My God and My Country

Not My Own Righteousness

by Phil Johnson - Pastor Grace Community Church

Preface & Edited by Dr. Riktor Von Zhades

Brethren:

This editor has often times stressed the fact, and it is indeed fact, that you simply cannot ever work your way into heaven. Our works are naught but filthy rags compared to the righteousness of God that is reckoned unto us by the sacrifice of our Savior and Redeemer Christ Jesus.

Yes it is indeed nice to do good, and we are encouraged by God’s word to do good works, and at all times and likewise not repaying evil for evil, but blessing those that curse you. (Read Matthew 5:16; Ephesians 2:10; Colossians 1:10; 2 Timothy 2:17) But these good works even the non-believers do as well, for even the most hardened criminal will love his own family and friends.

Thus it behooves us to continually remember that it is our faith our belief in Him who raised Christ from the dead that grants us His righteousness. Nothing else that we can do can achieve that goal. Therefore make note of the sermon below and read the scripture upon which it is based Dr. Riktor Von Zhades - Humble disciple in the service of our King: Christ Jesus.

“9 And be found in him, not having my own Tzedek¹, but the Tzedek ² through emunah³ in Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, the Tzidkat Hashem based upon emunah” Orthodox Jewish Translation - Online Edition 2002

We’re going to look at Philippians chapter 3 and I want to introduce that by sort of reminding you of an incident at the end of Moses’ life. Moses gathered the Israelites and gave them a series of long speeches. They had reached the end of those 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. They were about to enter the Promised Land and conquer the Canaanites who lived there. They were going to take their possession of the land that God had promised to Abraham. And among the things Moses said to them was this, from Deuteronomy chapter 9. I’m going to read three verses and I want you to listen, you don’t need to even turn there, but you listen to this and listen if you catch the phrase that’s repeated in every one of these three verses. Deuteronomy 9, verses 4 through 6.

“Do not say in your heart after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land.’ Whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you, not because of your righteousness, or the uprightness of your heart, or you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you and that He may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know therefore that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness. For you are a stubborn people.”

Now the principle that is summed up in those repeated words, three times Moses repeats it, “Not because of your righteousness,”⁴ that’s the same principle that lies at the heart of the Apostle Paul’s teaching on justification by faith. And you will see that clearly, I think, in the passage we are going to walk through in this day. And I just want to walk through it with you. Some of you very kindly have told me you listen to my sermons on line and all of that. If you’ve ever listened to me preach very much, you’ll know that one of the things I always do is stress the outline. I usually give you an outline and say, “Be sure you write this point down.” I’m not going to do that today because I took count and I realized you’re listening to about twelve messages in three or four days and you’re going to be fatigued with all of that. So what I want to do is walk through this chapter and I’m only going to give you one point that I want you to take away and write down. And when I get there, we’ll stress it.

But we’re going to look at the first nine verses of Philippians 3 and what I want you to do is try to follow the flow of Paul’s logic in this really difficult passage, building to verse 9. Verse 9 is the key verse in this section. Here’s a quick summary of the section we’re going to cover, nine verses. Paul is giving his testimony as a way of refuting his chief theological adversaries. These were some heretics and false teachers who insisted that salvation is not possible for anyone who did not adhere strictly to the Old Testament ceremonial laws, starting with and especially the law of circumcision.

Now Paul, of course, was the Apostle to the Gentiles. And as he planted churches throughout the Roman Empire, most of the people who responded to Paul’s preaching were Gentiles. And these false teachers insisted that in order for these Gentiles to become true Christians, they first needed to become Jewish proselytes. They needed to submit to the ritual of circumcision. They needed to observe all the Old Testament feasts and dietary laws. And essentially they said you need to live under the restrictions of the Mosaic Covenant. And because that was the nature of their teaching, these false teachers are generally known as the Judaizers because they believed membership in the church should be limited to Jews, or at best proselytes to Judaism. In short, they said the Mosaic Covenants is the doorway to salvation rather than Christ alone. And Paul is answering them in this section. He does that by giving his testimony, by recounting how fastidiously he kept the Mosaic Law from birth and then he formerly and emphatically renounces everything he had gained through his own legal obedience. And in verse 9 he gives us one of the most powerful single-verse statements of faith recorded anywhere in Scripture.

