Until the Day of Christ

Paul expresses his goal of going on to completion, a process that will culminate in bodily resurrection when Jesus arrives in glory.

Paul instructed the congregation of Philippi to go on to “perfection” in Jesus. Bodily resurrection must take place for the consummation of this process and the completion of our salvation. This will occur when Jesus appears “on the clouds of Heaven.” God will continue to perform what He began with our conversion until “the Day of Christ.” Salvation is a process throughout our lives.

The Apostle began his Letter by giving thanks for what God achieved in the congregation and the church’s contributions to the Gospel, even “from the first day until the present.” Paul remains convinced that God will complete what He started in us - (Philippians 1:3-10).

[Photo by Axi Aimee on Unsplash]

The phrase “Day of Jesus Christ” refers to the future coming of Jesus when he will appear and gather his saints. It will be a time of judgment and salvation – condemnation and punishment for the wicked, but vindication and everlasting life for the faithful - (Romans 2:16, 1 Corinthians 1:8, 2 Corinthians 6:2, Ephesians 4:30).

In his letters to the Thessalonians, Paul equated this day with the expectation of the “Day of the Lord” from the Hebrew Bible. That event would end in “everlasting destruction” for some, but life and salvation for many others - (1 Thessalonians 5:1-2, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-9).

As for going on to “completion,” Paul provides an example from his own life. After his conversion, he put his Jewish heritage aside to pursue perfection in Jesus Christ. “What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ… I have suffered the loss of all things and do reckon them rubbish that I may win Christ.”

This Paul did after Christ appeared to him on the Road to Damascus. He found Jesus and faith in him to be of infinitely greater value than his achievements in Judaism, so much so that he pictured the value of his past successes as no more than ‘skubalon’ (σκυβαλον – Strong’s Concordance, #G4657). This Greek term originally referred to things thrown to dogs, and thus means something akin to “rubbish, scraps.” It is formed with the words for “dog” (‘kuôn’) and “throw” or “cast” (‘ballô’). Jesus used both terms in an eerily similar way in his ‘Sermon on the Mount’:

• “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest once they trample them with their feet, and turning, they tear you” – (Matthew 7:6).

Paul voices similar sentiments when in Philippians 3:2 he warns the Philippians against the dangers posed by Judaizing elements promoting circumcision, a rite the Apostle to the Gentiles characterizes sarcastically as the “mutilation,” or at least he does so when men place their confidence in it rather than in Jesus:

• “Beware of the dogs (‘kuôn’), beware of mischievous workers, beware of the mutilation, for we are the circumcision who are doing divine service in the Spirit of God, and are boasting in Christ Jesus and not having confidence in flesh.”

SPIRIT RATHER THAN FLESH

Instead, the Apostle Paul presses on until he attains the complete knowledge of Jesus, including his sufferings and his own life conformed to Christ’s self-sacrificial death. He will continue to do so until he achieves “completion” on the Day of Christ’s arrival:

• “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed to his death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained or am already complete, but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus” - (Philippians 3:10-12).

Some believers choose a different path and thus make themselves “enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” Paul, however, is determined to qualify for the “resurrection from the dead” no matter the cost. If he fails to do so, all else is loss.

Paul has in view firstly Jewish believers who stressed their faithfulness to the traditions and regulations of Judaism, including circumcision and calendrical observations. Such men are those “whose glory is their shame,” an allusion to the rite of circumcision on which they placed so much value.

In contrast, the men and women who “render divine service in the Spirit and have no confidence in the flesh” are the very ones who “worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Jesus have their citizenship in heaven, from whence we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our lowly body, that it may be fashioned like his glorious body.” Those who press on by the Spirit and place no value in the things of the flesh will reap perfection on the Day of Christ when Jesus raises them from the dead.

The coming resurrection of the righteous is necessary to “complete” our salvation. It is not optional but central to the Apostolic doctrine. The process of salvation will remain incomplete until the resurrection occurs on the Last Day.

If we wish to inherit our full salvation, we must continue putting aside the things of the flesh and this fallen age, and instead pursue the things of the Spirit, including the full knowledge of Jesus, participation in his sufferings, and living lives conformed to his death.

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SEE ALSO:

• Day of the Lord - (Jesus will arrive to gather his people on the Day of the Lord. In the New Testament, this event becomes the Day of Christ)

• The Day of our Lord Jesus - (Jesus will arrive on the Day of the Lord at which time the dead will be raised, the wicked judged, and death will cease forever)

• The Last Day - (In explaining the resurrection, Paul listed key events that will coincide with the arrival of Jesus on the Last Day)