Getting into Christ

In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul tells us something about his background and it was impressive. He tells us that he was born from the tribe of Benjamin the first King.

He tells us that he was born into a strict Jewish home. It was a fallacy of fantasies that he tells us that he was circumcised on the eighth day as far as inheritance was concerned. The apostle Paul had the whole package that is even with his credentials he still wasn't an enemy of God that strikes at the core of a lot of religious activity doesn't doing the right thing doesn't make us right with God today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson continues his series union with Christ will learn what it takes to be truly in Christ God in an introductory study by looking to cover the tremendous number of times. The apostle Paul uses this expression in Christ thought of the event. Often on how the whole letter to the Ephesians presupposes these tremendous blessings that ours unfold a passage for our second study, you might want to attend to Paul's letter to the Philippians on two Philippians chapter 3, Paul is not the only Christian in the New Testament, who speaks about being in Christ is something believers lounge from the teaching of Jesus and all that apostle speak about being in Christ. But Paul is the one who dominantly exposes the wonder of this privilege under the same time. Interesting way he gives us clues as to the way in which he discovered that this was the privilege of every true Christian.

We know in many ways more about affairs in our Christian life than about any of the other apostle. Of course we know the outside story.

It's not rated three times in the acts of the apostles lucrative concert and lay on Saul of Tarsus is converted and then on to other locations. Paul gives his own testimony to how he was brought to faith in Jesus Christ. But in a sense the story he tells us in the acts of the apostles is the external history and an Philippians in Philippians chapter 3 writing to this church that if it was possible for him to have a favorite charge.

It was probably this congregation's outer labia seemed to have given him least hassle of all the other Christian churches. He opens up his heart to the Philippians in chapter 3 unto gives us some very strong hints about how it was that he came to be in Christ and how he discovered how significant this notion was for the whole of his Christian life and I want us to try and walk through the steps that he leads us on to explore this great theme. Of course he's concerned about false teaching, often the greatest passages in his letters are responses to false teaching and he is concerned as he tells us in Philippians chapter 3 in verse two, about those who are the dogs. They are people who are insisting that if you're going to be a real Christian and not only need to believe in the Lord Jesus, but you also need to be circumcised and everywhere Paul encounters this notion that you need something in addition to Christ. He always resolves the issue by telling us what it means to be in Christ, and that in Christ we have everything that we need. And here he feels is appropriate to describe lesson very personal town. He describes himself over against these false teachers who are boasting in the flesh who want to add something to the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he tells us he is all the credentials anyone could need to oppose them because he once was one of the if they have something to boasting. He says I have more of a credentials than my credentials are even better as to righteousness under the law. He says in verse six, I was blameless.

If anyone is a reason for confidence in the flesh, then verse four I had confidence in the flesh. If anyone saw to righteousness of his own verse nine. Then I sought a righteousness of my own, and believed I had discovered it until I realize that my righteousness was as filthy rags and I needed verse nine the righteousness of God which is given to us in Jesus Christ's note normally and rightly we think about Saul of Tarsus's experience on the Damascus Road as the tumbling point, but it seems to me, Paul gives us hints here and there are hints elsewhere in the New Testament that that was part of something larger that was taking place in his life and I want us to try and think about this in the light of what he says here he tells us first of all what he was outside of Christ.

Here are people who are in a sense persecuting his fellow believers.

But he tells us how he once was a persecutor of the church by heredity. He had an impeccable pedigree and by performance.

He was outstanding in his generation. He tells us that he was born from the tribe of Benjamin the first King. He tells us that he was born into a strict Jewish home. He was a fallacy of fantasies that he tells us that he was circumcised on the eighth day as far as inheritance was concerned. The apostle Paul had the whole package. Occasionally you will meet somebody who says they are sixth generation Texan RSA Dr. Robert Godfrey was telling the melody. He is 1/5 generation Californian and that I'm very many of them while you might say you are 100 generation start are that you might say is a man I know. While a wonderful man who bears the name once told me he is actually a direct descendent of Jonathan Edwards. Are you might claim that your ancestors came over on the Mayflower and you don't usually say those things to express your humility all your modesty you say them to tell people there's more to me than meets the eye. You need to treat me with respect, I am somebody, and Paul tells us he was able to save us. He had every reason he says for confidence in the flash because in his own estimation as he says here.

