08 Count It All Loss: Finding Hope in Christ Alone (Philippians 3:1–11)

Speaker: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta. Today we're starting chapter three of Philippians, and we'll be looking at the first eleven verses. This is the eighth talk in our series on the book of Philippians. You can find lecture notes and links for everything related to today's talk on our website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash Philippians eight. Thanks so much for joining us. We have finished the first major section of the body of the letter, and as we start chapter 3 today, we're going to begin his second major section. Just review, as always, Paul is writing this letter from prison, most likely his first Roman imprisonment, which would date the letter to around 60 to 62 AD. The Philippian Church has sent him a gift of financial support, and he's writing this letter in response to the gift. He has three main purposes in this letter. He wants to thank them for sending the gift. He wants to update them on his situation as a prisoner, and he wants to encourage them to persevere in and live out their faith. So in this letter, he's been encouraging them to extend self-sacrificing love and patience to each other, to flee rivalry and conceit and consider the needs of others as more significant than their own. They are to have unity around their shared belief in the gospel, so as they strive to embrace the same gospel, that will lead them to have one mind and one spirit, and he wants their common hope and faith to bring them together in spite of the ways in which they might disagree. He encouraged them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, not just urging them to be nicer or behave better, but to confront the issues of what the gospel means and then to live in light of what they say they believe. Starting in chapter three, then, Paul shifts to a new but related topic. His major concern is still that the Philippians sincerely embrace the gospel and so find eternal life, and he believes that this battle must be fought in the midst of real life. They will be faced with choices that confront them with basic questions about who they trust, what they believe, what they're counting on, and he's encouraging them to choose in accordance with the gospel. So far he's talked about their need to hold fast to the word of life in the midst of persecution from outside the church and disagreements and conflict within the church, and now he's going to address the issue of the Judaizers. The Judaizers were a group who taught that in order to be saved you must keep the Jewish law. Not only must you believe in Jesus, but after coming to faith in Jesus, you must now keep the law of Moses, in particular be circumcised. And I argued when we started the letter that Paul has not had this particular teaching in his view until now. So the opponents he describes in chapter 1 are not the Judaizers, but now in chapter 3 he's bringing in this group and warning about them. And his discussion of the Judaizers in this letter is quite brief. In his other letters, Galatians, for example, he talks about the Judaizers in much more detail. So we assume that the Philippian Church is already familiar with this group and he doesn't need to explain them himself fully. We have to use what we know from his other letters and what we know from church history to fill in the gaps about who these people were. So he starts in 3.1, finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. I want to pause there before we go on. Paul has talked about rejoicing a lot in this letter, and it's going to come up again. And I just want to comment on what he means by rejoicing. I don't think his admonition is a don't worry, be happy kind of thing. So he's not concerned that they have a positive upbeat attitude. That doesn't fit with what he writes elsewhere. We know, for example, in 2 Corinthians 6 10, he describes the Christian life as sorrowful, yet rejoicing. So rejoicing is not this kind of false happiness, rather, it is a response that we give to something that is highly desirable. So there is this thing that I want that is coming my way, and I rejoice in that hope. Perhaps the best analogy is that of childbirth and labor. Obviously, childbirth is a highly stressful and painful process. It's hard work. You could say that we women suffer through it, and yet there is great joy at the outcome. Because the end result, the child, is so highly desired, there is joy in the suffering. That's closer to what Paul's getting at. It's not be happy even though you're suffering, it's count on the hope of the gospel. Let that change your attitudes and your perspective. So rejoice because you value the hope of the gospel, the inheritance that is coming your way so much that you can rejoice in that hope no matter your present circumstances. And notice here he says, Rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice in what the Lord has done for you, who he is, the fact that it's through him that you are adopted into God's family as his children. So I think he has in view, I know you're suffering hardship, but remember the great things the Lord Jesus is doing for you. He died that you might find mercy. He will return to raise you up to eternal life of great blessing. The Lord is bringing us a salvation that is so valuable we can barely understand or grasp the enormity of it. And so in the midst of the hardships, the persecutions, the suffering, find comfort and hope in the joy the Lord has given you. I think that's what he means when he says, rejoice in the Lord, take this stance