Good morning.
I’d like you once again to turn to Philippians, Philippians 3:10—a single verse, verse 10. I think by now you know this is what we’ll be sharing on, so I don’t think this verse is unfamiliar.
This is Paul speaking to the Philippian church, and he said, simply and most profoundly:
That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
being conformed to His death.
I’ll read that once again:
That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
being conformed to His death.
Now, let’s have a word of prayer.
Lord, we are thankful for Your Word. We always say, “Your words are spirit and life.” And once again, Lord, we ask You to breathe upon Your Word, to make Your Word alive to us.
You alone have the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go? Unless You speak, Lord, we know that our time will not be of lasting, eternal value. But Lord, when You speak, You can do a work.
So we are asking You, by the Holy Spirit, to take charge of this time—the ministry, the speaking, and the hearing—so that Your Holy Spirit could reveal more of Christ and more of His great purpose. Lord, we ask this for Your name’s sake and for Your glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, you know, we’ve been sharing from this single verse in Philippians 3:10. We have said before that this is Paul’s most intimate letter to a church. He used very strong language when he talked about the brothers and sisters there. He called them beloved and longed for. They were his treasure.
And in that intimate relationship—with those who stuck with him right through to the end, those who ministered to him, and those who loved him—he shared his deepest secret.
And I believe that secret was not just for the Philippian church. I believe—and it’s the reason I’ve been sharing—that this secret should be our secret.
And I wonder, as we go through these different thoughts—this is the fourth and last time—is this our secret? This is the burden that seems to have stayed with me these many months: do we have this same secret? If we do, the Lord will be able to use us.
So this is what we’ve been looking at. He counted this secret to be his highest passion, and it was to know Him. If you read what comes before this verse, he counted everything else as loss.
Some versions say he counted it as dross. Some versions say he counted it as rubbish. Some versions say even stronger, he counted it as dung—and I don’t think I need to elaborate—so that he might have the excellency of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that he might win Christ, so that he might gain Christ.
That was his secret. That was his passion. It wasn’t a number of passions, as these phrases seem to indicate. It was a single passion: it was to know Him.
It was to know Him in the power of His resurrection. It was to know Him in the fellowship of His sufferings. And it was to know Him, in this last time we’ll share, in being conformed to His death.
That was his great secret. That’s what the apostle Paul shared with the ones he loved so dearly.
Now, years ago—and I just asked Josh; I’m sorry we didn’t have the song—we used to sing Philippians 3:10. I don’t know how many of you remember that, but somehow we’ve forgotten it, and we don’t know the tune anymore.
But let me just tell you—we used to sing this song. Brothers and sisters, this was our passion. This was our goal. We used to sing this song with such sentiment.
I remember those days. I was a young man, and as we sang the song, it brought us into the deepest prayer. This was our longing. This was our secret.
It says:
That I may know Him, wonderful Lord,
to know the power of His great resurrection,
and join in fellowship with that of His sufferings,
and in that being made conformable to His death,
that I may know Him, wonderful Lord.
Then we would go from the individual, and we would sing over and over the corporate: “That we may know Him, wonderful Lord. That we may know Him. That we may know You, wonderful Lord.”
We would sing it over and over, and then finally, by the grace of God, the Lord would lead us into some of the deepest communion and prayer that I’ve ever experienced in assembly life.
So that’s the burden. That was Paul’s secret. I hope, Josh, we can revive that song. We’ll get Sally to make sure she leads us in it.
That song means so much. I believe this is the heart of what we’re wanting to say, and may the Lord just really help us.
We’ve looked at a few things, and we really need to press on. We looked at Paul’s secret: the supreme knowledge. There was no other knowledge like this knowledge of Christ.
We looked at Paul’s secret and the power of His resurrection. What a power. What an unlimited power has been given to us.
I think of Ephesians 1:19:
The surpassing greatness of His power to usward who believe,
according to the working of His might, of His strength,
in which He wrought when He raised Jesus from the dead.
What power.
And then we looked at Paul’s secret: the fellowship of His sufferings. I’m wondering if some of you think I was getting way too negative, but brothers and sisters, everything we go through is for this purpose of knowing Him.
Paul was an elect vessel who suffered greatly, and all that suffering had a view, an end, in the end. And that view at the end was that through all that, he might know Christ.
