By Randall L. Broad
Read: Isaiah 66:1-24; Philippians 3:4b-21; Psalm 74:1-23; Proverbs 24:15-16
Humanity has long viewed the world through the lens of two competing realities: the spiritual and the non-spiritual. In older times this was defined as the physical and the meta-physical; and in more modern times as the secular and the non-secular. Today not many people understand what the term ‘meta-physical’ meant; it is rarely used in a culture that glorifies progress measured by advances in modern natural science and technological achievement. Still the battle between the two spheres rages on in the shadows and is becoming increasingly bitter as believers and non-believers defined the world in light of their revelation, discovery and understanding. We find in our reading today one of the sources which helped define the division of those two realities. Throughout his epistles and particularly here in Philippians Paul presents his world in two spheres: one sacred, righteous, and supernatural; the other pious, religious, and legalistic.
Paul begins our reading today admitting he once lived in the latter ...
3For
it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in
Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4though I
myself have reasons for such confidence.
If someone else thinks they
have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised
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; 6as for zeal,
persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
Philippians 3:3-6
Though Paul has every reason to boast of his worldly achievements; he knows there is a better way to experience God–the reality of God spiritually manifested through Christ in the world. Paul’s own conversion experience occurred in the world on the “Road to Damascus” when he meets Christ through the Spirit and he is never the same. This is a profound experience often difficult to express in words and thus his true intent has been distorted throughout human history by both the church and by secular scholars. They noticed from his writings and the teachings of Christ the idea of two separate, distinct realities co-existing in time and space. This dualism became the dominant thought of theologians, metaphysicians, and philosophers in the middle ages and led to the rise of monastic orders, spawned the division of scholasticism, and justified countless wars and religious struggles throughout human history.
However it is important to understand Paul never saw these two parts of his life as competing realms that defined the reality of his existence. For him they were simply two ways in which he had sought out and experienced God: one through piousness (v. 4-6) and the other through the Spirit (v. 3). Thus Paul’s main premise is simply the experience of Christ through the Spirit is superior to any achievement in the world.
7But
whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What
is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider
them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not
having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is
through faith in a Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of
faith. 10I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his
resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his
death, 11and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the
dead.
12Not
that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers
and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one
thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I
press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me
heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:7-14
Paul’s language in this passage rejects the worldly gains of the Pharisee for the spiritual embrace of Christ by the Apostle. Yet ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ became two realities that described the experience of God at the crossroads of the Messianic age. After Christ, and more specifically after Pentecost, humanity would be defined as either people who live in the Spirit or those who live in the flesh … and they would come to view each other as enemies with mutually incompatible kinds of existence. In modern times we interpret the divide between Saul’s physical achievement and Paul’s spiritual devotion in this passage as an example of the distinct and separate domains where a person is free to accept and/or deny the lifestyle they chose. But Paul would have rejected the very idea he was the one who chose; the choice was made for him on the Damascus Road and he walked in the calling he received through the Spirit to know Jesus Christ all the remaining days of his life … specifically he desired to know the power of his resurrection (v.10), and in doing so somehow … attaining to the resurrection from the dead (v. 11), by … participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia brought peace to Europe after more than a century of war and made possible a cultural and political transformation that served as an important bridge between the Renaissance (1454-1648) and Enlightenment (1649-1789).
“The
whole of medieval history is centered upon the theme of the predominance of the
spiritual sphere over the secular sphere, the predominance of the regnum
gratiae (the Spiritual Kingship of Christ) over the regnum naturae (Reign of
Nature); and the modern age is characterized by an ever increasing independence
of the secular in its relations with the spiritual.”[1]
The Treaty of Westphalia was also the birth place of the nation-state that would pave the way for the American and French Revolutions where the preeminence of the individual and the secularization of government would become vital to national life. The Enlightenment spawned evolutions in the natural and social sciences that led to the industrial revolution (1790-1899) and a modern worldview where truth became increasingly experiential and relative. It created an environment of secularism in which it became possible for an individual to live in one sphere or the other and defend their choice with the doctrine of dualism.