toward your life. He's going to repeat this admonition again in chapter 4. And again, I don't think he's primarily concerned about the way they feel. It's more a perspective on life that he wants them to have. He wants their salvation to mean so much to them that they can rejoice in the hope of the gospel despite their circumstances. The more they understand their salvation and the value of salvation, the more joy they can find in the midst of daily life. This is also an appropriate introduction to where he's going, because the more we rejoice in the Lord, the less likely we are to be taken in by counterfeit teachers and false idols. So the more we understand what is so amazing about grace and the gospel, the less likely we are to be taken in by those who preach something else. I think that's why he begins his admonition to beware of the false teachers by saying, Rejoice in the Lord. So Philippians 3 1 through 3, finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble for me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision who worship the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. So he says, Rejoice in the Lord, beware of the dogs, and that can seem like a strange juxtaposition. It's hard to figure out how verse one relate to verse two. And I would argue that just like they teach FBI agents to spot counterfeit money by having them study the real thing, so the more we understand the real gospel, the more easily we will recognize the counterfeits. It's by knowing and becoming intimately and personally and thoroughly familiar with the real thing that we recognize the counterfeit or the fake. So to rejoice in the Lord is to focus on the real, actual gospel, and the more we do that, the more we will be able to recognize false teachers. In fact, we see this in Paul's other letters, like his letter to the Colossians. In that letter, he's writing against a heresy that has cropped up in the Colossian church. And rather than explain what the heresy is and debunk it, he talks about the real gospel. We later Bible students have to put all the pieces together to try to reverse and figure out what the heresy is because he never spells it out. Instead, he focuses on teaching them the real thing, the real gospel. And I think that's the connection here between 3-1 and 3.2. The more we understand, know, and recognize the real gospel, the less likely it is that we will fall for counterfeits. In 3-2, then I think he's warning them against the Judaizers. I think the dogs, the evildoers, and those who mutate the flesh are all three names for the same group of people. And the Judaizers, as I said, were a group of Jewish Christians who taught that Gentile Christians must keep the law in order to be saved. So they claimed Jesus was a Jewish Messiah. To follow him properly, you have to eat kosher, be circumcised, and follow all the rules and regulations found in the law of Moses. Paul refers to them with three highly insulting terms. First, he calls them dogs. Now, ancient Jews did not view dogs as affectionate members of the family like we do today. Dogs at the time were scavengers, they roamed around outside the city, they ate disgusting and unholy things, and they were not clean and not viewed highly at all. The Jews tended to refer to people who were outside of Judaism as dogs, so Gentiles were insultingly called dogs, and Paul refers to the Judaizers using this term that the Jews used to refer to the people who are outside the people of God. Calling Jewish Judaizers dogs would have been a very provocative thing to say, and it's a reversal of their claims because they're claiming we're the real insiders. We're the real followers of Jesus because we keep both the law and follow Jesus. And Paul is saying, no, they're the outsiders. They think they're following Jesus, but they're not. Then he calls them evil workers. The Judaizers saw themselves as evangelists working for good. They are traveling around like Paul traveled around, they're teaching their ideas, and they would probably have seen themselves as helping the Gentiles getting it right. And they would probably have said Paul was missing this crucial idea of keeping the law, so they're showing the Gentiles how to be right with God, and they would have seen themselves as workers for good, and yet Paul turns that around and calls them workers of evil. And finally, he calls them the false circumcision or those who mutilate the flesh. And this is a very insulting way of referring to the circumcision which they preach. There's a play on words here that doesn't come through in English. The word translated mutilate is a variant of the word circumcision, so it's like saying they're the excision and we're the circumcision. It's kind of a pun, but it's also a very provocative way of referring to their message. He's turned the tables on them in all three of these terms. They see themselves as the true people of God because they're following the law of Moses, but Paul says they're dogs, they're outside the people of God. They see themselves as working for good, enlightening the Gentiles, but Paul calls them workers of evil, and they see themselves as the true circumcision, those who really have it right, and Paul calls them the false circumcision, they're leading people astray, and he does not use polite terms to do it. He follows this up then by contrasting them with true believers. Going on then, he says in 3 3, for we are the circumcision who worship the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone thinks he has a reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Good Bible students