All right, let's open our Bibles
back to Philippians chapter three. Now the title of this message
is The Life of Salvation. The Life of Salvation. I have
been studying with you, exploring the scriptures with you for the
past few months, concerning this awesome subject of salvation. There's so many misconceptions
and misunderstandings and confusions and wrong judgments in the world,
the religious world, about salvation. What is salvation? How is a person
saved? Why do we need salvation? All
these questions. And I, you know, basically I
deal with those every Sunday from different passages of scripture. But what I want to talk to you
about this morning, and I'm going to deal with this in several
messages too from several passages of scripture, is what we might
call Christian living. The life of a Christian. What
is it to live the Christian life? What is it to be a Christian?
And of course, you can get a thousand and one different answers to
that one. The Bible has many ways of describing that. and
different facets of it covering a whole realm of things. But
that's what Paul's talking about in Philippians chapter three.
It's sort of summarized in verse 14 of Philippians three. Look
at that with me. When he says, I press toward the mark for the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And that's
sort of a summation of Christian living. There's a lot of particulars
we'll go into about that, pressing toward. It means I'm pursuing,
like a runner in a race. Paul often used the analogy of
an athlete training for a race and running the race as a metaphor
of the Christian life. He mainly used three basic metaphors. He used the metaphor of a soldier
in an army. a soldier in the army of Christ,
clothed and equipped with the armor of God, as Ephesians chapter
6 says, fighting the spiritual warfare, not a physical one,
but a spiritual warfare, a warfare of the mind and the heart. And
our main weapon is the sword of truth, the gospel of God's
grace in Christ, preaching Christ. That's what we do when we invoke
the name of Christ and preach His message of grace. in the
scriptures, the word of God. And then he used the analogy
of a farmer planting, sowing seed. That's what we do when
we preach the gospel. We're sowing the seed of truth.
And as I told my Sunday school class, we water it with prayer
and with fellowship and with love. And now he uses the metaphor
of an athlete. He's done that several times.
We'll look at some passages there. But he says, I press toward the
mark. What is the mark? There's a goal, a finish line.
Well, what he's talking about is final glory in heaven. That's the mark. He's talking
about basically, and the best way to put it, is perfect conformity
to Christ in every way. I want to think like Christ.
I want to be like Christ in every way, in my character, in my conduct,
in my motives, perfection. That's what he's talking about,
sinless perfection. He says it up here in verse 11. He says, if by any means I might
attain, which means to obtain, that's not earn now, but I might
attain unto the resurrection of the dead. That's the glorification
of God's people, a final glory. That's when, you see right now
we're engaged in a struggle, a warfare within us. It's called
the warfare of the flesh and the spirit. We have the indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit who guides us and motivates us and
teaches us and instructs us in all these ways, corrects us.
And that spirit, we have new life within, the life of Christ. And that life manifests itself
in new desires, a new heart, the inner man. And we don't know
how to describe all that, and I don't know the anatomy of it
all. I know some people think they do, but they're not. But
you see, we have faith. That's a gift of God. But we
don't yet have perfect faith. Am I right? Anybody here think
they have perfect faith? Don't raise your hand, because
I don't want to. If you think you do, just sit there. Keep
it to yourself or something. We don't have perfect faith.
We have to struggle. We talked about that in this
morning's Sunday school lesson. Talking about if we believe not,
he abides faithful. I know you can make the two applications. If we deny him, he'll deny us.
We can make two applications. We can apply it to the apostate,
the one who just professes to believe it and really doesn't.
But we can also apply it to the fact that we struggle. this life. That's part of the Christian
life. Christian living is a struggle to believe. The man who wanted
his daughter healed said, Lord I believe help thou mine unbelief.
And that's the way we are. We have knowledge. We know God. We know Christ. But we don't
have perfect knowledge. We see through a glass darkly.
John wrote there in 1 John 3 that we read, you know, when it does
not yet appear what we shall be, but we know we'll be like
Him, be like Christ, for we shall see Him as He is. And so when
he talks about the resurrection of the dead, he's talking about
sinless perfection within me and you as we're glorified. Now, we're already perfect and
complete and sinless in Christ. And I know, listen now, I know
that's a tough one, you know, to hang on to. I know people
in religion get that confused all the time. We always, when
we talk about Christian living, we always have to make that distinction
of what I am right now in Christ, as God views me in Christ, and
what I am in myself. I'm perfect in Christ. And I'll
show you that. I don't know if I'll get to that
in this message, but I'm perfect. Right now, I'm all that I need
to be, ought to be in Christ. I'm the righteousness of God
in Christ. You're looking at a righteous
man, not because I'm sinlessly perfect, but because I have Christ
who is my righteousness. Over in 1 John 2, verse 29, it
talks about those who doeth righteousness. You know what doeth righteousness
is? Mark this down somewhere in your Bible. To do righteousness
is to abide in Christ. Period. Continually abide in
Christ. That's what Paul meant up here.