That song we sang earlier today, by Charlotte Elliott, Just as I Am, Without One Plea, came through deep suffering. At thirty-two years old, she became an invalid. She lived fifty years, never without pain.
But in that, brothers and sisters, she discovered the Lord Jesus in a way that few of us have ever known Him. When she died, her family found a trunk with thousands of letters—thousands—that said what that hymn did for their spiritual walk.
To know Him. To know Him in the fellowship of His sufferings.
And today we’re going to share on being conformed to His death. Now, I have a high hill to climb. One brother prayed at the beginning of the meeting, “Lord, we pray this message is not so negative.” Another brother prayed, “Lord, we know this is a hard subject, but we pray You’d really help us.”
Now, it is hard only because we think in natural thinking. But brothers and sisters, this thing of knowing Him and being made conformable to His death is actually one of the greatest victories that you can imagine.
It is not a negative subject. It is actually our release. If we really know what it means to be conformed to His death, we will know what it means to live in Christ.
This was Paul’s secret. And so I hope, at the end of it, you don’t feel it’s all too negative.
I think what we’ve tried to do, quite frankly—and you may not agree with me, and that’s okay, by the way, if you don’t agree with me—is to make the Christian life so palatable to modern lifestyle that we’ve watered down the gospel, so that all it has become is blessing and prosperity.
I tell you, I don’t watch much Christian television, by the way, but when you look at it, it’s all blessing. It’s all prosperity.
Now, before you think I’m this old bah-humbug kind of guy, I believe in blessing. I believe prosperity comes from knowing the Lord. But there’s a different emphasis that is a wrong emphasis when we try to take the gospel message and change it to make it more palatable.
And I don’t think the apostle Paul tried to do that. He shared his unvarnished secret. And if we discover that unvarnished secret, we will discover endless life in the Lord Jesus.
So that’s the positive part.
Today we’ll just try to touch upon a few things. Conformed is the end. Conformed to His death—we have to talk about that, because that’s what it says: “being made conformable,” in the old Authorized Version, “to His death.”
And finally, you cannot leave this out: conformed by the cross. That’s the way we will be conformed.
First of all, let’s talk about “conformed is the end.” When he comes to the end of this secret, the end of it all is being conformed.
Now, brothers and sisters, I think the end of the whole Christian experience, the end of the whole Christian life—whether it’s the individual life or the corporate life—is that we, in the end, are to be conformed to the image of God’s Son.
That’s the end of it. That’s the whole of it. That’s the purpose of it. In the end, we’re to be like Him.
And that wonderful expression in 1 John 3:2:
When we see Him, we shall be like Him,
because we shall see Him as He is.
That is the great thing that God has prepared for those of us who love Him. That is the end: that we would be conformed.
Now, I know, but I’ll ask you again to turn to Romans 8:28-29, because I think it really does hit the heart of it.
Everyone knows this verse, but most people read the first phrase, and that’s the whole of the verse to them. They are constantly comforting one another that all things are working together for good.
But that’s not all of the verse:
But we do know that all things work together for good to those who love God,
to those who are called according to purpose.
Because whom He has foreknown,
He has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son,
so that He should be the firstborn among many brethren.
That’s the purpose. That’s the calling. That’s the end.
And so, when the apostle Paul shared this deepest of his secrets and this highest of his passions with those he loved, the end of it was that we be conformed. And that’s the end in the work of the whole Christian life.
You know, from this side of eternity—or heaven, or however you want to put it—we see all the difficulties. From this side, we see all the things, as it says in Romans 8.
But when we’re with Him, when ultimately we’re with Him, we will look back and see but one word written. That one word written will be: conformed.
All of those difficulties, all of those dealings, all of those experiences, everything that we went through, is with a single purpose and calling in view: that we be conformed to the image of His Son. There is no higher purpose.
I often think of Peter. You’ve heard me say this before, and for those of you who have, give me a little liberty to repeat it.
When Peter was called, along with those other apostles, early in Matthew 4:19, the Lord said:
Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.
I like to leave out “fishers of men,” because that was a particular calling. I like to think of it this way: “Come, follow Me, and I will make you.” Stop there.