we want to ask who is the we who does that pronoun refer to in three three? Would it include the Gentile believers in Philippi? And I think the answer is yes, in part because Paul makes the same point in Romans 2. In Romans 2, 28 and 29 he says, For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter. So there he says the circumcision that counts is the work done on the heart by the Spirit of God. So these Gentile Christians deserve to be called followers of Christ much more than the circumcised Judaizers do, because they have had the Spirit at work in their lives. It's not just an outward act done by men, rather, it is an inward action of the work of God. In 3.3 he says, We are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. That worship by the Spirit of God, I think, is in contrast to Old Testament worship, which was a ritual concept. If you were an Old Testament Jew, you offered worship to God by going to the temple and making an offering. And Paul's contrasting that, that ritual outward service, with the genuine service or worship of a humble and changed heart. Gentile believers offer worship to God not through rituals in the temple, but through the work of the Spirit in their hearts, making their lives an offering to God. It's the reality of the changed heart that is changed by faith that counts. It's not going through the motions of prescribed rituals. Here he says we boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, again, in contrast to the Judaizers who are boasting in their obedience to the law. Their claim that they are right with God, their boast is in their law-keeping. They would say, we keep the law, God's happy with us, that's our boast. By contrast, true believers put no confidence in the flesh, that is the works of our hands, the things that we can do on the outside. Rather, believers boast in the work of Christ and in the hope of the glory of God. So our hope does not lie in anything we have done, but in the work of another, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is like a man who can't swim boasting in his life jacket. I'm not boasting in my own accomplishments. I'm boasting in my salvation, and that salvation comes through a life jacket that Christ wrapped me in. I'm probably stretching that analogy too much, but you've got the idea that even though I'm using the word boast, it is not on anything I have done, but on the work of another. He says we put no confidence in the flesh, and by flesh I think he means everything we are apart from God. The me that is left to myself with my own resources, apart from God's grace, apart from any work he does. So to put confidence in the flesh is to put confidence in my own efforts, my own abilities, and particularly my ability to keep the law. So if I have confidence in the flesh, I would think that I'm qualified to receive salvation because of my outward actions, like law keeping. Again, we see this kind of reversal. The Judaizers want the Gentile believers to be circumcised, but Paul is saying they're already circumcised in a deeper sense. The Judaizers want the Gentiles to serve God through their rituals and law-keeping and disciplines. But Paul says they're already serving God through the Spirit, changing their hearts and their lives. And the Judaizers want them to put confidence in the flesh and their law-keeping, but they put their confidence in the blood of Christ. Now he goes on to expand this idea of putting confidence in the flesh by using himself as an example. Paul is a Jew. He's a Christian Jew like the Judaizers. He already has all the so-called advantages. The Judaizers are urging the Gentile Christians to follow. And after saying he puts no confidence in the flesh, he says in 3, 4 through 6, although I myself might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more. Circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal of persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law found blameless. In this list, Paul's saying, I had everything the Judaizers could want. In fact, I had it the best you could have it. I had it even more. From the perspective of the Judaizers, I think the most important thing on that list is being circumcised on the eighth day. And Paul is saying, look, if you want to do this religious thing really, really right, that's the way to do it. And I did it all. I was born a Jew, I was a Pharisee, a member of the group that sought to study and obey the law above else. He was so zealous for the law when he heard about this Christian thing, he sought to get them arrested. So if you're going to measure law keeping, he was blameless. And I think he means by that not that he was without sin, but that he was a serious keeper of the law. To the extent that you could practice the law, he did it the best of anyone. I don't think he actually means to say he was justified before God in the context. I think he's making the point I kept the law as well as any person could ever keep it. And then he goes on in 3 7, but whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as lost for the sake of Christ. So what does he mean by gain and loss? Again, we want to put this in the context of the argument he's making. The question on the table is what must I do to be saved? Must I keep the law and be circumcised in order to follow Jesus or is faith enough? Paul's gain was all the advantages he just listed in verses 3 through 6. This is a race, he had a head start. He had a gain in that sense. He started out on the right foot with the right education, the right opportunities, and all the right advantages. So if law keeping is