think Paul’s experience is echoed by Augustine who, though well educated like Paul, was not the poster child for righteousness.  But God got a hold of them both (the self-righteous and the immoral) and transformed them.  And I think Augustine’s feelings must have been similar to Paul’s.  Augustine writes about the Lord reaching down to him in the depths of his sin and delivering him and says:

Your yoke and burden, dear Christ, felt wonderfully sweet, so much sweeter than those vain delights which I had forsaken. Indeed it was a joy to me to be deprived of those joys which earlier I had feared to lose. For you, O Lord, cast them away from me, and in their place you yourself entered me, bringing joy which is sweeter than any earthly pleasure. 

Jesus is joy sweeter than any earthly pleasure.  When Jesus gets a hold of us, we experience a radical reassessment of what really matters.  As The Message puts it:

all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master … everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him.

And so this fight involves treasuring Christ above all else.  Look at vv. 10-11, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”  Paul’s desire, above all else, was to know Christ.  Not simply to know things about Christ, but to know Him experientially, relationally, personally, really.  He wanted to gain Christ and be found in Him.  He wanted to know, for himself, the power of the resurrection (of being brought back to life, made new and set free).  And he was willing to face suffering and to die to himself to do so – to share in Christ’s sufferings and become like him in his death so that, whatever it took, he would be raised to life in Christ.  Paul treasured Christ above all else.  He wanted life in Christ. 

Paul was willing to live all-out to get that.  And so he reveals that this fight involves effort.  He says in v. 12, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”  And then in v.13, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  There is energy and emotion in Paul’s language.  He speaks of pressing on, pursuing, straining toward.  Paul was going after what God had for him.  The picture is of running a race - of a runner exerting him or herself; leaning toward the goal – lunging toward the tape at the finish line.  Paul’s language shows an undying commitment to reaching the goal; to achieving his end.

But notice also that he knows he can’t do it by his own strength.  Paul reveals that this fight involves allowing God to fight for us.  He admits in v. 12, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect;” and again in v. 13, “I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.”  Paul knows he is not there yet and he knows he can’t get there on his own (he’s already tried that). But he is committed to the race; to the pursuit: “one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”  It is God’s calling in Paul’s life that gives him the motivation, strength and endurance to run and to fight.  It is because Jesus has taken hold of him that he can strive to take hold of the life that God gives and cling to it tenaciously.

We are in a battle for our lives.  Are you fighting or do you find it easier to give up and give in?  Are you fighting or resting on your good intentions.  Do you want to fight, but it seems impossible?  Or you don’t know how?  Our fight is the same fight Paul was called to.  And so the way he fought is an example for us. 

Fight against pride – in your past; in your pedigree and in your performance.  We’re saved by grace alone.

Fight against a worldly assessment of what matters in life.  Power, money, sex and success may satisfy for a time, but they cannot ultimately satisfy.  Comfort and security are wonderful blessings, but they are not ultimate ends.  When Jesus gets hold of you, He brings about a radical reassessment of what really matters.  He really matters. 

Fight to treasure Jesus above everything else.  More than new phones and giant TVs; more than cars and homes and vacations; more than your job and your retirement fund; more than your appearance or popularity; more than  [you fill in the blank] – more than it all.  Everything is a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus.

Fight to allow God to fight for you.  Sometimes the biggest battle is getting out of the way in order that God can do the real fighting for us.  If fighting these battles in your life intimidates you, take heart!  You do not fight alone.  The Lord is a Warrior and He fights for us.

The living God has called you; He has taken hold of you.  So press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of you!  Forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead!  Press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus!  Do whatever it takes to grab hold of the life God offers.  Let go of everything else and cling to Christ.  Fight for the Gospel to win in your life.  Because only then will you see it win in your family, in your church and in your world.