Christ Above All

[0:00] We are continuing our little trek down through the book of Philippians. We're chapter 3 this morning. Picking up verse 3. We looked at verse 3 last week, but we're just using verse 3 to kind of get us into their context.

[0:14] And we're going to go down to verse 9. And so before we start, let's pray together. Father, we thank you for all the good things that you have done for us. You are the King and the righteous Judge of all the earth.

[0:26] And we pray that you would help our hearts to fear you so that we might gain a heart of wisdom. That you would teach us to number our days. And that you would help us, Father, to know you and the power of the resurrection.

[0:44] And we just pray, Lord, that you would use that in our lives to help us to be molded and shaped into the image of Christ. And we pray that today, that as we look at this passage, Lord, that you would illuminate our minds by your spirit.

[0:58] That we might know what you have said. So we might believe and we might be changed. And we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. There is the term conversion.

[1:13] And it is a term that we would use in speaking about things theologically and biblically and this kind of a thing. But I want you to think for just a second.

[1:24] What other areas of life do you have the word conversion? Yes, ma'am? Where are you? Philippians 3. 3. Yeah.

[1:34] There's a handout on the back of the table. Michelle, I'll bring on. That's okay. Okay. Philippians 3, verses 3 through 9 is where we are. Does anybody else need a handout?

[1:45] Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So conversion. Conversion. What other areas do we use that term? And what for? Yes, sir? Math and science. Okay. Give me some examples.

[1:57] Oh. They're trying to say something. Converting it into fractions. Okay. Right. Taking a decimal, converting it into fractions. And then you can take a fraction and do what? Converting it into a decimal.

[2:09] All right. Great. Maths. Is there another area you can think of where you convert things? Cooking. Mmm. Yeah. In what way? Because I didn't know this. With recipes, your amounts to devil and trout.

[2:23] That's right. And recipes are cut them down. Excellent. Excellent. What's another one? Science. Converting from a solid to a liquid to gas. Okay. Good.

[2:34] Good. Medications. Medications. Okay. No ground. No ground. Mmm. Right. Going from the metric system to the real system.

[2:48] Conversion vans. Conversion what? Vans. Conversion fan. Oh, vans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. What a normal sort of humdrum kind of van into camping mecca.

[3:00] Right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No. I've heard the term before used in like stocks, right? You can convert your stocks.

[3:11] I have no idea what that means. Anybody know what that means? Conversion. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. You take one stock, sell it, and put it into another stock. Oh. Okay.

[3:22] There you go. Or you can turn it into some other type of thing. Yeah. You can turn it into another one. Okay. In all of this, the kind of the key root of this is going from one system to another system.

[3:38] That is the kind of the concept that's behind to convert something or conversion of something. And I'm convinced that a proper biblical view of conversion helps us with our own walk, with sharing the gospel, with understanding missions and how to do these things.

[3:59] Without understanding conversion, we really can't understand how to grow or do missions or evangelism or anything of the like. So, with that in mind then, let's turn to Philippians chapter 3.

[4:15] And can I get someone to just read the whole passage for us this morning? Verses 3 through 9. Finally, brothers, rejoice in the Lord.

[4:27] It is no trouble for me to write the same thing to you again. And it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those men who be people.

[4:38] Those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are in circumcision. We who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus.

[4:49] And who put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more circumcised on the eighth day than the people of Israel.

[5:05] Of the tribe of Benjamin. A Hebrew and a few groups in regards to the law. A heresy for zeal. Persecuting the church as for the legalistic writings of the father.

[5:18] But whatever was to my father, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surprising greatness.

[5:29] Greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may get in Christ.

[5:40] That the woman is not. Go ahead with verse 9. And be found in him not having any righteousness of my own that comes from the law. That which is through faith in Christ.

[5:51] The righteousness that comes from God in me by faith. All right. The handout I've given you shows you kind of the breakdown of how we're going to look at this. And the first thing we want to look at is we want to look at Paul's claim to confidence.

