IBS Application for Philippians 3:8

“Indeed, 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...”

Paul learned loss and sacrifice for the sake of knowing Jesus. This was as crucial to his walk with Christ as it is to ours. Why? Because these things trip us up, distract us, and lead us away from Christ and what He has done for us.

The specifics of that “everything” that Paul talked about were his pedigree and his faithfulness to the Law. It was essentially all about the titles and power he had been born into and attained through his own works. But upon receiving the revelation of who Jesus is and what He had done in dying on the cross, Paul realized just how useless all of those things were to him; none of those things could save him from the judgement that he was due, because all of his works were infinitely lesser than those of Christ, whose life and work on the cross fulfilled the whole Law, which was the very set of rules that Paul had sought salvation in.

Works and worldly gain are loss in God’s economy. They cannot save. Only the grace of God through faith in Jesus can do that. Paul flat out states that in order to gain Christ and the grace that allows us to live, he had to throw away everything that he once clung to for identity, status and security.

This is something we as the Church all have to do. It’s all part of counting the cost of becoming a follower of Jesus. He saw no gain in the things of the world, for they are all loss compared to the glory of the Kingdom of God. Likewise, there is no lasting gain in the world, especially for the likes of us, whose lot in this life is death for all, for we have all sinned and have failed to meet the standard set by Christ.


My application for this IBS will be to start praying to God for the next few days that He would show me the things in my life that I still need to lay down for the sake of following Him. I know that there are still things in my life that have weighed me down in this race, so I need to start throwing them off in order to be the best follower I can be. I’ll also be praying for the strength and integrity I need to lose these things for His sake.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IBS Application for Jeremiah 23:23-24 “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.” There is something comforting and humbling about this truth. God is a God who is always close. He is immanent in our lives, meaning He is everywhere. There are some other places in Scripture where the idea is expressed that the heavens cannot contain Him. He is never not present; there is no place in the universe where He is not. As such, there is nothing we can do to escape from God. David, in Psalm 139, mentions this idea: “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence?” God is everywhere. It logically follows that He is intimately aware of all that we are doing and what is happening to us. I know that in this case God was addressing the faithlessness of Israel’s prophets, who were prophesying falsely i
Read more
IBS Application for Ephesians 6:1 & Colossians 3:20 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” I can’t talk about these passages without immediately thinking about all the ways in which this command has been abused in my own life. God’s command here has never been a hard one for me to follow. But it has led to some instances of strife in my life. Sometimes intense strife. Don’t get me wrong; neither of my parents have ever told me to do something that was outright and obviously morally compromising. But there was a time of my life when being obedient was actually the wrong thing to do. Not because the act of obedience was bad in itself; rather, it was because both I and the parent in question were refusing to be obedient to our Heavenly Father. I imagine that the part about how me acting in obedience to my parent was sinful doesn’t make much sense. Essentially, my parent was
Read more
IBS Application for 1 Corinthians 9:22 “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” Paul had a thorough understanding of what would be needed to reach and share the message of the Gospel with anyone and everyone he came across. While this certainly could be attributed to him having the gift of discernment, it’s also true that he was a very intelligent man who knew how to address an audience. He made use of the blessings of education he had received in his upbringing to glorify Christ. In the same way that Paul was prepared to be able to minister and witness to those who had yet to hear the message of salvation on a rhetorical level, I believe that it may be prudent for us as the modern church to follow his example in this regard, that we too might be used by God to save nonbelievers. I’m not saying that everyone should study rhetoric in the same way and at the same level that Paul had d
Read more