But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Many at their old age look at their lives—”I was born here, I did that and achieved this”—and say with disappointment that most of it was all a waste, a big loss. When the vanity of life fades and our strength weakens, the things we once thought were the great profits in our lives, we realize are the losses. How sad to realize that at the end of life, or even more sad, to die without even realizing that, and to be eternal fools and losers by losing our souls.
God made Apostle Paul realize that when he was a young, accomplished Jewish man. In Acts 9, he was going on his horse on the Damascus Road, in a dramatic, shocking heavenly encounter with the living Christ. God opened his spiritual eyes. There was a revolutionary, sudden change in his life. He, who was persecuting Christians, started preaching Christ himself now. What happened to him? We see the external life change in Acts, but we see the internal change here in Philippians 3.
He understood the true philosophy of life, the difference between a meaningless and a meaningful life, success or failure. We saw Paul’s testimony, what attainments! Every man in the world lives and envies this: a special religion, racial purity, patriotism, a pious home, a privileged nation, a higher tribe, fine education, fluency in his original mother language, a perfect blameless moral life, sincere zeal, and membership in the highest religious group. Can anyone here or most men in the world claim those qualifications? The best of the best! Paul lived his daily boast in the confidence of the flesh.
But that day, a big change happened. He realized all this was a loss. Why? He realized he had been using the wrong measuring scale. He realized the God he was dealing with was of infinite holiness, before whom even all holy angels, even archangels and seraphim who have never sinned, hide their eyes in the presence of uncreated infinite holiness. What is all my righteousness before Him?
How can you and I come to this realization? There comes a time when we stop measuring ourselves with our own standards and look at our life and achievements with God’s measuring scale and standards. We measure everything in life by a standard. The right standard is so important in life; think how wrong everything can go. When we go to the grocery store to buy rice, the grocer can take one hand of rice and say, “this is 1 KG of rice,” or a chicken shop cuts five pieces and calls it 1 KG, or puts one cap of petrol and says it is 1 liter. That is unacceptable. There has to be a standard, whether you are measuring rice or gold. In the same way, we will realize what is valuable in life when we stop measuring our life with all the wrong standards of men and start measuring ourselves with our Creator’s standard. That standard is His law. When we realize how short we are falling before that standard law, we start seeing the value of Christ.
There comes a time when we ask deep questions: “What is the purpose of man? Why was I born? Why is this life like this? What will happen after I die? What is death, and what lies beyond it?” There comes a time in a person’s life when they ask, “How many days will I defend and live this meaningless, empty life? Am I going to go on like this? Is this what I want in life?” People hold to something that is not allowing them to be saved. We say, “Anything, Lord, but not this. This is such a gain.” We make all the wrong calculations and never get saved. We experience true salvation only when we learn to calculate like Paul and helplessly say, “All I trusted is a loss.”
We see that Paul learned that new math and his marvelous testimony in this passage. It is a marvelous passage, so marvelous, and it is a very difficult passage for me because it is a very personal, emotional passage. His heart is overflowing with gratitude and love. It is very difficult to find a structure. I struggled a lot to figure out a structure to help you understand what he was saying. Such passages make us cry. “Lord, leave me…” Anyhow, I tried my best and pray God should help us grasp the depth.
Today’s message is titled “Three Greatest Calculations.” You will see the word “count” three times in these verses.
7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.
So there are three greatest calculations. Why? When you learn the first calculation, you can be truly saved. When you keep learning the second calculation, you can keep growing in the Christian life. When you do the third final calculation, you could reach a stage of assurance in the Christian life.
How does he do this calculation? In verses 4-6, in one column, he set down everything he had been and everything he had achieved before coming to Christ—seven things we saw—and he writes under it, “LOSS”! In a second column, we can say he puts Christ and all he gained through Christ and says, “GAIN.” Just as he outlined seven things as “loss,” he outlines seven things as “gain.”
- Knowing Christ – The surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
- Gaining Christ – That I may gain Him.
- Being found in Him – That I may be found in Him.
- The Righteousness of God – The righteousness which is from God.
- Experiencing the power of His resurrection – The power of His resurrection.
