Spurs to Holiness, Part 3

We return there to the passage
where we left off last week in itself, a passage we left off
the week before. You know, the context, the context,
as we’ve already said, is sanctification. Paul had not achieved sanctification,
nor did he believe that those to whom he was writing had achieved
it. We were all to be pressing on, as it were, as we have seen
in days and weeks past in this greater context of Philippians,
chapter three. But in order to jump right in,
I want to jump into verse 17. We’ll take it in a running start
and pick up where we left off in verses 20 and 21 last week. Paul wrote to them, Brethren,
join in following my example and observe those who walk according
to the pattern you have in us. For many walk of whom I often
told you and now tell you even weeping that they are enemies
of the cross of Christ. whose end is destruction, whose
God is their appetite and whose glory is their shame, who set
their minds on earthly things. We consider that passage two
weeks ago that there are several motivating factors here that
Paul presses upon us to particularly two grand motivators for the
pursuit of sanctification. That’s what Paul’s talking about.
And he wants us mindful of that great pursuit of sanctification. We are not there yet. We have
not arrived. And yet there are some motivating
forces that need to be there for us that propel us ever forward. The first one that he introduces
to us is this one that we’ve just read, that we are motivated
by those who have veered off course. What a frightening thought. Those of whom I often told you,
Paul says, this was a frequent subject of conversation and now
tell you even weeping, it was an utterly heartbreaking thing
for the pastor that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.
It couldn’t get any worse. Those who once were inclined,
who perhaps sat in fellowship, who maybe went to Bible conferences
now essentially were the enemies of the cross. We saw their spiritual
end. We saw who their God is, their
deity. Their God is their appetite.
Their glory is their shame. And their fixation is earthly
things. But thankfully, Paul didn’t end
there. There were two grand motivators for the pursuit of sanctification,
and he picks up the second in verse 20. We are motivated by
a yearning for our heavenly home. Look at verse 20. For our citizenship
is in heaven. from which we also eagerly await
for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the
body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His
glory by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject
all things for Himself.” Paul begins this section by suggesting,
by reminding really, that we should be those who are longing
for home. We should be those that are looking
towards heaven constantly and not just a longing for heaven
as a place, as we saw, but a longing for heaven as the dwelling of
our Savior. As that place where we will find
the King of Heaven. The undying, pardon me, underlying
motivation, said one, for pursuing Christ’s likeness is the hopeful
return of Jesus Christ. And as such, our citizenship,
as we saw, is in heaven. In a very real sense, we have
one foot there already. We have a great stake there.
Not only are loved ones there, but our Lord is there. Our treasure
is there. Our mansion is there. Scripture, as we saw, doesn’t
point us necessarily to just a mere plain admonition here
on how we conduct ourselves while we’re here on there. But rather,
we are being urged here to remember that we as Christians are already
members of another nation, the kingdom of heaven. We have rights
and privileges and citizenship that come with any citizenship. And as such, our behavior must
be different. Our outlook must be different.
Our conduct in and on this earth must be different because we
are citizens. We have an official status there.
Our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. We have
a place in heaven and Paul calls it here appropriately citizenship. As such, we began to look, though,
Because Paul’s focus is not so much a place as I indicated.
It is a person. It is not merely the place of
heaven. As we talked about last week,
the streets of gold, the great mansion, what our rooms might
look like. Will there be a canopy bed? Will we have our own restrooms? Well, you know, all these things
that people fixate on what this mansion looks like. It isn’t
that at all that’s in focus, not for Paul. And it shouldn’t
be for us. Paul mentions this citizenship
that is in heaven, and he does mention the place, but the focus
immediately switches to the Savior. It’s to the king of heaven that
we look. It’s to the king of heaven that we anticipate, or
as Paul calls him, a Savior. We eagerly await a Savior. And
we tackled this last week that We are already saved, really
and truly. If we have placed our faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ, the Scripture speaks of us as saved. We own
salvation. We are saved from the wrath of
God. We are saved from the power of
sin. We possess salvation in Christ. And yet, we eagerly await a Savior.
That’s what He is to us. But there is a very real sense
in which His coming is going to complete our salvation. As we saw last week, these citizens
of heaven, as Paul calls them, they desire to go home. They
desire the heavenly dress of righteousness. We are eager to
shed the sin and the sinful tendencies of this foreign land in which
we dwell. We are longing now to be sanctified. We are longing to be purified
and glorified. And so we wait in faith. We always
are pressing on, always looking to Christ, the author and finisher
of our faith. We look for the Savior. This eager longing that we talked
about last week, spoken of so often of the return of Christ,
that word there looking and longing, longing, looking for Christ is
spoken appropriately of the second coming of Christ, the return
of Christ. And just as I said, we are truly saved now. But there
is a very real sense in which that whole thing is understood
as a process that will be completed when the Lord returns. The second
coming of the Lord will finish and will finalize the salvation
of the redeemed. It will apply that redemption
to all the sins that remain, everything that we struggle with
currently, right up until the moment of the Lord’s return.
The Lord will glorify those that are in Christ, sanctify them
fully and bring them home to heaven. We began last week in considering
this, and I took the liberty to plunge into it a little bit
deeper. Not only are we looking for our
Savior, the first description of the King of Heaven, But as
we began last week and for the sake of time, I glossed over.
But my very point, I undid by doing so. Because I think Paul
paused here and inserted this next phrase for a very real purpose. Because he could have been quite
finished to just say, we eagerly await a savior who will transform
the body of our humble state, but he didn’t. Paul paused there
and he inserted this great name. Not just Jesus. And he would
have been fine to do that. To point us to the Savior Jesus. Because as we saw last week,
the name Jesus means Savior. But Paul magnified that name. He used the greatest name of
all, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he took away that casual
attitude that we have to the name in our own day. As one great
commentator said, the apostle used the full title. He is in
heaven. He is exalted as the Lord. He comes in royal grandeur. But
that glory has not defiled His humanity. It only envelops it.
He is still Jesus. The same Jesus taken up from
us into heaven. And since his commissioning has
not ceased, though his time on earth has ended, he is and ever
remains Christ. We began last week by looking
at it. The Lord just speaks of his sovereignty overall. We’ll come back to that point
at the end of the message this morning. But as we looked at
the Lord, it almost goes without saying that salvation is lordship
salvation. He is the Lord. We don’t need
to belabor the point. When we come to Christ, we come
to Him not only as Savior, we come to Him as Lord. So did His
apostles. So did His disciples. Those who
are around Him and about Him came to Him as Lord. He is Lord
over all, as we’ll see as we close this morning. We spent
just a moment on this little title, Jesus, this name, the
Greek name for Yeshua in the Hebrew, Jeshua. God is our help
or savior. Do you remember the fascinating
accounts of Jesus birth? Think back to both Matthew’s
account and Luke’s account. God, the father named Jesus. Remember? They didn’t draw it
out of a hat. They didn’t go to family lineage.
They didn’t name it after fathers or grandfathers. Remember, Luke’s
gospel records the angel Gabriel’s instruction very clearly to Mary. Now, the angel doesn’t unfold
the meaning of Jesus to Mary, but the angel does more than
just hint at the greatness of Jesus ministry. Listen to verses
32 and 33 of chapter one, that message of Gabriel to Mary. He will be great, and He will
be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give
Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over
the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”
Mary knew the meaning of Yeshua. Mary knew the meaning of Jesus.
She knew the meaning of this name. And I don’t think that
in Matthew’s Gospel, when it records a much lengthier description
of it, that Joseph didn’t understand. The angel just takes great pains
there to instruct not only Joseph, but us. Matthew’s Gospel records
the account of Joseph’s introduction by the angel that the child’s
name was to be Jesus. There was no ambiguity there.
It wasn’t left for anything for guesswork or decision making
on the part of the father, which owned the prerogative of naming
the child, typically. But as Joseph was instructed
there, he is told why this name was so important. His name shall
be Jesus, for it is He who will save. Because the name Jesus proclaims
Christ’s mission, that’s exactly what was indicated by what followed
It is he who would save. In other words, calling Jesus,
because that will be a clear and constant reminder to all
a declaration, if you will, of Christ’s purpose. Christ’s purpose
was to save. As J.C. Ryle, the great pastor
and commentator, once said, Jesus means Savior. This is his special
office. He saves his people from the
guilt of sin by washing them in his atoning blood. He saves
them from the dominion of sin by putting in their hearts the
sanctifying spirit. He saves them from the presence
of sin when he takes them out of this world to rest with him
in eternity. And yet, Paul is still not done.
And as I said, I don’t believe that this was a gloss. I don’t
believe Paul just said this flippantly. And they don’t believe it should
be glossed over by us in our reading. When Paul said that
our citizenship is in heaven from which we eagerly wait a
savior. The Lord Jesus Christ, I believe
Paul wanted those in Philippi to sit up and take notice. And
I believe that He means for us to do likewise today. We gloss
over so much, but we cannot gloss over the Lord Jesus Christ. If
the radio stations won’t say His name, we will. We must. If those who will talk about
God in general terms, deistically, as if there is no personhood
of Christ, we must. But Paul isn’t finished. Even
as He speaks of the Savior, He would have been justified, in
a sense, in just stopping there and in saying, the Savior, the
Lord Jesus. But He doesn’t. It’s the full
name of the Lord Jesus Christ that He uses. We commonly think
of Christ as a proper name. We think of it almost as Jesus’
last name. Now, while it isn’t Jesus’ last
name, it is now an appropriate designation of the personhood
of Christ. You’re not inaccurate to speak
of Jesus as Christ, but let’s see the transformation of this
word. Christ as a name wasn’t always the way the word was used.
Originally, the word was an adjective, not a noun. The word originally
referred to an anointing. And there were anointings of
various kinds. The sick were anointed. Several occasions recorded
in the Gospels. Mark 6.13 and others. James urges those who are sick
to call for the elders of the church so that they can come
and pray over him, anointing him with oil. Priests. in the Old Testament economy,
were anointed with holy oil as an establishment of their priesthood. Leviticus 4 repeatedly speaks
of the priests as the anointed. The anointed priests. Leviticus
16. speaks of the priest who is anointed
and ordained to serve as priest. And so that anointing was the
initiation or the affirmation, the earthly affirmation of the
ministry that God had begun in and through them. Exodus 29 speaks
of the priesthood’s anointing in this regard. It says the holy
garments of Aaron shall be for his sons after him that in them
they may be anointed and ordained. In other words, this was the
perpetuation of the ministry and it was done so by anointing
the pouring of oil upon the head. Exodus 40 speaks of it again
when it says, you shall anoint them even as you have anointed
their father, that they may minister as priests to me and their anointing
will qualify them for a perpetual priesthood throughout their generations. So there was the anointing of
priests. There was the anointing of prophets.
First Kings, at the closing of Elijah’s ministry, Elisha, comes
on to the scene and it says in 1st Kings 19, Elisha, the son
of Shaphat of Abel, you shall anoint as a prophet in your place. 1st Chronicles 16.22 urges us
as elsewhere, do not touch my anointed ones and do my prophets
no harm. A Hebrew parallelism that says
don’t touch the prophets. They are the anointed ones. Not only were priests anointed,
the sick were anointed, the prophets were anointed, kings were anointed. 1 Samuel 2.10, he will give strength
to his king and he will exalt the horn of his anointed. The
king was spoken of there as the anointed one. 1 Samuel 2.35,
9.16, You shall appoint him to be a prince over my people Israel.
There Samuel looking for Saul as king. And in 10.1, it says,
Samuel took the flask of oil, poured it on his head, kissed
him and said, Has not the Lord anointed you a ruler over his
inheritance? And so it’s not surprising to
us as Christians, especially if we know our scriptures, for
the promised one who would come to save his people to be spoken
of as the anointed one, the Messiah. It was an entirely appropriate
reference and even ultimately a title of the Savior. Isaiah 61 said it this way, the
Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed
me to bring good news to the afflicted. You say, well, that’s
Isaiah speaking. Yes, and Jesus quotes it of himself
in Luke 4, 18. The spirit of the Lord is upon
me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery
of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.
