Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, 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… [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. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own...
Philippians 3:7-12
I think it’s useful to round off this short ‘series within a series’ of Reflections on St Paul’s ambition to know the Lord Jesus Christ by returning to something he said at the start of the passage. ‘Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ... For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ...’
We know what Paul meant by all the ‘gain’ he had given up. It was his dual birthright as a Jew and a Roman, his learning and status as a Pharisee and promise of all this would bring him as his career developed in the future. But just what did Paul mean when he wrote that he wanted to 'gain’ Christ?
Jesus expected an exclusive commitment from His disciples and often described this with unsettling concepts. In Mark 8, we read that He called the crowd to Himself and said to them, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me'. Matthew 10 records him saying that, 'Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me'. Taking up a cross was a concept not just demanding but horrific to Jesus’ original audiences, yet it was the only way to be ‘worthy’ of Jesus.
We gain a thing by being worthy of it. In today's consumer society, this usually means paying for it, but owning something isn’t quite the same thing as gaining it! A popular example in recent years in the UK is the payment protection insurance (PPI) that was mis-sold to very many people: insurance they paid for but either didn’t want or was of not use at all to them, such as the retired and unemployed people who insured against losing their jobs. Gaining something includes the ability to benefit from it.
We need to be careful when we talk about gaining people because they are not property to be owned. We may talk about gaining a friend by some act of benevolence, referring to the mutual benefits of the relationship. While we cannot hope to comprehend all that Jesus Christ brings into a relationship, we begin to glimpse it when we reflect on what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23. ‘For all things are yours…the world or life or death or the present or the future―all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's'.
The church at Corinth was preoccupied with the extent to which they could enjoy life like everyone else in the city. Pushing the boundaries of what we might call ‘Christian’ liberty, they attended pagan festivals, defrauded each other, sought redress in the civil courts and even indulged in sexual promiscuity that disgusted the pagans. Paul agreed that ‘all things are lawful’ but prescribed the bounds of Christian liberty by what was helpful, addictive and constructive (see 1 Corinthians 6:12&10:23) and then pointed them to something greater ― Christ, Himself. The Corinthian Christians were focusing on the wrong things! It was seeing this that motivated Paul to give up everything he had and might gain in the future for an acquaintance with Christ.
Paul also wrote this, giving us a glimpse of the centrality, supremacy and completeness of Christ. ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created... And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together... For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...’ (Colossians 1:15-20).
When we begin to understand who Christ is, we begin to see that a relationship with Him is not only all the gain we need but all the gain there is to have. This may sound like pious idealism amidst contemporary consumerism but it’s the only ground for trusting God in all our circumstances. But, like Paul, we each need to say, ‘I press on to make it my own’.
© 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.
