This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Philippians” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, March 29, 1992.

In our reflections upon Philippians 3, verse 3, we have been reading consecutively through the chapters of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and we have arrived this morning at Galatians 6. Listen to the word of God. Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden.

Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well-doing. who in due season we shall reap if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

See how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand. As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised. only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me. and I into the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. And henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

And then turning over to Philippians 3, beginning with verse 3. For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I might have confidence in the flesh, if any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more circumcise the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, and Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law of Pharisee. Concerning zeal persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law of blameless, that what things were gained to me, those I count lost. for Christ.

Father, humble us before you, and Father, may we stand in awe of your greatness. The greatness, Lord, that is being told throughout the creation, by the creation itself and also by servants whom you’ve raised up. to declare your will. So even now, your people are gathered to hear you speak to them. Speak, Lord, for your servants here. Amen. Recently I had one of those painful experiences when an incident from my youth was brought to mind. I was in a discussion with my parents and they were reminding me of this instance from my youth.

We were talking about the time my sister and I decided to look for summer jobs in Chautauqua, New York. Now I know that some of you are aware of Chautauqua and maybe some of you have even visited Chautauqua, a lovely lakeside resort near Jamestown, New York.

A community so quaint that they still ban all motorized vehicles from the grounds. A community so unique that it offers up a rich and rare collection of lectures and sermons and concerts and opera performances, film repertoire, all of this in an atmosphere of comfortable inns and remarkable little shops. It’s idyllic. An atmosphere both exhilarating and relaxing, if not a little exclusive. A wonderful place to vacation, if you can afford it. a wonderful place to work if you can find a job, which neither my sister nor I could. We covered the ground on a late spring Saturday afternoon.

We went into the inns, we went into all the shops, we were turned down every place we inquired. It was quite disappointing for us. It was even embarrassing. But I hardly was prepared for the greater humiliation that awaited me in the parking lot as we prepared to leave.

You see, we were come upon by two of my closest friends. and they were already well-tanned and gainfully employed and thought nothing of gloating about their good fortune, but especially about their good connections. Their meaning was clear. How could you let alone their sister. How could you have ever thought that you would get a job here?” They swaggered, they were insufferable, and they left me quite ashamed. And that even worse, They left me fuming internally with what I now recognize in retrospect to be nothing short of out-and-out hatred.

It was as if the entirety of the history of the world settled in on that moment, was bound up in that encounter late on that spring afternoon. As if in that moment all of us who were there had struck the primary nerve. As if that event laid bare a fundamental ingredient to the basic depravity of the human condition. I won’t speak for my sister. I’m sure she handled it much better than I. But the ordeal exposed in my friends and in myself an abominable arrogance, an indomitable vanity.

At work in us, was a spirit that we have been cultivating since birth and improving upon. A spirit intent upon gaining the advantage, never looking the fool, never being embarrassed, is a spirit intent upon gaining the advantage and then wielding that advantage in self-interest and cruel consistency. This spirit, full-blown, gives vent to envy. to covetousness. It is concerned never to be viewed lagging behind or inferior to anyone.

But it was obvious that spring afternoon that I was definitely lagging behind I hadn’t even chosen the right parents. And obviously I was clearly in the minds of my friends inferior. I do recall the rage rising within me driving me in that instance never again to accept such an insult.

The Bible warns repeatedly about crime. Money will go to their grave never having dealt with it. The Bible speaks especially pointedly in two passages about pride. Two New Testament texts, each playing off an Old Testament passage. I have in mind James chapter four, verse and 1 Peter 5, verse 5.

These New Testament passages, pulling off of Proverbs 3.34, restructuring that statement from the Old Testament in this way, God resists the proud that gives grace to the I heard those passages paraphrased this way once, God is at war with the proud, but befriends the humble.

Now I think that it is obvious to you the way the passage is structured for you there that we have set before us two mutually exclusive ways of life. There is the way of pride and then also the way of humility. Two entire orders of existence set out for us there in stark contrast As you move down through the chapters in which these verses appear, James 4, 1 Peter 5, you suddenly become aware that you have many descriptions that then can be lined up on either side of the ledger with respect to these two orders of existence.

On the one side, You have that order of existence that knows submission to God and acceptance of His will. You have that promised freedom that is so expansive and so profound that it excludes anxiety. this order of existence to the one side. Proclaiming submission to God, acceptance of His will, promising even freedom from anxiety, promises as well the reverence from Satan’s domination. And even though this order of existence presently knows privation and even sufferings for the sake of Christ, it stands in expectation of the coming exaltation by way of Christ and by way of the powerful, loving presence of God, our dear eternal friend.

So that, to the one side, the side of humility, but then there is the other order of existence, which, according to James and Peter, proclaims friendship with the world to the extent that there is demanded the exclusion of God. There is a rejection of Christ and his ways, despite the vocabulary, despite the rhetoric that you may hear, a rejection of Christ, evident in an unrepentant and willful soul, a soul, then, that wittingly or unwittingly serves Satan and his legions by choosing this world over God and life within in another world altogether.

I tell you, pride is damning. It is as lethal a weapon as Satan possesses. And it is basic to man’s sinful nature. Fundamental to his depravity. But if James and Peter are not enough for you, maybe you would be convinced if we look to John and his writings. Let him make his contribution, an amazing contribution at that. For in John’s writings he will reduce our sinfulness to something like a compact formula in his first epistle, the second chapter, the sixteenth verse. Remember that passage.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the Word. The world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.

