If we had to pick one verse of scripture to distill the spiritual enthusiasm of the Apostle Paul, we might come close by looking to Philippians 3:8: "Nothing is as wonderful as knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have given up everything else and count it all as garbage." (Contemporary English Version).

But Paul doesn't stop with enthusiasm--for him, enthusiasm leads to commitment, as we hear in verse 9, where Paul declares that he desires to be completly united with Christ, so that his ethics and values and moral goodness ("righteousness") are shaped by his trust (also translated "faith") in Christ's love: "No longer do I have a righteousness of my own, the kind to be gained by obeying the Law. I now have the righteousness that is given through faith (trust) in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God, and is based on faith (trust)." It is Paul's trust in the love of Jesus and of God that leads him to embody love in the world. The roots of Paul's spiritual life have shifted from obedience to trust.

As Professor Elizabeth Bounds notes, "The Jesus of the gospels clearly loved the wonders of everyday life, reflecting a God whose loving attention ensured that 'even the hairs of your head are all counted.' (Matthew 10:30) The death of Jesus on the cross was a death in service of love and life, enabling the new life signaled by the resurrection."

She concludes: "What Paul saw Jesus inaugurating in his death and resurrection was a new earth and new heaven that inverted the old values and beliefs. As Mary put it in the annunciation, this is a world where God "has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly" (Luke 1:52). In Paul's words, "God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are." (I Corinthians 1:28). That which was nothing is now something; "everything has become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

In this perspective, as Dr. Bounds emphasizes, "to be righteous is to orient oneself and one's community to enacting God's justice in the world. Jesus, the embodiment of God's purposes, focused on relationships and community, because those living relationships, which included ensuring basic material well-being for all, were what God's justice looks like in the world."

Dr. Elizabeth Bounds is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta. Her full reflections on Philippians 3:4b-14 can be found in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary, Year A. Volume 3, pages 364-366, 2020.