Philippians 3:4-11
The Opportunity Cost of Religion
In business economics and accounting, there is a term called “Opportunity Cost”. An opportunity cost is the value of an opportunity not chosen. It’s the option you did not choose, and the value of that forsaken option.
Let me give you a couple examples to really show you.
Let’s say you have a good chunk of money, and you want to invest it into a stock, and you find two stocks you really like. You like St. Peter’s Fishing Co., and you also like St. Matthew’s Accounting Firm. But you can’t afford both - you can only buy one or the other. Let’s say you really like fish and so you put all your money into St. Peter’s Fishing Inc. Years go by and you retire off of the money you earned from your stocks. But, one day you look at the newspaper and you see that St. Matthews Accounting Firm has grown to be one of the biggest accounting firms in the country and their stock is worth ten times the value of St. Peter’s Fishing Inc. You then realize how much you could have made if you chose to invest your money into St. Matthew’s Accounting firm all those years ago. The value of that stock you didn’t choose is called opportunity cost. Opportunity cost: it’s the value of the opportunity you didn’t choose.
That’s great Pastor, but, we came here to hear the gospel, not Accounting 101. You’re going to hear it, trust me.
Listen, you have opportunity costs all the time. For instance, when you choose to watch the game on tv instead of your favorite show, then the opportunity cost is the sacrifice of enjoying your favorite show. (Tivo) Or, when you choose to read your Bible instead of watching tv, the opportunity cost is the time spent watching tv. A man lying on his deathbed who regrets spending all his time in the office and not with his family. Time spent with his family is the opportunity cost. It’s the value of the option we don’t choose.
There’s a good example in the Bible too. In Luke 10, Martha is mad at her sister Mary because Mary is not helping with the chores. Martha has chosen to do chores instead of sitting with Mary at Jesus feet. And when Martha starts to complain to Jesus he tells her that Mary has made the better choice. If Jesus is in your home, sitting at your table, sharing a meal with you, and you are hearing with your own ears the voice of the Son of God as He teaches the eternal truths of God, the dishes can wait. But, Martha chose to do chores and not worship Jesus with Mary; she has made worshiping Jesus her opportunity cost. The value of worshipping Christ has been sacrificed to do chores. Opportunity Cost: the value of what you didn’t choose.
Do you have regrets in life about a choice? When you find yourself saying, “I should have done things the other way” Or, “looking back now, I think I would have done things differently.” When people say those kinds of things, they’re talking about opportunity costs. They think the value of what they didn’t choose is more than what they did choose.
Businesses evaluate opportunity costs all the time before they invest money. They look at all the options to see which one is most profitable. That is the goal - to choose the most profitable, the most advantageous, most beneficial decision. The goal is that the value of what you DO choose is more than the value of what you DO NOT choose. Makes sense, right? We all make those choices all the time, right?
Paul is talking about opportunity cost in Philippians. He talks about two alternatives and the value of those alternatives. One is religion, and the other is righteousness. One is faith in self, and the other is faith in Christ.
Paul says that he had been more religious than any other man. He says in verse 4 that he had more reason to put confidence in his flesh, that is “himself” than any other man. And he goes on into verses 5 and 6 to list some of the most sterling religious credentials any man could have. Any Jew would have envied this religious resume of Paul’s.
He was circumcised on the eighth day, indicating he was not a convert to Judaism, but, born into it.
He was of the people of Israel, the chosen covenant people of God.
He was of the tribe of Benjamin, which was one of the elite of the 12 tribes of Israel. When the nation split into the northern and southern kingdoms, Benjamin was the only tribe that remained loyal to the lineage of King David and stayed with the tribe of Judah in the south. Benjamin is also the tribe from whom the first king ever over Israel came - king Saul. Saul, by the way is Paul’s name before he became the apostle to the Gentiles. He is called Paul beginning in Acts 13:9.
He was a Hebrew of Hebrews, meaning he was a pure-bred. Many Hebrews were not pure Hebrews because they had been mixed with surrounding Gentile peoples. They adopted Gentile customs and had forgotten the Hebrew language. Not Paul. His pedigree was pure. His parents and his heritage were pure Hebrew. He still spoke the language. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews.
He was a Pharisee, the most religious group in Israel that held the strictest view of the Law.
