Dikaiosune

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 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 and is by faith." Phil. 3:7-9

I used to think that the only way this scripture applied to my life was for the things that I did before I came to Christ, or the values I had before I came to Christ. Generally when I think of this verse, I think of Paul and how he did some gnarly things to Christians before coming to Christ. Also, Paul, as a Roman Jewish citizen had all of the status anyone would want during that time, but he called all of that rubbish, dung, or any other fecal matter, compared to the true life of faith in Christ. When I would hear preaching on this, it was generally about surrendering your life to Christ. Surrendering all that you valued before coming to Christ (money, power, sex, you dreams just to name a few), which is really, really hard, so that God could use you to your full potential. There's even a song or songs about this verse.

Even though all of this applies and still applies for me today, I can't help but think about how even in our Christians communities, we need to be surrendering to each other. We live in an incredibly competitive society and culture. For the wealthy, we have to have the most expensive toys, cars, houses, and bling, so that people will somehow respect us more. I believe God can redeem us from all of that. But it also seems that as Christians, we have also bought into this competitive mindset. At least for me, there seems to be a "new law" or unspoken code about what it looks like to be a Christian. That if somehow we follow that code well enough we will be respected, or at the very least not be questioned about our faith. There is a bare minimum that we need to do or be perceived to be accepted. But on top of that there is this tendency, ironically as we grow in our faith, for us to want to be "better" than the next guy. To one up each other so that we would be perceived as more mature, more spiritual, and in the case of Paul, more righteous. We want to have all the information and at the same time do it all solo. Though we probably would never admit to it, I know I find myself in this position all the time. I want to feel like I'm different from everyone else. Donald Miller calls it the "lifeboat theory". We don't want to be thrown off the lifeboat with other people vying for our spot and so somehow we want to seem more valuable than the other people, with something to offer or bring to the table. I want to know the right answer, or offer something different worth listening to and in doing this, I'm creating a righteousness of my own. I think that somehow God will say, "wow, that was really impressive Wes! I never heard anything like that before. Could you repeat that one more time?" Even in writing this I realize that I'm fighting the very temptation I'm writing about. But this is old news.

Dikaiosune (Dee-kai-o-su-nay) is Greek for righteousness. For me, I don't want this righteousness to be from something I did or from what I can offer, but completely from what Jesus Christ did on the cross. And like Paul, I want to be able to live out this righteousness in humility, that everything I do or can do is poo compared to knowing God and knowing Jesus.