- Fellowship of His suffering and death – The fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
- Attaining the resurrection from the dead – That I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
You can see these are seven things he lists in those verses. They are a very, very treasure of rich truths. We will see them one by one in two or three weeks. Today, we will understand what he is saying in verses 7-8 in four headings: Paul’s first past calculation, Paul’s second present calculation, Paul’s final total calculation. Then we will start looking at his seven gains. Let us try to cover one today.
Paul’s First Past Counting
7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.
This was the first math that made him a Christian. He says, “what things were gain to me.” We saw how he listed seven qualifications in verses 4-6: “circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” He lists them with a high degree of interest. They had been as precious pearls to him once, the apple of his eye, his daily boast. He lived and breathed for this. All his birth, rituals, following tradition, his outward moral life, and membership in a high religious group.
When he realized all those were losses, he was saved. It is so self-deceiving. You know the hardest people to preach the gospel to are traditional religious people. If you go among sinners of other religions and preach about Christ, their eyes open and they listen so eagerly. Go to traditional Christians and preach Christ, and you will see them sleeping. The more religious they are and the more sincere they are and the more stuck in tradition, the more they trust in that for their salvation. All their confidence is in their tradition and outward religious life, so they are blinded, and it never allows them to see the gospel truth. Paul says, “I realized all of them as loss, waste.” Why? Because these are the very things that never allow a person to come to Christ and be truly saved. False religion deceives the mind and damns the soul. It makes people live in false assurance, a false salvation. Someone said, “Religions are some of mankind’s greatest crimes.”
Though the world said, “Way to go, Paul!” he realized that with all this, he was empty inside, with no relationship with a living God and no true salvation experience. It was his own idol of his outward devotional religious life. He was not worshipping God; Paul had been worshipping Paul—who he was and what he had attained. He started learning saving math. All he had by birth and life was a big LOSS. “What will I gain if I gain the whole world and lose my soul?” One day I will die, all this will be ashes, and then when he enters eternity, can he say, “Open the door… I was circumcised on the eighth day, I am a Pharisee.” None of this would open heaven’s door for him. There came a point in my life that I added all this and saw them all as losses. The key that made me learn this radical math is my first introduction to Christ.
Paul’s Second Present Counting
8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.
Notice in verse 7 he talks about all those Jewish qualifications he counted—past tense—as a loss when he met Christ. But in verse 8, he talks about his present loss, counting now. It is as if someone asked Paul, “Okay, you considered all those great Jewish qualifications a loss and came to Christ… do you have any regrets? How is your counting now? You have been a Christian for 30 years… you have made so many sacrifices, suffered so much for Christ.” We are always anxious to hear what a man has to say about something after he has experienced it for some years. That is why we read reviews before buying anything. Many can begin with eagerness, but what happened to that eagerness after many years?
In a way to strongly answer that question, see how he begins verse 8: “Yet indeed, I also….” He uses many particles and emphasizes it very strongly. Originally, “not only that, more, more indeed, truly, certainly, doubtless… even now…”
If you ask me, “Paul, was your first calculation correct? Did you look at the accounts after all these years? What is your calculation now?” He exclaims with a very special burst of emphasis, “My answer…” Verse 8: “As surely as I counted those seven things a loss in the past, now, even more and more, indeed, truly, certainly, doubtless, I presently, after 30 years of my conversion, I reckon not only those seven specific Jewish qualifications listed. Notice in verse 8, ‘furthermore, I also count all things loss’… what are ‘all things’… all things I achieved last 30 years. I put no confidence in them to be accepted by God, and I consider them as loss.”
In other words, I was not only saved by that math, but I still continue to live by the same spiritual mathematics. You ask me whether there is any change in the math now after all these years? Yes, now I want to add to my earlier seven losses all my 30 years of Christian achievements. All that I’ve done as a missionary or that I’ve accomplished as a preacher, all my achievements as an apostle, all my sacrifices. All that I’ve performed as a servant of Christ, anything I have done, or anything that has been done in me, you can add it all up in my loss column. None of these will help me find peace and acceptance with God. It is a big minus and loss.
