Deep down, all of us are terrified at the thought of being exposed for what we really are. This universal fear flows from a common source in human history at the Fall, where the first reaction of Adam and Eve to their original sin was to feel a sense of shame at their nakedness: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” (Gen. 3:7). Where in their innocence they were “naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25), in their guilt they immediately felt a sense of such deep shame that their first impulse was to cover up. And ever since Adam and Eve first sewed together those fig leaves to try to give themselves just a little bit of covering over their shame, every human being has understood this sense of fear at being exposed.

What we really need, though, is something much more powerful than a simple papering over of our shame. What we really need is to be clothed in a perfect righteousness that doesn’t simply mask our sin and guilt, but that exchanges them for a real righteousness that is bulletproof from condemnation. With that kind of righteousness, you could stand with confidence before the omniscient Judge of all the Earth.

It is this desperate need for righteousness that stands behind what Paul writes about how circumcision, specifically, and the entire Mosaic law, generally. At the most basic level, Philippians 3:1–11 addresses one key question: On the last day, will you depend on some kind of fig leaves to cover over your sin, or will you submit your pride to trust that Christ will give you his own, genuine righteousness through faith?

Please open your copies of the Bible with me this morning to Philippians chapter three, we'll be looking at Philippians 3:1-11.

1 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.
2 Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. 3 For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— 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— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:1-11, ESV

One of the deepest seated fears that we have as human beings is the fear of being exposed for who we are or for what we are. All of us feel deep down of fear of this to some degree, that if people really knew who I was, they wouldn't be as nice to me. They might not even associate with me at all. We languish under this fear.

Well, this fear takes a lot of different forms in our wider culture. Sociologists and psychologists have coined a term for this feeling of being a fraud in the workplace that they call imposter syndrome. The belief that if, well, if people really knew what my actual credentials were, what my actual experience was like, if they really knew how little I knew what it is that I was supposed to be doing, I probably wouldn't retain my job for very long. Or sometimes in pop culture you see this, this fear put on full display, and it's an edgy, exciting thing to watch someone else languish under the fear that all of us feel all the time.

So about a decade ago, there was a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks called Catch Me If You Can, which was a true life story of a notorious con artist called Frank Abagnale, who lived his life conning his way into different lives and different occupations. Being a surgeon here and then an airline pilot there, faking his way the entire time through everything he was doing. The whole movie is on the question of will he get caught? There's also a television show right now called Suits about an attorney who conned his way, who lied his way into a job and to be an attorney and to practice law without a license, without having a law degree which he didn't have, is a federal crime. So the entire series is about the fear of will this guy get caught? Even in our dreams, which of us haven't had the kind of dream where we are going about our business, just like normal all of a sudden to realize that we are in fact naked. We've gone out in public thinking everything was normal, but in fact, there we are, standing naked and exposed before all the world to see.

Well, these fears all stem from a common origin. Our first parents, when they were in the Garden of Eden before sin had entered the world, we read there that they were naked and unashamed together. But on the day that they violated the law, that God had commanded them. God had told them of any tree of the Garden of Eden you may surely eat, but on the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die. On the day that they did eat from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, violating the commandment that God had given them. We read that then their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.

Literally the dream that we have had, they experience, they realized that they were out in public naked and they were ashamed. Because they were ashamed, they reacted in a very specific way that Genesis three records for us. They sewed together for themselves fig leaves as loincloths. To try in some way to some degree, to some extent to cover them up themselves, up to give themselves a little protection from the vulnerability of being naked and exposed in the eyes of the entire world.

Ever since that day, humankind has labored under a feeling and a fear of being exposed. A fear of shame that all of us carry around, but that we try to cover over with all kinds of masks to pretend that we are much better people than we actually are. This concern is behind the text that we are studying today here in Philippians chapter three. Paul is writing to address a particular false teaching by a particular set of false teachers who are teaching a particular way in which we can cover over our shame. These people will call the Judaizers had said, here's the way in which you attain the kind of righteousness with which you can stand in confidence not only before other people, but before God himself.

The solution they gave was well before you can become a Christian, before you come to Christ in faith, the first thing you need to do is to become Jewish. So you need to keep all of the law of Moses in general, but specifically, if you were a male, you need to submit yourself to circumcision. Well, Paul is going to address this issue of shame and our need for a covering, particularly a covering of righteousness, in the first three verses that we're going to look at in this passage. He's interacting with what the Judaism's were teaching and then he is going to evaluate two possible solutions to deal with this problem of original shame that our first parents experience back in Genesis three and that we experienced to this day.

