_NO CONFIDENCE IN THE FLESH._
The third chapter contains the portion of this Epistle in which,
perhaps, one is hardest put to it to keep pace with the writer. Here he
gives us one of his most remarkable expositions of true Christian
religion as he knew it, and as he maintains it must essentially exist
for others also. He does this in a burst of thought and feeling
expressed together: so that, if we are to take his meaning, the fire and
the light must both alike do their work upon us; we must feel and see
both at once. This is one of the pages to which a Bible reader turns
again and again. It is one of the passages that have special power to
find and to stir believing men.
Yet it seems to find its place in the letter almost incidentally.
It would seem, as some have thought, that in the first verse of this
chapter the Apostle begins to draw his letter to a close. Cheerful words
of farewell begin to shape themselves. At the same time a closing
reference is in view to some practical danger that required to be
guarded against. Almost suddenly things take a new turn, and a flood of
great ideas claim and take their place.
"Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord." Rejoice, Be of good cheer,
was the common formula of leave-taking. The same word is translated
"farewell" in 2 Cor. xiii. 11 (Authorised and Revised Versions). But the
Apostle, especially in this Epistle, which is itself inspired by so much
of Christian gladness, cannot but emphasise the proper meaning of the
customary phrase. Rejoice, yes, rejoice, my brethren, in the Lord. The
same turn of thought recurs again in ch. iv. 4. What it is fitted to
suggest will be equally in place when we reach that point.
Now he seems to be on the point of introducing some subject already
referred to, either in this or in a previous Epistle. It concerned the
safety of the Philippians, and it required some courteous preface in
touching on it once again; so that, most likely, it was a point of some
delicacy. Some have thought this topic might be the tendency to
dissension which had appeared in Philippi. It is a subject which comes
up again in ch. iv.: it may have been upon the point of coming up here.
The closing words of ver. 1 might well enough preface such a reference.
The theme was not so pleasant as some of those on which he had written:
it might be delicate for him to handle; and it might call for some
effort on their part to take it well. Yet it concerned their safety they
that should fully realise this element of the situation, and should
take the right view of it. Therefore also the Apostle would not count it
irksome to do his part in relation to it. People entangled in a fault
are in circumstances not favourable to a right estimate of their own
case. They need help from those who can judge more soundly. Yet help
must be tendered with a certain considerateness.
But at this point a new impulse begins to operate. Perhaps the Apostle
was interrupted, and, before he could resume, some news reaches him,
awakening afresh the indignation with which he always regarded the
tactics of the Judaisers. Nothing indicates that the Philippian Church
was much disposed to Judaise. But if at this juncture some new
disturbance from the Judaisers befell his work at Rome, or if news of
that kind reached him from some other field, it might suggest the
possibility of those sinister influences finding their way also to
Philippi. This is, of course, a conjecture merely; but it is not an
unreasonable one. It has been offered as an explanation of the somewhat
sudden burst of warning that breaks upon us in ch. iii. 2; while, in the
more tranquil strain of ch. iv., topics are resumed which easily link
themselves to ch. iii. 1.[3]
[3] In the text Ewald's suggestion is followed, in the form given to it
by Lightfoot. Meyer's view, however, may seem simpler to some readers.
He thinks that "the same things" of ch. iii. 1 are the warnings against
Judaising which actually follow in ver. 2. According to Meyer, the
Apostle had already, in a previous Epistle, warned the Philippians
against the Judaisers, and he considers it "safer" for them and "not
irksome" to himself to repeat the admonition. In this view the
connection between vv. 1 and 2 may be stated in this way: "Rejoice in
the Lord;" and, need I repeat it?--yes, it is better that I should
repeat it,--rejoicing in the Lord is wholly contrary to that boasting in
the flesh which characterises some great religious pretenders well known
to you and me. Beware of them! The energetic scorn of the phrasing is
explained by supposing that the circumstances and the argument of the
former Epistle had led to this animated denunciation, so that the
Apostle recapitulates phrases that were well remembered in the
Philippian congregation.