[6:06] The kind of confidence he could have claimed. And from verse 3 to verse 6 is where we want to focus. Now what he does, beginning at about verse 5, is he makes a list of seven things that he could take confidence in if having confidence in the flesh were important.

[6:24] So let's see if we can list out these seven things. What are these seven things that he has confidence in? Circumcision. Okay.

[6:34] Circumcised on the eighth day. Okay. So what did it mean for a Jew to know that he's got that? Can you think of one thing that meant for him?

[6:47] Well, he's following the Abrahamic covenant. He's following the Abrahamic covenant. That's right. And it proves he's not a Gentile. Right. It proves he's not a Gentile.

[6:59] But it also proves that since he's not a Gentile, that he's a child of God. That he's one of the people of God. He's in the covenant. He's one of the covenant members is the idea. Okay. What's the next thing that we see?

[7:14] He is from the tribe of Benjamin. He is from the tribe of Benjamin. Right before that, it was the nation of Israel. So we got circumcised Israel, Benjamin. And so we've got kind of this, it's kind of going from general to specific is what he's doing, right?

[7:29] So think of the tribe of Benjamin. Why would he, why would that be something for him to take confidence in and boast about? What do you know about the tribe of Benjamin? Well, it was the smallest of the, all the tribes of Israel.

[7:43] Okay. It was. And because of that, where did they stay? You know what I mean when I say, where did they stay? Is that a strange way to ask that question? That's what we say out here.

[7:54] Stay. Where do you stay? Okay. Well, that's what I mean. Where did they live? In Judah. They did. They lived in Judah. Right? They had combined with Judah.

[8:05] Okay. Do y'all know the history of Israel with the 12 tribes and the splitting of the 12 tribes? Is everybody familiar with that? Yeah. Does anybody, does anybody need me to review that for just a second?

[8:16] We've raised our memory. Okay. So, here we go. Let's see if I can do it this way. So, this is the basics of, oh, that last one's terrible.

[8:36] This is basics of the geography. This is Egypt over here. This is the Dead Sea. This is the Sea of Galilee. This is Jerusalem.

[8:48] So, when the 12 tribes come out and they take over the land, they disperse through. Three tribes end up over here. The rest of them end up over here. And there's a little bit of a dividing line that happens right about there.

[9:01] Let me do it this way. Right about there. And ten tribes go to the north and two to the south. Not twenty. Two. And that's Judah and Benjamin.

[9:13] Okay. This happens. So, you have three kings, right? You can say SDS. Saul, David, Solomon. Under those three kings, all 12 tribes were united.

[9:26] Solomon's son messed it all up. And that's when the ten tribes went to the north. You had Rehoboam in the south, Jeroboam in the north.

[9:39] So, Paul is saying that he's from the tribe of Benjamin. But there's another reason, I think, that he's talking about tribe of Benjamin. It's because Saul, King Saul, the first king, was from the tribe of Benjamin.

[9:53] So, it's just a point of place for him to be thinking about. Okay. What's the next phrase? We've gotten tribe of Benjamin. Hebrew of Hebrews.

[10:04] Okay. What does that remind you of when you think Hebrew of Hebrews? Boom. Just right there. What does it remind you of? Rehoboam. Oh, come on. There's biblical phrases.

[10:15] And it just thought, it didn't all just roll off the tongue. Hebrew of Hebrews and Lord of Lords and King of Kings. It's the same phrasing.

[10:25] Lord of Lords, King of Kings. Right? So, Hebrew of Hebrews means something like Lord of Lords and King of Kings. So, he's saying that of all the Hebrews, he's one of the best.

[10:38] He's one of the best. As to the law, that's the next one. As to the law, he's a Pharisee. What do you know about the Pharisees? They were lawyers.

[10:51] They were lawyers. They were what? Judges. Judges. Okay. Judges. They were proud. They were proud. Corrupt. Corrupt.

[11:02] He wouldn't have said that. Very corrupt. Yeah. So, it's also a way of looking at the scriptures. So, you had the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

[11:14] The Pharisees were conservative. Looked at the scriptures in a certain way. Believed that the problem of Israel in the past, their idolatry, could be avoided by having more laws.

