We need to come to appreciate that the only righteousness that matters, when the dust settles, is being “right” with God, and the only way to garner such righteousness is by faith in Christ. If we grasp this truth, heart-transformation will occur.

Secular materialism, the great religion of our age, is the second-hand smoke that we breathe daily, lethally, and unwittingly. Although we may not feel in danger, there is cancer in the air. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that modern Christians analyse the way in which a post-Christian culture threatens our vitality. We cannot allow ourselves to sit passively in toxic fumes. Gospel vigilance today means keeping watch lest the spirit of the age begins to suffocate our life in Christ.

In one sense, every age has the same problem. This is what Paul refers to as the “flesh” (c.f. Phil. 3:4). This is the mindset that drives human beings to think that they can achieve life, bliss, and liberty without the aid of divine wisdom, power, and grace. For the Apostle Paul, this “flesh” was fed on the paltry food of Pharisaic religion. Paul was sufficiently detached from reality to think that the CV outlined in Phil. 3:5-6 was sufficient to secure him a place in the life to come.

Of course, on the other side of his conversion, Paul realised the foolishness of such thinking. Encountering Jesus was a radical upheaval of his values. The things he once thought of as “gains” were transvalued as “losses”. The gospel reprogrammed his heart so that he came to see that the only way to be right with God was a complete renunciation of self-confidence and a complete entrusting of oneself to Jesus. Righteousness could not be purchased; it must be a gift from God, that is, of faith.

Now, we live in a very different spiritual setting than did Paul. This means that, for us, the “flesh” is often experienced in the form of a different kind of godlessness than afflicted Paul in his pre-converted state. Our fleshly religion is a secular religion, that is, one that revolves around the self, not God. This is evident in a lot of different ways. For many of us, peer recognition means a lot more to us than does divine approval. We don’t struggle with religious guilt as did Luther or Bunyan.

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