At least earlier, he listed seven specific things. Here, in verse 8, he does not even list all his achievements, but fearing anything might have been omitted, he succinctly sums up the whole by saying, “all things,” using a comprehensive word. Not only have I counted my Jewish qualifications as a loss and was saved, but now I am counting everything I achieved as a Christian as a loss, and by that counting, I am growing intimately with Christ. That’s his present counting. Notice he continues to do that. It’s an ongoing thing. By continuously learning this math, I am growing in the knowledge of Christ. So he’s really saying, “I continue to resist the recurring temptation to rely on my works rather than God’s grace for my standing.” You see, his saving math has not changed; in fact, it has become more strong and comprehensive.
So his past counting saved him; his present counting is helping him grow in the Christian life. Now, we come to the third shocking total sum. This is the grand total. This is his life’s estimate.
8 for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish.
All put together before conversion and after conversion, past and present, “I have suffered the loss of all things.” It is one thing to quote this verse and preach this verse, but this man has lived this calculation. Where do we see him now? The most famous, most rich, most educated, competent young man, most religious Jewish man loved by his whole nation, now rotting in a Roman prison, as a prisoner, with chains on his wrists. Not knowing when he will die. He lost everything. He has nothing in all the world.
He has lost all his old friends. His relations disown him, his countrymen abhor him and want to kill him. No name made the Jews gnash their teeth more maliciously than did the name of Saul of Tarsus, who was accused of being the vilest of religious traitors, an anti-nationalist. You read Acts and you see how much he suffered, how they hunted for him like a dog from town after town. Even his Christian brethren created troubles and losses for him. He has lost kinsmen, lost caste, lost tradition, and lost things on which he was glorying. He has no provision for his commonest needs. The Philippians have sent help, and his words as he writes are most true: “For whom I have suffered the loss of all things.”
Let us enter the prison, interview Paul, and put a personal question to the good man. “Paul, your faith has brought you to absolute poverty and a lack of friends. What is your estimate of it now? To talk theory is one thing, but to see it in practice is different. How now, Paul?” “Well,” says he, “I confess I have suffered the loss of all things.” We ask, “Do you deeply regret it, Paul?” He rises in zeal. “Regret it?” says he, “Regret the loss of my Phariseeism, my religious benefits, my Israelitish dignity? Regret it! Regret that I don’t glory in anything I achieved in Christian life?”
“Not a bit,” he says. “I am glad that all these are gone, because… you know why? Initially I saw them as loss… now, with a proud smirk, delight on his face, and a twinkle in his eyes, and a calm manner like a man who has calculated and found the answer to the great math problem of life, he says with full consciousness, “But all these are now… my grand total of all these are, ‘for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish.'”
Wow. He could not use a stronger word. Translators wanted to be decent, so they used “garbage,” “manure,” “dung,” but the worst word you can use is what Paul used here. “Septic tank,” “human excrement.” It’s something you want to throw away as soon as possible. It is not a good, flattering description; it is a shocking description. Losing all those are no loss at all. Actually, when it is gone, you should celebrate and congratulate yourself.
While we wonder if Paul has gone mad, he turns with a smiling face. “You are thinking me mad… if you don’t understand my math, you are the greatest madmen and are still living in madness.” Paul, why? “All of those qualifications before conversion, and all those things I achieved after conversion, all are dung. I don’t trust them. I regard them as manure, foul, unclean, offensive. I leave it as an eternal record in God’s word for everyone to read and assess himself. Judaizers, religionists, traditionalists… you can glory all you want in those things… your tradition, rituals, outward religious achievements… they will drag you to hell. But as an apostle, I realized that all that is dung and will never save you.”
The question is, what can make a man say that? All qualifications which the world seeks after and envies—the highest things every man lives for in this world. If he has realized all that is garbage, vomiting dirt… One, we know he is not a madman; he has the brightest intellectual mind in history. Then, the inevitable conclusion is that this man must have discovered and found something supremely high. He tasted and experienced something so gloriously sublime and excellent, which makes him see these things as dung. Right? My pastor would give an example. Earlier, he would love “Indian jujube,” “Indian cherry.” He just enjoyed them, would buy a bag full, and eat them daily during school. But when he grew up, he traveled to the US and started eating different kinds of food, a variety of fruits, and punch juice. His tongue taste changed with higher tastes. After many years, he came back and wanted to eat Indian jujube… he felt so horribly nauseous, spit it out, and threw all of it into the garbage. Vomiting… Why? Because the man’s tongue has tasted much higher things.
In the same way, Paul, who enjoyed life for these “Indian jujubes,” has now tasted something infinitely high. That is why he could say, “all these things are of a septic tank, a vomiting, nauseating refuse.” He says to the Judaizers, “You can feast on that garbage of those, that is why I call you dogs, but I have a heavenly feast. I have found a higher taste… a gospel feast.” Paul is like the man in the parable who saw an infinite treasure in a field, and in his joy over the treasure, he went and sold not half or 90%, but all he had, to get the field. Ignorant men who see him may think he is mad, but he is the wisest man.
Paul, how can you make such a total statement? “Selling all, a total wholesale break with everything?” “I’ll tell you why,” then he lists seven gains. Starting with verse 8, “Of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Now, what are those gains? All Paul’s gains can all be summed up in one word for Paul—Christ. The cause of this revolutionary math is in verse 7: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.” And verse 8: “count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” Because what Christ has done for him and what Christ does in him is much more glorious than anything in this world. If you put them on a scale, you put everything the world can give—all the gold, wealth, fame, power, satisfaction, hope, love, and care—everything on one side of the scale, and you put Christ on the other. All the others not only have no weight, but their value is “minus,” it is “dung,” it is “waste.” Such are the infinite blessings we have in Christ. Paul, what are those sublime, infinitely excellent things because of which you are saying everything in the world is “dung”?
Paul lists seven things as gains, just as he listed seven losses. We will start with the first one.
The First Gain Is Knowledge
Paul’s first gain is the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
How is one truly saved? One is saved not by ritual, religion, or works, nor by our own efforts. We must stop doing and first look to the surpassing greatness of Christ. The only way a holy God has appointed for a person to become righteous before Him is through the burnt offering, as we studied. Nothing we do or achieve will bring us to God. When a person’s mind is enlightened to see the surpassing greatness of Christ, he gains that knowledge. He throws everything he believed in away and completely puts the weight of his soul for all eternity on Christ. That is how saving faith begins; that is the only way of salvation. Salvation begins with the knowledge of Jesus Christ. That’s the first thing Paul gained: he gained the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
A religious traditionalist will say, “We know Christ. Oh, that’s all. We also know Christ.” When we talk about the knowledge of Christ, we are not talking about a traditional Jesus but about the Jesus who is revealed in the Bible. Secondly, it is not just head knowledge about facts—who Jesus is and what he has done. That never does anything for many people. The knowledge Paul is talking about turned his life upside down, so it must be something more.
Paul says “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” He uses a superlative word: “all-surpassing greatness.” We all use superlatives meaninglessly. When working with Americans, everything is “excellent.” In the UK, everything is “fantastic.” Paul did not use it meaninglessly. He used it because he felt the frustration of human language, and he contemplated the glorious reason for counting everything as lost, not only in the past but even in the present moment. He said, “I saw all as dung. There is no language or word to explain what I gained. The best I can do is call it ‘surpassing value,’ ‘excellence,’ ‘infinite value’ of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.” “Surpassing” means it is beyond anything and everything. It surpasses anything the world can offer. It surpasses every knowledge a person has, every experience, every joy, and every pleasure a person has. Anything and everything any person has experienced and enjoyed in their world in their lifetime, this is beyond all that, and nothing in the universe can be compared to it. That is what “surpassing” means. Knowing Christ so far surpasses those other things.
Let us understand the depth of the word “knowing.” It is a very, very intimate word. The Greek word is gnosis. Even in worldly literature, pagans used that word in a very intimate way. In the Gentile world, gnosis was used for the closest communion with their gods. They would worship their gods in a drunken, transcendental mind state to experience an elevated, secretive, cultic, mystical communion with a deity. They believed that in their inebriation, they ascended to a height by which they perceived their deities in intimacy. Paganism said there is an ascended knowledge, there is a transcendent knowledge. The Gentile intent is to speak of a deep, surpassing, transient, mystical, and intimate relationship. They experienced ecstatic joy, what today they say can be achieved with drugs.