Still, even if this denunciation of Judaising comes in rather
unexpectedly, it does not really disturb the main drift of the Epistle,
nor does it interfere with the lessons which the Philippians were to
learn. It rather contributes to enforce the views and deepen the
impressions at which Paul aims. For the denunciation becomes the
occasion of introducing a glowing description of how Christ found Paul,
and what Paul found in Christ. This is set against the religion of
Judaising. But at the same time, and by the nature of the case, it
becomes a magnificent exposure and rebuke of all fleshly religionising,
of all the ways of being religious that are superficial, self-confident,
and worldly-minded. It also becomes a stirring call to what is most
central and vital in Christian religion. If then there was at Philippi,
as there is everywhere, a tendency to be too easily contented with what
they had attained; or to reconcile Christianity with self-seeking; or to
indulge a Christianised arrogance and quarrelsomeness; or, in any other
shape, "having begun in the spirit to be made perfect in the
flesh,"--here was exactly what they needed. Here, too, they might find a
vivid representation of the "one spirit" in which they were to "stand
fast," the "one soul" in which they were to "labour" together (ch. i.
27). That "one spirit" is the mind which is caught, held, vitalised,
continually drawn upwards and forwards, by the revelation and the
appropriation of Christ.
The truth is that a remiss Christianity always becomes very much a
Judaism. Such Christianity assumes that a life of respectable
conventions, carried on within sacred institutions, will please God and
save our souls. What the Apostle has to set against Judaism may very
well be set against that in all its forms.
"Keep an eye on the dogs, on the evil workers, on the concision." The
Judaisers are not to occupy him very long, but we see they are going to
be thoroughly disposed of. Dogs is a term borrowed from their own
vocabulary. They classed the Gentiles (even the uncircumcised
Christians) as dogs, impure beings who devoured all kinds of meat and
were open to all kinds of uncleanness. But themselves, the Apostle
intimates, were the truly impure, shutting themselves out from the true
purity, the heart's purity, and (as Dr. Lightfoot expresses it)
"devouring the garbage of carnal ordinances." They were also evil
workers, mischievous busybodies, pertinaciously busy, but busy to undo
rather than to build up what is good, "subverting men's souls" (Acts
xv. 24). And they were the concision; not the circumcision according to
the true intent of that ordinance, but the concision, the mutilation or
gashing. Circumcision was a word which carried in its heart a high
meaning of separation from evil and of consecration to the Lord. That
meaning (and therefore also the word which carried it) pertained to
gospel believers, whether outwardly circumcised or not. For the
Judaising zealots could be claimed only a circumcision which had lost
its sense, and which no more deserved the name,--a senseless gashing of
the flesh, a concision. All these terms seem to be levelled at certain
persons who are in the Apostle's view, and are not unknown to the
Philippians, though not necessarily resident in that city.
For any full statement of the grounds of the Apostle's indignation at
the Judaising propaganda, the reader must be referred to the expository
writings on other Epistles, especially on those to the Corinthians and
to the Galatians. Here a few words must suffice. Judaising made the
highest pretensions to religious security and success; it proposed to
expound the only worthy and genuine view of man's relation to God. But
in reality the Judaisers wholly misrepresented Christianity, for they
had missed the main meaning of it. Judaising turned men's minds away
from what was highest to what was lowest,--from love to law, from God's
gifts to man's merits, from inward life and power to outward ceremonial
performance, from the spiritual and eternal to the material and the
temporary. It was a huge, melancholy mistake; and yet it was pressed
upon Christians as the true religion, which availed with God, and could
alone bring blessing to men. Hence, as our Lord denounced the Pharisees
with special energy,--sometimes with withering sarcasm (Luke xi.
47),--so, and for the same reasons, does Paul attack the Judaisers. The
Pharisees applied themselves to turn the religion of Israel into a
soul-withering business of formalism and pride; and Paul's opponents
strove to pervert to like effect even the gracious and life-giving
gospel of Christ. To such he would give place, no, not for an hour.
Two things may be suggested here. One is the responsibility incurred by
those who make a religious profession, and in that character endeavour
to exert religious influence upon others. Such men are taking
possession, as far as they can, of what is highest and most sacred in
the soul's capacities; and if they misdirect the soul's life here, if
consciously or unconsciously they betray interests so sacred, if they
successfully teach men to take false coin for true in the matter of the
soul's dealings with God and with its own welfare, their responsibility
is of the heaviest.
