More Thoughts on Philippians 3

 Today, my GNT opened to Philippians 3. I think that might have had something to do with the natural crease which formed there from holding it open on that chapter so much. I suppose there are few passages in the New Testament which I've come back to over and over again as many times as Philippians 3.
     This is Paul writing a few years before his execution. The very last letter he would write would be his very personal second letter to Timothy. He is writing from Rome around the time of his first acquittal before Nero. After he writes this letter, he will go on to Hispania, and if I'm right, will see the home of his youth for the first time in nearly thirty years. He will be executed on his return trip, after the great fire of Rome, and after Nero blamed it on the Christians.
     Paul's not really writing to correct anything, unlike his letters to the Galatians and the Colossians. Instead, he's really just giving them a thank you for all the support they had given him while he was in chains. Along with the thank you, he is classically Paul. That is, once he begins speaking about being a disciple and about Jesus Christ, he simply either can't stop or doesn't know when to stop. So, what was intended as a simple thank you received the fire hose treatment from its author, and everything he had endured becomes a teachable moment in discipleship. In truth, he hadn't been to Philippi itself for well over two years, almost three, by this point, and Philippi was the first church he had planted upon entering Europe through Macedonia. He's probably in his late forties, and the man and disciple he is now is far removed from the man who immediately went into the Synagogues to preach that Jesus was the Son of God upon receiving back his sight.
     The man who wrote Philippians 3 had lost everything several times over, and was good with it. When he says he had lost everything, he's not exaggerating. It got to the point where even if he would have acquired some few possessions or a stable place to live or even stable companions with him, within months it seems like he would be stripped of all of them as he was made to keep moving on, frequently not by his immediate choice. What is the point of holding on to anything if you're just going to lose it again? And so he writes that he has lost everything, and brought his thoughts to consider everything which he had lost "crap" so that he would gain Christ; so that nothing would interfere with the Spirit of Christ being the source of his behaviors and words. Just as Jesus said when He talked about the conditions of discipleship, anyone who doesn't let go of anything or anyone which could come between that person and Christ can't be His disciple. Paul had become driven through circumstances and choice to make sure he could be His disciple. This became, throughout his life, the one thing, the only thing, which drove him.
     And then after laying out this passion, this drive he tells them in no uncertain terms, "Become mimics of me, brothers, and scope out those walking in this way just like you have us for a type." This drive, this life, wasn't just about Paul, but his instructions make it clear that this race which Paul was running, stripping everything else away to reach for the prize, was what it meant to be a Christian, and was what he expected from the Philippians too. This pursuit of discipleship, this pursuit of Jesus Christ manifest within is in fact the hard fought race which each one of us who claims to follow Him must run. And of course he tells them to find and watch people who are, like himself, chasing after the Way, and actually being a disciple, in order to learn from their example too.
     Philippians 3 is the Path of being a disciple of Jesus Christ in a nutshell.