Dr. Ron Sumners
August 1, 2010
I have a confession to make. I have been working on my resumé this week. Now, before you begin to wonder whether I’m looking for another church or that I am frustrated here, I need to tell you what I mean by a resumé.
If you were concerned or even excited when I said I was working on my resumé, please know that I have no plans to go anywhere. I am too old to move anywhere else and even if someone came seeking, I am not looking. If the Lord and Meadow Brook Baptist allow, I will be here serving until retirement. Of course, that is always subject to change in a Baptist Church!
A resumé is a list of your merits, all the good things about you, your accomplishments, your skills, your qualifications. The resumé is your card of admittance into a position or a place to which you did not previously have access. It is a case made for your acceptance.
If you apply to a college, you fill out an application form; you create a resumé to describe your extra-curricular activities, your worthwhile qualities which will make you an asset to that institution.
When you go for a job, your resumé lists your qualifications, tells what you have done, and how you could benefit the company or business. It is a catalogue of your merits with the purpose of getting a new job. A resumé is meant to open doors.
We use resumés for friendships, maybe not a written one, but we size people up and determine if we want to associate with them or not. We look at their assets and their negatives and use that unwritten, but very real, resumé to choose our associations.
You use a resumé on yourself. You will shut the door on yourself if you don’t measure up to what you think you should be and do. How often do you beat yourself up, allow those voices in your head to tell you that you’re not good enough? Your resumé is talking when you feel you have to defend yourself, or when you attempt to build yourself up to get the approval of others.
So, when I say “I’ve been working on my resumé,” what I am really saying is: I’ve been trying to assess my strengths and weaknesses and attempt to make myself a better person and servant of the Lord. I’m trying to bolster my ego, lift my self-esteem. That can be a problem. Paul is combating this issue in Philippians 3. It is an issue we don’t often consider. We know that God is never pleased with our sin, but is God pleased when we try to improve ourselves, trying to boost our resumés?
Another way to talk about our resumé is to talk about our righteousness. Are we right with God? Are we acceptable? Paul understood this dilemma when he gave his resumé in Philippians 3.
Righteousness is our greatest need.
Paul outlines an impressive list of qualifications. He has a drop-dead resumé. He lists his advantages at birth and those acquired later in life.
He was born a Jew. He was a member of the special tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin, along with Joseph, was the son of Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife. Benjamin was the only child born in the Promised Land. Saul, the first King of Israel was a member of the tribe of Benjamin. This clan remained loyal to King David’s line. The Holy City of Jerusalem was located in their land.
Paul was a Hebrew of Hebrews, a badge of untainted blood line as well as untainted by Greek culture. Many Jews in the first century were thoroughly Hellenized; affected by Greek culture. Paul’s ancestry and upbringing gave evidence to a strong Jewish heritage.
Paul was a Pharisee. This group was very careful to obey the Mosaic Law. Zeal was their well-known characteristic. They traced their linage back to the Maccabeus; the leaders of the rebellion against the Seleucids that won independence for Israel in 164 BC. The Pharisees especially hated the Christians because they did not strictly adhere to the Mosaic Law.
Paul followed all the laws that a good Jew should. He presents a resumé that makes him look pretty good.
What’s on your resumé?
Life is full of all sorts of resumés. They speak of our friendships, status, home, reputation, and moral standing. Our resumé might list a good home, good upbringing, a quality education, a good job. Our resumé will certainly include time spent reading God’s Word, telling others about Christ. It will list all the moral qualities we have been taught that are right and proper.
Mothers have resumés which include well-behaved children, clean house, and happy husband. Is there anything inherently evil about those things? Of course, there’s not.
Men’s resumés list the hours they spend at work earning a living for their family; time they spend with the kids; the fact that they bring their family to church and are good to their wife.
Pastor’s resumés list the hours they spend studying God’s Word; the people they have counseled and a growing church; the influence and successes they have had in Kingdom work.
We all want to have a good resumé. We all need righteousness! We all want to feel right with God and the world. We are all trying to live up to something.
Notice what Paul does. He trashes his resumé! What everyone would see as gain and profit – he says is loss. He is so intent on dumping his resumé, on rejecting this wonderful pedigree that he calls it “rubbish.” The translators were more polite than Paul. Paul actually said it was “excrement.”
Why does Paul trash such an impressive resumé? Because he knows that this resumé, his listing of his good qualities is his greatest problem.
Paul warns us about good people.
In verse 2, Paul issues a threefold warning: “Watch out for dogs! Watch out for evil workers! Watch out for mutilators of the flesh!” He was talking about the Pharisees and Judiazers.
To call someone a dog was a biting metaphor in the first century. Canines were the zoological low lives of that day. Paul is not referring to a cuddly lap dog or your faithful pet, but the vicious scavengers which all ancient people considered unclean. It was the dogs that consumed the body of Jezebel. It was the dogs that licked the sore on Lazarus’ body and tormented him.
Next, he calls people evil doers, which was normally used of those who broke God’s law. But then the final cutting remark designates these people as “mutilators of the flesh.”
