GROWING IN CHRIST IN COMMUNITY: WHAT’S YOUR PEDIGREE?
Philippians 3: 4-9
01/20/13 © Dr. Rev. Ronald W. Scates
How important is pedigree? If you live in the world of the Westminster Kennel Club, it’s very important. If you dwell in a country that has royal families, it’s extremely important. In the South, we put it this way: Who’s your daddy?
How about when it comes to salvation? How about when it comes to your standing and mine before God? What about our eternal life? What kind of pedigree? What kind of resumé, what kind of curriculum vitae (C.V) might be impressive to God?
Back in 1997, the General Assembly of our denomination asked me to be part of a group of 8 biblically-Orthodox pastors and 8 theologically-liberal pastors. We were to meet for 3 days to try to find common ground theologically so that our denomination could move forward in a healthy way. Listening in to our conversations over that 3-day period would be John Detterick the head of the
General Assembly Council and Clifton Kirkpatrick, the Stated Clerk of the denomination. So over 3 days we bantered back and forth and at the end of 3 days we all agreed that we had pretty much reached an impasse theologically.
Out of exasperation, one of the liberal pastors looked at us and said, “The problem with you all is you just need more education.” We were rather stunned by this and one of our group, (a guy I didn’t know then, he was a pastor from New Jersey, now he’s a dear friend of mine), leaned forward and said, “Look, I’ve got a B.A. from Harvard. I did my Master of Divinity at Princeton
Theological Seminary and I have a Ph.D. from Oxford, just how much more education do I need?” I was in there going, “Wow! Man!
What a resumé that guy has!”
If you had to say, in the New Testament, “Who has the most impressive pedigree? Who has the most attractive resumé? Who has the C.V. with the most clout?” Who would you pick?
Well, we’re going to meet him this morning and he’s going to lay his resumé out before us, his pedigree, completely, right out there for us to see and then he’s going to tell you and me what he thinks about it. And then I invite you to put your pedigree up against his as we turn in our bibles this morning to Philippians, chapter 3 and take a look together at verses 4 through 9. Please pray with me before we read.
Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds now to Your Word that we might clearly understand it, that we might gratefully receive it and that we might faithfully apply it to our lives. For Jesus’ sake! Amen.
And now, if you’re able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word this morning as we find it in Philippians, chapter 3, beginning to read at the 4 th verse. Paul writes:
4 though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for 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; as to the law, a
Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order 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 comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from
God that depends on faith—
Please pray with me again! And now Father, as my words are true to Your Word, may they be taken to heart but as my words should stray from Your Word, may they be quickly forgotten. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen. Please be seated.
In the summer of 1976, I served as a seminary intern in what was called the Summer Evangelism Project of the Presbytery of
Philadelphia. They placed me in an inner city church and they expected me to explore a whole lot of different varieties of ways to do evangelism amongst what they told me would be a pretty tough crowd. So, to prepare for that summer, I brushed up on Coral Ridge
Presbyterian Church’s evangelism explosion, a way of doing evangelism using questions and here’s the lead question you were to ask non-Christians: If you were to die tonight and you stood before God and He said to you, “Why should I allow you in my heaven?” what would you say? That’s a pretty good question for us here this morning to think about. What if that was our situation—we were standing before God and He asked us that same question—what would you and I say? And how confident would we be with our answer? Where does your confidence lie? Where does my confidence lie when it comes to salvation? When it comes to our standing before God? When it comes to our eternal life?
Well, according to 1 st Century Judaism, there probably isn’t anyone else that would have a better reason to be confident in standing before God than Paul, who’s the author of the letter before us this morning. In fact, Paul, in this text we just read, confidently lays out his pedigree before you and me. And let’s track it.
First of all, he tells us that he was circumcised on the 8 th day, meaning he was born a Jew. He didn’t become a Jew later in life.
He was not a proselyte, a later convert. No he was born a Jew. He says, “I am of the people of Israel.” That means he’s a purebred
Jew. He’s one of the chosen people. He is not a mixed stock. And he says, “I’m of the tribe of Benjamin.” Whoa! What does that mean? Benjamin was the smallest of the tribes but in some ways it was the coolest of the tribes. You see, the tribe of Benjamin, that’s the tribe that gave Israel its first king—King Saul, after whom Paul was named. And the tribe of Benjamin—they were heroic.
They were the vanguard. They were always the first tribe in battle. The others always came after.
A famous Israeli battle cry was always: Follow the tribe of Benjaminites. And Paul says, “I am a Hebrew of Hebrews.” Even Billy
Graham can’t say that. He, Paul, says, “I’m a Pharisee.” Now they were the Jewish Jesuits. They were the most educated. They were the Ph.Ds. They were the folks who knew and lived by all 613 ancillary laws to the 10 Commandments. And when it comes to zeal,
Paul says, “Hey, I persecuted that heretical sect of that that upstart Jesus founded. When it comes to righteousness,” Paul says,
“under the law, I was blameless.” It doesn’t mean he thinks he was not a sinner; it just means he practiced daily the Jewish sacrificial system; his sins were covered daily by the blood of lambs and goats!