He said in verse 8, he said that I may win Christ. In verse 9
he says, and be found in Him. In Him. Now, even in glory, my hope of
eternal life is to be found in Christ. and not on my own merits,
but to be found in him. He says, not having mine own
righteousness which is of the law, that's my obedience, that's
my deed. Listen, this thing of Christian
living is not a person getting saved and then trying to keep
the law in order to climb their way up the ladder to heaven.
That's not Christian living. That's against Christ. Christian living is not keeping
a set of rules and regulations and rituals in order to make
myself righteous. Let me tell you something. As
you press toward that mark, and if you're a Christian, and if
I'm a Christian, that's what we ought to be doing, pressing
toward that mark, pursuing perfection, which I cannot attain in this
life. Now people say, well, why should I try? Well, I'll hold
on to that thought. I'll give you a bunch of reasons
for that one. Number one is because of the grace and glory of God
in Christ. But listen, as you're pressing toward, you need to
realize, and I need to realize myself, that our pressing does
not make us righteous. Now we'll grow in grace and in
knowledge of Christ, but our growth in grace does not make
us righteous. Somebody told a fellow, and he
called me and asked me about it, told him that I believe that
when we're born again, that what happens there is the Lord improves
the flesh. And I said, well, where did they
get that? Not from me. But I got to thinking about something.
Now, a lot of times, you know, people, we love to define our
terms, draw that paradigm, and argue with people within our
definitions. We love to do that. I do. I mean,
it's wrong, but we love to do that. But it depends. What do you call the flesh now?
In the Bible, the flesh, for example, is the nature of sin. And sin's not a substance. I
can't pick up a glass of sin and drink it like I'm doing this
water. That's not, in scripture, that's
not sin. Sin's not a lump of something
that you can pick it up here. Here's sin, I hear it's over
here and now I'm gonna put it over here. That's not in scripture. Sin is missing the mark. For
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What's the
mark? Sinless perfection, keeping the law. We all fall short. Even us believers who are living
Christian lives, we fall short. That's why we sang that song
moment by moment. There's another song here, it's
day by day. We all write another one called second by second.
Maybe nanosecond by nanosecond. We need Christ, you see, he keeps
us. And so sin is not some kind of
a substance. It's not material. Sin is a principle. It's a law. Paul called it in
Romans 7. It's a law in my members. That means literally a powerful
principle that I can't rise above. He said it keeps me from doing
what I want to do. I'm pressing toward the mark.
I want to be like Christ. And the very desire that I have
to be like Christ is evidence of new life, a new heart, a new
spirit, the inner man. the grace of God, Christ living
in me, the Holy Spirit indwelling me, that I have the mind of Christ,
that I desire to be like Him. But I've got some other desires
too. How about you? And they fight against that desire
to be like Christ. And that's a principle, that's
a law, whatever you want to call it. The Bible doesn't say, for
example, we're born in sin, the scripture says. We fell in Adam
and we're born in sin, born dead in trespass. It's not that when
your mama and daddy conceived you that God come down here with
a hypo needle and shot sin into you. No, that's our state. That's why we were born, born
in sin, born dead spiritually in trespasses and sins. So when
you talk about the flesh, what are you talking about? For example,
this hand here, that's flesh, isn't it? Now let me show you
what I'm talking about here. Now I can take that hand and
I could go out here and grab me a pistol and go shoot somebody
in the head and use that hand for evil purposes, can I? Now
where's the sin? Is it in that hand? No. Or I can use that hand to reach
down here and turn this page and read Jeremiah chapter eight. Now I'm gonna tell you something,
that's an improvement. I'd rather use my hand to turn the page
of the Bible and read Jeremiah chapter eight than I would take
it and shoot somebody. How about you? But my turning
the page and reading Jeremiah chapter eight is not my righteousness
before God. That didn't make me holy or righteous.
Christ is. And if I use my hand to turn
the Bible and read that and understand, that's what it's gonna tell me.
I can use my eyes. You can use your eyes to look
at evil things, or you can use your eyes to view, to read the
word of God. That's an improvement. But that's
not my righteousness. That's not progressive holiness.