the answer, then he had a leg up, he had an advantage. He was better off than the Gentiles because he was a Jewish lawkeeper, and he was better off than a lot of Jews because he was a Pharisee, a Hebrew of Hebrews from the tribe of Benjamin, and so on. But he says, I count all of that as loss for the sake of Christ, because now he understands that those things that looked like gain, that looked like advantages, were in a sense loss and a disadvantage because they distracted him from the real issue. Those things told him he was doing well. They told him all was right between him and God, and they kept him from confronting the real issue of sin and how he was going to find salvation. So in order to follow Christ, he had to let go of his dedication to his Jewish practices. He had to abandon all that self-righteousness that came from law keeping and realize if he was going to be saved, it had to be by the blood of Christ. That even as well as he kept the law, it wasn't enough to be right with God. Why did he have this change of heart? He goes on to tell us, look at three, eight through eleven. More than that I count all things to be lost 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, and 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, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. So Paul is saying, It's not surprising that I have let go of my Jewishness to follow of Christ, and that by Jewishness I mean by my law keeping, because I have let go of everything to follow Christ. Why? Because through faith in Christ I am right with God in a way that all the law keeping in the world could never accomplish. And the result is that I have this new relationship with Christ. The power of his resurrection is at work in my life, and I am becoming like him so that I am suffering like he did. And the result of joining in his suffering is that one day I will join with him in being raised from the dead. Through faith in Christ, the same power that raised him from the dead is now at work in me, changing me from the inside out, so that I am becoming like him in character. One of the results of that is I will then suffer like he did, but one day I will be raised with him from the dead. And I think the central concept here is the righteousness which is from God in 3 9. And in this context, I think by righteousness is what he means what we think of as justification. Let me just review what justification is. Justification is being right with God, it's a legal term. So when we sinned, we rebelled, we turned our back on God, we said, okay. Okay, I want to be God, I'm gonna decide what's right and wrong, I'm gonna do things my way. And there are two consequences of that. The first is that we experience sin and death. So when we sin, we will experience some kind of death, corruption, decay, negative consequences. As Paul says in Romans, the wages of sin are death. It's not just that one day our hearts will stop beating, that right now there are negative consequences to sin and selfishness. And we know those as bitterness, disappointment, despair, tragedy, loss, grief, anger, war, politics, all that stuff results from sin. So that's the first result. We will now experience sin because we have cut ourselves off from God, who is the source of life. But there is a second consequence, and that is what we did was not just unfortunate, it was wrong. Now I am a criminal. I owe a debt to justice. What I did was wrong, and I cannot be forgiven or put right with God until my debt to justice is paid, until my criminal sentence has been served. And the question then is on what basis do I get right with God? How do I pay that penalty for my sin or pay my debt to justice? God sends his son Jesus to die in our place on the cross, he accepts his death as payment for our sins, and then he can forgive us or justify us. So when he says the righteousness which is from God, he's talking about the justification which is from God, which he gave to us by sending his son to die in our place. So on what basis can I hope to find mercy and salvation from God by having my debt to justice paid? And he says the only basis for that is faith in Christ. Faith in Christ can make me right with God in a way the law could not. Now here in Philippians, he doesn't go on to say the law cannot make me righteous, but he does say exactly that in his other letters, Romans and Galatians perhaps being the most clear examples. For instance, Romans 8.3, for what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh. And then 8.4, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be filled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. That's the issue, because that's the issue raised by the Judaizers. They're arguing that keeping the law of Moses is necessary to be right with God. And Paul's saying the Judaizers are wrong to think that. They are wrong to think that faith in Christ is not enough, and wrong to think that a genuine follower of Christ must be circumcised and follow the law. He's saying faith in Jesus leads to being right with God, so of course I have abandoned whatever I used to think was valuable in making me right with God. Justification by faith in Christ is effective because it pays our debt to justice in a way that law-keeping cannot. And because that solves the problem of my sin and gains me hope and grace and forgiveness, I have willingly abandoned everything else. And I think in part he's probably alluding to his present circumstances. He's under house arrest, he's chained to a Roman guard, he has no home, no job, no source of income. He's probably doesn't have a lot of