Before and After
Dearly beloved by the Father, have you ever been tempted to judge your life from a worldly perspective? If anyone could have, it was the Apostle Paul.
“For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh, Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any man thinks that he has whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” Philippians 3:3-6 and following.
He had all the right worldly credentials. He came from the right race, the right family, he had the right education, he was in the right party, he moved in the upper echelons of the religious elite of his day, and he had the commitment, drive, and passion to go places.
Then something happened to him on the road to Damascus that radically changed his life; he met the Lord Jesus Christ.
“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.”
Paul was no longer the same person; he did a complete one eighty. What before had been “gain,” he now considered “loss.” You can imagine what his family, his friends, and the elite that he ran with thought. “He’s throwing away everything he worked for.”
“Yea doubtless, and I 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, and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of [believing concerning] Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith [the right way of believing]:”
His standards changed. His believing changed. He counted his former manner of life as dung. How could he have expressed the difference that the excelling knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord made in his life more forcibly?
“That [As a result] I know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable [having become conformed] unto His death; if by any means I might attain unto the [out] resurrection of the dead.”
Knowing Christ and his accomplishments changed everything for Paul. Forgetting the things that were behind and stretching forward toward the things that were ahead, he pressed toward the goal for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. We should imitate him.
Dearly beloved, our citizenship is in heaven, from where we patiently wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our death doomed mortal body so that it has the same form as his glorious body according to the energizing by which he is able to subdue all things to himself.
The world holds nothing for us any longer; Christ holds everything.
Therefore, my dearly beloved brethren, stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved. See yourself through his accomplishments; they are greater than any worldly accomplishments you could ever amass.