Please turn in God's word to Philippians chapter three. We begin at verse two through verse 11, even though the main focus will be verses four through six, and then especially verse nine. Here, Paul tells us a little bit about his life. This is not often that he does this, that he gives us autobiographical details, but he does here to show the point that man cannot be made right with God by anything he does. No matter how good it is, no matter how obedient or just or righteous he may seem, the righteousness that God requires cannot come from us. We're sinners, we're sinful, we're inclined toward all evil. Righteousness that God accepts is a righteousness that He gives us. In Jesus Christ in the obedience and satisfaction and righteousness of our Savior seen especially on the cross of Calvary This is the word of the Lord Philippians chapter 3 beginning at verse 2 Look out for the dogs look out for the evildoers look out for those who mutilate the flesh and For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish. in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Amen. Let's pray and ask God's blessing upon our time. Heavenly Father, help us now as we come to your word, as we come to this glorious central doctrine that you have justified us, you have made us right before your throne, before you. only in Jesus Christ, and we accept all of this only by faith. Father, help us to understand that we can never be made right with you on our own by what we do, not even by mostly your work and then a little bit of our work. No, it is Christ's work alone. in His perfect life of perfect obedience and righteousness, in His perfect death on the cross, shedding His own blood for us, piercing, letting His body be pierced for us, in His perfect resurrection from the dead when He is declared to be your Son in glory and power. Help us, Father, as the Apostle Paul teaches us, to cast away any basis in ourselves for confidence, and may we grab hold of Christ alone for all of our salvation. Help us now, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. What joy, what blessedness, indeed, what happiness Do we have, as God's people, in being made right with God through and in Jesus Christ? This is the unbroken testimony of Scripture. If you have not been made right with God, you have no peace in your life. But when God declares you righteous on the basis of Christ alone, then you can say what Paul says in Romans 5, 1, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. You can say what David says in Psalm 32, which is quoted in Romans 4 by Paul. Again, Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity. Blessed. Blessed is the man. In Hebrew, it's truly happy. Happy is the man. He has unbounded joy and happiness in life. When we are made right with God in Jesus Christ, we have come, you see, finally to the most central aspect of the Christian life, without which we cannot be Christian, without which we cannot be saved. If you think about your own body and what kinds of organs are vitally central to your life and which are more tangential, you could probably do without your arms or your legs. Your life would be greatly diminished, all right? But you can live. You can live without certain limbs and certain organs. You can't live without your heart. You can't live without your heart. Your heart being taken out of you, you would almost certainly immediately die. That's what justification by faith is. It's the heart of the gospel. It's the heart of the Christian life. It's the heart of what it means to be a Christian, that we don't save ourselves, but we are saved by another who is truly perfect, who is truly righteous, the Lord Jesus Christ. If you were to strike this doctrine and lop it off, you would almost immediately have death in your life. You would almost immediately have death in the Christian church because you will have taken out the heart of the gospel. Consider Paul's statement here in what we've just read in Philippians. He has no confidence in the flesh. Circumcision was the work of the Jewish people par excellence. It was what they boasted in, that they were Jews, that they were Israelites, that they were the people of God, that they were saved. And oh, don't you know that we are the people of God? Look at our circumcision. And yet Paul says, I put no confidence in the flesh. I put no confidence in any work of the law. And he goes on to relate a number of them, right? If anyone has the basis to put confidence in their flesh, in what they've done in their life, it's me, Paul says. Verse 4, "...though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh." Also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Right? Look at how perfect, quote-unquote, how perfect his life has been. Right, he says, I was circumcised on the eighth day. That's following the law of Moses. You were to be circumcised on the eighth day. By the way, the eighth day is simply, you know, you think of why the eighth day? The eighth day is symbolic of the resurrection and of renewal, right? Jesus was raised on what day? on the eighth day, right? Seven days, and then the first day of the next week is the eighth day. And so the eighth day, the octave in Jewish feasts always pointed to renewal and resurrection. So in many ways, when we're baptized, we are baptized on the eighth day. More to