I love verse 9 because it summarizes the very heart of the gospel message. Here is the gospel according to Paul. Here is the gospel according to Paul in a single verse. He wanted to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of his own, but the righteousness from God that depends on faith. And the point of verse 9 is simple. “The righteousness by which I obtain a right standing before God is not a righteousness of my own.” Same thing Moses was telling the Israelites. It’s not because you’re so righteous that God has blessed you. It’s not even because of a righteousness of your own. And that is the main point of the doctrine of justification by faith.

In what sense could Paul have thought that he had attained the standard of blamelessness? Remember, he [had in preceeding verses⁵ described] an era in his life, his old life, when he thought of the Law as primarily a standard for governing external behavior. [That is] the Law as Paul understood it in those days, in his pre-Christian life, the Law was a handbook to govern behavior. And the most important aspect of being a righteous person was the issue of what we look like to others. That’s the way the Pharisees thought. And so Paul, like any typical Pharisee, took extra care to obey all the external and ceremonial aspects of the Law, right down to the very minutia. And it was in that respect that he was blameless. There was nothing visible in his life that anyone could ever point to in order to accuse him.

And that was the heart of the Pharisee’s error. Their main obsession with the Law had to do with external and ceremonial matters. They focused on what others could see, not on what God could see. And they confused their high standards of external behavior with real righteousness. They believed that God would accept them because they kept up a righteous façade. That was what drove Saul of Tarsus. He believed that by obeying the Law as strictly as he could, he was earning a righteousness that would give him favor with God.

[Herein then] is the point of this entire passage. Here’s what you need to take away. Paul is contrasting two kinds of righteousness. One that is fatal and one that saves. And, in fact, the distinction between these two ideas of righteousness is so fundamental, so important, that if you can grasp this point, you will have understood the whole gospel. There are two kinds of righteousness. They are as different as night and day. One is a righteousness that belongs to man, and Paul calls it the righteousness of the Law. The other comes from God and it is by faith, he says. One is flawed righteousness that is the product of our works. The other is a perfect righteousness that is the product of what Christ has done. One is a righteousness we make for ourselves, that’s why we call it self-righteousness. The other is a righteousness that is imputed to us. One is the righteousness of human merit. The other is the righteousness of divine grace. One is our own righteousness. The other is God’s righteousness.

And what happened on the Road to Damascus was that Christ literally stopped Saul of Tarsus in his tracks and showed him that all his righteousness as impressive as it might have seemed by human standards, all of that fell short of divine standard and was totally unacceptable to God.

Paul says he took all those earthly advantages, any hope he might ever have had about earning favor with God for himself, and he jettisoned all of that in favor of knowing Christ. And this is very strong language Paul uses here. In the King James Version, he says, “I count all these things as dung.” And that is a fitting way of translating the expression, the Greek word is skubalon⁶ and it refers to the worst kind of filth, muck, excrement, sewage. I can’t think of any other English equivalence that are polite enough to say from this pulpit. And I’m reading the English Standard version which tones it down considerably by saying rubbish, tones down the force of the expression, “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as manure.”

This is shocking language from the Apostle Paul⁷. And it is clear that he means to give his readers a jolt. He wants to state this as plainly and as powerfully as possible. He’s just listed all the finest spiritual advantages available to any person. Remember that Judaism is a biblical religion. Paul is not describing some pagan notion of righteousness here. He has just outlined the highest level of person piety and privilege any human being can attain to. And then he says it’s all nothing but skubalon, dung. Here’s a whole difference between Paul the Apostle and Saul of Tarsus. In essence, Paul abandoned everything he had spent his whole life trying to attain. And he didn’t just abandon it, he came to regard it as revolting, disgusting, skubalon.

Here’s how John Calvin says, ‘Paul declares that he not only abandoned everything that he formerly reckoned precious but that it stank like excrement to him.’ And this was all the more remarkable when you consider who Paul was. He represented a strain of Pharisaism that had elevated religion to an almost unattainable super human level. And let’s be honest, you and I, we would never be able to adhere to the Law with the same rigor as Saul of Tarsus. I don’t know that anybody could in the Internet age. In human terms, the Pharisees had elevated personal righteousness to a level unattainable by most of us, they were super-spiritual, super-legalistic, absolutely fastidious holy men by all external standards. That’s what they were and Paul who had reached the pinnacle of that system said it’s all for naught. It was of no more value than if you took a shovel full of cow manure and decorated it like a wedding cake and tried to offer that to God.