One solution, the solution of the Judaizers, Paul exposes as a false solution. Then he tells us what the gospel teaches about how we address the issue of shame and the fear of being exposed.

So let's first look at these first three verses verse one of chapter three is kind of an introduction transition from the previous passage, so it doesn't entirely fit with the rest of the passage, but when you actually look at it, you see kind of what Paul is doing in summarizing everything he's going to say in advance. He's giving us his conclusion from the very beginning. So he says, "Finally, my brothers rejoice in the Lord." We haven't even gotten to the issue that he wants to address, but he's saying, here we are finally in this homestretch of what Paul is going to write to finish out this letter to the Philippians, rejoice in the Lord. You don't have to languish in fear. You don't have to live in shame and try to cover it over with the fig leaves that you can stitch together. Rejoice in the Lord because the gospel gives you something so much better.

Then he says in verse one, "to write these same things to you is no trouble to me." I'm a pastor, Paula saying, I want you to know these things. I live to teach you these things. "It's no trouble for me and it is safe for you." Well, that word safe obviously implies that there's danger. There's danger out there. These false teachers. There are wolves who want to devour you.

That's what he says next and verse two, "Therefore, beware or look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh." Now this sounds like extraordinarily, exceedingly strong language, because in English, if you were to call someone a dog, you would be calling them one of the vilest things you could say to them stopping short of actually using profanities. When Paul is writing, this is still a very strong term to use, but it doesn't have the connotations in his world that they do in our world and our language. To call someone a dog in Paul's context is not this terribly vile epithet that we would hear it as. It's really a word that describes Gentiles. Those who were unclean and outside the covenant community were gentiles, just like dogs were unclean and outside the covenant community.

The evidence that this is what Paul means by the word dogs is given when Jesus himself meets with the Syrophoenician Woman, a Canaanite woman, a Gentile. This woman comes pleading with Jesus to heal her dying daughter and Jesus rebuffs her at first saying it is not right to take the children's bread and defeat it to the dogs. Now, this is a woman who's about to lose her daughter if Jesus is really calling her a dog in the modern sense, it's hard to see how he would be doing that without sin. That's not what he's saying. He's saying it's not right to take the children's bread. In other words, I came to minister to the Jews. I am a Jew. Salvation is from the Jews. I am the promised offspring of Abraham, who has come to minister to the Jews first so that through me, the family of Abraham might bless the entire world, all the families of the Earth, but not just yet. It's not right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs, the Gentiles.

Well, that's what Paul is talking about here. He says look out for the Gentiles, which means that he is employing an extraordinary irony. He's calling the Judaizers who were insisting that you must be Jewish in order to become Christian, he's calling them Gentiles. It's also a little bit ironic because Paul is writing this letter to warn the Philippians, who were themselves Gentile Christians, not to become Gentile. Well, he's not talking about old covenant, Jewish Gentile distinctions. He's saying these are people who are Gentile, not in the sense of whether they were biologically descended from Abraham, but in the sense that they are outside the covenant community.

What he's saying is if you submit to the yoke of the old covenant law, if you submit to circumcision, you are excluding yourself, you're cutting yourself off from the covenant promises that God made to his people. You will become a dog, like the dogs who are preaching to you this false doctrine. So look out for the dogs. Then he says, look out for the evildoers. He's saying the same thing. Those who were trying to tell other people, these are the righteous deeds that you must do according to what the law prescribes. Paul is saying these aren't righteous deeds if you were slavishly in a servile way, obeying the law of Moses. If you do that, you become as an evil doer.

Then he goes on to say the same thing about circumcision. He says look out for those who mutilate the flesh. He says circumcision isn't circumcision anymore. The word he uses for mutilate is sort of a pun. It's a play on words. The word for circumcision is a word that means to cut around. This word he uses means instead to chop to pieces. He's saying, yes, circumcision was indeed at the heart, it was a sign and a seal of the Old Covenant. But in the New Covenant, now that Christ has come, the physical sign of circumcision does not bring you into the covenant community. It does not bestow upon you and place in your very flesh the covenant promises of God. If you submit to circumcision, you are only receiving so much genital mutilation.