Another point to notice is the energy with which the Apostle thinks it
right to denounce these evil workers. Denunciation is a line of things
in which, as we know very well, human passion is apt to break loose--the
wrath of man which worketh not the righteousness of God. The history of
religious controversy has made this very plain. Yet surely we may say
that zeal for truth must sometimes show itself in an honest indignation
against the wilfulness and the blindness of those who are misleading
others. It is not always well to be merely mild and placable. That may
arise in some cases from no true charity, but rather from indifference,
or from an amiability that is indolent and selfish. It is good to be
zealously affected in a good thing. Only, we have reason to take heed to
ourselves and to our own spirit, when we are moved to be zealous in the
line of condemning and denouncing. Not all who do so have approved their
right to do it, by tokens of spiritual wisdom and single-hearted
sincerity such as marked the life and work of Paul.
The Judaisers put abroad the false coin, and believers in Christ,
whether circumcised or not, had the true. "We are the circumcision, who
worship by the Spirit of God, and who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put
no confidence in the flesh." Such are truly Abraham's children (Gal.
iii. 29). To them belong whatever relation to God, and interest in God,
were shadowed forth by circumcision in the days of old.
No doubt, the rite of circumcision was outward; and no doubt it came to
be connected with a great system of outward ordinances and outward
providences. Yet circumcision, according to the Apostle, pointed not
outwards, but inwards (Rom. ii. 28, 29). Elsewhere he lays stress on
this, that circumcision, when first given, was a seal of faith. In the
Old Testament itself, the complaint made by the prophets, speaking for
God, was that the people, though circumcised in flesh, were of
uncircumcised heart and uncircumcised ears. And God threatens to punish
Israel with the Gentiles--the circumcised with the uncircumcised--because
all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.
The true circumcision then must be those, in the first place, who have
the true, the essentially true worship. Circumcision set men apart as
worshippers of the true God: hence Israel came to be thought of as a
people "instantly serving (or worshipping) God day and night." That this
worship must include more than outward service in order to be a
success--that it should include elements of high spiritual worth, was
disclosed in Old Testament revelation with growing clearness. One
promise on which it rested was: "The Lord thy God will circumcise thine
heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live." The true
circumcision, those who answer to the type which circumcision was meant
to set, must be those who have the true worship. Now that is the worship
"by the Spirit"; on which we shall have a word to say presently.
And again, the true circumcision must be those who have the true
glorying. Israel, called to glory in their God, were set apart also to
cherish in that connection a great hope, which was to bless their line,
and, through them, the world. That hope was fulfilled in Christ. The
true circumcision were those who welcomed the fulfilment of the
promise, who rejoiced in the fulness of the blessing, because they had
eyes to see and hearts to feel its incomparable worth.
And certainly, therefore, as men who had discovered the true foundation
and refuge, they must renounce and turn from the false trust, they must
put no confidence in the flesh. Is this, however, a paradox? Was not
circumcision "outward, in the flesh"? Was it not found to be a congruous
part of a concrete system, built up of "elements of this world"? Was not
the temple a "worldly sanctuary," and were not the sacrifices "carnal
ordinances"? Yes; and yet the true circumcision did not trust in
circumcision. He who truly took the meaning of that remarkable
dispensation was trained to say, "Doth not my soul wait on God? from Him
cometh my salvation." And he was trained to renounce the confidences in
which the nations trusted. Hence, though such a man could accept
instruction and impression from many an ordinance and many a providence,
he was still led to place his trust higher than the flesh. And now, when
the true light was come, when the Kingdom of God shone out in its
spiritual principles and forces, the true circumcision must be found in
those who turned from that which appealed only to the earthly and the
fleshly mind, that they might fasten on that in which God revealed
Himself to contrite and longing souls.
* * * * *
The Apostle therefore claimed the inheritance and representation of the
ancient holy people for spiritual believers, rather than for Judaising
ritualists. But apart from questions as to the connection between
successive covenants, it is worth our while to weigh well the
significance of those features of Christian religion which are here
emphasised.