He was the most zealous and ambitious religious Jew because he went as far as persecuting Christians because like every other Jew he thought it was a heretical cult that needed to be stamped out.
He was legalistically righteous, meaning he was faultless in the eyes of men. He kept the law and the traditions so spotlessly that no other religious Jew could look with a microscope into his life and find blame.
So that’s his religion. He’s got it and he’s good at it. But, in verses 7, 8 and 9 he’s comparing his religion to Christ’s righteousness. He’s comparing these two alternatives. He can only have one, or the other. He can’t have both. Which one is going to bring more profit? Which one is more valuable?
Paul does not hesitate, he says in verse 8 that knowing Christ far surpasses anything religious that he could ever do. All the reason for having confidence in himself falls far short of knowing Jesus Christ. He has chosen Christ over his religion. Everything - all of his religious credentials - has become loss, worthless, and trash compared to having Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
I want you today to see the surpassing profit, the incomparable gain that is in Christ Jesus. But, you can’t trust Christ and religion. You can’t be relying on yourself and your good works AND at the same time be relying on Christ. You can’t serve two masters Jesus said. You can only have Jesus Christ or your own works.
What I want today is for you to make your works - your religion - to be your opportunity cost. In other words, I want religion to be the option you didn’t choose. I want you, like Paul, to consider any good thing that you have done to be trash when you stack it up against Jesus Christ. I want whatever the value was of religion in your life - of self-made righteousness - to be seen as a massive loss compared to knowing Jesus Christ. I want for you to say, “I chose Christ, and I didn’t choose to rely on religion”.
Why? Because if you don’t choose to trust Christ - that is, if you do choose to trust religion, or yourself, or anything other than Christ - then your opportunity cost will be too much! What I mean to say is that the value of choosing religion is really no more than trash you throw away every week compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. You will give up four things if you choose religion. These four things will be your opportunity cost. These four things will be what you did not choose, these will be the things you forsake if you choose religion. Do not make these your opportunity cost. Do not let these be the things you DID NOT CHOOSE.
There’s four of them: Christ’s Knowledge, Christ’s Righteousness, Christ’s Power, and Christ’s Fellowship.
Knowledge
Paul says in verse 8, “…the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord …” and in verse 10 he says, “I want to know Christ …”
Knowing Christ is the single most important thing in your life. The word Paul uses for knowing is “gnosis” and it means to know by experience, by being personally involved.
It‘s the difference between reading about someone, and, knowing someone after having spent time with them.
It’s personally knowing Jesus Christ. It’s your own one-on-one relationship to Him. It’s not hearing about Him in sermons or from other people who do know Him and it’s not reading about Him and having the facts about Him. This is why we talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ - it’s you personally having your involvement with Him and your identity in Him.
This is key: It is when you are personally experiencing in your life what you read about Him in the Bible. Does Scripture say He has power and authority over all things? Are you experiencing the life-giving and life-changing power of Christ in your life? Does Scripture say that He gives close, intimate fellowship when you suffer for His sake? If so, then do you find yourself nearer to Him as you suffer? Is what you read about Him what you know to be true of Him in your life? That is gnosis - that is having the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Knowing God, and knowing His Son, Jesus Christ is the definition of eternal life. John 17:5 says, “………..”. Eternal life isn’t what you know, it’s who you know. Salvation is not a matter of what you do, salvation is a matter of who you know.
Going to heaven and not going to hell is entirely a matter of who you know. Jesus said in Matthew 7:21-23, “………….”.
Their problem Jesus said is that He did not KNOW them. He didn’t say “You’re not good enough”. He didn’t say, “You weren’t religious enough”. He didn’t say, “I added up all your good deeds and your bad deeds and your bad out-weighed your good.” He said he did not KNOW them! He did not have a relationship with them where they were personally involved with Him. They did all the right things, they knew about Jesus, but they didn’t know Jesus.
Listen: There are going to be people in hell who sat and served in church their whole life. This is because attending church and serving in church do not save. That’s works-based salvation. Knowing Christ saves
Paul says I now know Jesus Christ and it is unmatched, surpassing greatness to know Him and nothing compares. Nothing. Everything is trash compared to knowing Christ. Don’t make knowing Christ your opportunity cost. Don’t let knowing Christ be the option you didn’t choose.