What Paul doesn't say at this point, what we might expect him to say, but he doesn't go here, is to say that circumcision is outmoded, its outdated, circumcision is for the past. He doesn't even go so far as to say something like we should have never been doing circumcision, the whole law is a terrible thing. He doesn't follow that line of an argument. Instead, in verse three, he says, "For we are the circumcision." That's an interesting thing to say as well. Again, to the Judaizers, he said, you guys are like Gentiles. Now he says of the Christians, many of them and again, remember, Phillipi is a Gentile region. These were Gentiles converting to Christ, not Jews converting to Christ, but Paul says nevertheless, we are the circumcision.

He's not saying they need to be physically circumcised; he's drawing the distinction. He's actually bringing out the teaching of the Old Testament, sell itself about the nature of circumcision. That circumcision was never intended to be only a physical sign. Circumcision, the physical sign of circumcision was always intended to point toward a spiritual reality. Paul's not reading a foreign interpretation of the nature of circumcision back into the Old Testament. He's drawing on with the Old Testament itself teaches.

In Deuteronomy, you know, this is the law of Moses. Moses is reapplying the law, and in his final sermon in the Book of Deuteronomy and in Deuteronomy 10:16, he pleads with the Israelites he says, "Circumcise the for the foreskin of your hearts." You shouldn't be just circumcised in your bodies, that physical circumcision should point to a spiritual reality to be circumcised spiritually in your hearts. He doesn't lay that upon them as law and walk away. Later on in the book of Deuteronomy in Deuteronomy 30:6, he says, "Therefore the Lord, your god will circumcise your hearts." You're not going to do it. The Lord, your God will circumcise your hearts so that you may love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your might and with all your strength that you may live.

The promise of the Gospel, that orientation of the physical sign of circumcision was always to point forward to a spiritual reality of what God would do in and for his people to bring the reality to which the symbolism of physical circumcision pointed into the hearts of God's people. Paul says, you don't get that by going back to the Old Covenant sign. You get that by, what he goes on to say, we are the circumcision in the sense of we are the people who worship by the Spirit of God. We're not following external forms. We are worshipping by the Spirit of God himself.

Remember Jesus's words to the Samaritan woman and John chapter four? He says the Father is looking for worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth. Well, Paul may not be consciously doing this, but he's certainly echoing the words of Jesus by saying, we are the people who worship by the Spirit of God. We don't know what all Paul was trying to do here, but he's saying the same thing that Jesus was. That the Spirit of God is active and alive in our hearts to make the realities come true to which the physical, external signs always pointed.

Then, he clarifies by saying two things he says we are the ones who glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. We are not trying to establish a righteousness for ourselves in our flesh, in our own strength, by our own abilities, according to our own ability to keep the law. Rather, we are glorying instead in Christ Jesus. Where we are looking for a covering of our shame is not by trying to be better people who more rigorously adhere to what the law taught. Rather, we glory in Christ Jesus, acknowledging that he is the one who accomplished everything to which the Old Covenant pointed forward to, worshipping by the Spirit of God and becoming the fulfillment of the spiritual reality to which physical circumcision always pointed.

Now let me bridge the contexts here because today almost none of us have in the back of our minds running the question of how can I better obey the law of Moses? How can I better come under the yoke of the Mosaic Law? Rather than that, all of us still want to attain a righteousness for ourselves, but we want to do it in sort of a customizable fashion.

My wife and I, when we were dating, we were long distance and she, while she was finishing school up in Chicago at the Moody Bible Institute. I would go visit her sometimes, and one of those times I went up there, we went to Navy Pier and went to the store called Build-A-Bear Build a bear. They have a lot of them around the country. They have one on Navy Pier in Chicago. If you're ever there, it's really a pretty fun store. The idea is that you aren't getting a pre-made, prefabricated, cookie cutter kind of teddy bear. You go to this store to make your own teddy bear. You get a pick the size of the teddy bear, the color of the teddy bear, the texture of the teddy bear’s fur. You take that teddy bear skin over to the machine to stuff it yourself so that you can pick whether you want a firm teddy bear or a rather plush soft teddy bear. Then, as you go through the store, you can pick out outfits and accessories for the teddy bear. They even have a kiosk where you can apply for a second mortgage for your home. It's really very convenient, they give you the opportunity to actually afford the teddy bear by the time you reach the cash register.

