The Loss of the System

If we are trying to perfect an activity, we come up with a system. NASCAR pit crews have athletic trainers and rigorous practices to perfect their system for servicing race cars in the shortest time possible. Part of the Industrial Revolution was the development of a system for manufacturing product. Submariners practice a procedure for responding to a leak or other emergency so that they can do it well under pressure. In todays factories, systems engineers work to make the manufacturing process as straightforward and efficient as possible.

Discipline in every aspect and detail of an activity brings perfection. To get things right, we make a system and perfect it. This is the way that humans (at least Westerners) achieve perfection. This is how we think about solving problems and making things work well.

God knew this. He designed the perfect system for man. He gave them the requirements, the procedures, for man to get as perfect as he could. He gave man the Law and for centuries a greater or lesser number of people sought to perfect their execution of this system.

Paul, in Philippians 3, says that in regards to the System (Law), he was as perfect a practitioner as they come. He was a professional reaching the heights of exactness. It would seem like Paul would be the man to listen to. He had achieved more than anyone else in perfecting a system to be perfect, but he denied the systems ability to bring perfection. He declared to all of us who try to save ourselves by a system, that he went as far as anyone in achieving perfection and he not succeed. He declared in Galatians 3:24 that the System was a schoolmaster. The System failed Paul and it taught him that in near perfection, it remains powerless to save.

On this realization Paul declared in Philippians 3:7 that the things that he sought to bring him gain, he now considers a loss for Christ. We frequently paraphrase the word loss as valueless. I do not think this is correct. In the context of the passage, Paul is saying that those things which he considered helpful in his perfection of the System, he now considers loss. The practice of the system as a way of bringing gain was detrimental.

We all make systems to perfect ourselves. We reward our careful eating all week with an ice cream. We convince children to be responsible with rewards. We threaten punishment for students who do not do their homework. All these things are to bring conformance to a System which, when perfected, will, we think, create the epitome of good.

Many of us have been tricked into thinking that if we perform, we are good. Paul declares that the System taught him his helplessness, but also a self reliance that needed to be abandoned. In verse 8 of Philippians 3 he says that his habit of depending on the System was (literally) a damage as he learned to know ( literally to have knowledge of) Christ.

What system have you fallen trap to in an attempt to make yourself perfect. Surrender all you learned under the system, except for the knowledge of your own inability. Forget the System and come to know the perfecting power of Jesus. The System will not work. Salvation can only come through the ability of the Kingdom of God to transform our brokeness and helpless into sainthood.