Monday
Monday
Christianity Is Christ
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, for whose sake I have lost all things.
Philippians 3:7–8
It is extraordinary how many people think that the essence of Christianity is either believing the creed or living an upright life or going to church, all of which are important but miss the centrality of Christ. They need to read Paul’s letter to the Philippians and especially note 1:21: “For to me, to live is Christ.”
The apostle enlarges on this in chapter 3. He draws up a kind of profit-and-loss account. On one side of the ledger he puts everything he can think of that could be considered profitable—his ancestry, parentage, and education; his Hebrew culture; his religious zeal and legalistic righteousness. In the other column he writes one word only—Christ. Then he makes a careful calculation and concludes, “I count everything sheer loss, far outweighed by the gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (v. 8 REB). “Knowing Christ” is the claim to a personal relationship with Christ that occurs repeatedly in the New Testament.
Next, the apostle continues, “For whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (v. 8), where he is likened to a treasure one can “gain.”
Paul also writes of being “found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (v. 9). We need to unpack this involved sentence. God is righteous. It stands to reason, therefore, that if we are to enter his presence, we must be righteous too. There are only two possible ways of doing this. One is to establish our own righteousness by obedience to the law, which is impossible. The other is to receive righteousness as a gift from Christ who died for us, if we trust in him.
So for salvation we are those who glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in ourselves. Christianity is Christ—knowing him, gaining him, and trusting him.
For further reading: Philippians 3:3–11