John, like James and Peter, sets in contrast, in keeping with his own vocabulary, sets in contrast the two orders. The one order he calls the world, which is passing away with its evils, but the other is denominated by the person of the Father, by God himself. Isn’t it interesting that in John’s formulation of things, he will not put a world over against this world that is passing away, but rather he puts over against this world the Father. Nothing less than God in his deity, in his fatherly care, in his love, in his graciousness, the person of God, that one then upon whom our desires are focused. So John, there is then the world which is passing away with its evils.

There is also the Father whom we love, whose will we seek to do with the promise that we will abide with him forever. At the center of the one world, or the center of the one order of existence, is love of the Father. At the center of the other is love for the world, a love now which John tells us expresses itself in the lust of the flesh. by which he means that selfish gratification of our desires apart from and contrary to God. This love for the world, this love of the world, which expresses itself, says John, in the lust of the eyes, that is, in the focusing upon what we can see, and the satisfying of ourselves with the sufficiency of reality’s externals.

A way of life, a view of life, that excludes faith altogether. as if saving the most lethal to the end. This love of the world expresses itself in the pride of life, that is, the arrogant self-assertion with respect to life itself, whereby we exalt ourselves and our importance over others, even over God, and claim life to be our own sovereign domain.

Paul, in concert with Peter, James, and John, speaks to the subject of pride. For the Apostle Paul, it is not just a fundamental ingredient with regard to human depravity. mentioned possibly in passing. The pride is dealt with pervasively throughout the entirety of the Apostle’s writings. Paul’s vocabulary is varied and expansive. With a multiplicity of words and expressions he will cover the territory survey the territory that was surveyed by James and Peter and the lay of the land is precisely the same for Paul with the others sees two orders of existence the one exhales pride in glorying a rejoicing, a boasting in oneself, a boasting, a glorying that belongs to the order of the flesh. But on the other side, as if to match boast with boast, the apostle speaks about boasting in the Lord exclusively.

He speaks in Galatians 6.14 of boasting in the cross of Christ, and that exclusively. Here is this Galatians passage 6.14 that proves to be most instructive, because it is Paul further says his boast in Christ’s cross is due to that cross’s power to destroy the other world that is categorized by the flesh, and that that cross has the power to deposit him in the new creation, that is, in the order of the Spirit. This is what he means in the fifteenth verse. of that sixth chapter, for neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision but a new creation. But Paul goes on.

He declares in the sixteenth verse that this is his canon, this is his standard, this is the rule that he has for his gospel. than the mutually exclusive nature of the two orders of existence. On the one side, the flesh, known to us by its boast, the boast that rises from within the self. On the other side, the realm of the spirit and the boast that is expressed with respect to God and Him exclusively. And that boast focusing upon the work of God, in Christ’s cross.

It is precisely in the interests of this canon, this standard, this rule, this gospel that Paul works so hard in the case of the Philippians. Paul’s gospel allows for no boast in the flesh no pride born of this world, even if fanned by the finest of Jewish sentiment and devotion. Paul is merciless with regard to himself when it comes to pride. The religious world Paul knew through his Jewish upbringing, through his Jewish education, proved to be, in the end, as liable to the flesh as the paganism around him, because that order of things, in his Jewish upbringing, belonged to a provisional and temporary order of things, and in the end could be categorized as belonging to the order of the flesh. Religious zeal becomes the occasion for evil, Paul suggests, when it becomes the excuse for worldly pride, and we see that worldly pride blossoming amongst those who have held most strenuously to the law and its demands.

The pride born of the flesh. leaves all who express it short of God and contentment in him. Such pride leaves all in whom that pride finds expression short of Christ’s cross and the that is conferred upon those who have been humbled. Our pride stands opposite grace. Our pride stands opposite the gift of God. The proud cannot accept the gift.

Does not our pride convince us of our own superiority? Does not our pride convince us that we are not in need, that we lack nothing, that we have a right to all that we imagine we deserve? Does not our pride drive us and compel us toward an attitude that is marked by competitive greed, and blind anger in the interests of holding on to a world we believe is ours? Pride, pride born of the flesh, will you not bear testimony to this yourselves? pride born of the flesh is itself excluded from the world of God’s grace.

It cannot exist there. You standing before the presence of God, as John himself envisioned it, looking unto God the Father, pride melts away. It cannot exist in the present. of God’s grace in the presence of this person. In the language then of Philippians 3, verse 3, that pride is excluded in the realm where we worship God in the Spirit. That pride is excluded amongst all of us who will glory in, rejoice in Christ Jesus. Such pride as rises from the flesh has no place amongst those who put no confidence in the flesh, but whose confidence is in and of the Spirit. I did not realize it those many years ago That encounter, however, was indicative of a pattern of life. Unlearning, unlearning such a pattern is a torturous affair. It is brutal.

We who are being humbled, should have no difficulty admitting the operations of God in us. Those operations to the end that we might be humbled and not placed in the company of the proud. Hear us, Lord. Vanity rises, pride deals death, and we are slain. But your grace preaches a better end, for in front of that cross and standing in the presence of your glory. We, Lord, through the work of your Spirit, are humbled. Knowing, Lord, that you will multiply grace to us, you, our friend, help us, Father, in all of our dealings in this creation, that we may not express the vanity of pride to the undoing of our souls. Preserve us, O God, for yourself.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.