[11:31] So, they added 615 extra laws above the Bible to help you obey what the Bible had said. So, in other words, one of the best ones to look at is the idea of remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

[11:46] Okay. We know what the Bible says about that in the Ten Commandments. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Fourth Commandment. Well, they added all of these extra laws around that so that you couldn't even get close to violating that.

[12:02] That's why the guy at the pool of the Fezzel, who carries his mantle, that's why they get all upset. Because he violated one of their 615 laws. You're not supposed to carry anything of so much weight for so much distance.

[12:14] Because that would be work. Right? So, when Jesus comes to correct them, he's not correcting what the Old Testament says. He's correcting those 615 laws.

[12:25] And you've got to keep that in mind. But this was a way of living. This was a way of life. And this is who Paul is. Alright? As to zeal, he's a persecutor of the church. I think that's a pretty self-explanatory thing.

[12:37] He was so zealous about what he believed that he was willing to put into prison and see people put to death for his beliefs. Oftentimes, I will say that Paul was a murderer.

[12:50] And I have people look at me and say, well, the Bible doesn't say he was a murderer. Well, yeah, you're right. He doesn't. But, what he did do is he held the coats of those who stoned Stephen.

[13:03] And because of that, he was giving approval to and helping bring about this stoning of Stephen. And so, that's the essence of his zeal.

[13:14] And then the last thing, as to righteousness which is in the law, he's found blameless. Now, do you think that Paul is thinking to himself the same thing here as he thinks in other places where he talks about righteousness?

[13:30] I mean, he says he's blameless here. Do you think this blameless and this righteousness is the same kind of righteousness that he talks about in Galatians and Romans? Not at all.

[13:40] Not at all. His standard was here with the law. That's right. That's right. He's looking at these 615 laws. He's looking at the way things ought to be.

[13:51] It's like, I've never picked up a mat and walked with it. You know? And so, that's what he's looking at. These externals of things. So, the point is, is that Paul is stating that he has a particular ability to have confidence in the flesh if having confidence in the flesh was a good thing.

[14:14] Because that's what these people who are teaching the Philippians who are coming along that they're hearing from, they're trying to convince them to start being legalistic and to start doing things to earn salvation.

[14:25] And Paul is coming along and saying, listen, if anybody could have earned it, if anybody could have had confidence in the flesh, it was me. Right? So, the point is, is that confidence in the flesh.

[14:39] Jesus takes what the Pharisees were doing and he raises the bar. In Matthew chapter 5 verse 20, he says, For I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

[14:54] Now, for the people to hear that would have, it would have shocked them, it would have scared them, because they thought the Pharisees were the most righteous.

[15:06] And for Jesus to come and say, no, no, no, you cannot even enter the kingdom of heaven without a righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees. And of course, what Jesus is speaking about here is that it's a righteousness that has to go all the way to the bone.

[15:21] Right? That's why he says, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery. Because it's not just external behavior, but internal change. That becomes important as we get into Paul's repentance then, concerning his view.

[15:39] But before I hit that, I just want to say, what Paul is doing is he's setting up his previous life. And in his previous life, he's going to tell us that he counts it for nothing. But a part of confidence in the flesh is that we don't see Christ as being best.

[15:59] We see ourselves as being best. And so, so let's take then a look at verse 7 and 8. Let me just read it again, just to remind us.

[16:09] But whatever things were gained to me, those things I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.

[16:26] Now let me ask you some questions. Just looking at these two verses, what are the things that Paul says were gained to him?

[16:36] He says the word, they were gained to me. What does he mean? What's he referring to by these gained to me? What he thought previously. Exactly.

[16:47] The things he just listed out. Those seven big things that he says were his confidence. So what action does Paul say that he took about these things? He just counted them as a loss.

[17:00] That's right. These things had counted as loss. What drove him, according to verse 7, to count them as loss?

[17:14] Knowing Christ Jesus. His encounter with Christ. That's right. He has this little phrase right here, for the sake of Christ. When you see, for the sake of, anywhere in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, to do something for the sake of is to do something for the praise of, for the glory of.