It's not, nothing I do makes me righteous before God. That's
my point. It's only Christ and him alone. And so when we talk about Christian
living, we have to get to the root of this thing. What kind
of equipment do we need to live a Christian life? Well, number
one would be the grace of God in Christ, wouldn't it? We need
Christ. What is a Christian? A follower
of Christ, a disciple of Christ, a sinner saved by the grace of
God in Christ. We need grace. That's the umbrella
that covers it all. Because it's all of grace. I'm
saved by grace. I'm kept by grace. and I'll enter
glory by grace. It's never conditioned on me
at any stage, at any time, to any degree. The accomplishments,
the victory of it, the fulfillment of it is all on the shoulders
of the Lord Jesus Christ and he fulfilled it in his obedience
unto death. That's why we glory in the cross.
When Paul down here in Philippians 3, down here he talked about
those who are enemies of the cross. You see, the cross is
everything in the Christian life. And I'm not talking about the
cross we bear. We do bear a cross. He said,
take up your cross and follow me. We do bear a cross. That cross there is the reproach
of Christ that comes from being persecuted because we identify
with him and we preach his truth which the world hates. But the
cross that we glory in is his finished work on Calvary. It's
His blood and righteousness alone. That's our glory. That's our
hope. That's everything to us if we're living a Christian life.
He is so precious to me. Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2, he
said, Now, you know, usually when we read that verse, we think
of it as something precious, as something being valuable.
And he is. Christ is precious in the way
of being valued. But literally that word means
he's our honor. He's our glory. Just like in Philippians 3, 3
here, we rejoice in Christ Jesus. We glory in Christ Jesus. If you're living a Christian
life, you're glorying in Christ Jesus, not in anything else.
You may use that hand to turn that page and use those eyes
to read that Bible, and that's a good thing. But you don't glory
in it. That's not where your confidence
is. Your confidence is in Christ. That's Christian living. And
you need the grace of God to do that in Christ. Bible says
in John 1, 17, the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ. I'll tell you, the second thing
you need to live the Christian life, you need the Holy Spirit.
He must indwell you. How does he indwell you? I don't
know, and you don't either, but he does. He's in your mind, in
your affections, in your will, in your heart. He's there. He's spirit. And what he does
is he continually convicts us of sin and drives us to Christ. The reason, if you're glorying
in Christ and him alone for all of salvation in your life as
you live moment by moment, second by second, then you know that
the Holy Spirit indwells you. Because nobody would receive
the things of the Spirit of God except one whom the Spirit of
God brings to receive him. The natural man won't do it.
He won't receive the things of the Spirit of God. If you're
glorying in Christ, looking to Christ, you're running the race.
Paul's talking about pressing toward the mark. Running the
race. How do we run the race? Hebrews
12 and verse 2. We run the race looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher, completer of our faith. He not
only started this thing, He finished it. And because He started it
and finished it, I'll be with Him. I'll be liking. The psalmist wrote in Psalm,
what is it, Psalm 17? I can't remember. Should have
wrote it down. But he said, I'll be satisfied when I awake with
thy likeness. I think I've got that referenced
here somewhere. But you think about that now. See, that's the
issue now. We need the Holy Spirit. We need
the Holy Spirit. He motivates us with grace and
love and gratitude. He's not a legal spirit, he's
a spirit of liberty, the spirit of love. Here's the big thing
in the Christian life, now why do we do what we do? Why do we
do it? Why do we fight sin and why do
we seek to obey God? study the scriptures and worship
God and try to be moral upstandings. Why do we do that? Are we trying
to work our way into heaven? If that's the case, then it's
not the Holy Spirit. Are we trying to make ourselves
acceptable to God by our works? If that's the case, it's not
the Holy Spirit. It's not Christian living now. We do it because of what God
has freely given us in Christ. because of what he earned for
us. And the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps reminding us through
the word of God that we don't deserve anything we've gotten
and we cannot earn anything we've gotten in salvation. That it's
all owing to Christ. I belong to him. That's what
that song said. I belong to him. That's what Paul means back here
in Philippians 3 when he talks about being apprehended. Look
there in verse 12. He said, not as though I had
already attained, that is the resurrection of the dead, I haven't
already attained sinless perfection in myself. Now I'm gonna tell
you something, there are a lot of views in so-called Christianity
about sinless perfection. And they are all wrong. Because
it just does not exist in you or in me. My only sinless perfection
is in Christ. Right now. There's no sinless
perfection in you. Now, somebody can argue, well,
the Holy Spirit's in you and He's sinlessly perfect. That's
right, but He's not you and you're not Him. When God saves you,
He doesn't change you into the Holy Spirit or change the Holy
Spirit into you. That's blasphemy. When God saved
you, He didn't make you a little God or even divine. He didn't
change you into anything divine. We have life which is divine
because it's from the divine. It's divine life. All life originates
with God. In Christ, Christ is our life.