Righteousness
The second thing you don‘t want to make an opportunity cost is Christ‘s Righteousness. Verse 9 says, “…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”
Righteousness, simply defined, means “being right”, or, being “as you ought to be”.
Let’s say you met Paul before he was a Christian - before Acts chapter 9 - and you were to try and witness to him. Let’s say you asked him the following question: “Paul, if you died today and stood before God and He asked you, ‘Paul, why should I let you into my heaven?’ Paul, what would you say?” Paul would tell you everything he says in verses 5 and 6. He would say that all his religion, his heritage, his pedigree, his hard religious work would be the reason that God would let him into heaven. Paul would be standing on his own righteousness, otherwise known as self-righteousness.
But God says we are not righteous. Nobody is. Romans 3:10 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” A couple verses later it says in verse 20, “No one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the Law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” Nobody is as they ought to be. That is the purpose of the Law - to show us the standard that we don’t measure up to so we will cast ourselves at the mercy of God for our acknowledged unrighteousness. But, people keep thinking today just like they did in Paul’s time that they can keep the law and earn righteousness. That they can make themselves as the ought to be. That they can make themselves right before God.
But, no law, no amount of good works, no ceremonies, no church attendance, no having Christian parents, no being raised in the church and going to Sunday School, no being baptized, no taking communion, no praying prayers, no being a good, nice, and helpful person is ever going to hide our utter unrighteousness. The One we have to stand before someday says that we are not going to make it on our own.
Now, if you ran into Paul after Acts 9, his answer to your question would be entirely different. It would be what he says in verse 9. “I have a righteousness now, but not my own. I didn’t get it by myself. Someone gave it to me. Jesus Christ gave me His righteousness. The righteousness I now have I received from Jesus Christ.”
My dad is always giving me his clothes. I remember I was preparing for one of my first job interviews and my dad gave me a blazer to wear. He said you need to look good, and he gave me a really nice blazer - he has really good taste. So, I went to the interview looking good in my dad’s blazer. I looked good because I was wearing my dad’s clothes.
That’s what Jesus Christ does. He dresses you in his righteousness. You only look good to God when you are wearing Christ’s righteousness. God the Father gives you His righteousness when you place your faith in Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus took our sin, so that we could have his righteousness.
But, look at Philippians 3 verse 9 again, it says that this righteousness is not by works of the law, but, by faith. It’s by trusting in Christ. You can’t have this by working for it. It’s received after you have believed. Romans 3 verses 21 and 22 say, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known …. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” The kind of righteousness you want is the kind that comes from God. It’s the only kind that counts. And all who believe in Christ, will receive the righteousness of Christ, and therefore will be as acceptable to God as Christ.
So, don’t make Christ’s righteousness an opportunity cost. Don’t make this the option you did not choose.
Power
The third thing Paul says is power. He wants to know the power of Christ’s resurrection. This kind of power is not found in man, but, in God. It’s the power that God exerted to raise Jesus Christ from the dead. In Ephesians 1 Paul is praying for the Philippians and he says in verse 18, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms…”
This is life-giving power that is mightier than the power of death. God has demonstrated his power by raising Christ Jesus from the dead and by that power Jesus Christ is alive today seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. Death could not hold him down when God came to raise Him up!
And this is the same power that raises us from spiritual death to spiritual life. We see this power at work in God’s plan of salvation.
First, we are saved by the power of God. In Romans 1:16 Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe…” The gospel is the power of God to give us salvation. 1 Corinthians 1:24 says, “But to those whom God has called … Christ is the power of God”
Secondly, not only does His power save us when we believe, but, it is at work in us after we believe. The word Paul uses for power in our Philippians passage is the Greek word, “dynamis”. It is used also in Acts 1:8 when Jesus says, “But you will receive power (dynamis) when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem … and to all the ends of the earth.” The kind of power the disciples were going to receive was the power to be witnesses for Jesus Christ. It’s the power to speak the gospel message. Paul was a witness for Jesus Christ to carry the message of salvation to the Gentiles. The same Holy Spirit gives us the same power to be witnesses for Jesus Christ today. It’s natural to be afraid to tell someone about salvation in Jesus Christ, but, it’s only by the power of God’s Holy Spirit that you are able to. If you are a believer you have that power available because you have the Holy Spirit within you.