[17:34] You can't do something for the sake of God and add to God. Right? Like if you do something for my sake, it's because I've got a problem, I need help, and I need you to do something for my sake.

[17:45] Right? But if you do something for the sake of God, he doesn't need our help. He's perfect. So when we do something for the sake of God, for the sake of his name, for the sake of Christ, we're doing it for his glory, for his praise, that he is magnified.

[17:59] So Paul is saying, I've counted everything as loss for Christ's glory, for his praise, so that he is exalted and praised. He says then in verse 8, more than that, and he counts something else as a loss.

[18:19] What else does he count as a loss? All things. Oh, that's crazy. All things. I just want you to think about that. What do you think?

[18:30] Can you think of anything that wouldn't be covered under all things? What does all mean? Everything. Well, you know, it is true that in the Bible, sometimes all doesn't mean all, because there's some sort of limiter in the text.

[18:47] Sometimes there's not some sort of limit in the text. So, for instance, in the Gospels, it will say that all the world went out to see him. Right? Well, that would have been impossible.

[18:58] Right? Because there were people in other places. So it's speaking hyperbole, saying a bunch of people went out there. So there's a limit there. But here, I don't see any kind of limit. No.

[19:10] No. At all. So on one hand, all these things of his family origin, and how he grew up, and his zeal, and his view of the Bible, and his religious sentiments, he counts as a loss, but he also counts everything else as a loss.

[19:29] Wow. That is just incredible to me. Paul's reason, then, why does he count everything as a loss? For the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

[19:44] Yes. In view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. Knowing Jesus has such a surpassing value that he's willing to count everything in this world as a loss.

[20:05] That reminds me of Jesus' statement. He says, No one can come to me unless he hates father, mother, sister, brother, yes, even in his own life. It doesn't mean that you've got to be evil and wicked to your family.

[20:18] It means that the love for Christ, the desire for Christ, has to be so huge that it makes it look like the love for your family is hate.

[20:29] In comparison. Right? For the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, I count what was my gain as a loss. I count everything else as a loss.

[20:41] He counts them. He uses the term rubbish. Rubbish. What's rubbish? Trash. Trash. Garbage. Garbage.

[20:53] I mean, think about this. In this footnote, it says, Rubbish means either bodily excrement or food fit only for dogs. Yeah. That's true. It does mean either one of those, depending on the context.

[21:08] That's pretty bad. Now, think about this. A Hebrew of Hebrews, he's born of the tribe of Benjamin. So is his mom. If he counts the tribe of Benjamin and being a part of that as being a loss, counts it as rubbish.

[21:26] He's counting his whole upbringing. Does it mean that he's ugly to his mother? No. No. But there is something about coming to a place of wanting to know Christ in such a way, being driven so much by wanting to know Christ, to see Christ, to love Christ, to understand Christ, that it totally shifts and changes our whole view or the love we have for others.

[21:54] You guys gone? Alright, y'all be careful. We're driving on the white roads. So here's what I want to say about this.

[22:06] What we have here is we have a picture of repentance. Repentance. Now, our passage doesn't use the word repentance, but it gives us the picture of repentance.

[22:19] The word repentance in the Greek has two Greek words that come together, and what it means is it means a change of mind. A change of mind.

[22:29] That's the two parts of it. The root of repentance, then, is this idea that I thought this way, now I think this way.

[22:41] In other words, let's just say you've got somebody who they gossip about someone, which is a sin. Right? So, you do that. A change, a repentance of gossip would be not just, oh, I got caught and I shouldn't do that.

[22:56] Oh, somebody called me down on it, so I shouldn't do that. It's a, that is a violation of the commands of God. This is a, this is a sin against God. This is a bad thing I'm doing.

[23:07] It's a change of mind. Right? All of us have times where we've done something we shouldn't have done. We kind of got caught and we felt bad about it, but we didn't really feel bad about it because the thing was wrong, but we felt bad because we kind of lost face just a little bit.

[23:22] That's not repentance. Repentance is no matter if we get caught in it or not, we know that this is wrong and we no longer believe it's an okay way to act this way.

