October 5, 2002
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
One day when our son came home with his report card, he was very excited and beaming from ear to ear. He knew he did well. His friends were jealous of his grades. But when I opened the report card and saw all the “As,” I said, “What is this “B” doing here?” He was devastated! We Chinese-American parents have this terrible problem of wanting our children to excel beyond our own abilities. We create a standard of perfection that’s nearly impossible to attain.
After Republican candidate for governor, Bill Simon suffered a series of missteps in his campaign so far, he now has on the airwaves an unusual advertising tactic—a commercial in which he acknowledges past troubles and admits that, “I’m not perfect.”
Barbara O’Connor, professor of political communication at California State University Sacramento said, “I like the ‘I’m not perfect’ approach—and so do voters. It clears the air and allows people to move on…and it shows character.”
Way to Perfection
Are you on your way to perfection? Strange question. But it is hard to preach through the New Testament and sidestep the issue. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48). Paul exhorted the church to cleanse themselves of every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God (2 Cor.7:1). 1 John 4:12, 17-18 talks about being perfected in love as something that happens as the result of divine-human cooperation.
In our lesson for today, we can say that Paul was close to perfection. Writing with smug self-confidence, his credentials are impeccable. He had a wall full of diplomas and certificates! Paul was as good and righteous of a Jew as any par excellence Jew can be: his circumcision on the eighth day, his Jewish blood, belonging to the favored tribe of Benjamin, by law, a Pharisee, by zeal, a persecutor of the church, and by righteousness of the law, blameless. Paul thought he was perfect!
Something in our culture values this understanding of perfection that many turn to New Age Spiritualities that are often narcissistic and self-serving. They aim to gratify and fulfill oneself. The god to which they look is the divine within—inside of them. We’re not perfect because we haven’t discovered the god inside of us. They don’t worship the Lord who creates, redeems, and sanctifies without our help.
We also have our modern-day infatuation with therapeutic and religious language that aims to foster self-esteem. Striving for perfection is diagnosed as an obsessive-compulsive disorder, which must be replaced by healthy adjustment and acceptance of who one is. We’re not perfect because we think that we are not.
We see this mindset is also in control in our churches. Our prayers of confessions are rewritten to delete any sense of need for change or forgiveness from a holy and perfect Christ. We try to avoid the reality that we are imperfect whether it’s trying to find the divine from within, or be bombarded with therapeutic affirmations, or simply deleting the need to recognize that we come up short when we stand next to Jesus.
Everything as Loss
In our Scripture for today, we see a Paul who spoke about his past as almost perfect. He did everything as expected for a righteous Jew. Then something happened to him that changed everything. Christ found Paul. Paul says, “Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.”
Often times when people speak of their conversion to Christ, there is a sharp dichotomy between the former life and the new life in Christ. A person will often speak of his former life as a life of sin, aimlessness, and depravity. Upon finding Christ, a person will experience a turning from sin to finding a new righteous life in Christ. The problem with this exclusive form of thinking is that it portrays Christ as being only effective with the worst in life. Christ also came for those struggling in their sin but not lost in it.
Paul does not consider his former life a failure, nor was his life as a Pharisee one of sin and aimlessness. When Christ called Paul on that Damascus road, Paul was on the mountaintop already—the peak of his life! It was while Paul was on his spiritual mountaintop that he discovered there was even a higher mountain. In Paul’s word, “…I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” When he was comparing his new life with his old life, Paul found that knowing Christ is even better than the best that he’s ever experienced!
Many of us see problems in our past personal history. It wasn’t anything close to being perfect. We have tried conversion, tai chi, therapy, and medications to make our past easier to live with. With our troubled past, we have tried to kill it off, to bury it, or deny it ever existed.
But Paul looks back at his own past and speaks of it in a much more responsible manner than simply denying it ever existed. His history was one of meticulous perfection to the customs of his time, to the law, and to meeting the demands of his community. But now, he says, all that has come to be regarded by him in a vastly different way: neither discarded nor denigrated, but simply reckoned as loss compared to the great gain he has found in Christ. We can affirm that there was worth in the achievements of the past. However, those achievements now become not important when compared to the glory of the present.
The past is not void of meaning; rather, when compared with the present, the past is hugely inferior to the joy of the present.
Occasionally I hear people say of their own history that they wish that their past, or at least certain events in the past, had never happened. Given the trauma or the guilt and remorse attached to those events of the past, I can understand. But the truth of the matter is that if these events were somehow eliminated, the people we are now, in the present, would be different than we are. We are the persons we are, out of our own individual history. All of that history has gone into the shaping of who we are as persons in the present.