Brothers and sisters, that’s a calling with a promise. And Peter, we know, was a difficult case. And all of us, by the way, if no one’s told you—my wife regularly informs me—are difficult cases.
You know Peter: how impetuous he was, how he was always putting his foot in his mouth, and how he was always saying what he thought the Lord should have said. He was always being rebuked, always being dealt with, and he was so seemingly presumptuous.
I love Peter. I don’t feel like there’s a mistake I can make that Peter didn’t first make.
But Peter—think about it. The Lord, in His tender mercies, dealt with Peter, exposed Peter, worked with Peter. All of it, brothers and sisters, from the beginning of Peter’s calling to the end of that calling, was a conforming process.
And He was making Peter into something. That promise stood: “I will make you.”
Then, when you get to that glorious conclusion in John 21, you know the story. The Lord appeared to them. They were out fishing, and the others, all night, didn’t catch a thing.
Then, at the Lord’s instruction, they caught those 153 fish and could hardly bring them in. When they got to shore, Peter jumped into the water when John said, “It is the Lord.” He went to shore, and breakfast was prepared.
The Lord said, “Do you love Me?” You remember that. Peter was a different man. He said, “Lord, I’m attached to You.” It’s all he could say.
Three times—you know the story—the Lord said again, “Do you love Me?” He said, “I’m attached to Thee.” Then the Lord said, “Are you attached to Me?”
And Peter, I guess—you read it; at least I read it in his frustration—said, “Lord, You know all things. You know I’m attached to You.”
Brothers and sisters, I’m going to tell you something. This is what I see; you may see something different. Something was done in Peter. He was caught.
The 153 fish were not the catch. The catch was Peter.
And God’s promise that He would make him—He would conform him through all of those dealings, through all of those lessons, and through all of those exposings—was true.
Then the Lord said:
Peter, when you were young, you went the way you would.
But when you are old, you will stretch forth your hands,
and another will gird you,
and you will go the way you would not go.
And the Holy Spirit explains that this He said, speaking of the death he would die. In the end, Peter was conformed to His death.
Even legend goes—Eusebius, the great Roman historian who became the bishop of Caesarea, said in the history—that Peter thought himself so unworthy to be crucified like his Lord that he requested, in the end, to be crucified upside down.
Surely, he knew what it meant to be conformed to His death. And then he was so greatly used.
Well, you get the story. Peter—I think everyone knows the story of Peter—and I hope it’s a great comfort to you. I know it is to me.
The second thing about conforming is that we make it way too complicated. Believe me, I’m an engineer, and I make things way too complicated.
But conforming, from a biblical point of view, is very simple. You only have two choices.
Romans 12:2 says you can be conformed to this world—or, as it puts it in the 1901 version, you can be conformed to the fashion of this world.
And the apostle Paul tells us:
Be not conformed to this world.
The second place—and the only other place that that word “conform” appears in English in the Bible—occurs in Romans 8:29, which we just read a bit ago. We are conformed to the image of His Son.
There are only two choices. You either have the choice of being conformed to this world, or you have the choice of being conformed to the image of His Son.
We think we’re a people full of choices, but in the end, to use that phrase again, you have but two choices. What will be your choice?
Linda knows there’s a problem I have whenever we go out to eat. When we went to the Cheesecake Factory and they had this book for a menu, I hated that thing. Who wants to read a book when they go to eat?
I never can make up my mind. Maybe it’s a weakness. I always say, “Linda, would you help me decide?” They have so many choices. It’s overwhelming to me to have that many choices, let alone all the cheesecakes, which I never seem to have room for after the many choices in the meal.
But when it comes to being conformed, you have but two choices. What will be your choice?
The Greek word used in Romans 12:2 means an external forming, an external condition. It means fashion, if you will.
In other words, that’s why the 1901 version uses “fashioned”: fashioned according to this world. Are you in fashion, brothers and sisters, spiritually? I hope I’m not in fashion.
Because the fashion—the outward—is a world conformity. And then the other Greek word is a different word entirely, and it means that you’re being conformed to someone. You’re being made similar to someone.
Everything is for that purpose: that you’re being made in a similar image. So those are the two choices that we have when we look at this.
I hope you see that there are only two choices, and I hope we make the right choice in this lifetime.