Pretty impressive pedigree! Who here would like to put their pedigree, spiritually, up against the Apostle Paul? He as much challenges you and me to do that in verse 4 of our text. He says, “I’m looking for somebody else who has more confidence in the flesh than I do. Come on! Come one! I challenge you to a round of dueling pedigrees.” Anybody here? Anybody dare to put your pedigree up against Paul’s?
I will! I’ll put mine up there. I’ll put my Presbyterian pedigree up against his. I was born into a Presbyterian home. I was placed on the cradle roll of the Presbyterian Church of the Atonement when I was just a few days old. I was baptized into the Presbyterian
Church. I was confirmed in the Presbyterian Church and before they would confirm me, I had to demonstrate that I had memorized all 107 of the questions in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. I went to a Presbyterian college, Trinity University in San Antonio.
I’ve got two degrees from that college. I went to a Presbyterian seminary, Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. I was ordained in the old Southern Presbyterian church, the PCUS. I have faithfully pastored 3 Presbyterian churches, First P. Church, San
Antonio, Central P. Church, Baltimore, Highland Park P. Church, Dallas. I’ve been a member of 4 Presbyteries—Del Salvatore
Presbytery which morphed into Mission Presbytery in South Texas, Baltimore Presbytery and now Grace Presbytery. Cut me and I bleed Presbyterian.
Are you impressed? I heard somebody say, “No.” Is God impressed?
I track with the Apostle Paul in verse 7 through 9 of our text where basically says, “Hey, take Ron’s pedigree, put it together with mine, give us a dollar and that will get us a cup of coffee at McDonalds.”
Spiritually, Paul’s pedigree and mine makes as much difference as a hill of beans. My friends, Satan’s tact with you and me is he wants to lull you and me into thinking that there is something innate in us, who we are, what we’ve done in our lives, spiritually or otherwise that will really get God’s attention and make Him fall in love with us and will earn us a spot in eternal life. Satan’s tactic is he wants to comfort you and me with some background music that’s continually playing and it serenades us all the time with a song that goes something like this: “You know, you’re really a good person, especially compared too… and you know, look at your life, you’ve done a lot of worthy, wonderful things. You’ve got a swell resumé. God’s really going to be impressed with who you are.
You’re really a good person. You really do qualify for eternal life.”
Friends, I take my cue from the Apostle Paul in that my job as your pastor is to discomfort you if you should, in any way, think that that’s really the way things work, that you’ve got the possibility of somehow saving yourself, if it sneaked up somehow behind you and lights your resumé on fire, along with mine. That’s my job as your pastor. You see, the more religious you and I are, the more educated you and I are, the more respectable we are, the more that we have gained in this life, the more educated, that actually sets you and me up to be more susceptible to take Satan’s bait and really believe in our resumé. “I really am a good, fine upstanding person and I’m sure I qualify.” Friends, it’s very easy to get an impressive resumé, a padded pedigree and allow that to eclipse reality which is that you and I, without Jesus Christ, are totally, totally lost. It’s very easy to fall into that trap and think I really do merit heaven and eternal life. I can stand before God cause I’ve got this great resumé to place before Him.
The Apostle Paul is throwing a flag on that play. That’s why in verses 7 and 8 of our text he uses the word, “count” 3 times.
Count! Count! Count! He’s counting. He’s crunching the numbers. He’s looking at anything and everything in his life. He’s adding it up and he discovers that when he runs the numbers, it all adds up, spiritually, to absolutely nothing compared, he says, to knowing
Christ.
But when it comes to salvation, when it comes to yours and my standing before God, when it comes to our eternal life, none of that can tip the scales in our favor. Only one thing can! And that’s Jesus and Jesus alone. And Paul goes as far as to say that he is willing to give up and lose everything in his life for the sake of knowing Christ.
How about you and me? Do we think in those terms? What would you and me be willing to give up? What would we be willing to lose to gain Christ? How important do we really believe that Jesus’ live, death and resurrection is in terms of our eternal destiny?
Remember Paul’s not writing from an ivory tower here. He says, “I have suffered the loss of everything and all that stuff that
I’ve lost, I count it as rubbish,” he says. I can’t use the literal word in Greek in church, what he writes—rubbish, compared to gaining
Christ. He’s not writing from an ivory tower. He’s writing from a Roman prison cell. He’s on death row. He’s lost all his friends. He’s lost his career. He’s lost all his money. His future has gone…pfft. He lives anything but a pain-free life. He’s lost the respect of the authorities and yet he says, “I count it all rubbish. I wouldn’t trade this in for anything in the world.”
How much does Jesus weigh to you and me? Does He outweigh everything else? Paul says if He doesn’t, you have yet to understand the gospel of grace. That’s why I’ve always said about my kids, about their lives and about their resumés, I would rather have my children grow up to be janitors that know Jesus than CEOs that don’t.