Another way Paul wanted to know the power of Jesus was in glorification. The glorification of his own body that Jesus is going to perform for Paul in the future. Look at Philippians 3:20 and 21. “But our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, 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.” Paul has gone from being a degenerate to a regenerate by the power of God. And now, as he is being sanctified by that same power, he looks forward to the day when Jesus Christ will glorify him by transforming his lowly, perishable, ignoble body into a body just like his Lord and Saviors. Jesus Christ will do that to Paul, and every single believer, with power - the same power that was used to raise Him from the dead.
Don’t trade in the life-giving power of Jesus Christ. Don’t choose your own power and trust in your own strength for your salvation and reject the power of God in Christ. Don’t let the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead become your opportunity cost.
Fellowship
Lastly, don’t let fellowship with Jesus Christ become an opportunity cost. You don’t want to pass this up. Paul says, “I want to know Christ … and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death”. Paul wants to suffer like Christ, for Christ. Like Christ, for Christ. Paul uses the word “kononia”, for fellowship. You may remember he used the word in chapter 1 verse 5 when he says, “because of your partnership in the gospel..”
Kononia is the deep, connected bond that comes from going through the same experiences. Paul had it with the Philippians because he was standing firm in the faith, contending, witnessing, preaching and suffering … and so were they! (1:29,30) They had the gospel in common, but, they had the hardships of the gospel in common as well. Paul knew the Philippians knew what he was going through because they were going through it themselves.
Paul wanted Christ’s fellowship in his sufferings. He wanted to know how his Savior felt when he was rejected, when he was mocked, when he was persecuted for the message of the gospel. Why? Because it meant a deeper identification with Christ. It meant more conformity to his Savior. Suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ is a privilege that God grants (Phil 1:29,30; Acts 5)
When Paul says “becoming like him in his death” it throws us back to chapter 2 when he describes the humiliation of Christ in verse 8. How did Christ die? In humility and obedience. Paul wants to be so conformed to his Savior’s image that he is as humble and as obedient as Jesus was- all the way to death. Jesus pleased the Father by being humble and obedient, so too Paul wanted to please God the Father in the same way, and participate in suffering for Christ.
Where do you go in your trials? Who do you have? What do you turn to? I’ve heard many Christians who were going through the valleys of life or in the middle of suffering say, “I don’t know how people go through these things without Jesus Christ. I don’t know what I’d do without Him.” He is the One they fellowship with in their pain. He is the One who is their strength, their comfort, their refuge, their peace. Is He yours?
Choose to fellowship with Christ.
Conclusion
There are four things you do not want to let be opportunity costs: Knowing Christ, Christ’s Righteousness, Christ’s Power, and Christ’s Fellowship. Do not let these be the option you didn’t choose. Choose faith in Christ. It is of greater worth than anything you could ever do apart from faith in Him. And knowing Him is worth giving up all you are and all you‘ve done on your own. I want to close with a parable Jesus uses in Matthew 13.
(Finding something of greater worth than anything else you have and giving all you have to get it.)
The idea is that that treasure, that pearl, that thing that is worth so much - if you don’t get it, all the things you have that you once thought were so valuable will seem so worthless. It will all be as trash because now you see the superior worth of something else that you must have. And you are willing to give all that you now have so as to have that thing. If you were to possess it, you would be far richer with it alone than with everything else and not having it. It is your true riches and you will always be poor without it.
That is what Paul is talking about in Philippians today. He found the unmatched treasure in knowing Jesus Christ, and, when he did, he realized all the religion he had been relying on was worthless. For Paul, religion became his opportunity cost. It became the option he didn’t choose. He chose Christ. It is my earnest desire that if you are here today and have not chosen Christ, that you would. I talked with a man this weekend who has been a Christian for 60 years. He said that the night he became a Christian he learned three things that made him want to become a Christian. I want to tell them to you to close. First, God loves you. Second, Jesus Christ died for you. And third, Jesus shed his blood so your sins could be forgiven. If you’ll believe that, instead of in yourself, you will have eternal life. Don’t let one more day pass where you don’t choose Jesus Christ. Don’t let eternal life be your opportunity cost for one more day.
