"Model Minority" Image credit and copyright: Neal Yamamoto. Used with permission
As Asian Americans, we've been influenced by the performance model. We were taught from the earliest ages that success and failure are based on our performance. If you do your work well, you will be rewarded. If you perform poorly, you will find no reward and perhaps even punishment. Good performance is heralded as the key to success. Many people inherit that supposition from their family values.
A form of this performance system found its way into the Philippian church. It took the form of a performance-based spirituality. And we will learn what that means as we study Philippians chapter 3.
2 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, those mutilators of the flesh; 3 for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh,4 although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh.
Verses 2 to 4 as a group is addressing the problem of a religious group known as the Judaizers.
The early church was made up primarily of Jewish believers who had come up through the old covenant system of laws, sacrifices and ceremonies. And for them, receiving Jesus as the messiah was a logical next step. Now the early church began to see Gentiles or non-Jews coming to receive Christ.
But the question was whether they should be allowed to do so without fulfilling the requirements that the Jewish believers had been previously fulfilled: circumcision and other rituals particular to the old covenant. Their position was that by adding this to their faith, the Gentile believers would be saved.
This has particular significance to those of us who grew up in a culture of performance. Being good children, getting good grades, getting into the best school, finding a high paying job, buying a house in the best neighborhood with the best home values. A performance-based culture lends itself to a misunderstanding of the gospel message. So many have come through the Asian American church without hearing the message of grace, because grace isn't a part of our cultural value system.
So while we don't have Judaizers like in Paul's day, we have a belief system that teaches our Sunday School children that they have to work hard to be good boys and girls, and this performance model makes less valuable the work of Jesus Christ! We create a model of religion that adds our goodness to the work of Jesus. 50-50. The problem with 50-50 is that we can't fulfill our half of the bargain. And being unable to fulfill it, many people just give up and say, well, Christianity doesn't work.
The truth is that the performance model doesn't work.
I grew up with that model! I grew up believing that Jesus died on the cross, but I also believed that I had to do my part. To be a good boy. To keep the 10 commandments. To not tell lies. To not have inappropriate thoughts about girls. And as a teenage boy, that's just not realistic. And so, being unable to fulfill the model that I had about Christianity, I left the church in the 11th grade. I had bought into in the performance-based model of Christianity that tends to come out of the Japanese American culture. Culture, not Christ, was what determined my faith.
But Christianity isn't about my ability to be good or to perform well! Do we understand that? It's about the efficacy and sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ that is the foundation of the Christian faith. I mean, definitely choose to be good because it's a positive way to live. Don't ignore your moral responsibility to others: society, humanity. But don't be good because you think it will get you to heaven.
Paul and the early church understood that if salvation could be achieved by our own effort, then it minimizes the validity of Christ's sacrifice on the cross of Calvary. The 10 commandments are not the guideline for salvation. The purpose of the law was to show us that we are imperfect, to show Israel their need for a Savior.
In Galatians 3:10-11 the writer says,
10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” 11 Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” And in Galatians 2:21, Paul writes: "I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
We trample underfoot and regard as meaningless the work of Christ if we believe we can be saved by our own efforts or keeping the Law of Moses.
Law and grace are mutually exclusive. When we come to the communion table, we don't come saying, "Oh I did a great job. I'm such a good person.. I deserve this." No, when we come to the Lord's table we acknowledge that it's not about us. It's all about Jesus. The bread, the cup, both representing Jesus sacrifice on the cross.
As if to affirm the powerlessness of the law to bring salvation, Paul puts all of his credentials under the Law in perspective. In Philippians 3:7, he says,
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, 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 is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
All of the qualifications that gave him standing before his Jewish countrymen and before himself, all the external righteousness that he thought gave him privilege before God, he counts as loss.
In verse 8, he says that he considers them garbage. As nothing more than the sweepings that you would find when you passed a broom over the floor. It's not something you value. It's something that you barely take notice of as you toss it in the trash can. This is the estimation Paul has of the credentials that he possessed that he formerly thought would assure him of salvation.
The prophet Isaiah stated it well in the OT, in chapter 64:6 - All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
Instead of his own acts of righteousness, Paul desires to be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ in verse 9: 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 is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
Isaiah 61:10 - I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
Figuratively not wearing old dirty rags, but clothed in garments given to us by the Lord himself. There's an old hymn called "The Solid Rock." And one of the verses says, "Clothed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne. On Christ the solid rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand."
Do we want to be clothed in our own righteousness or in the righteousness given to us by God?
We gain righteousness not through our own effort, but through faith in Christ. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ, faith becomes the agency that provides the way for us to gain a new wardrobe. The righteousness of God comes to us by grace. The mechanism is faith.