Let me tell you about a janitor that I knew in seminary. His name was James. He was this janitor I knew at Union Theological
Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He had a rather pathetic pitiful pedigree and resumé. He was the descendent of slaves. My recollection is he had never gone past the 3 rd grade and he never gotten any higher on the social ladder, the career ladder, than being a janitor in a seminary but there’s no more respected person on the Union Theological Seminary campus than James. He was the one that all of the professors and the administrators, let alone the students, would go to when they had a crisis in their lives, when they had a theological question, when they were battling something, when they wanted really wise advice, James was who they went to. James was the unofficial chaplain of the entire seminary. That’s because he was wise and he was compassionate and he knew his bible but most importantly he knew Jesus. He knew Jesus.
Paul goes on in our text in verse 8 to say that he’s willing to give up anything and everything, to suffer the loss of everything in his life to gain knowing Christ Jesus My Lord. Interestingly, this is the only time in Paul’s letters that he ever uses that phrase, “My
Lord.” That’s the language of relationship. That’s the language of personal relationship. That’s the language of really up-close-andpersonal relationship-“My Lord!”
And he goes on in verse 9 to say it’s that relationship that results in righteousness. Now righteousness literally means right relationship—right standing before God. And he says, “What my pedigree could not accomplish put me in right standing, right

relationship with God.” That comes only through this, “knowing Christ, this relationship that’s based on, anchored in and dependent on faith,” he says, “faith in Christ.” If Paul’s life is a house and the house is on fire and he can only run back and grab one thing to rescue, Paul would say, “I would rescue my faith in Christ.” That’s all that really matters. By the way, they say you can’t take it with you—that is only thing you can take with you. And that’s the only thing somebody can’t steal from you—faith in Christ.
But that begs the question: What is faith? A Sunday School teacher asked her small children’s class and a little boy raised his hand and said, “Well, faith is believing what you know ain’t true.” But a lot of mature, older adults think, “Faith, well, that is giving intellectual assent to a bunch of propositions about Jesus or the faith, such as in the Apostles’ Creed,” which we did earlier this morning and it’s very important. And I hope you believe every phrase in it cause it’s true. But don’t confuse intellectual assent with faith.
The Apostle James warns us about that in his letter, James 2:19. He says, “You believe the Lord is One,” that’s the Hebrew
Apostles’ Creed, Shmah, in Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.” James says, “So, you believe the Lord is one.
Good for you.” And then he drops the bomb and he says, “even the demons believe.” Whoa! What does that mean?
Have you ever thought about the fact that there’s no more theologically orthodox beings in the universe than demons. They do not sit around and argue over whether or not Jesus was born of a virgin. They do not have debates on the bodily resurrection of
Christ. They’ve seen it all first hand. They know it’s true.
So what makes a demon different from you and me? Well, at least two things, I hope. Number 1: Demons do not follow Christ.
Do you and I follow Christ? Secondly, demons have no personal relationship with Jesus. Do you and I have a personal relationship with Jesus?
One of the last seminary classes I took was entitled, “English Bible.” It was taught by Dr. Elizabeth Achtemeier and she designed the class and she said, “Everybody needs to take my class before you leave from seminary.” We were like, “That’s kind of arrogant.” But then she told us why. We spend 3-4 years with you all, helping you dissect the bible and then,” she said, “we do a travesty to the church cause mainly we’ve been pushing you out the door to pastor churches and you’ve got the bible in pieces all over the place.” She said, “In my class, we’re going to reset the bible and we’re going to put it back together and we’re going to launch you with a great confidence in God’s Word.” Well, during that class, we wandered into a discussion about faith and she asked us, “Well, what is faith?” And we were pummeling her with all kinds of theologically deep profound answers that we thought would impress her and she was just shaking head and she said, “The other travesty is that we send you all out into pulpits and you have no clue what faith is, she said. “So, I’m going to tell you. You better write this down and never forget it.” And I did and I have it.
She looked us in the eye and she said, “Faith is a personal relationship with the Living Lord Jesus Christ.”
In other words, faith is knowing Christ at more than secondhand. Faith is the difference between knowing Jesus and knowing about Jesus. I’m convinced that hell is going to be populated by a whole lot of Ph.Ds. in religion, who studied the faith, who studied
God, who studied Christ but who never connected their hearts with Christ in a real up-close personal way.
My friends, what Paul really does here in this text is he sets himself up as the proverbial poster boy for that person who would achieves the highest rung on the ladder of success and then gets up there and finds, whoops, the ladder’s been leaning up against the wrong spiritual wall.
If you and I are here this morning and we have even just a sliver of thinking that there’s something innate in us as to who we are, some of the great things we’ve done in life, that that’s somehow going to impress God where He says, “Man, you earned it.
Come on in!” If we’re there, our ladders are still leaning up against the wrong wall.
Woody Allen is not known for having a whole lot of self-confidence. He’s the guy who said, “I would never join a club that would have me as a member.”
The good news of the gospel of grace is this—that God wants you and me in His kingdom. No matter who you are or aren’t. No matter what you’ve done in your life or haven’t achieved. But you’ll never get the gospel of grace until you understand that the only valid answer to that question, “Why should I allow you into my kingdom and my heaven?” lies in one word—Jesus.
His sinless life, His sacrificial death, bodily resurrection and ascension, His certain coming again—that’s the only pedigree.
That’s the only resumé, that’s the only C.V. that you and I ought to put our ultimate confidence in.
In the name of the Father, of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen!