Beautiful trade.

SCRIPTURE:  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 ESV

THOUGHT: You just read a 91-word sentence.

Sometimes I wonder if Paul was one of those little kids who talked and talked his mother to distraction? But if you’re willing to parse through all those words, there is so much richness there. You can sense that saying things wholly is important – he tries hard to capture not just essence, but also nuance. Here, he could have just said, “I’ve put all my eggs in one basket – Christ.” But he felt compelled to remind us that he went through a lot of losses in his life in order to do that: his fine education, the respect of his peers, all his cries of “anathema!” to the followers of Christ, all the networking and ladder climbing he did as a young man, his standing in the synagogue and his standing as a Roman citizen. Eventually, it all had to go if he was to embrace the Jesus who blinded him on the road to Emmaus. Paul had to completely give up his notion of who God is. By his own testimony, he says, “I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women (Acts 22:4).”

Paul thought he was doing God a favor.

But then he feels compelled to tell us he didn’t just give up former things he trusted, they became as rubbish to him after encountering the power of the living, resurrected Jesus – who had a simple but powerful question for him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me (Acts 9:4)?” The God who asks questions caught up with him, and for once, he was silent, not eating or drinking, but in prayer for three days, trying to hold on to his own logic and failing, opting instead to accept God-logic; trading in his self-righteousness under the law for the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that which comes through faith in Christ. He wanted to gain and be found in Christ. He was eaten up with the passion to by any means possible … attain the resurrection.

In short, Paul did attain a resurrection of a type. In those three days he transformed from the man who thought Jesus was rubbish to the man who saw his own attempts at right standing with God as rubbish. What a beautiful trade. To give up what you cannot keep for what you cannot lose.

PRAYER: Oh God, help us be fully gripped by the same epiphany that gripped the man once known as Saul.