I often think, in this matter of conforming being the end, of the book of Galatians. Galatians is a masterful work of the gospel that the apostle Paul did.
There were three significant phrases in that book that opened that whole book to me. To this day, it is my outline for the book.
In the first chapter, he talked about God having mercy to reveal His Son in the apostle Paul, who was called from his mother’s womb. So that phrase I take away is: Christ revealed in me. That’s the start.
Then, when you go to Galatians 2:20, you discover the second part of the apostle Paul’s secret:
I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
Brothers and sisters, this is the second part: “But Christ lives in me.” This is a secret.
Then you go to Galatians 4:19, I believe it is, and Paul said:
My little children, of whom I am in travail
until Christ shall have been fully formed in you.
That was the secret, and that was the end. Brothers and sisters, may we see this is our great end: our end is being conformed to the image of His Son.
Can you imagine? Doesn’t that overwhelm you?
I’m not exactly sure how to take that in. But somehow, when the Godhead met together and discussed this, and they determined in their heart to make man out of red clay and to breathe into him the breath of life, that he would become a living soul—to determine that this man, this created being, would be made in the very image and likeness of His beloved Son—is nothing short of overwhelming.
If you don’t think you’ve been called to a great purpose, you should ponder that very often. That is your end. And that was the end of the secret of the apostle Paul.
Second thing: we are conformed to His death.
Now everybody says, “Oh no, here it goes. He’s going to get really negative now. We don’t know if we can handle this part.”
But brothers and sisters, the story of the gospel is that death leads to life. It is never that death is an end. It is always that through death, we come into life.
It was the secret of the Lord Jesus. It was the secret of the apostle Paul. It was the secret of every saint down through the ages.
And what we come into by experiencing the death of the Lord Jesus in our everyday experience of knowing Christ, ultimately brings us into the life of the Lord Jesus.
Now, that’s the positive part. If you’ll just keep that in mind, maybe the hard parts, you think, won’t be so difficult to take.
This is necessary. You will never be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus without being conformed to His death. It’s utterly impossible.
You will never come into what it means to be a living expression of Christ unless you taste of death. Now, I think you’ll understand in a moment as we go forward.
But this is where the apostle Paul discovered this secret. He discovered it first in the Lord Jesus. Look at Philippians 2:5. It was the Lord’s secret.
Remember, this preceded him sharing his secret in Philippians 3.
Let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, subsisting in the form of God,
did not esteem it an object of repine—
that means, something to be grasped—
to be on an equality with God;
but emptied Himself.
Now, if there was anyone, ever, who never needed to be emptied, it surely was the Lord Jesus. But listen to what He did: “But emptied Himself.” That was His secret.
Read on:
Taking a bondman’s form,
taking His place in the likeness of men,
and having been found in figure as a man,
humbled Himself.
Now, brothers and sisters, I know many of you think I need to be humbled, and some of you probably need to be humbled. But did the Lord Jesus need to humble Himself? Certainly not. But He did.
An amazing secret:
Becoming obedient unto death,
and that the death of the cross.
He chose death. He chose the cross because He knew through death and through the cross He would come into all the fullness, all the fullness that He once had. And God would have His complete purpose utterly fulfilled.
Listen to this:
Wherefore also God highly exalted Him,
and granted Him a name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of heavenly and earthly and infernal beings,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to God the Father’s glory.
This was the Lord’s secret. I can’t imagine it, but this was His secret.
Well, it wasn’t only His secret. It became the apostle Paul’s secret. Look at 2 Corinthians 6. I think you probably know these verses. Second Corinthians is Paul’s spiritual autobiography.
In 2 Corinthians 6:4, he says:
But in everything, commending ourselves as God’s ministers:
in much endurance, in afflictions, in necessities, in straits,
in prisons, in riots, in labors, in watchings, in fastings,
in pureness, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness,
in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth,
in the power of God, through the arms of righteousness,
on the right hand and left, through glory and dishonor,
through evil report and good report,
as deceivers and true, as unknown and well known.
And listen to this phrase:
As dying, and behold, we live.
That was his secret. Through all of these experiences, that was his secret. He now knew it wasn’t just the Lord’s secret; it became the apostle Paul’s own secret.