In the Hebrew language, it was used in two ways. It was used for the most intimate physical relationship—a union of love. “Adam knew Eve, and a child was born to them.” It also referred to a very intimate, inseparable, familiar acquaintance. God said of all nations, “I know Israel.” Spiritually, Christ used this word for the most intimate spiritual bond. “I know my sheep.” He has an intimate love bond with them. Jesus said, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” This meant, “I had no bond of love with you.”
So, Paul is filling up the rich background of the mystical Gentile, Hebrew, and biblical meaning of an intimate, close union and bond for that word. You can think of any bond of union; this is beyond all that: the surpassing knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. He is filling up all of that rich meaning the world has so far known and says this is beyond all that. He is saying it is a knowledge of love, it is a union of love that is intimate, that is supernatural, that is transcendent, that is mystical.
This is not just ordinary head knowledge; it is beyond that. It is a deep, transformative relationship with Jesus, where you are able to see His infinite glory, enjoy His personhood, and experience His love and grace. In fact, in John 17:3, the Lord said, “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” Eternal life is connected with knowing God by knowing Christ. It goes beyond knowing something intellectually; it means to know experimentally, experientially, personally, or by personal involvement.
Salvation is knowing Christ. It’s not just knowing about Him intellectually; it’s knowing Him experientially. In 2 Corinthians 4:6, Paul says, “God is the one who shined in our hearts…that’s illumination…to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” In other words, Paul is defining the Gospel and the work of the Spirit. He says God comes into the heart and shines the light that reveals the knowledge of Jesus Christ. In 2 Timothy 1:12, it says, “I know whom I have… believed.” First, you know experientially; that knowledge makes you believe in Him fully.
Salvation is to experience and know the surpassing value, loveliness, and desirability of Jesus and all that He offers in His salvation. So much so that you fall in love with Him with your whole life. Salvation is a relationship in which I know Christ intimately. It is not, “I know about Him, I know the facts about Him, I know when He lived, when He died, I know a few other facts about what He taught.” It is not that, but “I know Him,” which is very different from knowing about someone. There is a great difference between “I know Aishwarya Rai” and “I know my wife.” In the same way, you can know about Christ and not know Him at all.
Notice how he calls Christ. In verse 7, he just called Him “Christ.” He knew very little about Him when he was saved, only that He claimed to be the Messiah. But after conversion, Paul began to learn about Him from Scripture and from months spent in the presence of Christ by himself in a lonely place in Arabia. He made many glorious discoveries as Jesus Christ revealed Himself to Paul. He only knew about Christ the Messiah when he was saved. As he understood His glory as the anointed Priest, Prophet, and King to whom the entire Old Testament pointed, he saw Him as “my Messiah.” Christ was such a glorious figure. Then, as he grew in that knowledge in his Christian life, he calls Him not just Christ but Jesus. This Messiah, the anointed one, came as the human Jesus and accomplished great salvation for me. He sees Him in the fullness of His work. He is the one my race and nation were waiting for, the one I was waiting for. “How blind I was.” He grew in understanding of atonement, reconciliation—all the details we see in the book of Leviticus about Christ—and he started understanding propitiation, justification, adoption, and sanctification, so that he was able to write the letters to the Romans and the Ephesians which have enriched humankind for two thousand years.
Then he cannot stop with that and says “my Lord.” Lord, the sovereign Yahweh, Lord of the universe, who created all and who exerts supreme authority over visible and invisible beings, all angels, demons, and humans. Yet, he uses the little word of closest intimacy, “my Lord.” He has become my only greatest wealth, “my Lord.” I cannot imagine the apostle penning those words without stopping and breaking out, lost in wonder, love, and praise that he should call Jesus Christ “my Lord.” These words must have caused him to pause and break out in doxology. “My Lord.” He just now said he had persecuted the church, he loved his old religion and hated Christ so much that he wanted to kill Christ, but since he couldn’t get Christ, he killed Christians. Imagine such a horrible person, now saved by the same Lord. Imagine what it must have meant for Paul to pen the words “the surpassing value of saving acquaintance with Jesus the Messiah, but who is supremely my Lord.”