possessions given his traveling lifestyle prior to his arrest, and he's saying, I gladly gave all that up in order to be right with God. Not just all that physical stuff, but all the Jewish advantages of being a lawkeeper. He says in 3, 10 and 11, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain the resurrection from the dead. He's pointing to the outcome of faith in Christ. And he says the Judaizers are wrong about how you become right with God. It's not law-keeping, it's faith in Christ that makes you right with God, and the outcome of being right with God is resurrection from the dead and sharing his sufferings now. For most of us, we're not still debating whether or not we should keep the law of Moses. That's a settled issue for Christians today. We don't think that we are required to keep all the laws of Moses, but there are other debates that are raising very similar issues today, like the practice of spiritual disciplines and the so-called spiritual formation movement. What I'd like to do with the rest of our time then is unpack the importance of what was at stake here, what was at stake with Paul and the Judaizers, because the same issues can be at stake today with different philosophies and practices. They may not be saying you need to return to the law of Moses, but they are raising the same kind of debate. So to do that, I want to compare what Paul says here with other passages where he deals with other misconceptions of the faith. Because in other passages we see him dealing with Christians who say we should not eat meat sacrificed to idols. That's in Romans 14. He deals with people who wouldn't follow, who would follow certain dietary restrictions, and in that disagreement he argues for tolerance and acceptance. And he says you should be kind and considerate of your weaker brother. But here he is not arguing for tolerance and acceptance. So what's the difference between the two issues? That he would harshly and strongly condemn the Judaizers, but not condemn those who are avoiding eating meat sacrificed to idols. So in that argument, he argues that you should accept each other in spite of your disagreements, that you should seek to avoid causing each other to stumble, and that ultimately God will teach you what's right and wrong and true. So somebody's right, somebody's wrong in that debate, eventually God will sort it out. In the meantime, we should avoid causing each other to stumble. We should wait, hope, and trust and accept each other and not get hung up on this issue. Yet here in Philippians and also in Galatians, he condemns the Judaizers and he urges believers in the strongest possible terms not to listen to him. So what's the difference in those two issues? Well, I think his language gives us a clue that something more is going on here. This is more than an argument about a religious practice and whether a religious practice is appropriate or not. The argument is about what that religious practice means and the value of doing it versus not doing it. Particularly, I think it's about what I think doing the practice gains me. So in arguing that you must do this to be saved, the Judaizers have crossed a line that they should not cross, and that's what makes the difference. We can have different opinions about what kind of music is best in worship, about how long the service should be, about whether we should pray out loud or pray silently or how often we serve communion. But when we start insisting that you must do it this way in order to be saved, and that those who disagree are not saved, then I think we have crossed the same line the Judaizers crossed. The people who were avoiding meat sacrificed to idols did not cross that line, and so Paul argues for a different response. But when you add something to the gospel, when you say we're we're no longer saved by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone, we're saved by that plus my way of doing things, then you've crossed that line. And this issue comes up all the time. I've spent a lot of time in the last few years arguing against the current teachings on spiritual disciplines because I think they've crossed that line. Not everybody in the movement, but some people. The idea has been around a long time, but it seems to me, and of course I could always be wrong, but it seems to me that some of the recent modern advocates have moved from saying, this is a good idea that may help you hold fast to the word of life, to saying this is a necessary, required idea that you must do in order to hold fast to the word of life. That moves the disagreement from something we might accept in each other and seek to get along and tolerate in each other to an issue where we must stand up and say no, that's wrong, you're teaching a false gospel. Listen to how Paul addresses the Galatians when they started listening to the Judaizers and accepting their teachings. This is Galatians 5, 2 through 4. Look, I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace. Paul's saying there, it's not just that the Judaizers are wrong, they are so wrong that if the Galatians joined them, they would be abandoning the gospel. There is something incompatible in the teaching of the Judaizers and the gospel of Christ, such that if the Galatians embrace the teachings of the Judaizers, they are turning their backs on the gospel, even if that's not what they think they're doing. There's something so wrong in the teaching of Judaizers that it can be not, it cannot be reconciled with the gospel, and I think that thing that is wrong is that they've crossed the line from saying, here's a good idea