The Opportunity Cost of Religion
In business economics and accounting, there is a term called “Opportunity Cost”. An opportunity cost is the value of an opportunity not chosen. It’s the option you did not choose, and the value of that forsaken option.
Let me give you a couple examples to really show you.
Let’s say you have a good chunk of money, and you want to invest it into a stock, and you find two stocks you really like. You like St. Peter’s Fishing Co., and you also like St. Matthew’s Accounting Firm. But you can’t afford both - you can only buy one or the other. Let’s say you really like fish and so you put all your money into St. Peter’s Fishing Inc. Years go by and you retire off of the money you earned from your stocks. But, one day you look at the newspaper and you see that St. Matthews Accounting Firm has grown to be one of the biggest accounting firms in the country and their stock is worth ten times the value of St. Peter’s Fishing Inc. You then realize how much you could have made if you chose to invest your money into St. Matthew’s Accounting firm all those years ago. The value of that stock you didn’t choose is called opportunity cost. Opportunity cost: it’s the value of the opportunity you didn’t choose.
That’s great Pastor, but, we came here to hear the gospel, not Accounting 101. You’re going to hear it, trust me.
Listen, you have opportunity costs all the time. For instance, when you choose to watch the game on tv instead of your favorite show, then the opportunity cost is the sacrifice of enjoying your favorite show. (Tivo) Or, when you choose to read your Bible instead of watching tv, the opportunity cost is the time spent watching tv. A man lying on his deathbed who regrets spending all his time in the office and not with his family. Time spent with his family is the opportunity cost. It’s the value of the option we don’t choose.
There’s a good example in the Bible too. In Luke 10, Martha is mad at her sister Mary because Mary is not helping with the chores. Martha has chosen to do chores instead of sitting with Mary at Jesus feet. And when Martha starts to complain to Jesus he tells her that Mary has made the better choice. If Jesus is in your home, sitting at your table, sharing a meal with you, and you are hearing with your own ears the voice of the Son of God as He teaches the eternal truths of God, the dishes can wait. But, Martha chose to do chores and not worship Jesus with Mary; she has made worshiping Jesus her opportunity cost. The value of worshipping Christ has been sacrificed to do chores. Opportunity Cost: the value of what you didn’t choose.
Do you have regrets in life about a choice? When you find yourself saying, “I should have done things the other way” Or, “looking back now, I think I would have done things differently.” When people say those kinds of things, they’re talking about opportunity costs. They think the value of what they didn’t choose is more than what they did choose.
Businesses evaluate opportunity costs all the time before they invest money. They look at all the options to see which one is most profitable. That is the goal - to choose the most profitable, the most advantageous, most beneficial decision. The goal is that the value of what you DO choose is more than the value of what you DO NOT choose. Makes sense, right? We all make those choices all the time, right?
Paul is talking about opportunity cost in Philippians. He talks about two alternatives and the value of those alternatives. One is religion, and the other is righteousness. One is faith in self, and the other is faith in Christ.
Paul says that he had been more religious than any other man. He says in verse 4 that he had more reason to put confidence in his flesh, that is “himself” than any other man. And he goes on into verses 5 and 6 to list some of the most sterling religious credentials any man could have. Any Jew would have envied this religious resume of Paul’s.
He was circumcised on the eighth day, indicating he was not a convert to Judaism, but, born into it.
He was of the people of Israel, the chosen covenant people of God.
He was of the tribe of Benjamin, which was one of the elite of the 12 tribes of Israel. When the nation split into the northern and southern kingdoms, Benjamin was the only tribe that remained loyal to the lineage of King David and stayed with the tribe of Judah in the south. Benjamin is also the tribe from whom the first king ever over Israel came - king Saul. Saul, by the way is Paul’s name before he became the apostle to the Gentiles. He is called Paul beginning in Acts 13:9.
He was a Hebrew of Hebrews, meaning he was a pure-bred. Many Hebrews were not pure Hebrews because they had been mixed with surrounding Gentile peoples. They adopted Gentile customs and had forgotten the Hebrew language. Not Paul. His pedigree was pure. His parents and his heritage were pure Hebrew. He still spoke the language. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews.
He was a Pharisee, the most religious group in Israel that held the strictest view of the Law.
