Knowing Christ: Pressing Toward the Goal

Dear People of God, 

It is a truism in our culture that non-reciprocal giving can make people uneasy. People don’t always like the thought of others receiving what they have not earned. Extravagant generosity like this can seem a disruption to the moral order.

This was part of the criticism levelled against Paul’s message of righteousness given apart from the keeping of the law. If people are simply given righteousness as a free gift, what becomes of their motivation toward Godliness?

Paul answers this critique in our passage for Sunday. Yes, he puts no confidence in his own human accomplishments to make him worthy before God. Yes, he surrenders everything to receive from God a righteousness that rests only on faith in the Giver. But how Paul uses that gift is the key factor – he does not see himself as perfect by virtue of the gift of God; rather he responds to God’s empowering gift by using it to pursue the full working of Godliness within himself that his own efforts could not accomplish. The free gift enables the accomplishment of what his own efforts could not achieve – movement toward “the upward call of God in Christ.”    

Paul gives his own life as an example and invites the Philippian brothers and sisters to imitate him in doing so within their own lives.
There is a profound witness for us as those on a spiritual journey toward God. God meets us, gives us what we cannot secure ourselves, and invites us through his messengers to put that gift to use pressing further into the goodness and life of God.

Let’s come to worship this week eager to receive the good gifts of God and put them to beautiful usage within our lives before God.
 
Your servant, 
Peter DuMont