Philippians 3:3 The Inheritors of the Promises. I. They who worship God in the spirit are the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty. II. They behold the brightness of the Father's glory. III. They inherit great and precious promises. IV. They are favoured with special Divine revelations.... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:7 The Christian Estimate of Gain and Loss. The Christian man keeps an accurate account-book; he reckons up with an intelligent and enlightened judgment his gains and his losses. And most important is it that those who would be Christian men should be rightly informed and rightly mind... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:7 The Apostle's Ground of Trust. I. When such general homage is paid to earnestness as in our own time, what wonder if some people should mistake it for religion; and if a man should imagine that because he is zealous in the activities of benevolence, warmly attached to certain Church... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:8 I. "The knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord"; that is, the knowledge of our wants and of the means by which those wants may be most fully satisfied; the knowledge of sin and of salvation. Men's eyes in general are equally closed against both, for as none but Christians have anything l... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:8 Christ the Only Gain. Consider: I. What it is to win Christ. (1) To win Christ is to count Him gain. What is gain to me is what puts me on a right footing with God. This I once thought that my personal qualifications of birth, profession, privilege, attainment, might do; now I see... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:8 The Cross Borne for us and in us. I. The whole of the Gospel is the doctrine of the Cross, but that twofold: the cross borne for us and the virtue and power of the Cross by the sacraments communicated to us and henceforth to be borne by us. By baptism we are made members of Him who... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:10 I. The great object of the Christian, the great end and aim of the Christian life, is to know Jesus Christ. There is a great difference between "knowing" a person and "knowing about" a person. Many can give an outline of His history, can repeat some of His sayings, and describe His... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:10 The Fellowship with Christ's Sufferings. I. It is manifest that there are senses in which we can have no community with our Lord in His sufferings, in which they were peculiar and His own. For they were meritorious sufferings, whereas we have not, and can never have, merit in God's... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:12 Our Christian Aim. I. Progress is not identical with growth. In speaking of progress, we take account of human endeavour, and not only of Divine law. It is not only that the minute germ appropriates by some mysterious power the elements which it needs, and clothes itself with beaut... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:13 I. The past has its uses. Not for nothing did God bestow upon us memory; not for nothing do His servants recollect themselves, look back, call to mind, remember. (1) We want the past for purposes of humiliation. We might almost content ourselves, if we desired to humble the pride of... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:13 Living in the Future. I. First, we may take this as the advice commended to us in the example here taught us: Live in the future. Our highest condition in this world is not the attainment of perfection, but the recognition of heights above us which are as yet unreached. From gener... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:15 Toleration. I. In proportion as we really love the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall love those who love Him, be it in never so clumsy or mistaken a fashion, and love those too whom He loved enough to die for them, and whom He lives now to teach and strengthen. We can surely do good tog... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:18 The Cross the Measure of Sin. How is it that every sin, even the very least, makes men enemies of the Cross of Christ? I. First, because it was sin that, so to speak, created the Cross: sin made a Redeemer necessary. It opened some deep breach in the order of life and in the unit... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:19 I. Others, says St. Paul, have their mind set upon things below; appetite is their god; they make the Gospel itself a means of worldly gain; what they pride themselves upon is just what a Christian should be ashamed of; and the end of these things is death. When the world perishes,... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:20 Heaven the Christian's Home. I. "Our conversation is in heaven." Many are the meanings of this word, and every way the Apostle says we are in heaven. For the word, in the language in which God wrote it, means the city or state to which we belong, or citizenship, or the rules and or... [ Continue Reading ]
Philippians 3:20 The Reunion of the Saints. I. "The body of our humiliation." What a word is that! It was not always thus. When God, in the solemn conclave of the Eternal Trinity, said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," He could not have been speaking only of man's soul. The recor... [ Continue Reading ]