"We," he says, "worship by the Spirit of God." The Holy Spirit was not
absent from the old economy. But in those days the consciousness and the
faith of His working were dim, and the understanding of the scope of it
was limited. In the times of the New Testament, on the contrary, the
promise and the presence of the Spirit assume a primary place. This is
the great promise of the Father which was to come into manifestation and
fulfilment when Christ had gone away. This, from Pentecost onwards, was
to be distinctive of the character of Christ's Church. According to the
Apostle Paul, it is one great end of Christ's redemption, that we may
receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. So, in particular,
Christian worship is by the Spirit of God. Therefore it is a real and
most inward fellowship with God. In this worship it is the office of the
Holy Spirit to give us a sense of the reality of Divine things,
especially of the truths and promises of God; to touch our hearts with
their goodness, on account especially of the Divine love that breathes
in them; to dispose us to decision, in the way of consent and surrender
to God as thus revealed. He takes the things of Christ, and shows them
to us. So he brings us, in our worship, to meet with God, mind to mind,
heart to heart. Although all our thoughts, as well as all our desires,
come short, yet, in a measure, a real consent with God about His Son and
about the blessings of His Son's gospel comes to pass. Then we sing with
the Spirit, when our songs are filled with confidence and admiration,
arising out of a sense of God's glory and grace; and we pray in the Holy
Ghost, when our supplications express this loving and thankful close
with God's promises. It is our calling and our blessedness to worship by
the Spirit of God. Much of our worship might fall silent, if this alone
should be upheld: yet this alone avails and finds God. Whatever obscures
this, or distracts attention from it, whether it be called Jewish or
Christian, does not aid worship, but mars it.
It is true that the presence of the Spirit of God is not discernible
otherwise than by the fruits of His working. And the difficulty may be
raised, how can we, in practice, be secure of having the Spirit, thereby
to worship God? But, on the one hand, we know in some degree what the
nature of the worship is which He sustains; we can form some conception
of the attitude and exercise of soul towards Christ and God which
constitutes that worship. We do therefore know something as to what we
should seek; we are aware of the direction in which our face should be
set. On the other hand, the presence of the Spirit with us, to make such
worship real in our case, is an object of faith. We believe in God for
that gracious presence, and ask for it; and so doing, we expect it,
according to God's own promise. On this understanding we apply ourselves
to find entrance and progress in the worship which is by the Spirit.
All appliances which are supposed to aid worship, which are conceived to
add to its beauty, pathos, or sublimity, are tolerable only so far as
they do not tend to divert us from the worship which is by the Spirit.
Experience shows that men are extremely prone to fall back from the
simplicity and intentness of spiritual worship; and then they cover the
gap, which they cannot fill, by outward arrangements of an impressive
and affecting kind. Outward arrangements can render real service to
worshippers, only if they remove hindrances, and supply conditions under
which the simplicity and intentness of the worship "by the Spirit" may
go on undisturbed. Very often they have tended exactly in the contrary
direction; not the less because they have been introduced, perhaps, with
the best intentions. And yet the chief question of all is not the more
or less, the this or that, of such circumstantials; but rather what the
heart fixes on and holds by.
Again, we "glory in Christ Jesus." Christians are rich and great,
because Christ Jesus assumes a place in their mind and life, such as
makes them partakers of all spiritual blessing in Him. They glory, not
in what they are, or do, or become, or get, but in Christ. Glorying in
anything implies a deep sense of its wonderfulness and worth, along
with some persuasion that it has a happy relation to ourselves. So
Christ is the power and wisdom of God, the revelation of the Father, the
way to the Father, the centre of blessing, the secret of religious
restoration, attainment, and success: and He is ours; and He sets the
type of what we through Him shall be. To glory and triumph in Christ is
a leading characteristic of Christian religion.
And so, then, we "put no confidence in the flesh." If in Christ, under
the revelation which centres in Him, we have found the way to God and
the liberty to serve God, then all other ways must be for us _ipso
facto_ exposed and condemned; they are seen to be fallacious and
fruitless. All these other ways are summed up in "the flesh." For the
flesh is human nature fallen, with the resources which it wields, drawn
from itself or from earthly materials of some kind. And in some
selection or combination of these resources, the religion of the flesh
stands. The renunciation of trust in such ways of establishing a case
before God is included in the acceptance of Christ's authority and
Christ's salvation. This condemns alike the confidence in average
morality, and that in accredited ecclesiastical surroundings. It
condemns confidence in even the holiest Christian rites, as if they
could transfer us, by some intrinsic virtue, into the Kingdom of God, or
could accredit our standing there. The same holds of confidence in
doctrines, and even of confidence in sentiments. Rites, doctrines, and
sentiments have their place of honour, as lines in which Christ and we
may meet. Otherwise they all fall into the category of the flesh. Many
things the flesh can do, in worship as in other departments; but it
cannot attain to the worship that is by the Spirit of God. Much it can
boast of; but it cannot replace Immanuel; it cannot fill the place of
the reconciliation and the life. When we learn what kind of confidence
is needed towards God, and find the ground of it in the Christ of God,
then we cease to rely on the flesh.