As far as the law was concerned. I was blameless. What he didn't know then was that there was a young man who would come to the Lord Jesus who told him the same thing didn't all these commandments, I have kept from my youth upwards, and Jesus penetrated that façade and showed him that was a commandment, but he clearly had not checked from his youth. The man was rich and so Jesus said to him, just show me but you don't cover these Scriptures just let him go give to the poor come and follow me, and it was in that moment of meeting with Christ that the man who believed he had kept the law from his youth discovered he hadn't really kept the law from his youth at all and something similar seems to have happened to the apostle Paul. He had no real sin consciousness. Now I don't mean by that, but he would've claimed to have been perfect. I think I know what this means. Most people have no real sin consciousness, they think of themselves as as good as are usually better than others. Apparently, about 90% of people think about their better-than-average drivers and many other things. That's how we tend to think about ourselves in this kind of fairly horizontal way and Paul thought of himself in that way as well. And of course that was his basic problem he needed more than anything else was sin consciousness because without sin consciousness. One never seeks a Savior and it was to this, but he was awakened and what seems to me to be in an extraordinary way. Remember how we are introduced to them in the acts of the apostles. He's there. That was Stephen the Stephen is martyred. Amenities.

He's breathing out persecution against the charge. He is a man with a profoundly violent heart persecuting the church with integral of course he was persecuting the church because it was a pharmacy. It was not because he was a fallacy that he was persecuting the church the way he wants. How do we know about his theological professor Gamaliel you remember the man who said let's just like these Christians be and God will decide about that of God are not so here was Paul going way beyond his own professor of theology and persecuting the church, not the big question is why was he doing this and I think the letter indications in the New Testament of what was going on in his life and the way in which over last season he was brought TS it came to a climax.

He was brought to faith in Christ and in that moment of coming to faith in Christ. This understanding of union with Christ became crystal clear to him. So how did this come about, how was he brought to Christ. Let me try and fill in the clues. The first clue is in Romans chapter 7 how he says, before I became a Christian I felt I was blameless. According to the law, but then the law came, he means much more than I read the law for the first time he means something happened in his soul.

The power of the law came and exposed his sinfulness. But what law while the 10 Commandments of respite. It doesn't say the 10 Commandments he tells us exactly the law that broke open his soul that was you shall not covet.

When that law penetrated his thinking. He realized that he was a sinner and he tells us he died, he realized he was a spiritually dead man.

But here's the question that would not be true of over three person comes to faith in Christ range of commandments that might penetrate our façade. My question is why that commandment.

Why did the commandment not to covet penetrate the soul of Saul of Tarsus because he tells us here in chapter 3 that he was such a model shoe. Nobody had anything he needed to covet until he met Stephen Luke gives us a fairly interesting hen duster what happened in the acts of the apostles when he tells us that Stephen as he was preaching the word of God, was opposed by a certain synagogue. It's very interesting to notice what he says because it's one of those details that you just read over and you think is totally irrelevant to listen to what Luke says Stephen, full of grace.

This is acts chapter 6 verse eight was doing great wonders and signs among the people and some of those who belong to the synagogue of the freed men as it was called, and of the Cyrene and the some of the Alexandrian's and of those from Celestia and Asia rose up and disputed with Stephen no why that information in because most of us reading it. Move on because it's irrelevant answer because it's actually the most relevant thing in the story because this is the synagogue undoubtedly took which young Saul of Tarsus would've been told by his parents living in the region of Celestia. When you get to Jerusalem, make sure you go to the synagogue where our relatives are our people are you send your you send your child to the United States from Korea.

What are your last words. If you have Christian make sure you go to the Korean church. First of all, they're welcome to it was the same. Here the world these different ethnic synagogues in the faith capital of these Jewish people and it's very interesting.

It was in the synagogue, particularly in the synagogue but we were debating with Stephen and listen to what we are told as they debated with him they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking not imagine Saul of Tarsus.

He has outstripped all of his generation. He tells us that Galatians chapter 1 he says I was. I was advancing beyond most of my generation.