And he said, “My secret is, through all these things, dying we live.” That is what he communicated to the Philippian church.
Well, look at 2 Corinthians 4:7. The same autobiography:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the surpassingness of the power may be of God,
and not from us.
Listen to what it says:
Every way afflicted, but not straightened;
seeing no apparent issue, but our way not entirely shut up;
persecuted, but not abandoned;
cast down, but not destroyed.
Listen to that comfort. Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians 4:10. He comes to the secret.
He said, “This is what’s happening, in case you didn’t know, through all these things, these extreme cases I’m going through. You will go through much less, but all I’m going through is with this one secret in view.”
Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal body.
For we who live are always delivered unto death on account of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
And then he said:
So that death works in us, but life in you.
Isn’t that tremendous? This is the secret. Everything he went through, everything he went through, so that he could experience the dying of the Lord Jesus, so that in the end he could experience the life of the Lord Jesus.
The reason the apostle Paul knew so much life of the Lord Jesus is because he was conformed to the death of the Lord Jesus. That was the manifest secret that he shared.
And the Lord said to His disciples in Matthew 10:24:
The disciple is not above his teacher,
nor the bondman above his Lord.
Brothers and sisters, if this was the Lord’s secret, if this was the apostle Paul’s secret, don’t you think—don’t you think just maybe—it should be our secret?
I believe that’s the message of the end of Philippians 3:10.
I remember when I was a young Christian. I was only months old in the Lord. It’s hard to think back those many years. In 1972, I was born again—February 4, 1972.
I had the privilege of meeting Stephen, a young man back then, in October 1972, and they’ve been here ever since.
But I remember reading through my Bible for the first time, and I discovered what John the Baptist said when he was being asked about the Christ. He said, “I am not the Christ. I know the Christ. I am not the Christ.”
He said he was the friend of the Bridegroom. But then he said this remarkable thing in John 3:30. I remember underlining it in the first Bible I ever owned, a little Good News for Modern Man Bible about this big. I couldn’t even read it today, but I still have it.
And he shared this grand secret:
He must increase,
but I must decrease.
That is being conformed to His death. Brothers and sisters, that is our calling. May the Lord really help us to open our eyes to how necessary this is—how necessary, how absolutely necessary it is.
I’m thankful that John the Baptist said, “I know the Man. I’m not the man.”
He must increase. That’s the secret of the Christian life. I must decrease. That’s the secret of the Christian life.
If you don’t know those two secrets, you’ll be trying to live the Christian life on your own. And if you don’t decrease, you’ll always be in the way. I hate to tell you.
That’s the reason conformity to His death is so important.
I remember some fellow engineers I worked with at the power company. I didn’t work—I worked for them. They worked at the power company, and they were believers, and they are believers.
We used to have this thing we would always say to one another. If you helped in any way, you were “the man.” I don’t know if y’all say that. Maybe y’all aren’t so coarse as I am.
But when they did it right, or when we got it right, or when you got something you needed—which was often the case when you were looking for information—you would say, “You are the man.”
I remember we would say it, and those two guys would say to me, “I’m not the man. I know the Man, but I’m not the man.”
Do you understand? That’s what the apostle Paul is saying. “I’m not the man. I know the Man. That’s my secret.”
Well, I think you get it. The last point we want to think about today is this matter of being conformed by the cross.
This work of being conformed to His death is not possible without the cross. The cross is essential to the Christian life.
It was essential to the Lord’s ministry and to us coming into our redemption. It is essential to the individual believer that we know the cross.
What the apostle Paul is teaching in Philippians 3:10 is the experiential knowledge of knowing the Lord. And you can only come to really know the Lord, in the end, through the cross.
What we have done today, I think, in many ways, is preached a crossless Christianity—a crossless Christian life.
Most believers know one, or maybe two, of the aspects of the cross. Hardly any of us know all three aspects of the cross.
We know the cross as the substitutionary work. Every true believer knows: Christ died for me. It was the substitutionary work of the cross. That’s the first and essential aspect.
Now, if you don’t know that aspect of the cross, you don’t know the cross. You have to know He died for me. He was my substitute. He was made sin, that I might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
But there’s the second aspect, and that’s spoken of in Romans 6. It’s the inclusionary aspect.
