“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Phil. 3:77But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. (Philippians 3:7)). What a marvelous change! Saul had had many sources of gain. He had gathered many honors round his name. He had made progress in Judaism beyond many of his equals. He had achieved a legal righteousness in which no man could find a flaw. His zeal, his knowledge, and his morality, were of the very highest order.
But, from the moment that Christ was revealed to him, there was a thorough revolution. Everything was changed. His righteousness, his learning, his morality, all that could in any wise be gain to Paul, became as dung. He does not speak of open sins, but of those things that could justly be esteemed as gain to him. The revelation of the glory of Christ had so completely changed the entire current of Paul’s thoughts, that the very things, which he had once esteemed as positive gain, he now regarded as positive loss.
And why? Simply because he had found his all in Christ. That blessed one had supplanted everything in Paul’s heart. All that belonged to Paul was displaced by Christ; and hence it would have involved actual loss to possess any righteousness or wisdom, holiness or morality, of his own, seeing that he had found all these, in divine perfectness, in Christ. If Christ is made of God unto me righteousness, is it not a loss to me to have any righteousness of my own? Surely. If I have that which is divine, have I any need of that which is human? Clearly not.
The more completely I am stripped and emptied of everything in which “I” could glory, or which would be gain to “me,” the better, inasmuch as it only renders me all the more entitled to a full and all-sufficient Christ. Whatever it be that tends to exalt self, whether it be religiousness, morality, respectability, wealth, glory, personal beauty, intellectuality, philanthropy so-called, it is a positive hindrance to our enjoyment of Christ; first, as the foundation of the conscience; and, secondly, as the object of the heart.
May the Spirit of God make Christ more precious to us!