I think many fail to see just what the apostle means, when he says in Philippians 3, that he counts all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. “Counting” is faith; and faith is the God-opened eye, which simply realizes things as they are. It does not color them. A good eye imparts nothing to the object it takes in, but only realizes it as it is, adding nothing, subtracting nothing.
The Apostle was not magnanimously giving up what had real value in it. It was not even a generous self-abandonment, which does not count the cost of what it does. He had counted; and his quiet, calm, deliberate estimate is here recorded. Pursuing what he saw alone to have value, he says,
“Yea, doubtless, and I do count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ (or ‘have Christ for my gain’), and be found in Him.”
This is not “sacrifice,” as people speak; for to make that, there must be worth (at least, in our eyes) in the thing we sacrifice. The Apostle’s deliberate conviction was that in his pursuit—entire, absorbing pursuit as it was—of Christ there was none. And this is the estimate which eternity will confirm, as the Apostle’s abundant experience had already confirmed, for he was no mere theorist. To occupy himself with it would be loss indeed.