In the first half of this chapter, Philippians 3, Paul attacked the Judaizers, calling them dogs, evil workers and the mutilation. He attributed their requirements for worship to the flesh, revealing it as a “manmade righteousness”, a holiness that is defined by man, done for man and never enough to be accepted by God. Paul then listed his achievements and blessings for the purpose of showing that before he was in Christ he already had everything the Judaizers were trying to require of the Gentiles and yet he was still missing the one thing that mattered, Christ Himself. The point Paul was making to the Philippians was the same one that Jesus tried to make to Martha when she complained that Mary wasn’t helping her with the great work that she was trying to accomplish. In Luke 10 the Scripture tells us that Jesus went to visit two sisters named Mary and Martha. Luke wrote that Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listening to Him talk but Martha was “distracted with much serving”. Finally, in frustration, Martha went to Jesus and asked Him to do something about the situation, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.” Jesus responded to Martha: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” Paul is teaching that Christ Jesus is the “one thing” needed and the “good part” that must be chosen, nothing else compares to Him, nothing can stand beside Him and nothing should be allowed to compete with Him. Paul made his own personal list of achievements and religious blessings: he had circumcision, was of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, had kept the Hebrew language, kept the Law and was zealous even to the point of persecuting those who were not, he had everything required and yet, he met Christ and immediately counted all those things as loss compared to the excellence, the greatness, the beauty of actually knowing Jesus. The Philippians already knew Jesus, why would they need to add any of those old things? They were already rich, He would not allow them to diminish what they had been given by adding something that was no longer necessary. In tonight’s passage Paul continues to model unity through humility by joining himself to the Philippians in this process. He basically shares with him that while he has been writing from his experience he is not writing from his achievement, he has learned some things but he has not accomplished everything, he wants them to know that while he had counted everything as loss, they are still all together in needing to press on, forget what was behind and go forward with Jesus. Paul reveals his true goal for the letter in these few verses, to stand with his brothers and sisters where they are so they could all walk together. He says, “I have not attained, I am not perfected, I’m still pressing, let’s go together”. That’s the true call of unity, we are in this together, we may be at various stages of the journey but we are all still on the same path for the same purpose. We are all in the midst of the process of being conformed to the image of Jesus.