Do you know that the Lord Jesus, when He was crucified—and by the way, many Christians don’t know this, and they struggle for their whole Christian life trying to live as a Christian—the great secret is that when Christ was crucified on the cross, Adam, the old man, was put into Christ, and the old man died in Christ.
So Romans 6 tells us we have been crucified with Christ.
Now, because that old man has been crucified, we now can yield to the Lord. We now can walk in newness of life. We now can reckon ourselves dead, because we are a new creation in Christ Jesus. We now have a new source to live by.
Many believers struggle all their Christian life because they never understand this inclusionary aspect. They’re always pedaling uphill harder, always saying, like the little red train, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”
When the real secret is, we yield. When the real secret is, we lay hold of that new life we have in Christ. When the real secret is, you were the problem, and you were done away with.
And now, through the cross, you have a whole new resource, a whole new source of living.
And then there’s the third aspect of the cross. It’s the voluntary aspect. I think few of us know that.
This is what the apostle Paul is speaking about here in Philippians 3:10: those believers who become identified with the Lord and voluntarily take up their cross and follow the Lord Jesus every day.
This is the secret.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon put it this way. I love this quote:
There are no crown-bearers in heaven
that are not cross-bearers here.
Another said:
No cross, no crown.
Brothers and sisters, we must take up our cross. It’s the only way to be conformed. It’s the secret revealed. It’s what the apostle Paul shared when he shared his deepest thought.
And with us today, we have made a crossless Christianity. I want to read some verses from Matthew 10. Maybe these will help you.
The Lord Jesus told His own. This was the secret. Look at Matthew 10:34-39.
These are strong words. You talk about tough words. Listen to what the Lord said:
Do you think that I have come to send peace upon the earth?
I have not come to send peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man at variance with his father,
and a daughter with her mother,
and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law.
And they that are of his household
shall be a man’s enemies.
You may think those words are too strong.
He who loves father or mother above Me is not worthy of Me,
and he who loves son or daughter above Me is not worthy of Me.
And he who does not take up his cross and follow Me
is not worthy of Me.
He that finds his life—soul life—shall lose it;
and he who has lost his soul life for My sake
shall find it.
That was the secret He shared with His disciples, and that is to be our secret. It’s the only way. Unless we take up our cross, unless we are conformed by the cross, we will never come into a true knowledge of the Lord.
Well, look at Matthew 16. I think you know this as well. You remember the infamous statement of Peter after that great revelation, when he said, “Thou art the Christ.”
Then the Lord began to speak to him. He was telling him how He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things at the hands of the priests, die, and then be raised again.
And Peter, in his wisdom—his crossless wisdom—said, “God be favorable to Thee. Don’t be so hard on Yourself. Do You really have to go that way? Think of it. Think of the consequences.”
But the Lord Jesus said, in the strongest words—and I tell people this all the time—I’ve been called many things, almost all of them deserved, but no one yet, as far as I know, has ever called me Satan. That may change after this message.
The Lord turned to Peter and said:
Satan, get thee behind Me.
He knew what was at stake. A crossless Christianity is a life without knowing Christ.
And then, of course, you know the rest of this. He opened this great secret. Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 16:24:
If anyone desires to come after Me,
let him deny himself,
and take up his cross,
and follow Me.
That’s us, brothers and sisters.
For whosoever shall desire to save his life—
that soul life again—shall lose it;
but whosoever shall lose his life—
that soul life again—for My sake,
shall find it.
For what does a man profit
if he should gain the whole world
and suffer the loss of his soul?
Or what shall a man give
in exchange for his soul?
Brothers and sisters, how many men and women have sold their soul with a crossless Christianity?
They saved themselves from the cross, but they lost their way. This is my appeal to you: don’t save yourself from the cross.
You may gain what you think is everything, but in the end, you will not be conformed, and you’ll lose your way. You will lose your life.
Do you understand? Do you think this is too hard a word? It was the Lord’s word. Can we ignore it? Should we preach only on pleasant things?
Shouldn’t we attend to the things the Lord said in the strongest words, compelling His own to take up their cross and follow Him?
I believe the Lord knew, just like He knew for Himself, it was the secret.
One more passage: Luke 14:25-27.
And great crowds went with Him. This was the crowds. This wasn’t the disciples. This wasn’t Peter. This was the crowds.
