I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith―that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:8-11
As I’ve mentioned before, I began writing this series of Reflections because I needed (and still need) to learn contentment. One consequence of this is that every time I think I’m coming to the end of the series, I’m gripped by something in St Paul's letter that I hadn’t properly appreciated before. This is what happened when I began to look again at the passage at the start of this Reflection. I thought it would be the subject of one or two Reflections but I’ve discovered that I’m barely going to scratch the surface of Paul’s meaning. Instead of this series finishing in February, I now expect it to last until nearly Easter.
If we’re to even begin to understand the foundation of St Paul’s contentment, we need to understand this passage. In earlier Reflections, we’ve considered the need to understand God’s best intentions―‘with knowledge and all discernment, so that [we] may approve what is excellent’― and to trust God unerringly when things don’t go as we expected and in spite of our own mistakes. But in Philippians 3, Paul goes further than knowing God as we might know and trust someone. After 30 years as Jesus' disciple, Paul writes of knowing and ‘gaining’ Christ Jesus! That was the single focus, the chief ambition of his life and no other ambition came even a close second! Paul's entire lifestyle was subordinated to this aim, which is why he could be content to pursue it even in prison.
How do we know Jesus Christ? The first and most obvious way is from the Gospels, the four biographies. A mistake I’ve made and which I think I see others making is that we’re often more attracted to the New Testament letters which seek to explain how we should live rather than to the Gospels that tell us how Jesus lived. I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong in studying the letters, or in wanting to understand the book of Revelation better, but that should never be at the expense of putting first things first: knowing Jesus.
Christianity is essentially, fundamentally a religion of a person. Other religious systems have their origins in the thoughts and teachings of certain people but, as time goes by, the religion becomes a system of faith in itself. The founder or founders are revered but the beliefs they founded continue without them. This can never be the case with Christianity. It began with Jesus Christ, continues through Him and is nothing without Him. It is when the Church has lost sight of this fundamental that ‘Christians’ have become so unlike anything that Jesus was or taught, sometimes behaving no better than violent religious extremists today.
Dr G Campbell Morgan (1863-1945) is one of the Bible teachers that I’ve learned most from. I think his commentaries on the Gospels are the best things he wrote and the best I have read. I know from his own comments on teaching that he would not prepare sermons on a particular Bible book until he had read it 40 to 50 times. Recently, I listened to a recording of an old sermon in which the preacher referred to a conversation he had with Dr Morgan, when he said that as a young minister there was a period of two years when he read nothing but the newspaper headlines, the few letters he received and the four Gospels. The preacher I was listening to added that it was at about that time that people had began to take notice of G Campbell Morgan!
The Gospels are not the only way that we get to know Jesus but they are the place to start. I plan to resume this theme next weekend because knowing Jesus as St Paul knew Him is crucial to experiencing contentment as Paul experienced it.
© Copyright Philip Evans 2015.
What is freely received should be freely shared and not sold for profit, so please feel free to copy these Reflections freely and without cost to others. Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in these Reflections are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