be said on that perhaps later. He's circumcised on the eighth day. He's of the people of Israel. He even knows his tribe. A lot of Jews at the time of Paul didn't know what tribe they were from. He says, I'm from the tribe of Benjamin. In fact, my name, my first name, Saul, is after the great king of the tribe of Benjamin, the first king of Israel, King Saul. A Hebrew of Hebrews asked to the law of Pharisee. I am the creme of the creme, the 1% of the 1% of the 1% who follow to an exacting degree the law of God. I am a Pharisee. I am not the one who is taught. I am the one who has mastered all 500 plus laws of Israel, of Moses. And I am the teacher. I am the master. I am the Pharisee. As to zeal, you want to know how zealous I was? You want to know how committed I was? I was a persecutor of the church as to righteousness under the law, blameless. I could not be faulted for not following, for not obeying anything in the law of Moses, in the law of God, in the Old Testament. I had accomplished everything. My pedigree, my family, my credentials are impeccable. If anyone has confidence in the flesh, it's Paul. It's solace polis. Then he says in verse seven, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, he says it again, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish. I count it as scubula in Greek, as manure. The worst kind of thing that you can find, that you can see, that you can smell. That's what all of my righteousness is before God. All of my good works, all of my obedience, the sorts of things I take comfort in. It's all garbage. It's all manure. It's all trash. compared to Christ, compared to His spotless righteousness, compared to His obedience. I cannot, you know, you think of, Calvin says, you know, we pride ourselves on our own good works, right? And we think that we can look at a can-do and that our vision is so strong by looking at a can-do. little light here on earth. He says, go ahead and look upwards to the noonday sun with your sight and you will soon find out that you are blinded. As strong as you think you are, as strong as we think, as perfect, as obedient as we think we are, as good as we think we are, turn your gaze towards heaven and there look at the perfect Son of God. How can your life compare to Him? How can your obedience compare to Him? How can your goodness compare to His? There's no comparison, but only an utter stark contrast. As good as we think we are, we are so full of death, so full of darkness. And this is the realization that Paul confronts and is confronted with on the road to Damascus. Here is a man who has lived according to the dictates of the law of Moses, according to the dictates of his own conscience. And here, at the very end of his life, as Saul of Tarsus, he finds an emptiness in his life. He finds that he has no true righteousness. And so he says, I give it all up. I give it all up for the sake of receiving the righteousness from God. Verse nine of righteousness. That is not that does not come from me obeying and trying to be a good person and me trying to work my way up to heaven. with whatever ideology I have. No, this righteousness that brings me into heaven, that saves me, is a righteousness from God that is given by faith alone in Christ's work alone. It's received. It's accepted. It's the open hand of faith that receives that which God gives in Jesus Christ. And so you see, coming now to the Heidelberg Catechism, In question 59, what use is there to believe all of this, and all of this is everything we've looked at from the Apostles' Creed. What use, what profit is there to believe in God the Father, Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord? who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried on the third day, and he descended into hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. What use is it to believe in the Holy Spirit and the communion of the saints? the forgiveness of our sins and the life everlasting, the resurrection of the body. What use is there to believe all of this? The catechism says, It's by faith, it's by believing all of these things that you are made right with God. It is by faith that I am an heir of eternal life. In other words, as I believe in the Lord Jesus, in the Father, in the Spirit, in all their work explained in the Apostles' Creed, that what they are and what they have done is for my salvation. As I believe this, you see, I am fully dependent on them. And as I depend on God and His work for me, I am declared righteous. I am made and heir of eternal life. All of the Apostles' Creed, you see, points towards what the church has called in times past, an alien righteousness, alien here, not having to do with, you know, unidentified flying objects, right? Alien here has to do with something that is foreign to you. The righteousness that we need is alien to us. It's not native to us. It's not inborn. It's not inherent. It's a righteousness that comes from without us, not from within. It comes from Jesus Christ. It's a foreign obedience that belongs to Christ alone. And you see, we need this alien righteousness from Jesus Christ. You see, the problem that we have, consider what our problem is in question 60, right? My conscience accuses me. I'm corrupted within. I have grievously sinned against all of God's commandments. I'm condemned. I have