F.B. Meyer wrote, “We may know Him personally and intimately, face to face. Christ does not live back in the centuries, nor amid the clouds of heaven. He is near us, with us, compassing our path in our lying down and acquainted with all our ways. But we cannot know Him in this mortal life except through the illumination and teaching of the Holy Spirit. And we can surely know Christ not as a stranger who turns in to visit for the night or as the exalted king of men, but there must be an inner knowledge as of those whom He counts His own familiar friends, whom He trusts with His secrets who eat with Him of His own bread.” To know Christ, he perfectly suits all our soul’s needs. To know Him, He is enough in all of life’s trials, storms, and in the valley of the shadow of death. To know Him as strength in weakness, joy in sorrow, to know the sweetness of His dealing with us when we are weak and bruised reeds, to know the tenderness of His sympathy and the strength of His right hand. All this involves many varieties of experience on our part. But each of them, like the facets of a diamond, will reflect the prismatic beauty of His glory from a new angle. That’s to know Christ. Salvation begins with the knowledge of Christ, for which Paul says, “I’ll exchange anything for that privilege.”
So we see his three calculations and his first gain out of seven.
Applications
First Calculation
Think of Paul’s first calculation. If you are sitting here and wondering why you are not saved and how you can be saved, can you join Paul in his first calculation? His first calculation saved him, and it can do the same for you.
How do you see yourself and your life? Do you think you are very lovely, have great potential, will achieve big things, and that God is going to be pleased? You don’t see yourself as deserving of hell at all. Whatever the Bible says, you are still confident that you never did anybody any harm, that your life has been decent, better than many of your worst friends. You may be a drug addict or a drunkard, but you appear decent on the outside. An old man of 80 was asked, “I hope that when you die you will go to heaven.” “Ah, surely,” he said, “I never did anything wrong, so why should I go anywhere else?” There are multitudes who believe that creed. They do not speak it out quite so plainly as the aged peasant did, but they mean it all the same. Ah, dear friends, you must be brought out of that delusion, and all these moral excellences and virtues must be a loss to you if you are to be saved.
How do we gain that intimate, bonded love, that experiential love with Christ? Clearly, it is not by rituals, tradition, self-righteous works, or any of our own efforts. Paul had done all that, and he never experienced this bond of intimate knowledge. In verse 7, he says that as an unbeliever he was saved when he considered all his gains as a loss, threw them away, and trusted in Christ and Christ alone. It was then that the surpassing knowledge of Christ came to him. Nobody will ever know the surpassing value of the Christ revealed in the Bible until they see all they are by birth, their tradition, and their own achievements and efforts as a loss, useless, and dung.
It is these things that blind people from seeing the surpassing value of Christ. True salvation alone can give this personal, living relationship and bond with Christ. Years of following traditions cannot give that. Rituals, infant baptism, and sincerity in outward religion cannot give that. The only way you will ever come to a deep knowledge and intimate love bond with Jesus Christ is through salvation by grace through faith. Nothing will make you acceptable before God. The way God appointed to find peace with Him, the burnt offering, is Christ alone. Stop looking anywhere else. The only place to look if you want to be saved is Christ. You start with Christ. That is where you begin, with this great Alpha. He says, “I am the door.” Christ is your first breath. He is your first answer when God speaks to you.
You do not make your own ways to God, but you realize Christ is the only way. To see that is saving faith. One comes to God not by works, not by labor, and not by doing. We must stop doing, and first look to the surpassing greatness of Christ, and entrust yourself to Him. That is how you gain Christ and be found in Him. This is the journey of Paul.
Second Calculation
Can we join Paul in his second calculation? As believers, can I ask you to join Paul’s second calculation? Remember, Paul was writing this to believers. Why can’t you describe your Christian experience as worshiping in spirit and rejoicing in Christ Jesus? Do you have this kind of joy and rejoicing in Christ Jesus? Do you see knowing Christ as the most valuable thing in your life, not just theoretically, but do you demonstrate that in your life? Can people see it? If not, why not?