that might help you in your Christian journey, take it or leave it, to here's an idea that you must do in order to be saved. And that's the line we shouldn't cross. Now you can imagine a group of believers who say, one of the best ways we have of seeking righteousness and avoiding sin is following the law of Moses. So they might argue the law describes for us in vivid detail what righteousness looks like, and therefore, as followers of Christ, we should seek to live the kind of life described in the law. So when in doubt, keep the law. They might argue, true, we are saved by grace in Christ, but having a better understanding of the law gives us a better understanding of sin and therefore holiness. In the end, we're forgiven by the blood of Christ, but if we don't know what's right or wrong or we don't know how to act in a certain situation, we should turn back to the law. Now, would Paul call that group dogs and evil workers? I think not, because there's an essential difference. The Judaizers believe that their law keeping is the very thing that makes God pleased with them. The hypothetical group I described says the blood of Christ is what makes God pleased with me, and we can use the law to better understand what a righteous life looks like, but the law itself does not save me. The Judaizers would say God will not forgive those who haven't kept the law in the way we Judaizers have kept the law, but my hypothetical group would say the law is not required, it's an example or a description of righteousness. And I think that's what makes the difference. So where does that leave us today? What should we take away from this? Christians have always lived with this tension. On the one hand, we know that we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, and yet on the other hand, we know that how we live is important. We've talked a lot about that connection between what we believe and the choices we make. Last week we looked at some New Testament examples of how that connection plays out, and I want to look at one more example. I want to look at Psalm 51. This is a psalm that King David wrote after his adultery with Bathsheba. He calls on God to be gracious to him, to purify him and give him a new heart, and then he says this. This is Psalm 51, 16 and 17. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God you will not despise. The Judaizers do not have broken and contrite hearts. They would say, The law says to make these sacrifices, to follow these dietary restrictions, to make these kinds of ties, and you better make them or you are not saved. And they would might say, We are better than you because we're following all these rules and rituals, and you're not. So there's no brokenness, there's no contrition in that kind of an attitude. That is looking and saying, I am okay because look at all the things I'm doing. And further, they would not recognize the broken and contrite hearts of the Gentiles as being anything worthwhile. And yet in Psalm 51, I think David reconciles this tension between grace and law, between how we live and what we believe in a beautiful way. If we have these broken and contrite hearts, then we know we are sinful. We know we need mercy. We know sin is a real serious problem and that we cannot solve it on our own. And he makes no excuses in the psalm. He knows how deeply he sinned and did wrong, and he prays that God would have mercy on him and forgive him, which he knows he does not deserve. He has no illusions that if he goes and offers the right sacrifices in the temple, all will be well. He has no illusions about his own ability to solve this problem. He says if he's going to be forgiven, God is going to have to forgive him because of his own grace and merciful character. There is that recognition we are sinners, we desperately need mercy, and our only hope is the grace of God. Second, he also knows that sin is the enemy and he wants to be freed from it. He goes this is Psalm 51, verses 10 through 12. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. So the broken and contrite heart says both, please have mercy and please change me. I don't want to be this way. And that is faith in a nutshell. That's what the gospel is all about. That's the promise. God will forgive us because of the blood of Christ, and God will not leave us in our sins. We can enjoy approving ourselves like the Judaizers. We can enjoy being the kind of person who does it right, and we can enjoy all the dubious attractions of spiritual disciplines and religious practices because they give us a way to assure ourselves we're okay, all's well with me and God, and I know all is well because I'm doing it right. I'm following all the right disciplines. In contrast, look where David is in Psalm 51, and it's a scary place to be. He's saying, Wash me, purge me, clean me. He's recognizing God is not obligated to do any of these things for me. I have done nothing to deserve such lavish grace, and he's counting on the gracious character of God to save him. Part of the brokenness of a contrite heart is knowing I am fully at God's mercy. If he forgives me, he forgives, and if he doesn't, he does it. And I can do nothing to twist his arm, to sway him to one side or the other, because all I deserve left to myself is judgment. Yet the amazing promise of the gospel is in that familiar verse John 3.16, God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. There is a way to salvation, and it is not through lawkeeping. And anything that blinds us and to that truth and makes us think that we are worthy apart from the blood of Christ, we ought to flee from.