[23:35] So, that's what Paul's doing. He's counting his whole life, everything. He's walking away from it, changing his mind about it and going a different direction. There's a passage in 2 Corinthians that talks about two kinds of sorrow and repentance.

[23:55] Okay? Let's just read this. He says, I now rejoice not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.

[24:12] For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death.

[24:23] For behold, what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow has produced in you. What vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong in everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.

[24:40] There's a sorrow according to the will of God produces repentance without regret, leading to salvation. There are all the pieces of repentance. This repentance being a change of mind, it starts because you see sin, you sorrow over your sin, and you turn to God.

[25:00] And all that is a mental, spiritual thing, which is the root of repentance that should eventually turn into fruit of a changed life.

[25:17] The way I like to picture repentance though, because we get into ruts and habits of the way we interact and talk to people, the way we think, the way we feel about things, we get into ruts.

[25:30] And repentance is not an easy thing. Matter of fact, Martin Luther said in the first of his theses, he says the Christian life ought to be a life of repentance. The one thing you and I should constantly be doing is repenting.

[25:44] Because we have so much to repent of. But I like to think of repentance like a semi-truck. Okay? I've never driven a semi-truck, but I've watched them.

[25:55] You know, and I've watched them on the highways, and if you think about one on the highway with exit ramps and everything, if he's up on the highway and going one direction, you realize he's going the wrong direction.

[26:07] Can he immediately flip around and be going the other direction? No. He's got to slow down. He's got to exit. He's got to make the U-turn. He's got to get all the way around.

[26:19] Then he's got to build up speed. He's got to go on the on-ramp, and he's got to get back up on the road. But if you're saved, say, when you're 25, and you had 25 years of treating people a certain way that's absolutely outlawed by God's Word, you can't expect that in 15 minutes after this person's saved that they're never going to do that again.

[26:46] They may have changed their mind, and they have gone and pulled their foot off the gas of that action. That's repentance. Now, if it's true repentance, they'll keep pressing on the brake and slow down, but it may take another 10 years before they conquer that thing.

[27:03] What I'm saying is that repentance is one side of conversion, and when somebody's converted, when somebody's saved, does not mean that they immediately have a complete change.

[27:15] Now, there are some people that do. There are some people they've got something in their life and they repent of it and it's gone immediately. And God has done that in some people's lives, but that's not the typical way most of us experience things.

[27:28] Let's talk then for a moment. I think I may have too much material. We may have to pause here in just a second because I've got like two more points and we're almost out of time. It's just because this is so important because conversion is brought about by both repentance and faith.

[27:44] And so I wanted to talk about repentance and I want to talk about faith so that we can understand conversion. So, let's go a little bit just a little I'll watch the clock we'll go a little bit longer and see what we get to.

[27:56] So, let's talk then about then this faith Paul's faith. We've seen the repentance and now let's look at the faith. Verse 8 verse 8 and 9 More than that I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

[28:32] faith. So, what sort of righteousness was Paul not seeking for? Law. Yeah. No righteousness by law which meant no righteousness by obeying the old covenant and trying to do it in my own strength.

[28:49] Okay? But instead he wants what kind of righteousness? Faith through cross. Right. A righteousness now look what he says it's a righteousness that comes from God.

[29:04] So, it's not a righteousness that is in you that gets developed. It's not a righteousness in you that you just all of a sudden start living. It is a righteousness that comes from God given to you.

[29:19] You have to think of God like a judge. Okay? Picture God as a judge. You're the guilty person. You're standing in the defendant's booth and as the judge walks back in he looks at you and says normally we think to ourselves he's going to say one of two things.

[29:35] Right? He's going to say either guilty or innocent or not guilty. Right? So, you're either guilty not guilty guilty or innocent whatever. Right? In this picture God doesn't come in and say either one of those things.

[29:50] What he does is he comes in and says righteous. Righteous. See, to be not guilty is to not have enough evidence to convict me of my sin.

[30:04] To be righteous is to say you never sinned. You lived perfectly. You obeyed perfectly. Okay, let's just pause right there.