At this point the Apostle cannot but emphasise his own right to speak.
He appeals to his remarkable history. He knows all about this Judaic
religion, which glories in the flesh, and he knows also the better way.
The experience which had transformed his life entitled him to a hearing;
for, indeed, he, as no man else, had searched out the worth of both the
ways of it. So he is led into a remarkable testimony regarding the
nature and the working forces of true Christian religion. And this,
while it serves the purpose of throwing deserved disgrace on the poor
religion of Judaising, serves at the same time a higher and more durable
purpose. It sets the glory of the life of faith, love, and worship,
against the meanness of all fleshly life whatever; and thus it vividly
impresses on all hearers and readers the alternatives with which we have
to deal, and the greatness of the choice which we are called to make.
If Paul decries the Jewish glorying in the flesh, it is not because he
lacked ground, that had enabled him to cherish it and might enable him
still to do so. "I also have material enough of fleshly confidence:--if
any other thinks to have confidence in the flesh, I more." Then comes
the remarkable catalogue of the prerogatives which had once meant so
much for Saul of Tarsus, filling his heart with confidence and
exultation. "Circumcised the eighth day"--for he was no proselyte, but
born within the fold: "of the stock of Israel"--for neither had his
parents been proselytes: in particular, for he was one whose pedigree
was ascertained and notorious, "of the tribe of Benjamin": "an Hebrew of
Hebrews"--nursed and trained, that is to say, in the very speech and
spirit of the chosen people; not, as some of them, bred up in a foreign
tongue, and under alien influences: "concerning the law, a
Pharisee"--that is, "of the strictest sect of our religion" (Acts xxvi.
5); for, as a Pharisee, Saul had given himself wholly to know the law,
to keep the law, to teach the law. More yet--"as to zeal, a persecutor
of the Church"; in this clause the heat of the writer's spirit rises
into pathetic irony and self-scorn: "This appropriate outcome of carnal
Judaism, alas, was not lacking in me: _I_ was not a Judaiser of the
half-hearted sort." The idea is, that those who, trusting in fleshly
Judaism, claimed also to be Christians, knew neither their own spirit,
nor the proper working of their own system. Saul of Tarsus had been no
such incoherent Jew; only too bloodily had he proved himself thorough
and consistent. Lastly, as to "law righteousness," the righteousness of
compliance with rules, he had been unchallengeable; not a pharisaic
theorist only, but a man who made conscience of his theory. Ah! he had
known all this; and more, he had been forced in a great crisis of his
life to measure and search out the whole worth of it.
"But what things were gain to me"--the whole class of things that ranked
themselves before my eyes, and in my heart, as making me rich and
strong--"those I have esteemed" (in a mass) "to be loss for Christ."
They ceased to be valuable, they began to be reckoned as elements of
disadvantage and of loss, in comparison of Christ. Nor these things
only, but even all things--"Yea doubtless, and I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." "All
things" must include more than those old elements of fleshly confidence
already enumerated. It must include everything which Paul still
possessed, or might yet attain, that could be separated from Christ,
weighed against Him, brought into competition with Him--all that the
flesh could even yet take hold of, and turn into a ground of separate
confidence and boasting. So the phrase might cover much that was good in
its place, much that the Apostle was glad to hold in Christ and from
Christ, but which yet might present itself to the unwatchful heart as
material of independent boasting, and which, in that case, must be met
with energetic and resolute rejection. "All things" may include, for
instance, many of those elements of Christian and Apostolic eminence
which are enumerated in 2 Cor. xi.; for while he thankfully received
many such things, and lovingly prized them "in Christ Jesus," yet as
they might become occasions to flatter or seduce even an
Apostle--betraying him into self-confidence, or into the assertion of
some separate worth and glory for himself--they must be rejected and
counted to be loss.
The difficulty for us here is to estimate worthily the elevation of that
regard to Christ which had become the inspiration of the life of Paul.
At the time when he was arrested on the road to Damascus, God revealed
His Son to him and in him. Paul then became aware of Jesus as the
Messiah of his people, against whom his utmost energies had bent
themselves--against whom he had sinned with his utmost determination.
