Rubbish - Part 1

We put our trash bags in our garage until it is time to have it hauled away. This last week, we had something that smelled a little funky in one of the trash bags. When the smell was no longer funky, but rather very pungent, I decide to air out the garage. It helped, the fresh air came in and the pungent funk went out. Trash seems to have many different yet distinct odors and it reeks of rubbish. There is more rubbish in our lives than we think, but this trash isn’t just in trash bags and waste baskets. Garbage can be all over our lives and we never smell it or see it. It usually can be seen by others before us because we are too used to it being around us. This garbage can consist of things like bad habits and sinful things we are tied up in. But according the Apostle Paul, rubbish is not ONLY the bad things in our lives, but also good things that keep us from growing closer to Christ. In Philippians chapter 3, Paul goes through a list of things that he has done to make himself the most righteous person, the most confident person. Then after the list he says that he counts all that stuff as rubbish. The things that Paul did to make himself confident in his flesh include being brought up in the right culture, being part of the right family, following the right rules, and executing orders in the right manner. So, being brought up in a Christian home, in a small town where people respect me because of my name and following the proper protocol is rubbish? It can be. Paul tells us that he counted all those things as loss for the sake of his salvation through Christ. He goes on and says that it is worth counting them as loss because of what he has in knowing Christ. The word “knowing” is a present participle, meaning that this knowledge is incomplete and constant and Paul does not want to stop learning Christ. He doesn’t want his confidence in himself to hinder his confidence in Christ. He wants to know less of the sinful Paul and know more of the Christ. Our Pastor asked us this Sunday if we are willing to give up our name for Christ. I am proud of who I am, my heritage. I am proud to say that my Anabaptist relatives came over from what is now Germany to escape religious persecution. I am thankful that I come from a line of faithful and godly people. But I will not dwell or boast on my religious heritage, but I will rather boast in what Christ has done for me and what He has in store for me.* My next 4 posts will deal with the garbage list that Paul gives in Philippians 3:4-6. I will try to give some practical applications we can use in our lives to get rid of the rubbish.

*Disclaimer* Now, I want to make one thing clear, my relatives are not garbage, they are wonderful people. But I could easily dwell on what they did and put their actions in front of what Christ did for me. My relatives did not die for my sins; they did not defeat death on the cross. But they did live their lives as examples of godly men and women who have put their faith in Christ and who also desired to know Christ in a continuous way.