As we have established so far, conforming to the image of Christ is the high calling of God to us. This is the ultimate decider of where and how we will spend eternity. To excel in any aspect of this life and yet fail in God’s high calling is to get your priorities misplaced and fail in life. Therefore we are admonished to forget what lies behind press on toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14). How do we do this?
Philippians 3:7-11 give an outline of stages we go through to come to the full image of Jesus Christ. It is wisdom for us to know these stages and judge our lives by them that we may know if we are still in the faith. The Scripture reads: “7But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:7-11).
The first step to conform to the image of Jesus Christ is to “count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus… so that I [you] may gain Christ and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my [your] own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ…” (Philippians 3:7-9). We are to count all things as loss, signifying repentance from the things that are contrary to Jesus Christ, i.e. dead works, and put our faith in Jesus. This is how we gain Christ and begin our lives in Him. This describes our salvation experience.
By repenting from dead works we acknowledge the truth of God (2 Timothy 2:25) and through faith in Jesus Christ we are made righteous (Romans 3:21-22; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The two go hand in hand: repentance and faith. To claim faith in Jesus but willfully continue in sin is to be deceived. Those who do so will reap destruction and have no part in the kingdom of God (Galatians 6:8; Galatians 5:20-21), for it is those who confess their sin and renounce them that find mercy (Proverbs 28:13). To receive God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus is not merely to have God’s nature imputed to you so that you may live in the manner you please. Rather, having been made the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus, we are instructed to pursue righteousness (see 1 Timothy 6:11). Simply put, we are to actively live and behave ourselves in accordance with the things that are right in God’s sight; the things He calls righteous in His Word not what we define for ourselves as righteous. It is His righteousness, not our own, that conforms us to the image of Christ (Philippians 3:9-11).
To be continued…
– Kwadwo Omari,PhD
© July 10, 2017.