+I. Is an inward and conscious spiritual change.+--"For we are the
circumcision."
+II. While reverently using outward forms of worship is superior to
them.+--"Which worship God in the Spirit."
+III. Finds its joy in living union with Christ.+--"And rejoice in
Christ Jesus."
+IV. Repudiates all ordinances that divert from Christ.+--"And have
no confidence in the flesh."
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 4-8.
_External Religionism incomparable with the True Knowledge of Christ._
+I. The highest example of external religionism affords no ground for
confident boasting+ (vers. 4-6).--External religionism had its most
complete embodiment in Paul. He was its most zealous devotee, its
ablest champion. These verses describe the best eulogy that can be
given of the observer of external rites. By birth, lineage, training,
ability, consistency of character, and sincerity of aim, Paul was an
ideal Jew, a model all his countrymen might aspire to copy. If there
was ground for boasting, no one had a greater right than he. He
needed no Christ, no Saviour; he was well able to look after himself.
But one day the discovery came that all this glorying was vain;
instead of gaining salvation he was farther from it than ever, and in
danger of losing everything. Religious progress is often more
apparent than real. When Captain Parry and his party were in search
of the North Pole, after travelling several days with sledges over a
vast field of ice, on taking a careful observation of the pole-star,
the painful discovery was made that, while they were apparently
advancing towards the pole, the ice-field on which they were
travelling was drifting to the south, and bringing them nearer to the
verge, not of the pole, but of destruction.
+II. The supposed gains of external religionism are for Christ's sake
esteemed as loss.+--"But what things were gain to me, those I counted
loss for Christ" (ver. 7). Not losses, compared with the plural of
gains; but all the supposed gains are treated as one great loss, and
this after the most careful scrutiny and calculation. "I counted
loss." The swelling sum of fancied virtues, painfully gathered and
fondly and proudly contemplated, vanishes into nothing at one stroke
of the discriminating pen. All that was prized as valuable, and as
the all of personal possession, is regarded as dross, because of
Christ. They did not help him to win Christ, but to lose Him; the
more he gained in self-righteousness the more he lost of Christ. It
was not only profitless, but productive of positive loss.
+III. The surpassing excellency of the knowledge of Christ renders
external religionism utterly worthless.+--"I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord; . . . and do count them but dung [refuse], that I may win
Christ" (ver. 8). The gains were: circumcision performed without any
deviation from legal time or method; membership in the house of
Israel, and connection with one of its most honoured tribes; descent
from a long line of pure-blood ancestry; adherence to a sect whose
prominent distinction was the observance of the old statutes; earnest
and uncompromising hostility to a community accused of undermining
the authority of the Mosaic code, and a merit based on blameless
obedience to the law. These once gloried and confided in were counted
as a loss, for the sake of a superior gain in the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ. He was no loser by the loss he had willingly
made, for the object of knowledge was the Divine Saviour. Is it not
super-eminent knowledge to know Him as the Christ; to know Him as
Jesus, not because he wears our nature, but because we feel His human
heart throbbing in unison with ours under trial and sorrow; to know
Him as Lord, not simply because He wears a crown and wields a
sceptre, but because we bow to His loving rule and gather the spoils
of the victory which He has won and secured? The apostle made a just
calculation, for neither ritualism, nor Israelitism, nor Pharasaism,
nor zealotism, nor legalism could bring him those blessing with which
the knowledge of Christ was connected; nay, until they were held as
loss this gain of gains could not be acquired (_Eadie_). As with the
two scales of a balance, writes Rieger, when one rises the other
falls, and what I add to one diminishes the relative weight of the
other; so as one adds to himself he takes away from the pre-eminence
which the knowledge of Christ should have. What he concedes to Christ
makes him willing to abase himself, to resign all confidence in His
own works. Therefore the sharp expressions, "to count as loss, as
dung," become in experience not too severe; for to reject the grace
of Christ, to regard the great plan of God in sending His Son as
fruitless, were indeed far more terrible.
+Lessons.+--1. _The highest kind and supreme end of all knowledge is
the knowledge of Christ._ 2. _True religion is the spiritual
knowledge of Christ._ 3. _Religion without Christ is an empty form._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._