Typically, the gospels begin by presenting Jesus, the Christ. Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus as
the anointed one with the definite article. In other words, Jesus
is the anointed one, the Messiah, John 1.41. He first found his
own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah. The book of Acts goes on likewise
to do the same thing, Acts 4.27 and 10.38, the Messiah, the Christ. And as such, Jesus was literally
anointed on more than one occasion. But the anointing of which Paul
speaks here is the anointing by God. This was God’s Christ. This was God’s anointed. This
was God’s Messiah. Ultimately, it was a title that
Jesus would even accept for himself. and use of himself.” John 17,
3, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. And ultimately, now,
the name passes on to become a regular and very appropriate
title of our Lord. Matthew 11, 2 speaks of the works
of Christ. Romans 6, 4 speaks as Christ
was raised from the dead. Romans 8, 9 speaks of the Spirit
of Christ, and there is no ambiguity who Paul is talking about in
any of those verses. Romans 8, 17, fellow heirs with
Christ. Romans 15, 19, the gospel of
Christ. Galatians 2, 16, that we are
justified by faith in Christ. There’s no ambiguity. There’s
no ambiguity to speak of Christ’s as if that is a proper name.
But when we do so, the concept is there that he is our Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul does so here in fullness,
out of great reverence to the Lord Jesus. God, who was sovereign in his
purpose and his mission, had now sent the Savior to the world,
the Lord Jesus Christ, We took this up also briefly, point number
three, in our glorious description of the King of Heaven. Not only
is He our Savior, not only is He the Lord Jesus Christ, we
saw last week that He is the agent of our glorification. And
as I suggested last week, it is a fascinating choice of words.
The Greek word there is metaskematizo, to change the appearance. And
what it says is that the Lord Jesus Christ will transform the
body of our humble state. He will take that outward appearance
and transform it in some glorious way. The word is used, I said,
it’s an interesting word to be used because it’s used in 2nd
Corinthians to speak of the disguise that evil workers put on. And
so there is a sense there where it’s merely the outward appearance.
And that is what is in focus in this passage. I was nearly
accosted in Sunday school for suggesting that Jesus isn’t here
changing our natures. Our natures are going to be changed. Our sinful natures, our hearts.
But God has already begun that work and He will complete it.
But what is in focus here is our physical nature. The Lord
is going to change our bodies, not just our natures, not just
our hearts. Those things have already begun
and they will be completed. But the focus here is our physical
body, not our moral nature, not our spirit, not our heart. He’s
going to change in some glorious way our physical bodies. What
Paul refers to here as the body of our humble state. If you’re
reading an older translation, it’s quite inaccurate to speak
of our vile bodies. I read this past week again of
a dying pastor on his deathbed, and along came some trainee,
if you will, and was there reading Scripture to this dying pastor
on his deathbed. And he came across this passage
and he read it. Who shall transform our vile
bodies? The dying pastor opened his eyes
and leaned his head up and he said, nothing that God made is
vile. There’s another word here, as
we saw, that can often be mischaracterized if you’re reading the old translation.
Because there, I don’t think it was a mistranslation originally.
The King James Translation, when it translated it vile, didn’t mean to add to the. To
the misunderstanding that said that flesh is inherently evil,
the Gnostic theory. There wasn’t any contempt in
view of the body here. It just means that this body
of our humble state where we live now, with all of its limitations,
with all of its difficulties, with all of its aches and pains
and all of its evil tendencies, God is going to transform that
body. The Lord Jesus Christ is going
to take that material and retool it for God, for himself, for
eternity. One said it this way, observe
this special mystery and glory of the gospel, a promise of heavenly
perfectness for the body of the Christian. It is no mere prison
of the spirit. It is its counterpart. It is
destined to share with the spirit the coming bliss. It’s stricken
condition because of the fall makes it too often the load of
the spirit. But hereafter, it shall be the
wings of the spirit. That is a good correction. But
I want to close with point four. The glorious description of the
King of Heaven. He is not only our Savior. He
is not only the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not only the agent of our
glorification. The fourth description of the
glorious King of Heaven is that he is sovereign in the exercise
of his might. Look at verse 21 again, speaking
of the Lord Jesus, who will transform the body of our humble state
into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion
of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. Some would say that this promise
of the glorification of our bodies is farfetched. I mean, come now,
Pastor, what about those who have literally returned to the
dust? What about those who have literally been vaporized over