He actually means that apostolic modesty, he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries and then Stephen appear and Stephen process the very things, but Saul of Tarsus didn't he have the power of the Holy Spirit. He was filled with grace is life manifested the wonder on the power of the kingdom of God that had come in and through Jesus Christ and what's the next thing we know the next thing we know is that Saul is standing beside his dead body approving of his martyrdom and it's also interesting that in Mount Marshall done that are course of the Lord Jesus and he he sees the Son of Man standing at the right hand is he's the only Exuma Christian New Testament actually calls Jesus the son of mine recently asked Jesus way of describing himself in its unique to Jesus. But you see, Stephen C7 Stevens, full of grace Stephen praise the prayer of Jesus from the cross, forgive them when you see what's happening Saul of Tarsus doesn't yet understand what is happening to him is that in Stephen. He is encountering the Lord Jesus Christ. And when that happens you have experienced this people do it in sophisticated and unsophisticated with people encounter the Lord Jesus Christ in the life of a believer. They have only two options for the, like Saul of Tarsus, or in some much more sophisticated and genteel way. You have to destroy US and so they persecute the demesne are you have to join and so what does Saul do so chooses. The first option I am going to destroy this remixes where he has these letters but give him authority to persecute the church years. He calls himself the chief of sinners, not because he was super pious because he was the one person in history who seem to be incapable of destroying the entire Christian church man on the Damascus Rd., Christ stops him and remember the conversation. Who are you, Lord, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting the force the logic there. Saul wasn't thought of himself as persecuting Jesus he was persecuting these followers of the way. But what did the first words Jesus spoke to him, teach him that every follower of the way was united to the way persecute them in your persecuting me he'd already taught the apostles this Sunday in Matthew 25. Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers you've done it to me. And then of course it took Paul many months, perhaps years to work out in full detail what this really meant, but from the very beginning of his Christian life. The seed was sown.

If you are a Christian like Stephen then you are united to the Lord Jesus Christ on that union with Jesus Christ transforms the whole of your life. And this is why in Philippians chapter 3 he says this is all I want to know.

All I want to know is who this Jesus Christ is to whom I'm united and to experience the outworking of that union so that my life is transformed.

Until ultimately, I'm actually conformed to the likeness of God's son, Jesus Christ. He puts this in a single sentence doesn't in Romans 829 God has destined us to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers undersea.

He had seen something in Stephen he saw in Stephen Stevens – produced life in him, but in Stephen's own life that was not there was a kind of reef formation of life to be like the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, who as a seed that was planted in the ground and die for much fruit and Saul then was brought to see the this was the meaning of what happened to them. This actually was the meaning of what happened to Stephen I'm surely on the Christians didn't think about. They buried Stephen with much morning and you can fully understand, but but what God intended them to see was that Stephen had been like Jesus and Stephen had experience the very things that Paul speaks about in Philippians chapter 3 he wanted to share in the fellowship of his sufferings and be made like Christ in his death and then be made like Christ in his resurrection and Saul had seen, but already appealing and Steve Twain. Christ met him on the Damascus Road turned in those few words printed to him, but every believer is united to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul committed himself to working that out in the whole of his Christian life know my friends are some great theology doesn't really make any difference to our lives will actually when you look at Philippians chapter 3 you'll see that it makes a profound difference to our lives. For one thing, says Paul, it produces a new spiritual accountancy we count everything loss for the sheer volume of knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord and not only so, he says, paradoxically, creates a kind of holy dissatisfaction, he says, essentially, something absolutely satisfied with Christ, but was unsatisfied with Christ are not satisfied with how much I know of Christ, and so on and driving on to pursue this in a sense he's he's like a young man was fallen in love with a young woman if he doesn't he doesn't just want to make an appointment with her for next month.

At the same time he he finds himself so satisfied with what he has discovered in her but he wants more and then Paul says being united to Christ.

Does this, it creates a wonderful, wonderful simplicity. He says this one thing I do. The only thing I do is pursue the knowledge of Christ. I think I dream that I might've tapped him on the shoulder succumb on nine and…. By way of never seen you do just one thing you're always doing a thousand things and I think he would've smiled and said you know when you know that you are in Christ and not doing a thousand.

You're doing one's pursuing the knowledge of Christ and of values different and that makes all the difference. That's what it means to come to the single-minded focus of a Christian is doing just that is in it pursuing Christ.

What a simple yet profound message by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson you're listening to Renewing Your Mind. And that were bringing you some of the lessons from Dr. Ferguson's new series titled union with Christ will be happy to send you all 12 messages onto DVDs for your donation of any amount to regular ministries.

You can call us at 800-435-4343 or you can give your gift online at Renewing Your Mind. That word, as believers, our goal is to become united with Christ more and more as we renew our minds in his word and that's why we made hundreds of resources available to your free of charge on our mobile app will find audio and video teaching series articles and blog posts plus daily Bible studies. Download the app for free when you search for Lincoln here in your app store. By the way leader is spelled LYG ONI ER well I do hope you make plans to join us again tomorrow is Dr. Ferguson continues his series on union with Christ, if I'm united to Christ how it transforms the way I live my Christian life because I unbuttoned to him and I don't seventh Latin bonds. When I fail him unfairly lies the shame of my sin, but also therein lies the motive for me living a life of absolute faithfulness to him will learn how our union with Christ has an impact on every aspect of our lives. That's Wednesday here on Renewing Your Mind