Philippians 3 - Righteousness? Or Smoke Screen?
In Psalm 106 - Another ingredient of Righteousness, I described how righteousness is accounted to men for their zealousness for God and His name. As such zealousness naturally leads one to live out God’s laws and commandments as well as possible, it is easy measure man and his salvation by his works. After all, Jesus confirmed that you would know a follower of God their fruit. But, wait. Am I equating works and fruit? Didn’t Jesus actually draw a distinction between them? Yes, he did, and boy did He shake things up!
Basically, the first people who followed God and His Law did so for the sake of God and His name. And those people had righteousness accounted to them, as much as Abraham who had righteousness on account of believing God when He spoke. However, over time, things changed. After a time, obedience to the Law ceased being a fruit of righteousness, and became the means for achieving it… and that was doomed to fail.
Likewise, zeal for God’s name was replaced with zeal for God’s Law, which led eventually to zeal for the rules man came up with for ensuring obedience to God’s Law. In other words, Zeal for God’s name was meant to lead to obedience; it was instead replaced with zeal for the Law, expressed as obedience. But putting your obedience in something once-removed from God, essentially removes God from the equation, whether you mean it to or not. It is a losing proposition, but it is what we do.
In Romans 10 - Must you believe in Christ to go to Heaven?, I addressed the possibility of being saved through pure zeal. Paul found it an important topic to write on, because people thought their zeal for the Law was salvific. Well, zeal for the law as obedience in righteousness is a fruit of salvific righteousness, but it is not a source of it. Zeal for God’s name is another matter, but it is not the same. Still it was the standard that man held up for Paul to live up to, and so rather than dismiss it, Paul meets the Philippians where they were at, and does not mince his words:
 2Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.
Yikes! Is he referring to Jews who circumcise? I mean, God commanded it, right? You bet, and you bet! But circumcision ceased being in obedience to God, and became something done in obedience to the Law. Circumcision was always meant to be an outward sign of an inward state. So honestly, it was always the circumcision of the heart that always mattered.
3For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
      If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
So, Paul it would seem actually lived his life exactly as the Jews of his day prescribed… but now reveals that it was not enough to save, because it was done as a reflection of his fleshly circumcision… not spiritual. In other words “legalistic righteousness” does not save.
 7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, 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. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.Â
Wow. I think that’s awesome, that Paul realized that his own obedience to God’s law was an attempt to achieve righteousness, when Moses himself wrote that obedience is not a source of righteousness, but a manifestation of it.
This is why Christ did not come to change the Law, yet it seems the Law was changed. What happened is that the purpose of the Law was distorted. It ceased being an expression of God’s righteous people, a way for them to stand out in a world of idols and misled rituals and rules; but it devolved into something from which a truly righteous man could not stand out against. So, Jesus, coming to change the Law, but to fulfill it, gave us new signs of righteousness. The primary sign of fleshly circumcision was replaced with the sign of baptism. The bloated law was reduced to only the Jewish Sh’ma. The Law that was meant to express love for God and your neighbor was fulfilled by Christ’s sacrifice, so it could be removed for the smoke screen that it had become. But, lest the Philippians (who were Jews who believed in Jesus) not hear Paul’s message, he pointed out that if you look at Paul’s smoke screen, it was as sure anyone else’s… but it is just a smoke screen.
How do you live your life? How do you measure it? What do you put out their for other people to measure? Your church attendance and your tithe? Your volunteerism and your church service? Well, if that’s all, then have become like Pharisees of Jesus’ time. What about your love for God and your neighbor? Can people see that? Or have you replaced the signs of righteousness with a smoke screen?