[30:17] Do you see the difference between those and understand that? Is that hitting your heart? Some of you are going hmm, that hit my heart. Some of you may not get it just yet. That is the core of the Christian life.

[30:33] That is the moment of conversion when we go from being in the defendant's box to being declared righteous.

[30:46] He credits to our account. This is another way of thinking about it. You can get out of the judicial mindset and think about it from a fiduciary mindset. How do you like that? I have no idea what that word means.

[30:59] No, no. It's about finances, right? And so, your account, your account, I've said this on Sunday morning, has a trillion, a hundred trillion debt.

[31:12] A hundred trillion debt. You can't ever pay that off. but Christ, because of the way he lived, he earned a hundred trillion credit, right? It's perfect righteousness. And you need the hundred trillion credit in order to be saved.

[31:26] So in that moment that the judge says, you're righteous, the debt we have is wiped away, but we don't return to zero. The righteousness of Jesus is credited to our account, so now I have a hundred trillion credit, because I have the righteousness of Christ.

[31:43] His righteousness covering me, not my righteousness. So, Paul is saying that's the righteousness that comes by faith.

[31:54] It comes from God on the basis of faith. Now, I like to use this idea of faith, this definition of faith, that I feel like takes in the whole Bible into consideration, and it's this.

[32:08] Faith is a conviction of the truth of the gospel, and a commitment to the Christ of the gospel. Faith is a conviction of the truth, truths of the gospel, and a commitment to the Christ of the gospel.

[32:25] If you don't believe the things that are in the gospel, if you don't believe that Jesus is God, if you don't believe Jesus is the Son of God, if you don't believe that Jesus died and rose again, that means you don't believe those things.

[32:35] You're not convicted that those things are true, then you're not a Christian. That's just the way it is. Right? But even if you believe those things are true, but you're not committed to Christ, then what good does it do you?

[32:51] Right? I always like to use the idea that faith is the three things. Right? It's knowing the facts, believing they're true, and then trusting. Right? The facts are the stool is designed to hold weight.

[33:05] I believe it will hold up my weight. Now I'm trusting the stool to hold my weight up. I'm not holding myself up. The stool is holding me up. That's the trust.

[33:16] It's those three parts. Let's think about it one other way. If you're going to go see a dignitary of some kind, president, king, queen, whomever it might be, and you have an invitation in your hand.

[33:31] You have an invitation in your hand like this. You get up to the door, secret service is there, people who have guns, and they will shoot you if you try to go through on your own.

[33:44] And you're saying to them, and I want you to think about this, on the basis of faith, what does it mean on the basis of faith? Is it because I believe or is it because what I believe? Is it because I believe or is it because what I believe?

[33:57] What you believe. What you believe. So here's the difference, okay? Just so we can be clear with this. If this is my invitation from the king to go see him, and I walk in and I go, I'm, look at this, I'm holding, look at my hand, I'm holding my invitation.

[34:15] Do you not see how well I'm holding this? Do you see my fingers? Do you see how strong they are? Do you need to let me in because look at the way I'm holding this? Well, I look at it like, well, first of all, you're cuckoo crazy.

[34:28] Secondly, get out of here. No, faith is not how I do it or that I believe, but it's what I believe. And I say, here's my invitation.

[34:40] Faith is described as theologians as empty hands. And it's what's in our hands that God looks at and therefore credits our account with righteousness.

[34:53] Our hands, our faith has to hold Christ. Our faith can't hold our faith. Our faith can't hold our church membership.

[35:05] Our faith can't hold our baptism. Our faith can't hold anything but Christ and Christ alone. And so, if I walk up to the Lord and I'm holding Christ by faith, He sees Christ because I'm holding Christ, He says, I credit to your account the righteousness of Christ.

[35:27] Conversion is the moment where I repent of my sin, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the moment of conversion where I repent and I believe.

[35:40] The next moment after that is not conversion, but it's justification. salvation. So, my salvation comes and what I must do, you must, a person must believe, a person must repent to be saved in that moment of conversion is I need to repent and believe.

