Living in the Spirit
October 2, 2020
Scripture Reading:
Philippians 3:4b-14
even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Clergy from my denomination generally do not wear the white clerical collar. Some of my female friends wear collars because sometimes they are not accepted by others as clergy without that visible proof. Some clergy advocates wear the collar to tell legislators and media that faith-based groups care about an issue without the need to say a word.
In the scripture above, Paul is talking about credentials that are meaningful to other people. In his case, he seems to mainly be addressing the Jewish community to whom the credentials he lists would be most important. Paul claims something beyond merely following the law. He describes being the righteousness that can only be realized through a relationship with Jesus Christ. There is a difference between stopping at a stoplight to keep from getting a ticket and stopping at a stoplight to make sure your neighbor, driving on the same road, is safe. The mask we wear to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is an excellent example of this. I understand that these masks do little to protect me from the virus, but they protect others from the virus when. We all wear masks, we eliminate markedly the spread of illness, with you protecting me and I protecting you.
There is a difference between self-righteousness and God’s righteousness. We are called to be a part of God’s righteousness, God’s justice. That does mean we must remove all impediments to our ability to love like Jesus letting go of what we value about ourselves and living in the ways that God created us to live. It takes knowing we are each a person of worth because God created us, as are all people.
Prayer: Righteous God, teach us to love ourselves as you love and thus enable us to love all others as you love them. Amen.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.