Paul's Spiritual Biography

In this part of the sermon: Paul introduces his list of fleshly advantages by stating that if anyone has grounds for confidence in the flesh, he has more, preempting accusations of 'sour grapes' from…

Children jealous of a new bike criticize its features because they don't have one. This illustrates how Judaizers might dismiss Paul's teaching as 'sour grapes' because he supposedly lacked their privileges, which Paul refutes by listing his own.

Paul says, is that so? If any man thinks to have confidence in the flesh, I have everything he has plus some more. In other words, he says, this is not sour grapes. Now you kids know what sour grapes is.

13:05 - 13:18 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The climax of the study focuses on Paul's radical re-evaluation: what he once considered 'gains' he now counts as 'loss,' a settled judgment for the sake of Christ.

Paul is likened to an accountant with a ledger book, where his fleshly advantages were once listed as 'pluses' or 'gains.' This illustrates his former evaluation of these things as assets for acceptance with God.

Such things were not gained singular, but in the original it's in the plural. Such things were gains to me. Now he's like a mathematician or like an accountant sitting down and he's got a ledger book in front of him. And he says, in my past this was my former evaluation of all of these fleshly advantages.

30:07 - 30:34 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The climax of the study focuses on Paul's radical re-evaluation: what he once considered 'gains' he now counts as 'loss,' a settled judgment for the sake of Christ.

The account of Paul's shipwreck in Acts 27, where cargo was thrown overboard as 'loss' to save lives, illustrates Paul's re-evaluation of his former 'gains' as utterly worthless when compared to Christ.

And the only other place where you find this word loss used in this particular form, the family of words, is often used in the New Testament for lose, but as loss is in that well-known passage in Acts 27 where Paul's involved and others in a shipwreck. And he speaks of great loss of life and of cargo. And that cargo that was thrown overboard was considered as loss. At one time it was considered in the minds of the ship owners and those who placed it upon that ship as something that would bring gain, but when it stood between them and life, they now had a totally different evaluation of it.

32:49 - 33:31 Read in full sermon

The point: Dare you venture upon Christ and Christ alone? And having ventured there, do you dare to stay there?

A nervous child on an airplane wants to flap his arms to help the plane stay up. This illustrates the foolishness of Christians who, having begun by trusting Christ alone, later try to add their own efforts to maintain their standing before God.

But there are others of you who desperately need the emphasis of the text as it stands this morning. Dare you venture upon Christ and Christ alone? And having ventured there, do you dare to stay there? Can you imagine a little child who's flying in an airplane for the first time and he's got a hundred questions.

51:34 - 51:55 Read in full sermon