[36:03] And then God credits me the righteousness, adopts me and then all the other blessings of salvation come. So, I basically have kind of gone through the rest of this without going through the rest of this directly.

[36:18] Let me ask you, do you have any questions? Because there's a couple things I want to say and then I'm going to get you to do something and I think we've got the time for it. Do you have any questions about what I'm saying? This is so foundational. Martin Luther, I go back to him again, he said the church rises or falls upon the doctrine of justification that they belong.

[36:36] And that's what we've been talking about. This is the most important thing we could ever talk about. Yes? I like Galatians 2 20. It's really supportive of this.

[36:46] It's no longer I that live but Christ lives within me. The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

[36:59] So I don't live by my own faith. I live by his faith that has been imparted to me. There's one other scripture that says that we have been made righteous by the gift of God.

[37:15] Anybody else? Let me make a distinguishing statement between what I'm saying and what I know others have said because I think it's important for us to see the truth kind of lined up against something that I don't think is true.

[37:35] And so maybe you can see what I'm seeing here. There are some people who would say that that moment of salvation does not require repentance.

[37:46] That you don't have to repent because they would say that that would be a work. And because it would be a work you just need to believe and that's all you need to do. I don't think that's right.

[37:59] I mean I go through scriptures and show you all this repentance but you look at what Paul's doing Paul is counting a loss in order to know. So I think they go together. There's some people who would say that faith is just a mental assent to the truth and it's not that commitment of your life to Christ.

[38:16] But I don't see how you can look at what it is that Paul's been saying here. I don't see how you can say I guess I've passed it up.

[38:28] Yeah. I don't see how you can see that he wants to count it all as rubbish so that I may gain Christ and say that that's not a commitment to Christ. then some want to add to the faith and repentance and they want to say on one hand some say that you need to add baptism as a way of expressing the faith.

[38:50] Okay. Now have you ever heard that before? That's going to be in the church of Christ. Okay. The church of Christ see baptism as a way of expressing your faith but the Bible never tells us anywhere that that is a thing that's happening.

[39:03] faith and repentance go together. We don't express faith through some other means. And then there's some who are going to say that what needs to be added is it's not just a faith and repentance but like it's all this obedience and it's much like the Galatians.

[39:18] You've got to obey all these different things because if you don't you're going to lose it. And if you lose it then you've got to do other things to get it back. And so what we're saying is it's repentance and faith that's conversion.

[39:33] That's where our life is changed. That's where we went from one system to another system. So here's the discussion part. Instead of breaking into groups what I want you to do is I just want to take you I want you to take a few moments just kind of on your own and I want you to think about your life.

[39:55] If you are a Christian you have a moment of conversion. If you're a Christian you have a moment in your past where you were converted.

[40:07] Now you may not remember it and I get that. Some people they're converted at a young age and they can't remember all the details or maybe now it's been so long ago and memory kind of fades sometimes and you can't remember all the details.

[40:22] So I'm not looking for a date. But if you know the date I think that would be an important thing. I think that's a good thing. You may not. That's fine. I remember my date because I was 18 years old and I remember it.

[40:34] I mean this is crystal clear in my mind. But not everybody's that way and that's okay. But I want you to think about and try to write out your testimony, your story, what you were like before Christ.

[40:49] What does Paul say? I was a Hebrew of Hebrews. I was this. I persecuted the church. And then when did you meet Christ? When were you converted? When did you believe and repent? And then what has your life been like after that?

[41:04] Because Paul goes on to say, you know, I want to know Christ. I want to know Christ. I'm doing all these things to gain Christ. so take a few moments and think about that.

[41:14] I used to say it like this, AC, DC, BC. No, BC, BC, DC, AC. Before Christ, during Christ, after Christ. There we go. Something like that. But there are three parts to your testimony.

[41:28] Everybody. You have three parts. You may not be able to remember details, but try to come up with as much as you can. Try to remember as much as you can. And just take a few moments to kind of write it out.

[41:41] If you're not a writer, you don't want to write it out, that's fine, but just think it through. And now I'm going to be quiet so you can think.