To speak of newness of life as though it involved a split between an unworthy past and the redeemed present is to speak of a divided self, part redeemed, part banished. The glory of God’s grace and mercy is that we are redeemed as whole persons. Jesus didn’t say, I’d only take this better part of you and leave the rest for you to worry about. Jesus died on the cross to give us the promise that everything that makes up who we are, are forgiven and redeemed.
Striving for Maturity
One of the reasons that we have such a problem about perfection as a part of the Christian experience is that it is widely misunderstood. In our culture, we think of perfect in the Latin definition. It means being flawless, pure, entirely without fault or defect. But the New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek root from which perfect, perfection and perfected comes implies completion, maturity, and fullness.
It is presumptuous for us to think that we can become entirely without fault or defect in this life. Only Jesus Christ was so flawless. But it is altogether reasonable, on the other hand, to say one is aiming for growth and maturity in Christ.
After worship this morning, I will begin my Inquirers Class for those who believe in God’s love but have yet to make a decision for baptism and church membership. You might think that your report card in life is not all “As,” but there’s a lot of “Cs” and maybe some “Ds” and “Fs.” Perhaps you feel that compared to the righteousness of God, my life is “rubbish” and therefore “I am not worthy.”
Like Paul, we will never be “perfect” in the Latin definition of the word. But we can strive toward perfection in the Greek definition of the word—“wanting to know Christ and the power of the resurrection and sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”
The mark of maturity and fulfillment is summed up by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39: loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Christians of every age and place can aspire to this attainment, but reaching it doesn’t happen overnight, any more than a seed that is planted one day is a full grown plant bearing fruit the next day.
That’s what Paul was saying to the Philippians. He hasn’t attained perfection or reached his goal. But he is striving to know Christ because Jesus Christ has made him his own. And even if the Philippians think that Paul has reached this perfection and goal, Paul said, “I do not consider that I have made it on my own, but this is one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” (3:13-14)
Perfection in our human terms is impossible. But being perfected in Christ requires us to yield entirely to the work of God’s loving Spirit within us. It is a life-long process of striving for maturity and fullness in knowing God in our lives. It’s not a splitting off the past from our existence but acknowledging our past and continuing with our lives in the present. When we press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ, our future will be perfect!
The very things most precious to Paul, which gave him a sense of identity and purpose, are now rubbish because of the far greater worth of knowing Jesus Christ. Paul said in verses 10-11,
“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his
sufferings by becoming like him in death. If somehow I may attain the
resurrection from the dead.”
Paul has three goals that we can see from these verses. Paul is striving to gain Christ. He is striving to be found in Christ. And Paul is striving to be raised at the last day to be with Christ.
Like us, Paul hasn’t reached his goal. Like us, he wants to be perfected and in fullness with God, but he’s not there yet. It is only by grace that Paul even knows Christ and that Christ has made him his own. Paul now looks to the fulfillment of the ideal or calling of Christ, begun when Christ transformed him from a persecutor and unbeliever into a person of faith and an evangelist of the gospel.
If God can transform Paul from a persecutor of the church to become a person of faith in Christ, imagine what God can do in your life! God changed Paul, a person who was going one direction, 180 degrees around to go another direction. When we look at our lives, God has an easier job to change most of us who may only need a 90 degrees change! We may still be imperfect but we are not lost in sin.
Not Eagles
Joy often asks, “Why are there no baby pigeons?” I don’t know but maybe pigeons are like eagles. The egg is laid, the mother bird broods over it, and when it is hatched, it is an eagle. Though it is only an eaglet, it needs no education, but simply growth. It is as much an eagle the day it is hatched, as when it first swoops for its prey, or five years afterward when it’s full-size. It is not more an eagle when it is ten years old, or one year old. It is born into eagleship.
We are not eagles or pigeons. No one is born into the Christian life of perfection. Neither are we able through our human efforts earn, gain, or obtain the qualifications to be perfect. Paul realized that it was impossible even for one with such an impeccable past.
But like Paul, we are called to press on to make faith in God our own, because Christ Jesus has made us his own. Although we will never be able to make it on our own, the one thing we are sure about is to forget what lies behind and look forward to what lies ahead.
When we press forward toward the goal that Jesus has reached, we too will reach the future perfect goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we know that we will not become perfect by our human efforts. Yet, invite us into your love and grace as we live our imperfect lives faithfully in Christ. We want to know Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection so that our lives may be dedicated to press forward toward the goal of your promise of everlasting life. Amen.