by Larry Ferrell | March 9, 2018
Here Paul says that he learned to count all human effort as loss that he might win Christ. To state these truths he uses the figure of a balance sheet, showing assets and liabilities. He says that he has learned to reckon all the assets he had earned before he knew Christ as liabilities and to enter into his new column of assets the name of Jesus Christ alone. We must realize that human righteousness is nothing when measured against the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus Christ and that God is right to insist upon His standards.

In the first place, human righteousness falls short of the standards set by God, and anything short of those standards is unrighteousness. Righteousness is one of those things like perfection that loses its meaning entirely if you divide it. Perfection is a whole. Righteousness is exactly the same. You are either entirely righteous by God’s definition or you are not righteous at all. Jesus Christ said in what is undoubtedly the most important single verse in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be perfect, therefore, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). That is the standard! All fall short of it, and falling short of it, they miss it all. There is a second reason why human righteousness is not adequate when measured against the goodness of God. Human goodness, even at best, is polluted by sin. We do good things, but all of our good deeds, even the best of them, are contaminated by sin. And because sin is there, sin can always break forth into death. That is why the noblest ideals and the most sublime ideologies of human beings lead away from God. God must pronounce a curse upon them in order that true righteousness might be established through the work of Jesus Christ.

In verses 4-8, Paul illustrates these principles from his own experience. Humanly speaking he had acquired all the assets that anyone could imagine. He was a Jew, and Jews had always had a special place in God’s dealings with the human race. But in terms of salvation Paul came to admit that these things had actually kept him from God. He writes, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:7-8). Paul lists seven achievements in these verses, those that were inherited and those that were earned. That is a real list of assets from a human point of view. But the day came when Paul saw what this was in the light of the righteous God. Probably the most important word in the entire third chapter is the word that begins verse seven: “but.” That “but” marks Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus when Paul first saw Jesus and learned what God’s righteousness was. He thought before this that he had attained righteousness by keeping the law. But when he saw Christ he knew that all his righteousness was as filthy rags.

That is the work of God in a human heart. Paul came to the point where he opened his ledger book. He looked at what he had accumulated by inheritance and by his efforts and reflected that these things actually kept him from Christ. He then took the entire list and placed it where it belonged – under the list of liabilities. He called it “loss,” and under assets he wrote, “Jesus Christ alone.”

Philippians 3:4-8 Reflection Questions:
Have you exchanged your assets for Christ? Or are you trusting in the kind of goodness that will never be accepted by God?
What are the inherited assets that Paul had? What were Paul’s earned assets?
Have you reached the point in your Christian walk were you count all your inherited and earned assets as loss and put “Jesus Christ alone” as your only true asset?

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