Now [again] remember what Paul’s main point is here. This is the one thought he wants us to retain. There are two kinds of righteousness. One is skubalon, revolting, abhorrent, it’s an offense to God no matter how wonderful it may be made to appear to human eyes. What is the other kind of righteousness? Paul mentions it in verse 9, he says that, “Now it is his great hope to gain Christ and be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Now there’s a wealth of great theology in that one sentence and I don’t want you to miss it. The whole gist of the gospel message is summed up in that verse. What Paul is teaching us here is a very important doctrine. I don’t hesitate to say it is THE most important doctrine in all of theology. It is the doctrine of justification by faith⁸. Notice what this verse suggests. First, the only sufficient ground on which we can stand before God is a righteousness that exists outside of us.

Here’s the truth that Saul of Tarsus finally came to grips with and we must come to grips with if we hope to gain eternal life. The righteousness that saves us is not our own righteousness. That idea is absolutely contrary to the whole belief system of the Pharisees. It flatly contradicts everything Paul had ever been taught and that’s not all. This doctrine sets Christianity apart from every other religion known to man. Every religion you can name teaches that people must become righteous in order to be acceptable to God. Christianity alone teaches that God supplies on our behalf all the merit we need to please Him. The lowest sinner, a thief hanging on the cross can be redeemed and restored to a right relationship with God all on the basis of a righteousness that is provided for him⁹.

[In conclusion] which righteousness would you rather entrust your eternity to? You see why Paul gathered up all his own righteousness and threw it on the rubbish heap? He opted instead for another righteousness. Theologians sometimes refer to it as the alien¹⁰ righteousness. Alien because it’s a righteousness that in no way comes from within us. This theme of alien righteousness was never far from the Apostle Paul’s thoughts. The whole first half of the book of Romans is Paul’s systematic presentation of the doctrine of justification by faith. And his focus is to show how an alien righteousness is imputed to those who believe. If Saul of Tarsus couldn’t do it, you and I for sure can’t. And that is exactly what Scripture tells us over and over again. We must seek a righteousness that is not our own, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

1 Self achieved righteousness, by definition a self-righteousness based on chumra that is to say legalism of which legalism itself a "merit" misinterpretation of the Torah - Dr. RVZ

2 In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely, and he that shall call her, is the Lord our righteousness - Jeremiah 3:16

3 Literally firmness; figuratively security; morally fidelity - Strong’s Concordance

4 Editor’s notation - One might assume that their own good deeds have accounted one to have earned righteousness, when such is not the case. We are instead justified by faith, and our righteousness is imputed through the sacrifice of Christ. “And it was not for his sake alone that this was written in scriptures, that his faith would be reckoned onto righteousness, 24. Except, also for our sake, that for us also it was destined to be reckoned as those who believe in the One who raised our Maran Eashoa Msheekha from the dead” Romans 4:23-24 Aramaic Translation (note literal translation “house of the dead”) - Vic Alexander

5 Editor’s notation - And likewise in various other epistles - See also Romans Chapter 7

6 What is thrown to the dogs, i.e. refuse (ordure):--dung. - Strong’s Concordance

7 Editor’s thought - The Apostle was certainly not one to mince words

8 Editor’s notation - This justification by and of faith grants us the only way in which we can stand before God. That is to say, that through it and it alone is righteousness recognized in us. Without righteousness one cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life, for God simply will not allow sin to enter His Kingdom. It is to be pure and undefiled.

9 This editor is reminded herein of the Gaither’s song “ Yes I know”:
“ Jesus’ blood can make the vilest sinner clean “

10 Editor’s thought - Alien in so far is it an anathema to the carnal wisdom of man. The thought just cannot be reconciled within man’s own wisdom, in so far as, due to our sinful nature, it cannot be conceived as anything within us. Hence it simply must be from something beyond our own minds.