A Homily on Philippians 3.4-14: On The "Great Exchange" and Cutting Our Gains

 

On The “Great Exchange” and Cutting Our Gains

 Prayer of Invocation

 Father, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 Prayer of Illumination

 Father, you know who we are; we are content and we are dissatisfied; we are confident and uncertain; clear-minded and confused;  we love and we hate, but not always in the proper order; we are filled with hope; we are filled with anxiety; we are Christians by conviction and Christians by convention; we believe, we half-believe, we disbelieve, we doubt; we are surrounded by friends and family; we are lonely, and despairing; we come from well-ordered families; and we come from homes that know mostly chaos, distress,  and fragmentation; we come from the inner circle of Christian community, and we come from the outer edges; we come ready to worship; we come longing  to leave. But we are here, now,  before You, with all our differences, yet alike in that we all are in the wrong with You; alike in that we have hurt one  another; alike in that we are not who we should be, not who we want to be,  nor what we pretend to be;  alike in that You welcome us;  alike in that you invite us to draw near to Your throne of grace to receive mercy in our time of need; alike in that we cannot hide ourselves from You; alike in that you offer us healing through confession and forgiveness;  alike in that Your Son, Jesus Christ, enables us to speak the truth about ourselves to others. We are here, together, in this place. We beg You, in your power and mercy: Speak to us; deliver us; heal us; encourage us; orient us; warn us; awaken us; correct us; empower us; unite us; for the sake of Your name. Amen.

 Proclamation

 It is known as ‘The Great Exchange”, and various descriptions of it have made their way throughout church history. Martin Luther had at least two versions of “the Great Exchange”. In a letter to a doubting and perplexed Christian, he writes:

"Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say: "You, Lord Jesus, are my righteousness, but I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and have given to me what is yours. You have taken upon yourself what you were not and have given to me what I was not." Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one. For Christ dwells only in sinners. On this account he descended from heaven, where he dwelt among the righteous, to dwell among sinners. Meditate on this love of his and you will see his sweet consolation. For why was it necessary for him to die if we can obtain a good conscience by our works and afflictions? Accordingly you will find peace only in him and only when you despair of yourself and your own works. Besides, you will learn from him that just as he has received you, so he has made your sins his own and has made his righteousness yours."

And in his “The Freedom of a Christian" Luther modified “the Great Exchange” to include the image of marriage:

Who then can value highly enough these royal nuptials? Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils, and supplying her with all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying: “If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine;” as it is written, “My beloved is mine, and I am his. (Songs 2:16)...Christ [gives] to us what is His, under that law of matrimony... all that is the husband’s is also the wife’s. 

This “Great Exchange” is what Paul is celebrating here in Philippians 3. He was, perhaps, the originator of this way of talking about what Christ has done for us: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor 8.9). 

In Philippians 3, we find this “Great Exchange” hiding in the middle of the passage we read this morning, in Phil 3.9,  where Paul talks about not having a righteousness of his own that comes from the Law, but that which comes from the faithfulness of Christ/faith in Christ. (You may be aware that there is some debate about how to properly translate this little phrase in Phil 3.9. In Greek, it can be rendered either “faith in Christ”, which stresses what we do in order to gain access to God’s righteousness,  or it can be translated  “faithfulness of Christ”, which underscores the source of our righteousness, namely the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Since towards the end of this verse, Paul stresses that the righteousness from God “depends on faith” (our human response), I think it is likely that what Paul has in mind earlier is “the faithfulness of Christ”, not least because it makes the contrast that he is making fit the context: Paul’s achievements by following the Law v. Christ’s faithfulness, or confidence in the flesh v. confidence in Christ’s righteousness.

But there it is, the “Great Exchange”. A righteousness that is not our own; a right standing with God that comes from outside of ourselves; a status that is given to us that is not based upon the faith of our parents, our ethnic or religious background, our achievements or good behavior, our heritage, or our zeal. Rather, it is a righteousness that comes from what someone else has achieved on our behalf, namely Jesus. He is what we are not. And we have access to Jesus’ performance, His faithfulness, His righteousness by entrusting ourselves to Him. 