And great crowds went with Him, and turning around, He said to them:
If any man come to Me and shall not hate his own father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
yea, and his own life too,
he cannot be My disciple.
Now, do you know what that means? Do you really believe you’re to go away from this place and begin to hate your wife, your mother, your father, and your children? It doesn’t mean that at all.
It just means those soulish affections have to go to the cross, or they’ll get in the way of you being conformed to the image of Christ.
This is all about losing our soul. These soulish loves are greater than our love for the Savior. That’s what He was getting at.
And whosoever does not carry his cross
and come after Me,
he cannot be My disciple.
I think today—I’ve said it, and I’m going to say it again—we preach a different brand of Christianity.
We have spent a generation—my generation; I’ll take personal responsibility for it. They talk about the past generation as the greatest generation. We won’t ever say that about my generation.
We brought in such things, allowed such things, which you cannot imagine. And I believe, in a real way, the emphasis in our generation—my generation—is self-love.
The great emphasis we brought into the schools is self-esteem. We thought that would solve all the problems. People’s problems, we said, are because they don’t love themselves enough. If they only loved themselves more, this world would be utopia.
And even that has come into Christianity. Remember when the Lord was preaching on the law and talking about the two great things of the law? He said:
Love your neighbor as yourself.
We’ve made a whole brand of Christianity around that verse that I think it entirely does not speak to. We’ve said, “Unless we love ourselves more, we cannot love our neighbor as we love ourselves.”
So the whole emphasis begins to shift from loving our neighbor to loving ourselves. They say that’s the secret.
Brothers and sisters, that’s preposterous. Let me tell you what I think, and you may not agree, and it’s okay if you don’t agree.
I believe the Lord’s teaching here is that self-love is assumed. It’s not taught; it’s assumed.
You don’t believe it? Take a hatchet out and cut your finger off. That happened to a friend of mine growing up. Most normal people will stop short of doing that. He wasn’t normal.
Self-love has infused Christianity. Self-life has infused Christianity. Self everywhere.
It’s me, myself, and I. I told Dora this the other day—I’ve said it before, and you’re sick of it. Linda thinks all of my illustrations ought to be like food in the grocery store and have a timestamp on them: “Do not use after this date.”
I sometimes violate that. But I remember, clear as a bell, years ago, leaving this place one Sunday, going down to Huguenot Road, and seeing this dear little lady. She had this bumper sticker on the back of her car, and it said, “I am the center of the universe.”
I’ll never forget. I thought that was an extraordinary thing to say.
Yeah, most of us think that way. Certainly, if we’re not Christians, everything revolves around us. But would you put it as a bumper sticker on the back of your car? That’s some bold stuff.
But I think this is what’s happened with Christianity. Most Christians don’t understand the danger of the self-life.
You cannot be conformed to the image of Christ if your self-life is not touched. You cannot.
I remember years ago that cartoon about Pogo. You remember, some of you that are really dating may know Pogo. It says in Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
It was actually a takeoff on Admiral Perry in a naval battle on the Great Lakes: “We have met the enemy, and he is ours.” But in the cartoon, it became: “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”
In many ways, the danger that keeps us from this secret is this self-life. That’s why we need the cross.
Without that, you will never enter into what it means to be a real believer, conformed to His image and conformed to His death.
A. W. Tozer said in the little book The Radical Cross:
The cross stands in opposition to the natural man.
That’s this voluntary, subjective cross.
He said:
In every true Christian’s heart is a cross and a throne.
And the Christian is on the throne
till he puts himself on the cross.
Do you understand? Do you get it?
If he refuses the cross,
he remains on the throne.
That’s the danger. Brothers and sisters, may the Lord help us.
The apostle Paul said in Galatians, at the end, almost his closing words except for his final parting:
Finally, let no one cause me trouble,
for I bear on my body the brands of Jesus.
The marks of the cross. This is the one who knew the secret. He said, “I bear on my body the brands, the marks, of the cross.”
Now, here’s my question to all of us in these rooms: are there any marks? Are you unblemished?
Here’s One who knew the secret. Think of the Lord Jesus after He was raised from the dead. I never understand this: I don’t know why God didn’t erase the marks of the cross from the Lord Jesus. Why didn’t He?