never kept any of them. I'm disobedient. And I'm still inclined toward all evil. My disposition is towards what is against God, what offends God. That's what attracts me. That's what delights me. And so we stand guilty before God, condemned by God. How are we then to be saved? We can only be saved, you see, not by ourselves, but by God. But how does God save us? God saves us by fulfilling His own standard, the prescriptions of His law. When you hear the prescriptions of the law, don't hear a drug-related paraphernalia, right? Or a little script, a little paper, right? Prescriptions of the law mean the stipulations of God's law. God fulfills his own standard, the prescriptions of the law, and succumbs to the penalty of the law. And this, you see, is what we need to be saved. We need God, you see, to obey in our place, to fulfill the law in our place, to die the penalty of the law in our place. So then now in the next few moments that we have, notice three things from the catechism. Notice three things from God's word. First of all, the gracious character of salvation, the gracious character of salvation. We've been talking about it already. Salvation is a gift. You don't deserve it. You haven't merited it. You haven't done anything to earn it. It is not a check that God writes to you because you are a good person. It's not wages, right? Wages is what you earn, right? You do an odd job, you get paid, right? You say, hey, I'm up for this job. It says, if I do it, if I move you, if I paint your apartment, you'll pay me 100, $200. All right, you do the job, you get paid. It's not salvation, that's not how salvation works. The gospel in the first instance is not about us earning salvation at all, ever, or what we do in response to God. The gospel, salvation, the good news is what Jesus has done for me, outside of me. It's what Jesus has done, not what I do. The gospel is first and foremost the work of God. Notice what the catechism says. Even though I have a wretched condition, nevertheless, without any merit of my own, out of sheer grace, I don't deserve it. My sins rather cry out against me. I'm very conscious of my sins without any merit of my own, out of sheer grace. It's not God and man working together to save man. It's not, right? Salvation sometimes is described as 99% God and 1% you, right? God has done everything. You have to do just the last bit, the last part. No. It's all of God, 100% of God. And again, we look at Paul's life. Paul says, if anyone could have been saved by the Lord, it would have been me. No, the gracious character of salvation tells us that God's grace alone and all of his work and all of Christ's perfections is what saves us. And God grants and credits this to me. The catechism goes on to say, God grants it. It's a gift. It's a grant, not deserved. It's given to you graciously. But notice secondly, not only the gracious character of salvation, but the Christ-centered nature of salvation. What is credited to me? What is given to me? What is granted to me? The perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. The perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. Each of these perfections of Christ addresses our wretched condition. I am condemned by breaking God's law, but the perfect satisfaction of Christ's death fulfills the penalty of the law. Every soul that sins must die. I am disobedient to God. I've never kept any of his commandments and yet the righteousness of his life fulfills the prescriptions of the law. Christ is obedient for me in my place. I am inclined toward all evil. The holiness of Christ's very person shows a perfect and perfectly obedient disposition or an inclination, an affection that conforms perfectly to the law of God. I need all of Christ, all of Christ. His entire life is nothing but a complete, willing, wholehearted obedience and surrender to God's law. And this is most clearly, perfectly seen in His death. Notice what else it says, the catechism in question 60. As a result, because all of Christ is credited to me, his satisfaction, righteousness, and obedience, as a result, what am I? What am I given? If all of my sins are credited to Christ, then what is given to me? And now I stand before God as if I had never sinned. nor been a sinner, and as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me." Beloved, your conscience may accuse you. You might be very aware of all of your sins and there's something to be said for that as we evaluate ourselves in the light of God's word. And yet you must not only see your sin, you must see your savior. You must see Jesus Christ who has covered you with his righteousness and his obedience so that now you stand before God as what? The blessing of being justified is not that you're declared not guilty, Someone who is not guilty is not righteous. They still haven't obeyed. Remember, righteousness is tied to the law. Righteousness has no better definition than obedience to God's law. No, you're not considered and declared by God not guilty. And it's not that you're declared innocent even. Someone who's innocent like Adam in the Garden of Eden, although they had not sinned, still had not obeyed God's clear commandments. No, it's that you're declared righteous, righteous, as if you had obeyed, as if you had kept every single one of God's commandments perfectly. And why, why can God consider us in this way? Because we're covered by Christ. Because we are covered by Christ. And it is not us who God sees. God doesn't see you in yourself. He doesn't see you in your disobedience and in your condemnation and in all the corruptions of your fallen nature. He sees you covered by Christ's blood and righteousness. In the Old Testament, in Zechariah chapter three, we're told of the prophet looking out and seeing Joshua, the high priest. This isn't Joshua, the successor of Moses. It's another Joshua. And Joshua is the high priest. And we're told that Satan stands right next to him, accusing him. And you wonder, why is Satan accusing? We know that Satan is called the slanderer, the accuser of God's people. But he is accusing Joshua. Why? Because Joshua's garments are full of filth. He is clothed with filthy garments. And at that point, as we're reading God's Word in Zechariah 3, we understand the existential crisis that we're confronted, the very holiest of men in the Old Testament, the great, the high priest Joshua himself is defiled. And so what salvation can there be? These clothes with filthy garments. And this is why Satan accuses. This is why Satan prods. This is why Satan can say about us, God, don't you know that they are sinners? Don't you know what they have done? Don't you see their lives? Don't you see their thoughts? Don't you see their words? Don't you see their actions? Don't you see how they treat each other? These are your people. These are the people you've saved. Accusing, accusing, accusing. The Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, Remove the filthy garments from him. And to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments. This is, you see, what Jesus Christ has done. This is what God does for us and in us in Jesus Christ. He takes off the filthy garments that we have because we're born as sons of Adam, corrupted and condemned. And he puts on us the robes of Christ's righteousness. So that Christ's life is credited to you. His obedience is credited to you. His death is granted to you. His holiness is credited to you. Everything about Jesus is now yours. And how do you receive this? Thirdly, notice not only the gracious character of salvation and the Christ-centered nature of salvation, but finally, the faith-filled reception of salvation. At the very end of question and answer 60, all of this is mine if only I accept this gift with a believing heart. Question and answer 61 goes on to explain that it is not our faith that saves us, No, only Jesus saves us. Only His satisfaction, righteousness, and obedience make me right with God. So what is the function of faith? What is the function of believing? Faith, you see, is contrasted to the law. The law being a synonym of striving, of doing, of working. Law is that which we think we can do to achieve God's favor in order to be saved. But faith is not the law. Galatians 3.12, the law is not of faith. Faith does not do. Faith rests. It believes, it trusts, and it rests in the accomplished work of Christ. Faith does not, in the first instance, seek to obey, thinking that it can get to heaven by our works. No, faith receives the obedience of Jesus as its own. And so you see, in this sense, faith is the instrument of our being accepted by God in Christ. It's the instrument that receives Christ. It's the instrument that receives salvation. In itself, faith is nothing. But faith, you see, connects us to Him who is everything. Just like your hand, right? Your hand brings the food up to your mouth. The fork held by your hand picks it up and brings it to your mouth. But your hand is not what nourishes you. The fork is not what nourishes you. It's the food. It's the food. And that's what faith is. Faith is not the food, but it's the fork. It's the empty hand. It's the empty mouth that receives and accepts the Savior who alone can save. And so that's why we don't talk about faith as the substance of our salvation. We don't say have faith in faith, right? Just believe. No, believe what? You are called to believe and to rest in the work of God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit, which is your very salvation. And so in the Christian life, we cannot outsource faith. We cannot outsource faith. We neither want to worship our faith. Our faith is not the substance of salvation, but neither do we want to minimize the necessity of faith. You must believe the Lord Jesus Christ. You must receive and grab hold onto His promise. You cannot simply say, God's work is true. I believe it's true. No, God's work for me is true. My Savior lived, yes, but He lived for me. My Savior died, yes, but He died for me. My Savior was raised and He was raised for me. My Savior even now prays for me and intercedes for me. And this, you see, is the joy and the peace, the happiness, the blessedness of being made right with God only in Jesus Christ. Amen? Let us pray. Our Father and our God, truly what blessedness belongs to them whose sins have been truly forgiven in Jesus Christ, whose sin has been removed, and Father, they have been declared righteous on the basis of Christ alone. Help us, Lord, to enter into the enjoyments of this great truth, Father, that our lives would be ever tuned to the great work of you, our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.