Well, in the same way, we don't want a prefabricated standard, historic kind of righteousness. That's not the way we think. We're better than that. We want to create our own custom version of righteousness, so that we pick and choose which laws we want to put ourselves under. Sometimes we define righteousness by the political candidate we support or vote for. Sometimes by whether or not we have the purest, most organic food that we put on our bodies. Sometimes by our work ethic. Sometimes by the people we associate with or the people we don't associate with. The list goes on and on and on. We can define our righteousness, the standard to which we want to reach in order to be confident that we are indeed good people. We define it however we want.

Here's the problem, even though we define for ourselves a build, a righteousness, a custom righteousness, if I could just live to that standard, I would be a good person in the side of other people and God, if he exists. Even though we think we can do that at the end of the day, we know that doesn't address the shame, that doesn't fix the problem. That doesn't take away the fear I have of being exposed for who and what I am. I needed better covering. I need a different covering. I need a true, impeccable, bulletproof righteousness to give me the ability and confidence to stand before other people and God himself.

This is the issue Paul is getting at, and it took a little while to develop all of that, so we'll kind of look at these next two solutions somewhat quickly. Paul then says, OK, if we need a covering, if we need a righteousness, if we need a confidence, how can we get it for ourselves? Do we do it by obeying the law or by the gospel of Jesus?

So he starts by evaluating the Judaizers claims, well, in order to be righteous, we have to submit ourselves back under the old covenant law of Moses, not by attacking that argument outright, but he rather tries to demonstrate, ironically, that if anyone had a claim to that kind of righteousness, he did. He himself nevertheless saw the shortcomings of trying to establish for himself that kind of righteousness from his former life.

So he says in verse four, "Though, I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh. Also, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more." If you want to play this game, Paul is saying, I can beat you at it. So he lists four elements that would have been standard issue for any Jewish born boy. Circumcised on the eighth day, just like every Jewish boy of the people of Israel, the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. Well, not every Jew would have been from the tribe of Benjamin, but if some tribe, a Hebrew of Hebrews Paul says. He's saying, I am a Jew of Jews, I am a Hebrew of Hebrews. Everything that the law required to me in my birth and upbringing, I accomplished.

Now that again wasn't remarkable in comparison with other Jewish males, but it certainly put Paul ahead of the Philippians because remember the Philippians are Gentiles, the best they can hope for is to become a convert to Judaism. Paul is saying what you are considering converting to, putting yourself back under the yoke of the law. I had that from birth. It's not just the gentiles that Paul can beat out, he says, also as to the law, I was a Pharisee. Elsewhere, he tells us he wasn't just a Pharisee, he was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He was educated in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel. I mean, this was a guy who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Law School and clerked with the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, figuratively speaking. He had impeccable training, but not just training. He was also a mover and shaker, an activist. And six, he says, as to zeal, I was a prosecutor of the church. I didn't just believe this stuff, I acted upon it. Even putting to death Stephen and other Christians who had apostatized from Judaism, according to his old mindset.

Then he continues and says as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Now, Paul is not saying that he formerly had no sin when he lived a life under the law. What he's saying is he's acknowledging that the law presumed the presence of sin, and that's why it had various ritual cleansing and sacrifices to offer. What Paul is saying is that whatever the law required, whenever the law required it, I was there. I was blameless as to what the law required.

The question is raising implicitly is can the Judaizers even rise to this level of dedication to the law? The point he's making is that, no, they can't. Even I, Paul is saying whatever gain I had, I counted that as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, verse eight, "I count everything is lost 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."

Again, Paul seems to be echoing the words of Jesus, we have no idea of what was going through his head when he was writing this, but this sounds so familiar to the reverse of what Jesus taught. He asked rhetorically, Jesus did, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his own soul? Paul is saying, whatever gain I had, I counted that as loss. He's applying the teaching of Jesus. I counted that as loss in order that I may gain Christ. I didn't cling to that stuff. I didn't put together my resume of righteousness and put it forward in order to have confidence before God. I saw how far short that fell and if I can't establish a covering for myself, according to the obedience to the law, then you can't either. :earn from the from the failures of a successful man, Paul says.

So the first solution to put yourself back under the law, Paul says, does not work. You need a covering; you need a righteousness. You need a confidence before which you can stand before God or under which you can stand before God and other people. But you can't get it through your own abilities under the law, not the historic law of Moses and not whatever build a law, build a righteousness that you put together for yourself today.

