Verse by Verse Devotional on Philippians by Pastor Jack #149

The Power of Self-Deception

3:6a as to zeal, a persecutor of the church

In order to protect the Philippians from the influence of the Judaizers who try to get Gentiles to become Jews so they can be REAL Christians, Paul rehearses his own Jewish heritage in v.5-6 so that he can tell the Philippians that it is all rubbish in comparison to knowing Christ.

In v.6 he says that his zeal for Judaism was seen in his persecution of the Christian church. Paul’s persecution of the Christians was brutal :

Acts 8:3 says that Paul "began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison."

In Acts 22:4 Paul says, "I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons."

In Acts 22:19 Paul says, "in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed."

And in Acts 26:10-11 Paul says, "not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death I cast my vote against them. And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities." (See also Gal.1:13 and 1Tim.1:13.)

The amazing thing to me in all this (apart from the fact that God saved such a man) was that Paul was doing all this to serve God. Here in the Philippian epistle, he is using this persecution to show how dedicated he was to the cause of the God of the Jews. In describing his fellow Jews in Rom.10:2 Paul says the same thing about them, "I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge." Before he met Christ, Paul had a zeal for God that drove him to try to destroy the church.

Do we not see here the amazing ability of the human heart to deceive itself? When Paul was doing the very worst things, he thought he was doing the very best. He thought he was honoring God when really he was persecuting God (Acts 9:4-5).

"The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer.17:9)

I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of what is done in the name of God today is actually against God. We all struggle with this. It is easy to do what we want to do and justify it as the will of God. It is easy to have such a mistaken understanding of God that what seems to be His service is actually a blatant transgression of His way.

This ought to make us more humble and more careful.

Search my heart, O God. Test me and see what wicked ways there are in me. Show me my sin so that I may repent of it and cry out for Your help in repudiating it. Don’t let me go charging out blindly in Your name only to end up contradicting Your will. Help me to be humble and cautious. Do not let me be deceived by my own foolishness or by Satan’s other ploys. When I do wrong, Lord, help me to see I’ve done wrong. I want to live for You, Lord, and not only think I’m living for you. I want to do your people good, Lord, and not only think I’m doing them good.