But this “Great Exchange” is ensconced within another kind of exchange that is going on in this passage. It’s an exchange of confidence. But it is more than just an exchange of confidence--it is an exchange of telos. That is, it is an exchange of the end goal--and this exchange makes all the difference in the world. The exchange that Paul is highlighting here in Phil 3.4-14 is a complete reorientation from self to Christ, from self-achievement and self-aggrandizement to “knowing Christ and sharing in His sufferings (Phil 3.10). 

What Paul makes clear here in this passage is that in order to receive this “Great Exchange”--a righteousness that comes from God by faith--then we must forfeit or lose certain things. We must renounce all the things that we counted on to have a right standing with God. Why? Because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus (3.7-8). That’s what is at stake here. In order to truly know Christ, we don’t need to cut our losses, we need to cut our ‘gains’. We must renounce ourselves and all the ways that we become the telos, the end or goal of the story. To gain Christ, we must lose everything that places us at the center. We must eradicate everything that makes us say to God and others “Look what I have done. Look what I can achieve. Look where I have come from.” And in exchange, we must say “all that I am, I am because of what Jesus Christ has accomplished for me”. 

Paul’s point is that you can’t have both. They are mutually exclusive. The one cancels out the other. If you become the center of the story, you become the center of the story. There is no room for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ and confidence in the flesh. But in losing yourself--your confidence in your performance, your achievements, and your heritage--you gain Christ. And what comes with gaining Christ? Two things. (1) Resurrection life. New creation. Life in eternal fellowship with God and His people--what Paul calls in Phil 3.14 “the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. And (2) the capability of living for others, paying attention to the needs of others, and seeking their good above your own--just like Paul points out in Phil 2.1-11. 

One way to diagnose our present condition, one way to suss out where our confidence truly resides, one way to discern whether we are at the center of the story is by looking at our joy gage. What do we rejoice in? What brings us joy? Paul begins this passage, which we did not read this morning, with the strategic exhortation to “rejoice in the Lord.” He adds that the reason he writes this as a “safeguard for you.” (3.1) The point he is making is that we can only rejoice in the Lord when He is the goal of the story, only when we forfeit all the things (like achievements and performance) that make us the center of the story. So, I ask it again; what are you rejoicing in? From where do you get your joy and delight? For Paul, if you place your hope in yourself and your performance, if you place yourself at the center of the story, if you look to your achievements as the grounds on which to stand before God, then you are robbing yourself of true joy and delight. You are exchanging joy for insecurity, weariness,  and inevitable dissatisfaction.

So, the “Great Exchange” starts with exchanging ourselves at the center of all things for knowing Christ and His righteousness. And when we do, we find reliable, alien confidence, joy, and hope. And we are freed to live for the sake of others. 

Reflection and Discussion Questions

1. What are some of the ways that you place yourself at the center of the story, as the goal of the story?
2. What are ways that you rely upon your achievements and your performance in order to feel confident before God and others?
3. What do you need to lose in order to gain Christ?

Eucharist

 Calvin was another one who carried on this tradition of describing the “Great Exchange”, writing about it in his teaching on the Eucharist: "as bread nourishes, sustains, and keeps the life of our body, so Christ's body is the only food to invigorate and enliven our soul:

"Godly souls can gather great assurance and delight from this Sacrament; in it they have a witness of our growth into one body with Christ such that whatever is his may be called ours. As a consequence, we may dare assure ourselves that eternal life, of which he is the heir, is ours; and that the Kingdom of Heaven, into which he has already entered, can no more be cut off from us than from him; again, that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from whose guilt he has absolved us, since he willed to take them upon himself as if they were his own. This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming the Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness." 

Make your joy complete; put no confidence in the flesh. Make knowing Jesus the goal of your story. 

Benediction

May God grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit so that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith--that you being rooted and ground in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3.16-19