It could be that you started doing the wrong calculation. You have not learned the second calculation of Paul and have gone back to the religion of confidence in the flesh. It could be that you stopped learning this new spiritual math and have started counting your gains. Remember how you were saved? You were thinking you were so good and proud about yourself. There was a time God made us see our depravity; everything we trusted broke, crumbled, and fell at our feet. We stood naked as depraved sinners with nowhere to hide. Through the Gospel, God made us see the perfect righteousness of Christ, so precious to us. We threw away all we trusted in, considered all that a loss, and put the weight of our souls on who Christ is and what He has done. Oh, what peace we found with God, what a glorious sight of Christ, what unbearable joy! We dared to venture everything upon Christ. Our days were filled with singing. “Oh, happy day, when all my burdens rolled away,” a happy, happy, divine peace.
As days and years passed, you have learned more of the Bible, joined a church, learned your duties and responsibilities as a believer, and started obeying them. You have some victory over sin. You are not a helpless sinner as before, but now you are maturing. You became proud of your prayer life, your Bible study, or your witnessing, or you started thinking God is pleased because of your human effort. Sometimes, you even think God owes you for what you have done.
Slowly, you stop rejoicing in Christ Jesus. Very subtly, you have allowed your performance, your efforts, your level of growth, and your attainments to be part of the ground of your standing before God. You have added these old, dirty patches of cloth to the perfect righteousness of Christ. Now, you have started counting gains outside Christ. Why? Because for three weeks, you have had victory over your besetting sin.
Therefore, you feel you have a surer foundation to approach God in prayer. “Oh, a better ground than Christ.” Then what happens in the fourth week? You fall before your besetting sin. And now, instead of being on the solid rock of Christ, you were walking on the thin thread of your victory as the grounds for your coming to God. Now, that thread is broken. Your ground is shattered, and you don’t come to God. You become estranged from the place of prayer. You pray less.
The lifeline that gives you strength to live by worshiping in spirit and rejoicing in Christ Jesus is gone. You don’t feel like praying. When you have no spiritual strength, you are tempted more, and you are vulnerable to sin. And you say, “How can I come to God when I am in this mess and have no communion with Christ?” So, why pray or read the Bible? And that attitude gives birth to more sin. You start on a road of long backsliding. But your conscience pricks you, and to pacify it, you maintain an outward form of religion, putting confidence in outward activities like coming to church and taking communion, without worshiping in spirit or rejoicing in Christ Jesus.
You see where it all started? Instead of standing on the solid rock, like Paul, considering all your attainments as a Christian a loss, you started counting gains in your Christian life. Oh, what a subtle danger to put confidence in the flesh! Are you resting now on your years of manifest improvement since conversion? Are you beginning to depend upon the regularity of your attendance at the means of grace, upon your private prayer, upon what you have given, or upon your preaching or anything else? Ah, it will not do. We must continue to stand where we stood at first, saying, “Yes, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Anything I achieved in the past and anything I can do in the present is a loss, a liability, if it is to be considered a ground for meritorious assumption. That’s why Paul said, “Beware of the dogs.” Put no confidence in the flesh. It will take away all worshiping in spirit and all rejoicing in Christ Jesus.
It will keep you from rejoicing in the Lord. When you lose that, the joy of the Lord is your strength and lifeline to live the Christian life. Once you cease rejoicing, you don’t have the battery power to live the Christian life. Oh, let us learn this great counting of losses from Paul.
Continue to count whatever you attain, whatever even God by grace does in your heart. Never put your confidence in that. See them as losses all your life, for the surpassing value of the saving acquaintance of Jesus Christ, my Lord, and continue to count it all as refuse. So that you may grow in an intimate, bonding knowledge of Him. You may know Him more and more.
This matter is like a balance: if one scale goes down, the other must go up. The weightier Christ’s influence is, the lighter the world and self-righteousness will be. And when Christ is all in all, then the world and self will be nothing at all.
