Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church · Sermon study sheet

Cherish Christ - Philippians 3:7-11

Bryan Schneider · December 15, 2018

Philippians 3:7-11

sharonrpc.org/sermons/cherish-christ

Summary

Christians must continually cherish Jesus rather than allowing their first love to cool into occasional religious nostalgia.
Paul deliberately weighs heritage, achievement, and religious works against Christ and counts every former gain as loss and refuse by comparison.
The Christian treasure is not abstract religion but the living person Jesus Christ, Messiah, Lord, Redeemer, righteousness, and inheritance.
To be found in Christ is to possess a righteousness from God through faith rather than standing before God in one's own record.
Knowing Christ includes fellowship in his sufferings and conformity to his death, as persecuted believers demonstrate through faithful endurance.
The power of Christ's resurrection changes lives now by breaking sin's dominion and guarantees the believer's bodily resurrection to eternal life.

Has my love for Christ cooled into familiarity or nostalgia?
Which heritage, achievement, or religious work am I tempted to place on the scale against Christ?
Why does Paul describe former sources of confidence as rubbish rather than merely lesser goods?
Do I treasure Jesus himself, or only benefits and ideas associated with Christianity?
What does it mean to be found in Christ rather than in my own righteousness?
How can suffering become fellowship with Christ rather than evidence that he has abandoned me?
Where should resurrection power produce visible change in my present life?
How does bodily resurrection strengthen hope in the face of persecution, decline, and death?

Cherish Christ: To value, love, seek, and hold fast to Jesus himself as the surpassing treasure above every other gain.
Loss: Everything Paul once treated as spiritual profit but now regards as unable to justify him or compare with knowing Christ.
Rubbish: Paul's deliberately contemptuous description of his former grounds of confidence when weighed against Christ.
Righteousness by faith: A right standing from God received through faith in Christ rather than produced through personal law-keeping.
Union with Christ: The believer's real spiritual participation in Christ, including his righteousness, death, resurrection life, and promised glory.
Fellowship of suffering: Knowing Christ through costly faithfulness that shares the pattern of his suffering and death.
Resurrection power: The power of the risen Christ that frees believers from sin's mastery now and will raise their bodies at the last day.