Again, Paul’s terms were made more acceptable by translators. What Paul is objecting to is that these people he is referring to are trying to make Gentiles be circumcised. The Judiazers were trying to undermine Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles by insisting that they had to become Jews before they could become Christians.
Paul was insistent that the sign of circumcision does not equate with the reality of being adopted by God. Paul had come a long way from his Rabbinic Judaism. He called faith in Christ the “circumcision of the heart!” (Rom. 2:29)
Paul tells the Philippians that those who are demanding that they obey God’s Law, who say that faith in Christ demands obedience to the Law, are mutilators. They are evil because they demand that you work for God’s favor. They are dogs because they scavenge to create a good resumé for themselves. Doing good in order to make yourself pleasing to God or to be accepted by God makes one an evil-doer!
Why is Paul attacking good people? Pharisees were the most meticulously religious people who have ever lived. How could Paul call them dogs or evil doers? The fact is that their “goodness” had replaced God. Their rules had replaced the Cross! Paul’s adversaries were not immoral – and that is a huge problem, not only for Paul, but for you and me. We still equate personal morality, a good resumé, with Christianity.
What is most dangerous to our relationship to God as well as others is not our sin, but our morality. There is nothing so deadening than to think that we are good. Repenting of self-righteousness, ripping up your resumé and ceasing to present yourself as good, are crucial to being a Christian. There is nothing that stands in our way more than those resumés! There is nothing more deadly than that list of good attributes you possess and hold up to others, to yourself and to God.
Paul’s concern here is not for the sin of the Philippians, but rather for their righteousness. Their sins, and ours, have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, the penalty has been paid. The issue for us is this: do our lives reflect Christ living in us? Are we in right relationship with God and man?
Sin is not the problem for us. It is often not our sin that keeps us from God. It is our righteousness! It is our attitude toward our own goodness that causes us to miss the mark of the high calling of God.
There are plenty of people who know they are sinners. But that knowledge is not enough. That’s why Paul was a Pharisee before he knew Jesus. That is why so many people are religious, without a true knowledge of Jesus. When Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he stopped being religious and became a follower of Jesus Christ. There is a difference!
Here is the Gospel: you come to realize that those who are irreligious as well as those who are very religious are in control of their lives and assume that they are their own saviors. They are all trying to write their own resumés. We all want to keep control of our lives. We do not want to give God control.
We become true Christians when we repent of our righteousness! We often use Jesus as an example, a role model, a hero, but we are our own savior. We believe that we save ourselves through our own goodness. Of course, the only person we are fooling is our self. We thought our resumé was good enough. We thought we were doing everything we could to be considered a follower of Jesus.
A true Christian is the one who says, “I used to repent of my sins, but now I repent of my righteousness as well.” We have to come to the place that we understand that we can never get good enough to earn God’s favor. We already have it! It is the righteousness of Jesus that saves us; not our own, because ours is as filthy rags, according to God’s word. (Isaiah, 64:6)
Righteousness is our greatest gift.
Why does Paul trash his resumé? Why does he call moral, good people who call for personal obedience to God’s Word “dogs, evil, mutilators”? Because there is good news for me and you. It is the best news in the entire world. It is the Gospel. Instead of constantly trying to update our resumés, rather than always applying duct tape to our sinful hearts, and covering the holes in our souls with spackle, there is a resumé that is offered to us as a gift.
That is why Paul begins with the command to rejoice in the Lord!
That is where our joy must be found! This chapter opens with a call to rejoice, to have joy, but the place of joy is critical. He is not telling the Philippians to be happy, but points them to the place where real satisfaction and joy can be found. It is not found in trying to make yourself presentable or acceptable, but it is found in Jesus alone. Paul finds it necessary to repeat this truth again and again because we forget it again and again.
Paul elaborates on this in 3:8-9. As Paul looks at his resumé, he willingly throws out the tattered shambles of his own accomplishments and acknowledges the surpassing glory of Jesus Christ.
Paul does not think of Christ as the ultimate prize after a series of other achievements. The gift of righteousness comes not to those who do their best and then look for God’s grace, but for those who have abandoned all hope of ever getting good enough to please God. The gift of God’s resumé comes to those who not only turn from their sin, but turn from their own righteousness!
The gaining of Christ requires the loss of all former things, because to be rich in Christ means to be rich in Him alone, not in Him plus other things. For Paul, grace and self-righteousness are a radical antithesis. Grace plus anything else cancels out grace!
What does this all mean for you and me? If our resumés are not about us and our performance; our good qualities, our obedience to the Law; but are about Christ’s perfect keeping of the Law for us, then our lives will be different. No matter what happens, no matter if life trashes my accomplishments; if everything I have and have done comes crashing down around my ears, my life is safe in my relationship with Jesus. His resumé is now mine! I am a child of the King!
Things no longer have control of us. They no longer jerk us around; we can lose something now and not be devastated. That does not mean that we won’t weep over the loss, but we will not be devastated! If you are found in Christ, if your resumé is His, then your life is secure.
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