He was the most zealous and ambitious religious Jew because he went as far as persecuting Christians because like every other Jew he thought it was a heretical cult that needed to be stamped out.
He was legalistically righteous, meaning he was faultless in the eyes of men. He kept the law and the traditions so spotlessly that no other religious Jew could look with a microscope into his life and find blame.
So that’s his religion. He’s got it and he’s good at it. But, in verses 7, 8 and 9 he’s comparing his religion to Christ’s righteousness. He’s comparing these two alternatives. He can only have one, or the other. He can’t have both. Which one is going to bring more profit? Which one is more valuable?
Paul does not hesitate, he says in verse 8 that knowing Christ far surpasses anything religious that he could ever do. All the reason for having confidence in himself falls far short of knowing Jesus Christ. He has chosen Christ over his religion. Everything - all of his religious credentials - has become loss, worthless, and trash compared to having Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
I want you today to see the surpassing profit, the incomparable gain that is in Christ Jesus. But, you can’t trust Christ and religion. You can’t be relying on yourself and your good works AND at the same time be relying on Christ. You can’t serve two masters Jesus said. You can only have Jesus Christ or your own works.
What I want today is for you to make your works - your religion - to be your opportunity cost. In other words, I want religion to be the option you didn’t choose. I want you, like Paul, to consider any good thing that you have done to be trash when you stack it up against Jesus Christ. I want whatever the value was of religion in your life - of self-made righteousness - to be seen as a massive loss compared to knowing Jesus Christ. I want for you to say, “I chose Christ, and I didn’t choose to rely on religion”.
Why? Because if you don’t choose to trust Christ - that is, if you do choose to trust religion, or yourself, or anything other than Christ - then your opportunity cost will be too much! What I mean to say is that the value of choosing religion is really no more than trash you throw away every week compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. You will give up four things if you choose religion. These four things will be your opportunity cost. These four things will be what you did not choose, these will be the things you forsake if you choose religion. Do not make these your opportunity cost. Do not let these be the things you DID NOT CHOOSE.
There’s four of them: Christ’s Knowledge, Christ’s Righteousness, Christ’s Power, and Christ’s Fellowship.
Knowledge
Paul says in verse 8, “…the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord …” and in verse 10 he says, “I want to know Christ …”
Knowing Christ is the single most important thing in your life. The word Paul uses for knowing is “gnosis” and it means to know by experience, by being personally involved.
It‘s the difference between reading about someone, and, knowing someone after having spent time with them.
It’s personally knowing Jesus Christ. It’s your own one-on-one relationship to Him. It’s not hearing about Him in sermons or from other people who do know Him and it’s not reading about Him and having the facts about Him. This is why we talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ - it’s you personally having your involvement with Him and your identity in Him.
This is key: It is when you are personally experiencing in your life what you read about Him in the Bible. Does Scripture say He has power and authority over all things? Are you experiencing the life-giving and life-changing power of Christ in your life? Does Scripture say that He gives close, intimate fellowship when you suffer for His sake? If so, then do you find yourself nearer to Him as you suffer? Is what you read about Him what you know to be true of Him in your life? That is gnosis - that is having the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Knowing God, and knowing His Son, Jesus Christ is the definition of eternal life. John 17:5 says, “………..”. Eternal life isn’t what you know, it’s who you know. Salvation is not a matter of what you do, salvation is a matter of who you know.
Going to heaven and not going to hell is entirely a matter of who you know. Jesus said in Matthew 7:21-23, “………….”.
Their problem Jesus said is that He did not KNOW them. He didn’t say “You’re not good enough”. He didn’t say, “You weren’t religious enough”. He didn’t say, “I added up all your good deeds and your bad deeds and your bad out-weighed your good.” He said he did not KNOW them! He did not have a relationship with them where they were personally involved with Him. They did all the right things, they knew about Jesus, but they didn’t know Jesus.
Listen: There are going to be people in hell who sat and served in church their whole life. This is because attending church and serving in church do not save. That’s works-based salvation. Knowing Christ saves
Paul says I now know Jesus Christ and it is unmatched, surpassing greatness to know Him and nothing compares. Nothing. Everything is trash compared to knowing Christ. Don’t make knowing Christ your opportunity cost. Don’t let knowing Christ be the option you didn’t choose.
