Philippians 3:4-11 I get to leave it behind for Christ!

Fifth Sunday in Lent – Year C, 2025

“You need to get perfect attendance,” may be something you heard from your parents and teachers growing up. It was said that perfect attendance means you will be in school learning, you will get an award, you will get a better job, you will be more successful, you will have a better retirement, and you will have a better life. It may be a stretch to connect perfect attendance to all those things, but we do work at things. We work hard to put together a solid resume to provide for ourselves and our family. And we hope that after decades of work we will have a stable retirement.

When the pieces fall together as we work on our plans, it fills us with confidence. Getting the perfect attendance award, having the resume that rose above the rest to get the job, and the full retirement package fills us with confidence that our plan for a good life is working out. In our New Testament reading from Philippians 3, the Apostle Paul shared his bullet point, vision board, 7 steps of a highly effective life plan, 4 …If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. Any of Paul’s peers who heard this description would have been filled with awe and envy. This description was an influencer, celebrity, not just keeping up with, but surpassing the Joneses level life, and Paul had lived it. Paul made it to the top; his confidence was unstoppable.

We are all at different levels of confidence. You might have confidence today because your mom and dad are here, and there are snacks and toys waiting for you at home. You might have confidence today because you are working toward perfect attendance, a spot on the team or the eye of your crush. You might have confidence because you have the stages of your life all planned out with a family, job, house and full retirement, or because you have done it and are living at the end of a full life. And if you are sitting here thinking that you do not have any confidence, that means you are confident in a plan that is not working out. Confidence appeals to all of us, and confidence is good when it is in the right thing. Confidence in our plan and our ability to work that plan stops being good when Christ stops being part of the plan. When it is your plan and your ability to work the plan, the one to blame is you when the plan does not work out. The days when the plan is not working, and we feel all alone, are not good days. And when our last day comes, death will bring us face to face with God, and he will not be impressed when your bullet point, vision board, 7 steps of a highly effective life plan does not include Christ.

Paul had everything going for him with himself to thank until the day he met Jesus. Earlier in his life when he was without faith in Christ on a mission to capture Christians in Damascus and he went by the name, Saul, Jesus appeared to him. And the question Jesus asked him is recorded in Acts 9, 4 … “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Jesus showed Paul that he was not working for God as he thought, but against him. Jesus emptied Paul of all his confidence that day, and it was the best day of his life. Paul encouraged the Philippians, and he encourages us with what God did for him that day in our New Testament reading from Philippians 3, 7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. When Jesus appeared to Paul, he took everything away from him. Jesus took everything away from him so that he could give Paul faith in Christ Jesus his Lord. Jesus gave Paul the gift of confidence in Jesus who was blamed for all the times we did not follow the right plan, the times we came up with the wrong plan and when we trusted in a plan without God.

The same gift Jesus gave to Paul, he gave to you. You are not alone; you have Jesus. You have the righteousness of Jesus, which means you have the perfect record, highest qualifications and best life plan. Christ Jesus worked every day to be righteousness by loving others, giving other people what they need, sticking to the truth even when it hurt feelings and brought hatred and rejection, and he sacrificed his own comfort to follow the will of God. Jesus achieved the perfect life, a life in which to have absolute confidence. And he sacrificed that life to save you from your sins and death. You may achieve a lot of good things in life, and you may not get a lot of the good things you wanted in life, and all of that will be lost when you die. But the one thing that you will have, that cannot be taken away from you, is Christ.

Getting to know Christ better will fill you with confidence. Spending time with God in the Bible grows your knowledge and faith in Jesus. Spending that time with him means you know God’s bullet points, vision board, multiple steps of a highly effective eternal life plan followed by Jesus for you. Repetition helps us get to know something really well, which is one benefit of us repeating the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed each week in worship as they summarize who God is and what he has done for us according to the Bible. And as we grow in knowing Christ, our lives change into what Paul described in Philippians 3, 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. The more we know Christ, the more we will leave behind our confidence in the things of this world. Our suffering will increase as this happens, since the world is against Christ as we read in our Gospel reading from Luke 20, 13 “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’ 14 “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. In this parable, Jesus revealed the evil desire of the world to go against God and put his one and only Son, whom he loves to death to steal eternal life. The same evil world is against us as those who put their confidence in the resurrected one and only Son of God. We participate in that suffering, dying to our self-confident and sinful desires as we are encouraged to do in our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 43, 18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing!” Christ is the new confidence we have. In Christ we are confident that the one who will judge us when we die is the same one who loves us unconditionally, who gave us purpose, forgave our sins and gives us eternal life in heaven. Jesus knows what it means to suffer and die with confidence in God. He knows the struggle to have confidence in God and not in ourselves. He is also the one who will never leave you, who stands by your side through this life and the next. He is also the one you can share with others and pray they will leave behind the things of this world for Christ.

“You need to get perfect attendance” may be something you heard from your parents and teachers growing up. We work hard at so many things in life like perfect attendance, a well-rounded resume and full retirement benefits, and these are good things, but we cannot take any of these things with us when we die. It is hard to leave these behind because our confidence is in them, but your confidence can be in someone who will be with you after death. You will be with Christ Jesus because in him you have the perfect record, highest qualifications and best life plan. In Christ you have his righteousness and the power of his resurrection. Confident in these, you get to say, “I get to leave it behind for Christ.” Amen.

Gunnar Ledermann, Pastor Divine Peace Church