It is rejoicing in Him alone. We will see next week that by being found in Him alone, you can experience the righteousness of God that comes from faith. Realizing that God treats me not as though I were, but because I am in Christ, He treats me as one in Christ, clothed with His perfect righteousness, one in His death and resurrection. Oh, what a standing that is! Romans 8 says, “Who can bring a charge against those whom God justifies?”
Come now, Christian, if you could go back, would you begin at the cross? If you could retrace your steps, would you begin again by resting upon Christ and by taking Him to be your all in all? Oh, may God open our eyes to see our standing in Christ as so glorious that Christ is more precious to us than all our gains.
Third Calculation
Again, you cannot join Paul in the third calculation and say, “For whom I have suffered the loss of all things,” but still I must put it to you: do you think you could have suffered the loss of all things if it had been required of you for Christ’s sake? Christ may not ask you to lose all, but He definitely put a condition that you should be ready to lose.
If life brings situations where you have to lose this or that, or you have to lose Christ here, what is your general trend? Sometimes you have to lose your lusts, sometimes your name, sometimes money, or benefits. Would you let all go rather than renounce your Lord? You can see it in small things in your life. What are you losing for Christ? Why are you not growing in assurance? Is it not because you fail to grow in this calculation?
This is another test by which you can evaluate your life. How much are you losing for Christ’s sake? If you are gaining in the world, all that becomes more important to you. Your life is not losing anything, so you are not rejoicing in Christ Jesus like Paul. You don’t have any idea of the surpassing value of Christ, because when you have that sense, you may not practically lose all things, but at least you will count them as dung compared to Christ’s sake. Oh, not for you. Those are precious things you hold on to, right?
If Christ is so valuable for us, if we see the surpassing value of the knowledge of Christ, would you want to share about Him with your friends, colleagues, and relatives? Whatever a person values for himself, he values for others. See yourself in that event: why was your mouth so silent? Your name was so important, a big gain for you. You gained by not talking about Christ. Why don’t people always see you rejoicing in Christ Jesus? Why is your face so sad that day? You are not rejecting the joy of the Lord because you know your heart.
You may judge your own sincerity by the measure of your desire for the salvation of others. Oh, may my God open our eyes.
Learn these three calculations. The first one will save you. The second will help you grow in the Christian life. And the third one will increase your assurance.
Let me close with this story. In the 1730s in England, a young man named George Whitefield desperately wanted to be right before God. As a student at Oxford, he was part of the Holy Club, along with John and Charles Wesley. The members of that club rose early every day for lengthy devotions, two or three hours. They disciplined themselves so as not to waste a minute of the day. They wrote a diary every night in which they examined and condemned themselves for any fault during that day. They fasted each Wednesday and Friday and set aside Saturday as a sabbath to prepare for the Lord’s Day. They took communion each Sunday. They tried to persuade others to attend church and to refrain from evil. They visited the prisons and gave money to help the inmates and to provide for the education of their children.
Whitefield nearly ruined his health by going out in cold weather and lying prostrate before God for hours, crying out for deliverance from sin and Satan. For seven weeks he was sick in bed, confessing his sins and spending hours praying and reading his Greek New Testament.
Yet, by his own admission, he was not saved, because he was trusting in all these things to save him. Finally, “in a sense of utter desperation, in rejection of all self-trust, he cast his soul on the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and a ray of faith, granted him from above, assured him he would not be cast out.” (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, 1:77; see pages 60-77 for full account). The burden of his sins was lifted, he was filled with joy, and he went on to become the great evangelist used by God in the First Great Awakening.
Thankfully, we do not all have to go through the agony of soul that George Whitefield went through. But we must all come to the same place he did, where we throw overboard as worthless all trust in human merit and cling to the Lord Jesus Christ as our only basis for acceptance with God. If we lose all our pride and self-trust in exchange for Christ and His merit, we gain everything!
Boy, what a testimony. What a list. All these are on the “profit” side, things every person would run after: “circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” Think of every person who lives for this: rituals, race, tribe, caste, tradition, outward religion, sincerity. What will my caste people say? What will my relatives say? That is what takes people to hell. Sources
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 