You remember doubting Thomas. He said, “I won’t believe unless I take my finger and stick it into the nail prints in His hands, and take my hand and put it into His side.”
And then the Lord Jesus appeared to him and said, “Thomas, take your finger. Here are the hands, still marked with the marks of the cross. Here is the side, still marked with the marks of the cross. Be not disbelieving.”
Brothers and sisters, these are ones who knew the secret. May the Lord really help us so that we’re ones who bear the marks of the cross.
You know, let me close with this. You may think this is way too hard to talk about. I was more fearful of this message than any of the preceding three.
I thought, “Lord, how do You communicate it? How do You make it so we just don’t tune out and turn off and look the other way? How do we really do it?”
You might say, like me—and I’m telling you, you might be more like me than I realize—you might say, “Impossible.” Hearing those words, it’s impossible.
But I thank God that the apostle Paul concluded with some of the most encouraging thoughts. Turn to Philippians 3 again.
This is what he said:
Not that I have already obtained the prize,
or am already perfect.
This was the apostle, the one who knew the secret. Or perfected—it means mature, by the way, not sinless perfection.
He said:
But I pursue.
That was his secret. He realized he hadn’t attained, but he never gave up.
But I pursue,
if also I may get possession of this,
seeing that I have been taken possession of
by Christ Jesus.
Listen to what he said in Philippians 3:13:
Brethren, I do not count to have got possession.
But one thing:
forgetting the things behind
and stretching out to the things before.
Couldn’t that be said of all of us?
You know, brothers and sisters, let me share with you one little thing. Often our problem is the past. We’re living in the past.
Some people think it’s the good old days, but I hardly have found the past the good old days. I think they’re embellished memories, is what I would like to call them.
But we live in the past. We live in past failures. We begin to say, “This is impossible.” We begin to say, “I can’t do this.”
There’s only one remedy for the past. There are not two remedies. It’s forgetting the things that lie behind.
Brothers and sisters, the only remedy for the past is that we repent, that we take the blood of Jesus, and then, by the grace of God, we forget what He forgets.
I have seen more marriages in trouble simply because people always bring up the past in every strained event.
What we need to do is listen to the apostle’s secret: forgetting that which lies behind. You can do that. You may not be able to do what you think, but you can do that by the grace of God.
And then he goes on to say in Philippians 3:14:
I pursue, looking toward the goal
of the prize of the calling on high of God
in Christ Jesus.
The secret of the apostle Paul was looking at the goal. You don’t look at the ground.
When the Lord said, “When you see these things come to pass,” what did He say? Look up. Look at the goal. That’s the way through.
We can take up the cross because we can look at the goal. And the Lord Jesus—it even says—“for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.”
That’s what we’re to do, and that’s what the secret is being revealed here.
And finally, he ends with this wonderful little word in Philippians 3:15:
As many, therefore, as are perfect,
let us be thus minded.
That’s all. Pursue. Forget. Look to the goal.
And listen to this beautiful encouragement:
And if you be any otherwise minded,
God shall reveal this to you.
Isn’t that precious? Don’t worry about making mistakes. This is one thing I can guarantee: you will make mistakes.
But this encouragement Paul reserved for the end of this secret. He said, if you set your course to be conformed to His death, to take up the cross, if you pursue, if you join in to forget, if you look to the goal, if you’re any otherwise minded, God will even show you this.
Now, isn’t that encouragement? Thank God He keeps us on the straight path.
Well, this is the secret. The great secret of the apostle Paul is to know Him. It’s the only secret.
And we need to be those that choose this voluntary secret: to be conformed to His death.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we lay all these thoughts before You. Unless, by Your mercy, You reveal to us, in Your Spirit, the truth that’s in Your Word, we will go a different path.
We’re thankful that this secret is a shared secret. We’re thankful it’s no longer a hidden secret. We want to know Christ, and we want You to be our singular passion, like the apostle Paul.
We want You to be the One we pursue. We want You to be the One we’re conformed to. And Lord, we know we can’t do that without the cross.
We’re thankful for the cross that saves us. We’re thankful for the cross that delivers us. But Lord, we want to take up the cross that makes us and conforms us to Your image.
In Jesus’ precious name, amen.