So instead, Paul says, don't go back to the law. Don't try to put together a righteousness for yourself. Instead, turn the corner and let's do something different. Paul says, let me pick up in verse eight, but we're going to look from at nine through eleven here. But Paul starts in verse eight, so let's start there. He says "For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order 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 comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith."

Paul lays out here one of his clearer teachings, one of his clear articulations of the doctrine of justification by faith alone, what theologians call justification by faith alone. Paul is saying, I have been counted, righteous, declared to be righteous, that's what justification means. It's the idea of standing in a courtroom and having the judge evaluate you and declare you to be righteous. Not, he says, from a righteousness of my own that comes from a law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends upon faith.

So here's what he's saying here's how he says faith relates to this. What Paul is saying is saying faith is like the instrument. It's like the pipe, the pipes through which water runs into your house. You have pipes in your home, probably. That's the only way in which you can get water into your sinks and showers and everything else. Here's the thing. Your pipes, the pipes in your home, they might not be hooked up theoretically or theoretically, they might be hooked up to an empty reservoir, or they might be hooked up to a filled up reservoir that happens to be poisoned. The pipes themselves can do nothing for you except to be conduit for whatever flows through them.

So what Paul is saying is, I need a righteousness, and it's not that faith is the new work, the new law that I perform. So that God says, wow, that guy has great faith. I'm going to declare him righteous. What he's saying instead, is that righteousness or that righteousness flows through the pipes, the conduit of our faith. We receive a righteousness outside of us what Martin Luther called an alien righteousness through faith.

Behind this, what Paul is talking about is another doctrine called imputation. Imputation is the idea of something being credited to another person's account. When Paul says at the very beginning of verse nine that he wants to be found in him. He's talking about imputation that comes through our union with Christ. We are actually hidden in Christ. Paul writes in Colossians 3:3, our lives are hidden in Christ. We are judged in Christ. Here's what this means. What this means is that Christ has actually taken us to himself the way a bridegroom takes to himself a bride so that we are united to Christ in such a way that our liabilities become his liabilities and his assets become our assets. Just as when you got married, your assets and liabilities became those of your spouses and your spouse's assets and liabilities became yours. When you become married, when you become united in that way, you share in common everything that the other person has.

Well, what theologians call this double imputation; that our shame, our guilt, our sin was imputed, it was credited to Christ's account. So that when Jesus suffered throughout his life, being despised and rejected by his own people, but ultimately, when he was nailed to the cross, he was being judged for you. You were hidden in him so that you actually died in a sense with him judged in him. Christ received and bore the brunt of the wrath of God against your junk because it was imputed to him in a real sense. Not because God was cooking the heavenly books in accounting, but because Christ united himself to you, taking your shame, even though he deserved nothing of it.

By the opposite token, Jesus Christ imputes to you, his righteousness. You have a covering; you have a righteousness. You have a confidence, a standing, a righteousness that comes not from you, but from God. An alien righteousness that God freely gives you that you receive through the conduit the instrument of faith. Because of that, because of the righteousness that you have by faith suddenly, you don't need those fig leaves anymore. Suddenly, your shame is not just papered over or glossed over or swept under the rug or ignored or looked over. Your shame has been given to Christ, and he dealt with it. In exchange, in a glorious exchange, he gives to you, his righteousness.

So Paul says we don't mean to try to keep establishing our own righteousness, Christ has given us one. He's made us righteous in a real sense, because we have been united to him. Our shame has been put away and we have been closed in righteousness. We're no longer naked and ashamed, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Well, Paul goes on here in verses ten and eleven to address some issues that we're actually going to pick up more next week. He goes on to not only speak of our justification, our being declared righteous by the alien righteousness that is imputed to us freely through faith from Christ. He goes on then to talk about our sanctification. Being declared righteous, justified by faith alone isn't an excuse to sit back and just chill for the rest of your life. It's a call to share the word there to share in the sufferings of Christ is the word for fellowship. We are united to Christ, not just to be saved in the sense of justification, but to be conformed to his image. To follow in the footsteps of his cruciform, self-suffering, self-sacrificing servanthood. So that we may become like him conformed to him in his death.