Righteousness
The second thing you don‘t want to make an opportunity cost is Christ‘s Righteousness. Verse 9 says, “…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”
Righteousness, simply defined, means “being right”, or, being “as you ought to be”.
Let’s say you met Paul before he was a Christian - before Acts chapter 9 - and you were to try and witness to him. Let’s say you asked him the following question: “Paul, if you died today and stood before God and He asked you, ‘Paul, why should I let you into my heaven?’ Paul, what would you say?” Paul would tell you everything he says in verses 5 and 6. He would say that all his religion, his heritage, his pedigree, his hard religious work would be the reason that God would let him into heaven. Paul would be standing on his own righteousness, otherwise known as self-righteousness.
But God says we are not righteous. Nobody is. Romans 3:10 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” A couple verses later it says in verse 20, “No one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the Law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” Nobody is as they ought to be. That is the purpose of the Law - to show us the standard that we don’t measure up to so we will cast ourselves at the mercy of God for our acknowledged unrighteousness. But, people keep thinking today just like they did in Paul’s time that they can keep the law and earn righteousness. That they can make themselves as the ought to be. That they can make themselves right before God.
But, no law, no amount of good works, no ceremonies, no church attendance, no having Christian parents, no being raised in the church and going to Sunday School, no being baptized, no taking communion, no praying prayers, no being a good, nice, and helpful person is ever going to hide our utter unrighteousness. The One we have to stand before someday says that we are not going to make it on our own.
Now, if you ran into Paul after Acts 9, his answer to your question would be entirely different. It would be what he says in verse 9. “I have a righteousness now, but not my own. I didn’t get it by myself. Someone gave it to me. Jesus Christ gave me His righteousness. The righteousness I now have I received from Jesus Christ.”
My dad is always giving me his clothes. I remember I was preparing for one of my first job interviews and my dad gave me a blazer to wear. He said you need to look good, and he gave me a really nice blazer - he has really good taste. So, I went to the interview looking good in my dad’s blazer. I looked good because I was wearing my dad’s clothes.
That’s what Jesus Christ does. He dresses you in his righteousness. You only look good to God when you are wearing Christ’s righteousness. God the Father gives you His righteousness when you place your faith in Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus took our sin, so that we could have his righteousness.
But, look at Philippians 3 verse 9 again, it says that this righteousness is not by works of the law, but, by faith. It’s by trusting in Christ. You can’t have this by working for it. It’s received after you have believed. Romans 3 verses 21 and 22 say, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known …. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” The kind of righteousness you want is the kind that comes from God. It’s the only kind that counts. And all who believe in Christ, will receive the righteousness of Christ, and therefore will be as acceptable to God as Christ.
So, don’t make Christ’s righteousness an opportunity cost. Don’t make this the option you did not choose.
Power
The third thing Paul says is power. He wants to know the power of Christ’s resurrection. This kind of power is not found in man, but, in God. It’s the power that God exerted to raise Jesus Christ from the dead. In Ephesians 1 Paul is praying for the Philippians and he says in verse 18, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms…”
This is life-giving power that is mightier than the power of death. God has demonstrated his power by raising Christ Jesus from the dead and by that power Jesus Christ is alive today seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. Death could not hold him down when God came to raise Him up!
And this is the same power that raises us from spiritual death to spiritual life. We see this power at work in God’s plan of salvation.
First, we are saved by the power of God. In Romans 1:16 Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe…” The gospel is the power of God to give us salvation. 1 Corinthians 1:24 says, “But to those whom God has called … Christ is the power of God”
Secondly, not only does His power save us when we believe, but, it is at work in us after we believe. The word Paul uses for power in our Philippians passage is the Greek word, “dynamis”. It is used also in Acts 1:8 when Jesus says, “But you will receive power (dynamis) when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem … and to all the ends of the earth.” The kind of power the disciples were going to receive was the power to be witnesses for Jesus Christ. It’s the power to speak the gospel message. Paul was a witness for Jesus Christ to carry the message of salvation to the Gentiles. The same Holy Spirit gives us the same power to be witnesses for Jesus Christ today. It’s natural to be afraid to tell someone about salvation in Jesus Christ, but, it’s only by the power of God’s Holy Spirit that you are able to. If you are a believer you have that power available because you have the Holy Spirit within you.