But you're still a human being. And you'll never, listen, even
in glory, you'll never be any more than a human being. You'll be a saved human being.
saved by the grace of God. You'll be a spiritual human being,
a spiritual person. When God saves us, he makes us
spiritual, the spiritual person. But you see, the Holy Spirit
continually indwells us, not to show us that we have some
kind of a sinlessly perfect nature in us. We don't have that now.
We have the life of God, the life of Christ. If somebody wants
to call that a new nature, that's fine with me, but don't go the
way of sinless perfection with it. That comes into blasphemy.
I'm telling you. I have new desires that I didn't
have before because God saved me. I have a desire to be like
Christ. I have a desire to obey God because
of love and grace and gratitude. I have a hunger for the word
of God. That's the next thing we need in this thing of Christian
living. We need the word of God. And
I'll tell you something we don't need. We don't need the word
of men. We need the word of God. I want to know what a Christian
is and how a Christian lives and should live according to
this word, not according to what some religious Pharisee says. The Pharisees came to our Lord
and said, You ought not let those disciples pick corn on the Sabbath. What did he say? He said, well,
fellas, we better stop doing that. No, he said, pick more. Christian living. They called John the Baptist
an idiot, a crazy man. They called our Lord a winebibber. Have you ever had somebody look
at you at any time in your life and say, and you call yourself
a Christian? I told somebody one time, I said,
you're daggone straight, I do. Practice what you preach. Well,
I'll tell you what I preach. I preach I'm a sinner saved by
the grace of God in Christ. I'm a sinner in need of mercy.
I'm a practicing sinner in need of mercy every day, moment by
moment. We need the Word of God, you
see. We need to be hungry for the Word of God. I urge you to
study the Word with us. We all have busy lives, I know,
but study the Word. Peter said, as newborn babes
desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. And you know what he said right
after he said, if so be you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
If there's grace in the heart, there's gonna be some hunger
for the word of God. And that hunger has to be cultivated
and developed. It's not gonna come natural to
you. Study the word of God. Another thing we need to live
the Christian life is honesty. Need to be honest now. And that
comes by the grace of God, because we're not, the heart's deceitful,
desperately wicked. Above all things, who can know
it? We're gonna be dishonest with ourselves, except the word
of God, by the spirit of God, through the grace of God in Christ,
show us the truth. You ever heard anybody talk about,
well, a Christian would never do that. Or a Christian will always do
this. Well, let me honestly tell you what a Christian will never
do. One thing. He'll never, totally, ultimately,
finally leave Christ. And you wanna know why? Right
here, look at verse 12. Paul says, not as though I had
already attained, either were already perfect, I'm not already
sinlessly perfect, I'm not already glorified, but I follow after,
If that I may apprehend, that I may lay hold of, that for which
also I am apprehended of Christ." Christ laid hold of me. And if he's got a hold on me, he'll
never let go. That's what he said in John chapter
10 and a myriad of other scriptures. That's why we'll never ultimately
leave Christ. That's right, because he's got
a hold on us. And Paul says, I'm striving to lay hold of that
for which I've been laid hold of. Christ has got a hold on
me and He will not let go. That's why we can't be lost.
It's not because we keep on keeping on. It's because He keeps us. Kept by the power of God. Kept
by the grace of God. And we just need to be honest.
I've had folks tell me, said, you ought not say some of those
things you say from the pulpit about your sin and all that.
Well, why not? I'm a Christian. I'm a sinner saved by grace.
If I can't be honest with you, who can I be honest with? If
you can't be honest with me, what are we? Christ Jesus came
into the world to save what? Sinners. And the moment you find
out somebody's a real sinner, the first thing you want to do
is kick them out the door. Sinners. That's who He came...
The whole don't need a physician. But sinners. Sinners. He said, I didn't come to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And when the Pharisees
come along and says, look at what kind of people your disciples
are having supper with. We wouldn't even want to be seen
in public with such people. And that's what He told them.