So we have sanctification there, our growth in holiness as we follow in the sufferings of Christ himself, but also verse eleven, "that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead." Not just justification and sanctification being made wholly to Christ, but also glorification. The day when the remaining vestiges of our sin and shame and guilt will be put away forever so that it won't cling to us anymore. Paul says elsewhere in Second Corinthians that we are already a new creation, what is old is passed away. However, he acknowledges somewhere else in Romans seven that we still deal with it. The old man still clings to us. We still want to do wrong things. We still walk around with shame. Why? Because it hasn't been finally ultimately decisively put away until the day when Jesus Christ returns to complete the good work that he began in us.

You need a covering of righteousness to stand confident before God and other people. You cannot get it yourself by the law by putting together a particularly impressive resume of righteousness. You can only gain it by grace, by God's utterly free gratuitous grace. When he imputes it to you through your union with Christ.

So here's what this means for Harvest Community Church. Here's what this means for those of us living today, 2000 years removed from Paul's writing this letter to the Philippians, a city across the world from Omaha, Nebraska. What this means is that you and I don't have to languish under our shame. Christ leads us in a real way, to live with confidence. Giving the ability to be vulnerable. Exposed in who and what we are to one another. Without fear any longer. Because our righteousness, our confidence does not depend upon our ability to get it together and hold it together. Our confidence is Christ's. We are not on trial because Christ was already put to death because of his trial for us. We are not judged on our own ability to make things right. We are judged instead by the righteousness that God gives to us in Christ.

At the very end of C.S. Lewis children's classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe after the battle with the White Witch and her ghastly army. One of the four Pevensie children, Edmund, lies dying. Edmund, who had betrayed the other children, Edmund, who had come under the captivity in the spell of the White Witch. Edmund eventually is ransomed and redeemed by Aslan, who trades his life, Aslan's life for Edmund. Well, Edmund comes back restored to share in the sufferings of Aslan so that he almost dies in battle, direct hand-to-hand combat with the White Witch. So as he's lying there, dying with his younger sister, Lucy weeping over him. Edmund had also betrayed Lucy specifically. Lucy is weeping, wondering what could be done, and Aslan says only two words, he says, "Quick Lucy."

You read there at that point, Lucy, for the first time, remembered what she had had all along, what Father Christmas had given her well beforehand, a cordial, a cordial of an elixir. That could heal even the gravest most severe injuries and illnesses that with just a drop, she could heal even someone as badly hurt as Edmund. She had had it all along, but it didn't occur to her to apply that cordial to this particular situation.

As a church. We are a people who are good at theology. That's the shape of our particular church. It doesn't make us better or worse than other churches. That's the particular place where we are good. We have a heritage of caring deeply about theology, and that is a good thing. What we don't often realize is the way in which that theology can be applied and expressed. That the cordial we have had that God himself has given us in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The doctrine that we have a covering, a covering of the righteous robes of Jesus Christ so that we do not have to live in shame, so that we do not have to pretend to be better than we have been with us all along. It gives us the ability to live vulnerably, openly exposing ourselves to other people in a very figurative sense, of course, but letting people know exactly who we are without fear of being exposed because quite frankly, our righteousness doesn't bend on us anymore, but on what Christ gives to us.

This is what we are praying for in our small groups. Not only in our small groups, but our small groups of this church, which are starting again this fall, if you haven't joined one. I plead with you, consider joining one for this fall. Not because it is the only place where the magic of vulnerability could possibly happen. Of course, that's silliness, but rather that those are places where we specifically are trying to put people in contact with one another, so that we can let down our guard so that we can let people know what we're struggling with. Know what's breaking our hearts. Know where we are failing to follow in obedience in our sanctification after Jesus.

We can do this in the confidence that our theology gives us. Our theology shouldn't make us just brains, just people who constantly think and never do. Our theology gives us permission. To recognize that the covering we so desperately need has been given to us in Christ. Quick Harvest Church, take the cordial, apply it to your lives and in boldness and confidence without shame open your lives to your fellow believers, whom Jesus Christ is also saving.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would be gracious to us. We thank you in the knowledge that you have graciously saved us, justified us, declared us to be righteous, not because you've made something up, but because you have united us to Christ who is righteous, who freely gives us his righteousness. We ask that you would cause that theology to sink deeply into our souls, to give us confidence and boldness to stand before one another, clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ to let other people know who we are. As we continue to put to death the deeds of the flesh, waiting for the day, the day of Christ Jesus, when you will complete the good work that you have begun on us. We pray this in the name of and for the sake of your son, our savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.