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“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 ⁹ 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; ¹⁰ that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, ¹¹ if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. ¹² Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. ¹³ Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, ¹⁴ I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Dearly Beloved Fellow Believers,

If we are going to get anywhere or accomplish anything, it is necessary for us to have a goal. We need to have clearly in mind what it is that we want to achieve and to know what we need to do in order to achieve it. This is true whether the goal is something grand and long-range or just something small and short-range. Our goal may be something big like getting an education or raising a family, something that will take years and a lot of hard work to complete. Or it may be something as small as completing our duties and chores for a single day. In any case, a clear goal is necessary, for without it we would be aimless, wasting time and resources on things that will not get us anywhere.

If goals are so important for this life, then surely it is far more important to have a goal beyond this life, for the life and world to come. To have goals only for this life is to be extremely short-sighted. To put it another way, it is not enough for us to have goals within our life; our life itself needs to have a goal, a purpose. As disciples of Christ and children of God, we have such a goal: everlasting life with Christ. Our whole life and everything in it should then be ordered and directed in such a way as to advance us toward this goal. That we may do this, we listen today to the apostle Paul, who reminds us of our goal and exhorts us by the Holy Spirit to continue toward it.

Recognize and gladly sacrifice the things that are no help in reaching our goal.

We see from our text that the apostle Paul was a man who had his life and all the things of his life very much in the proper perspective. It is this perspective that he also urges on all his fellow believers. In the verses that lead up to our text, Paul looks at all the things in his life that would ordinarily be considered advantages, and then he gives his appraisal of them. He mentions his background. He was “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” (Phil. 3:5,6). In the society in which Paul grew up and lived he had all the right credentials; he had all the best advantages. To put it in contemporary terms, he had all the right things in his resume. For most of his life Paul had been proud of these things, and he had put great stock in them. But when he came to believe in Christ, his attitude toward those things changed radically; he counted them all loss. He realized that all those things, by themselves, apart from Christ, gained him nothing. Even circumcision, that God-given rite that brought him under the covenant, which made him a part of God’s people—even that was of no value to him apart from Christ.

In our text, Paul takes this all another step further. He says, “I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” He had made great sacrifices for the sake of Christ. He had “suffered the loss of all things,” he says. He had been a highly respected member of Jewish society; he was well educated, very gifted, the kind of man that people would seek out for advice. His name was one that would come up when there was a need for someone to fill an important position. But now as a disciple and apostle of Jesus Christ, Paul was an outcast from that society; he had lost his former friends, colleagues, and allies. His life up to the time of his conversion to Christ had no doubt been a comfortable one. Now he had a hard life of toil and hardship as he traveled the Roman world as an ambassador for Christ. He endured beatings from enemies of the Gospel; once he was even stoned and left for dead. In his travels and work he endured cold, hunger, shipwrecks (three times!) (2 Corinthians 11:23-27). Paul says here that he didn’t regret any sacrifice that he had made for the sake of Christ.

May we all say the same thing as Paul says here, for every believer makes sacrifices in order to follow Christ, and we are no exceptions. We have given up things for the sake of Christ. We have given up time for worship and Bible study that we might otherwise have spent on selfish pursuits. We have given money for the support of the gospel. Perhaps some of us have lost friends, a promising relationship, a job opportunity, a business opportunity for the sake of Christ. Such things Christians give up in order to follow Christ and be faithful to Him. Now our point here is not to boast about our sacrifices; it is not to be proud of how much we have sacrificed for Christ. Certainly not, for we all have to confess that we have not always made the sacrifices that we should have made; we have sometimes placed other things ahead of Christ. But it is good to realize that we have given up things for Christ, so that we may ask ourselves, “Do I regret it?” May we answer as Paul does here and say that we don’t regret a single thing that we have sacrificed for Christ. May we see clearly that whatever we have given up for Him would be of no use in reaching our goal, which is everlasting life.

Continue to strive for the goal

Paul did not regret the sacrifices he had made for the sake of Christ and the Gospel because he had in mind the goal of everlasting life. He realized that that prize was his only through Christ. Getting to his goal and laying hold on the prize would happen only if he continued to hold to Christ by faith. So, Paul says that this is what was most important to him: “That I may gain Christ.undefined

Let this be what is most important to us also, that we may gain Christ. If we lose anything that we now have in this world, whether it be money, possessions, friends, or anything else, such a loss we can stand, be it ever so great and ever so painful. The one loss we could not stand would be the loss of Christ, should anything ever become more important to us than He, should anything ever completely crowd Him out of our life or replace Him on the throne of our heart. Our highest goal must ever be that stated here by Paul: to “be found in Him.” When God our judge finds us may He find us believing in Jesus. When Christ returns may He find us watching and ready, believing and trusting in His righteousness, not our own. May He find us trusting in His sacrifice, His blood which cleanses us from all sin.

Striving for the goal of everlasting life means knowing the power of Christ’s resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. What this means in our daily life is that we put to death and crucify our sinful nature. The old Adam, the old sinful nature in us that resists God and wants to sin can’t be reformed; it has to be put to death. We do this by daily repenting of our sins. When we do this, we confess that we have no natural life in ourselves; the only life that we have is in the resurrection life of Christ. Repenting of our sins, resisting temptation, striving against sin is knowing the power of His resurrection, for it means that sin doesn’t reign in us anymore, it doesn’t have the upper hand. Rather it is put to death; it died and was buried with Christ.

When we strive for the goal of everlasting life we strive to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of us (v.12 of the text). We are believers bound for heaven for one reason, and for one reason only: Jesus Christ has laid hold of us. God’s grace in Christ has taken hold of us by the Gospel.

Knowing this, then, press on. Don’t look back at what you have given up or the life that you might have had, that you have left behind. Press forward, keeping in mind your goal at all times: the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.

—Rev. John Klatt

Watertown, SD

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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.