And he says, you've missed it, fellas. He says, yeah, you're
faithful to tithe. Oh, you wouldn't miss that. You're
faithful to pray and to go to service and all that. But what
about justice and mercy and truth? What about those things? What is this thing of Christian
living? I'll tell you another thing we need to live the Christian
life is humility and meekness. And that certainly takes the
grace of God. In other words, that has to do with submission
to God's will and God's way and God's word. You can't just pick
and choose out of here. Well, I like this part of the
word of God and I don't like this other part, so I'm gonna
avoid that. And some people say, well, you
know, parts of the word of God are just so hard to understand.
Well, let me tell you something, you don't have to worry about
those parts. You really don't. I like what old Mark Twain, now
Mark Twain was an atheist, but he had this much sense, he said
this, he said, it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand
that bother me. He said, it's the parts of the
Bible I do understand that bother me. Now that's the problem, isn't
it? That's the problem. Living the
Christian life. Look over, I'm gonna come back
to this passage and go through it again, but I want you to look
at verse 20, look here. Philippians 3. He says, he says,
for our conversation is in heaven from whence also we look for
the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he talks about final
glory. Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned
like unto his glorious body. See that's the aim, that's the
goal, that's the prize, that's the mark that Paul's talking
about and pressing toward. That's the purpose of God in
the book of Romans when it talks about that we're predestinated
to be conformed to the image of his son. Romans 8, 29, I believe. That's what John was talking
about when he said that we shall be like him. We shall see him
as he is. We'll see him in his effulgent
glory. That's what that means. Right
now we see him, but again, we see through a glass darkly. And
David said, I'll be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness,
when I'm perfectly like Christ in my thoughts, in my morality,
in my motives, in my inner being. Right now, I am perfectly conformed
to Christ legally because his righteousness is imputed to me,
charged to me, and I stand before God in him complete and whole.
But in myself, I've got a long way to go, you see. So he says in verse 20, our conversation
is in heaven. You know what that word conversation
is literally? It's citizenship. Our citizenship
is in heaven. Now, if you want to learn to
live the Christian life, what I want you to understand is this.
We're talking about advanced citizenship. That's what we're
talking about. He calls it over here in verse
14 of Philippians 3, I press toward the mark for the prize. What is the prize now? It's eternal
glory with Christ. That's a prize. And it's not
a prize we earn. It's a prize that we're given
by virtue of our oneness with Christ and by virtue of what
he's accomplished for us. And he says, of the high calling. This is a high calling. It's
the highest calling. It's a calling of God in Christ
Jesus. What is it? Christian living
is living the life of grace. living on and living in and living
out of the grace and power of God in Christ. At no time are
we on our own in this thing of salvation. At no time is it ever
conditioned on what we do or don't do. It's always by grace,
always by Christ. Christian living is living the
life of faith in Christ. Paul wrote it this way, as I
quoted earlier in Hebrews 12 to looking unto Jesus, the author,
and finisher of our faith. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed. I'm persuaded that he's able to keep that which
I've committed unto him against that day. That's the Christian
life. It's not just believing one time. And you know, here's,
this is sad because in our day and age now, a lot of times,
and y'all know this is true. A lot of times, you ask a person
if they're saved or if they're a Christian, you know what they
always do? Nine times out of 10, they'll
always say, well, when I was 12, I accepted Jesus as my personal
savior. They always go back to the past,
you see. Look at verse 13 of Philippians
3. Paul says, brethren, I count
not myself, Philippians chapter three, verse 13. He says, brethren,
I count not myself to have apprehended. I haven't laid hold of final
perfection, final glory yet, see. Got a long way to go. But
this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind
and reaching forth unto those things which are before. If somebody asks you if you're
a Christian or if you're living the Christian life, don't go
back to some experience you had where you walked an aisle and
got baptized or whatever. Don't go back to any dream you
had. Don't go back to feelings. Don't
go back to anything. Just simply say, well, I'm running
the race of grace looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of my faith, right now, today. That's the Christian life right
there. Looking unto him, the just shall
live by faith. The Christian life is a life
of repentance. Continually repenting. The Bible
calls it godly sorrow over sin. We're to repent of all sin. All
sin. If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth of God is not in us. If we confess
our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse
us from all unrighteousness. It's a continual life of repentance,
every day, moment by moment. It's a life of love, but that's
love that's grounded in the glory of God in Christ and his truth
and his people, which evidences itself in mercy and compassion
towards others. It's a life of obedience, but
the obedience of love and grace and gratitude, living the Christian
life. Well, we'll pick up there next
week, Let's close with singing hymn number 175, Standing on
the Promises. That's a good hymn for this.
Living the Christian life is standing on the promises. All
right.