Gospel-Driven Holiness: The Heavenly Citizen's Pursuit

We return this morning to our study of the third chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. And we’ve said throughout our expositions of the last few months that, in this chapter, Paul is chiefly concerned with defining the nature of the true Christian in the face of doctrinal threats. And defining a true Christian necessarily touches upon defining the true Gospel. And Philippians chapter 3 gives us one of the most blessed summaries of the Gospel, especially in verse 9, where Paul declares that in Christ, the repentant and believing sinner is justified by God on the basis of the imputation of the external, alien righteousness of Christ. That is to say, the Good News that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that because of sacrifice of Christ in His death and the perfection of righteousness achieved in His life, sinners who turn from sin, abandon all hope of achieving righteousness on their own by their own good works, and trust entirely in Christ’s work to have earned their acceptance with God for them, God will count that perfect righteousness that Christ achieved to their account. Sinners are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

But from the very inception of that good news—from the earliest days in which it was preached both by our Lord and by His disciples—there have existed two great perversions of that message. And either of those perversions, if believed, empties that message of its power to save—because it changes it into another gospel entirely, which, as Paul says in Galatians, is really no gospel at all. And those two perversions are the heresies of legalism and antinomianism....

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