the centuries, destroyed, even burned, lost at sea? Well, God is able. God can do
what God does. God can do the miraculous. And
here it says the Lord Jesus is able and not only able, but He
will. The same God that brought this
world into existence by the command of His Word is able. As one pastor
said, it is plain to the child of God that according to the
working of Christ’s power, which He has already seen in subduing
all things to Himself, He has even seen Him subduing
His hard heart to Himself, nothing is impossible if God can bring
us into existence with a word. If God can subdue our evil hearts
and bring us to life by a word, then God can gather the atoms
and molecules and make us anew. The resurrection of the body,
he goes on to say, after all, is but a little thing compared
with the resurrection of a dead soul. Literally here, Paul says that
this working is according to the energy of his ability. It
is fascinating language that Paul uses here. It’s energy from
where we get our word energy. It is used in the New Testament
of divine, even superhuman power. And in that sense, it is even
used of the devil’s power on occasion. It is almost always
used with regard, though, to divine activity. This is a God
word. Colossians 1.29 says, for this
purpose, I labor striving according to his power. Yes, it’s me out
there running and working and laboring, but it’s God who is
coursing through me with his grace. Striving according to
his power, which mightily works within me, said Paul later on
in that same book, Colossians 2.12. having been buried with
him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with him
through faith in the working of God who raised him from the
dead.” When we come to Christ, it is the same power that raised
Christ from the dead that energizes us and brings us to life. And
it is power. It is Almighty God’s power. I
love Stephen Charnock’s definition of power when he said, the power
of God is that ability and strength whereby He can bring to pass
whatever He pleases. Whatsoever His infinite wisdom
may direct, whatsoever the infinite purity of His will may resolve.
God’s power is like Himself, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible. It can neither be checked, restrained,
nor frustrated by the creature. We don’t stand in God’s way.
In other words, this kind of transformation that is produced
in the lives of believers is nothing short of the exercise
of Christ’s omnipotence. In other words, it is a miracle.
It is yet another miracle in a long line of miracles. What
about the miracle of bringing us to Christ in the first place?
We who are dead in our trespasses and sins, God made us alive. Elsewhere in Scripture, this subjection is presented
to us as the Father subjecting all things to Christ. Here, Paul
says very plainly, Christ has the power to subject all things
as well. If He is Almighty God, He has
all power. To speak of it one way and then
again the other is no damage to Scripture. 1 Corinthians says
He must reign until He puts all His enemies under His feet. spoken
of God the Father there on behalf of Christ. Ephesians 1.22, likewise. Turn if you would. We don’t have
any time anyway, but turn anyway. Ephesians 1.18. And you know what? I’m just going
to close with this. I just want you to see how powerful Christ
is and how eagerly Paul wanted his Ephesian saints to know the
power of God. Look at verse 18. I pray that
the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, opened up, so that
you may know what is the hope of His calling and what are the
riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. That when we get
to heaven, we get something. We get Christ. But He wanted
them to know about how powerful God was and what is the surpassing
greatness of His power towards us who believe And the whole
rest of this passage talks about that power. Look at verse 20.
Pardon me. End of verse 19. These are in
accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which
he brought about in Christ when he raised him from the dead and
seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. In other
words, God’s power began to move mightily. In the resurrection. He raised him from the dead and
seated him in his right hand in the heavenly places far above
all rule and power and dominion and every name that is named,
not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put
all things in subjection under his feet and he gave him his
head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness
of him who fills all in all if the Lord Jesus. can subject all
things, the totality, everything that is in the universe, everything
that was ever made to Himself, all powers, all dominions. Can
He refurbish, refashion our lowly bodies to have a form like His
own glorious body? He absolutely can. He absolutely
will. If Christ can do little things
like subduing nations and worlds to Himself, He can do big things
like bringing us to salvation and bringing our physical bodies
to a glorious transformation. Let’s thank Him for that. O merciful God, we humble ourselves
at Your feet And thank you for the grace that you’ve shown to
us in this passage and in reminding us of the great motivation we
have. Not only those who have veered
off course, but also our longing hearts to see our King of Heaven. Our Lord Jesus Christ. To Jesus
name that we pray, Amen.