Another way Paul wanted to know the power of Jesus was in glorification. The glorification of his own body that Jesus is going to perform for Paul in the future. Look at Philippians 3:20 and 21. “But our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, 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.” Paul has gone from being a degenerate to a regenerate by the power of God. And now, as he is being sanctified by that same power, he looks forward to the day when Jesus Christ will glorify him by transforming his lowly, perishable, ignoble body into a body just like his Lord and Saviors. Jesus Christ will do that to Paul, and every single believer, with power - the same power that was used to raise Him from the dead.
Don’t trade in the life-giving power of Jesus Christ. Don’t choose your own power and trust in your own strength for your salvation and reject the power of God in Christ. Don’t let the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead become your opportunity cost.
Fellowship
Lastly, don’t let fellowship with Jesus Christ become an opportunity cost. You don’t want to pass this up. Paul says, “I want to know Christ … and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death”. Paul wants to suffer like Christ, for Christ. Like Christ, for Christ. Paul uses the word “kononia”, for fellowship. You may remember he used the word in chapter 1 verse 5 when he says, “because of your partnership in the gospel..”
Kononia is the deep, connected bond that comes from going through the same experiences. Paul had it with the Philippians because he was standing firm in the faith, contending, witnessing, preaching and suffering … and so were they! (1:29,30) They had the gospel in common, but, they had the hardships of the gospel in common as well. Paul knew the Philippians knew what he was going through because they were going through it themselves.
Paul wanted Christ’s fellowship in his sufferings. He wanted to know how his Savior felt when he was rejected, when he was mocked, when he was persecuted for the message of the gospel. Why? Because it meant a deeper identification with Christ. It meant more conformity to his Savior. Suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ is a privilege that God grants (Phil 1:29,30; Acts 5)
When Paul says “becoming like him in his death” it throws us back to chapter 2 when he describes the humiliation of Christ in verse 8. How did Christ die? In humility and obedience. Paul wants to be so conformed to his Savior’s image that he is as humble and as obedient as Jesus was- all the way to death. Jesus pleased the Father by being humble and obedient, so too Paul wanted to please God the Father in the same way, and participate in suffering for Christ.
Where do you go in your trials? Who do you have? What do you turn to? I’ve heard many Christians who were going through the valleys of life or in the middle of suffering say, “I don’t know how people go through these things without Jesus Christ. I don’t know what I’d do without Him.” He is the One they fellowship with in their pain. He is the One who is their strength, their comfort, their refuge, their peace. Is He yours?
Choose to fellowship with Christ.
Conclusion
There are four things you do not want to let be opportunity costs: Knowing Christ, Christ’s Righteousness, Christ’s Power, and Christ’s Fellowship. Do not let these be the option you didn’t choose. Choose faith in Christ. It is of greater worth than anything you could ever do apart from faith in Him. And knowing Him is worth giving up all you are and all you‘ve done on your own. I want to close with a parable Jesus uses in Matthew 13.
(Finding something of greater worth than anything else you have and giving all you have to get it.)
The idea is that that treasure, that pearl, that thing that is worth so much - if you don’t get it, all the things you have that you once thought were so valuable will seem so worthless. It will all be as trash because now you see the superior worth of something else that you must have. And you are willing to give all that you now have so as to have that thing. If you were to possess it, you would be far richer with it alone than with everything else and not having it. It is your true riches and you will always be poor without it.
That is what Paul is talking about in Philippians today. He found the unmatched treasure in knowing Jesus Christ, and, when he did, he realized all the religion he had been relying on was worthless. For Paul, religion became his opportunity cost. It became the option he didn’t choose. He chose Christ. It is my earnest desire that if you are here today and have not chosen Christ, that you would. I talked with a man this weekend who has been a Christian for 60 years. He said that the night he became a Christian he learned three things that made him want to become a Christian. I want to tell them to you to close. First, God loves you. Second, Jesus Christ died for you. And third, Jesus shed his blood so your sins could be forgiven. If you’ll believe that, instead of in yourself, you will have eternal life. Don’t let one more day pass where you don’t choose Jesus Christ. Don’t let eternal life be your opportunity cost for one more day.
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