The doctrine of dualism plays an important role in our modern understanding of everything. In the Church dualism began as a way to experience God, grew into a doctrine to explain our fallen nature, and turned into a cosmic law; it imagines the existence of two realities; one material (physical) and one immaterial (spiritual). With the rise of Scholasticism a more secular view emerged in the discipline of philosophy which rejected dualism’s relationship with deity and redefined the two realities within the scope of humanism–the body and the mind capable of non-physical thoughts. While philosophers and meta-physicians debated the necessity of God in one sphere; scientists and academics debated His very existence giving rise to the idea of atheism (circa 1570), which is essentially the denial of any spiritual reality. Dualism makes perfect sense to the vast majority of people who are not philosophers or metaphysicians but who still needed an explanation of the experiential differences and often irreconcilable properties of the mental and the physical spheres.
It’s perfectly rational to exist solely in the philosophical reality of mind and body when you do not believe in God, but much more challenging for the Christian who cannot escape their experience of God through the Spirit. We see this manifested in our reading today. Paul would have never been able to wrap his mind around the concept of atheism. He lived in an age when everyone had a spiritual nature. In fact, it was an age in which more people struggled to grasp the concept of ‘one god’ than ‘no god’. There were most certainly people who would have rejected the existence of god (… though probably not the spiritual side of humanity), but they were small in number and Paul was not writing to them or about them. Paul would have rejected their pagan religions and their superstitions, but he was an intensely spiritual man himself especially after the Damascus Road experience. The power of that experience left on him the indelible mark of the Spirit of God, whereby he would forever “boast in Christ”, and ended his efforts to experience God through his flesh.
He ends today’s reading with an exhortation to follow his example.
15All
of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some
point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16Only
let us live up to what we have already attained.
17Join
together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us
as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. 18For, as I
have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as
enemies of the cross of Christ. 19Their destiny is destruction,
their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is
set on earthly things. 20But our citizenship is in heaven. And we
eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21who, by
the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will
transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Philippians 3:15-21
In these final verses we see one of Paul’s richest calls for his disciples to follow his example as he has followed Christ’s. For Paul had discovered through his own life experiences there was more than one way to seek God, but there was only one way to find Him. It was not through his efforts or piousness that he meets Jesus, but rather through the Spirit and the redeeming quality of the cross. He also makes clear in this passage that he has not yet … arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me (vv. 12-14). In all the remaining days of his life he would seek to experience Jesus through the Spirit while living in the world. For Paul the reality of the world and the Spirit of God were united; there was no division between God and his creation. Paul never intended for his thoughts to be interpreted any other way. The same can be said for the entire New Testament.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Ethics:
“One is
denying the revelation of God in Jesus Christ if one tries to be “Christian”
without seeing and recognizing the world in Christ. There are, therefore, not
two spheres, but only the one sphere of the realization of Christ, in which the
reality of God and the reality of the world are united. Thus the theme of the
two spheres which has repeatedly become the dominant factor in the history of
the Church is foreign to the New Testament. The New Testament is concerned
solely with the manner in which the reality of Christ assumes reality in the
present world, which it has already encompassed, seized and possessed. There
are not two spheres, standing side by side, competing with each other and
attacking each other’s frontiers. If that was so, this frontier dispute would
always be the decisive problem of history. But the whole reality of the world
is already drawn into Christ and bound together in Him, and the movement of
history consists solely in divergence and convergence in relation to this
centre.”[2]
Reread this
passage in Philippians in light of Bonhoeffer’s words and you will discover a
whole new meaning to Paul’s thoughts–a whole new meaning to the One Year
Bible–a new understanding of the universe where Christ is the center of the spiritual and the non-spiritual; the physical and the metaphysical; the secular
and the non-secular.
Walk with the Lord …
Ephesians 1:17
(RLB231002)
© Copyright 2019: Randall L. Broad.
Disclaimer: This commentary is written by Randall L. Broad. It is in no way affiliated with or represents any denomination, university, church, or pastor. Any errors or omissions are purely my responsibility.
[2] Bonhoeffer, 195.
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