When we go abroad, we have a problem at Passport Control. Many ports, airports, and train termini have automated electronic passport checking. No human being required. It makes things faster.
Or it should.
But not in our case. Because when our current passports were delivered by the postie, the dog collected them from the letterbox and added his own teeth-based signature to my wife’s passport. The teeth marks went through the electronic chip. Returning from her last foreign jaunt to see the ABBA Museum in Stockholm, the Swedish authorities were very sniffy about this, seeking additional ID, and telling her that she really needed a replacement passport.
The journey of our lives is meant to take us, in Paul’s word, ‘heavenwards’ (verse 14). What passport will get us in when we arrive?
What Paul talks about in our passage is how he knew he had had the wrong passport and how easy that is for religious people.
Look how he lists his religious qualifications to prove what an impeccable Jew he was:
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised 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; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
You couldn’t be better than that. And that little word ‘zeal’ points us to what kind of Pharisee he was. In his day, there were two competing schools of Pharisees: those who followed Rabbi Hillel, and those who followed Rabbi Shammai. The Hillelites were lenient, and the Shammaites were strict. The Hillelites had a ‘live and let live’ approach to the political authorities, just so long as they could study God’s Law in peace, but the Shammaites said peace would only come when Israel was free from Gentile oppressors. Guess which one Paul was? A Shammaite.[1]
But whereas for the modern Christian ‘zeal’ is something you do on your knees, or in evangelism, or in works of charity, for the first century Jew ‘zeal’ was something you did with a knife.[2]
You wanted a pure, undiluted Jew? Paul thought he was pretty much there. But on the Damascus Road he had discovered it wasn’t putting him in God’s favour: it was putting him in opposition to God, even persecuting him.
I had a pretty good passport, too, or so I thought. Methodism was almost embedded in my DNA. When my sister took over the family ancestry work from our father, she concluded that she and I had been ‘fifth generation, same congregation.’ Our family’s involvement with our home church, Edmonton Methodist, had gone back five generations to a woman who joined the ladies’ meeting.
It did me no good. In fact, it led me astray. I thought that Christianity equalled believing in God plus doing good things. Salvation by works, as we call it. I thought I was close to God. In reality, I was a long way away.
As a minister, I have had people start attending one of my churches on a Sunday, having moved into the area and previously belonged to another church. They have asked to be considered for membership ‘if [they] were good enough.’ Those words are a sure sign of someone who holds the wrong passport.
And I still get people who, on their first meeting with me, want to tell me all about their Methodist heritage and what good Methodists they are. My heart sinks. If they are relying on their Methodist credentials, then they have the wrong passport.
What I need to hear about is their love for Jesus. Because that is the right passport.
And Paul tells his readers that our passport for our heavenly journey is – Christ:
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and 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 on the basis of faith.
That old passport based on his religious credentials? He considers it ‘loss’, in fact he calls it ‘garbage’ in our refined and delicate English translations. The word is actually a little less cultivated than that. It’s what we flush down the loo. I’m sorry if you’re shocked, but that’s what it is.
All that relying on our Christian heritage as our way to heaven needs to be flushed away. When we rely on that, it’s toxic. It needs to go.
The right passport is Christ, not us. Our heavenly destiny depends on our union with him and on his virtues, not ours.
Think of it like marriage vows. At the giving of the rings in the current Methodist Worship Book service, the words the bride and groom say to each other include these:
All that I am I give to you,
and all that I have I share with you[3]
In older generations, the words will have been, ‘All my worldly goods I thee endow.’
Coming into relationship with Christ is like this. We give him all we have. He gives us all he has. We give him our sin (which he disposes of at the Cross). He gives us his righteousness. And having the righteousness of Christ by repentance of those sins we have given him and by faith in him is what qualifies us for the passport for our heavenly journey.
The problem with the wrong passport, the one that lists our religious bona fides, is that it is about pride. Look at me. Look at how good I am. Look at what I’ve achieved. Me, me, me.
But the right passport is him, him, him. Christ has died for us. Christ has been raised to new life for us. Christ reigns on high.
When our daughter recently wanted to change jobs, she updated her CV and sent it off to various employers. But it is no good presenting our religious CV as our heavenly passport. It does not pass muster. It cannot reach the heights of the heavenly standards, because those have been set by Christ.
If we want the heavenly passport, we need to be relying entirely on Jesus.
Why say this to a group of people, most of whom have embraced the Christian faith for decades? Because Paul knew there was a danger of lapsing back into old ways of thinking. It had happened to the Galatians. He seems here to be wanting to put in preventative measures so it doesn’t happen to the Philippians.
Let’s examine ourselves and make sure we haven’t lapsed back into using the wrong passport. Let’s make certain that we are relying entirely on Christ as our passport to glory.
Now that might be a good place to conclude. But Paul doesn’t stop there. He has something else to say here, and it’s about living with the right passport:
10 I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
This union with Christ where we give him all we have and he gives us all he has leads to certain implications. Just as in a healthy marriage the couple get to know each other more deeply (even if men will never really understand women, and women will never really understand men) so we shall want to know Christ. And just as a couple will share one another’s sorrows and joys so we shall enter more deeply into both the suffering and the resurrection of Jesus.
But what does all that mean? Knowing Christ means we engage ever more deeply with his teaching. We read it in the Scripture. We ponder its meaning. We start putting it into practice.
Sharing in his sufferings and becoming like him in his death means that we too pay the cost of doing what is right and godly. And we also allow our hearts to be broken by the things that break his.
Attaining to the resurrection of the dead shows where we are heading, just as Jesus did, who was the first fruits of the resurrection of the dead, according to 1 Corinthians 15.
All in all, that union with Christ that provides our heavenly passport is like taking up all the marriage vows with him:
For better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
from this day forward[4]
We just delete the words ‘until we are parted by death’, because this is a union for eternity.
Therefore, union with Christ which provides our heavenly passport is not simply a ticket to heaven. It is a relationship that stretches into eternity. But it begins now.
Moreover, this is not just an individual thing. For we in the church in all our marital diversity – single, married, divorced, widowed – are together the Bride of Christ. And therefore this union with Christ that takes us to glory is something we work out together – not just united with Christ but united with one another. We cannot take the journey alone. As the church we are not just a bunch of snooker balls who bounce off each other every Sunday morning, we are a community that together works out the joys and sorrows of union with Christ.
And it’s OK to admit that we haven’t got our act together perfectly yet, that we are a project in the making, that – as Paul said in chapter 1 of Philippians, he who began a good work in us will complete it on the day of Christ Jesus. It’s OK to admit that – as long as we are committed to the relationship with Christ and each other and to its continual deepening. Paul himself knew he wasn’t the finished article, but he put his name to that development of the relationship. For as he said at the end of today’s passage:
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, 14 I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.
I hope and pray that’s what we’ve all signed up for. Rejecting the wrong passport of boasting about our religious credentials; taking up the true passport of Christ; and living out that union with Christ together.
That is what church is.
[1] Tom Wright, What St Paul Really Said, p26.
[2] Op. cit., p27.
[3] Methodist Worship Book, p375.
[4] Op. cit., p374.
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