derstanding, From the loss of
our glory in Thee, Preserve us, gracious Lord and God._" The words are
the very soul of St Paul, as it conveys the Spirit's oracle to us here.
St Paul dreads exceedingly for the Philippians the incursion of "error
and misunderstanding"; the advent of a mechanical rigorism of rule and
ordinance, and (as we shall see in later pages) the subtle poison also
of the specious antinomian lie. How does he apply the antidote? In
the form of an appeal to them to be sure to not to "lose their glory in
the Lord"; and then he writes a record of his own experience in which
he shews them how his own Pharisaic treasures had all been cast away,
or willingly given up to the spoiler; and why? Not for abstract
reasons, but "because of the surpassingness of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord"; because of the irresistible and infinite _betterness_
of His discovered glory, seen in the atoning Cross and the Resurrection
power.

Let us "arm ourselves likewise with the same mind." We have countless
perils about us in our modern Christendom, things which only too easily
can trouble the reason and sway the will away from the one "hope set
before us." Let us meet them, whatever else we do, with the Moravians'
prayer. Let us meet them with obedience to the Apostle's positive
injunction, "Rejoice in the Lord."

ii. The passage bids us remember the profound connexion between a true
"knowledge" of the Lord Jesus as our Atonement and a true "knowledge"
of Him as our Life and Power. Both are here. In ver. 9, so it seems
to me, any unprejudiced reader of St Paul's writings must see language
akin to those great passages of Romans and Galatians which put before
us the supreme question of our Justification, and which send us for our
whole hope of Acceptance before the eternal Judge, whose law we have
broken, to the Atoning Death of our Lord Jesus Christ. In those
passages, demonstrably as I venture to think, the word "Righteousness"
is largely used as a short term for the Holy One's righteous way of
accepting us sinners for the sake of the Sinless One, who, in our
nature, was "made a curse for us," "made sin for us," "delivered for
our offences," "set forth for a propitiation," that we might be
"justified from all things" in our union with Him by faith. If so,
this is the purport of similar phrases here also. St Paul is thinking
here first of the discovered glory of Christ as the propitiation for
his sins, his p