That discovery came home to him with a sense of great darkness and
horror; and, no doubt, at the same time, his whole previous conceptions
of life, and his judgments of his own life, were subverted, and fell in
ruins around him. He had had his scheme of life, of success, of welfare:
it had seemed to him a lofty and well-accredited one; and, with whatever
misgivings he might occasionally be visited, on the whole he thought of
himself as working it out hopefully and well. Now on every side were
written only defeat, perplexity, and despair. But ere long the Son of
God was revealed in his heart (Gal. i. 16) as the Bearer of
righteousness and life to sinners--as the embodiment of Divine
reconciliation and Divine hope. In this light a new conception of the
world, a new scheme of worthy and victorious life, opened itself to
Paul--new and wonderful. But the reason of it, the hopefulness of it,
the endless worth of it, lay chiefly here, that God in Christ had come
into his life. The true relation of moral life to God, and the ends of
human life as judged by that standard, were opening before him; but, if
that had stood alone, it might only have completed the dismay of the
paralysed and stricken man. What made all new was the vision of Christ
victoriously treading the path in which we failed to go, and of Christ
dying for the unrighteous. So God came into view, in His love,
redeeming, reconciling, adopting, giving the Holy Spirit--and He came
into view "in Christ Jesus." God was in Christ. The manifold relation of
the living God to His creature man, began to be felt and verified in the
manifold relation of Christ the Son of God, the Mediator and Saviour, to
the broken man who had defied and hated Him. Christ henceforth became
the ground, the meaning, and the aim of Paul's life. Life found its
explanation, its worth, its loving imperative here. All things else that
once had value in his eyes fell away. If not entirely dismissed, they
were now to have only such place and use as Christ assigned to them,
only such as could fit the genius of life in Christ. And all new
prerogatives and attainments that might yet accrue to Paul, and might
seem entitled to assume value in his eyes, could only have the same
subordinate place:--Christ first, whose light and love, whose power to
fix and fill and attract the soul, made all things new; Christ first,
so that all the rest was comparatively nowhere; Christ first, so that
all the rest, if at any time it came into competition with Him, if it
offered itself to Paul as a source of individual confidence and
boasting, is recognised as mere loss, and in that character resolutely
cast away.
This had become the living and ruling principle with Paul; not so,
indeed, as to meet with no opposition, but so as to prevail and bear
down opposition. Enthusiastically accepted and embraced, it was a
principle that had to be maintained against temptation, against
infirmity, against the strong tides of inward habit and outward custom.
Here lay the trial of Paul's sincerity and of Christ's fidelity and
power.
That trial had run its course: it was now not far from its ending. The
opening of heart and mind to Christ, and the surrender of all to Him,
had not been the matter merely of one hour of deep impression and high
feeling. It had continued, it was in full force still. Paul's value for
Christ had borne the strain of time, and change, and temptation. Now he
is Paul the aged, and also a prisoner of Christ Jesus. Has he abated
from the force or cooled from the confidence of that mind of his
concerning the Son of God? Far otherwise. With a "Yea doubtless" he
tells us that he abides by his first conviction, and affirms his first
decision. Good right he had to testify. This was not a matter of inward
feeling only, however sincere and strong. He had been well proved. He
_has_ suffered the loss of all things; he has seen all his
treasures--what are counted for such--swept away from him as the result
of unflinching faith and service; and he counts all to be well lost for
Christ.
This passage sets before us the essential nature of Christianity--the
essential life of a Christian, as revealed by the effect it has on his
esteem for other things. Many of us, one supposes, cannot consider it
without a sense of deep disgrace. The view here given awakens many
thoughts. Some aspects of the subject must be dwelt upon for a moment.
Those things that were gain, all things that can be gain, such are the
objects Paul here reckons with. The believing mind concerning Christ
carries with it a changed mind as regards all these.
Apparently, in some deep sense, there arises for us in this world an
inevitable competition between Christ on the one hand and _all things_
on the other. If we should say _some_ things, we might be in danger of
sliding into a one-sided puritanism. But we escape that risk by saying,
emphatically, _all_ things. A decision upon this has to be reached, it
has to be maintained, it is to be reaffirmed in particulars, in _all_
particulars. For we must remember that the heart of Paul, in this burst
of loyalty, is only echoing the call of Christ: "He that loveth father
or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." Let us repeat it, this
applies to ALL things. Because a certain way of feeling and thinking
about these things, and especially about some of them, is present with
us all, which asserts itself against this principle, therefore Christian
life, however rich and full, however gracious and generous its character
truly is, must include a negative at the base of it. "Let a man deny (or
renounce) himself, and take up his cross."
That life should be subjected to this severe competition seems hard: we
may repine at it, and count it needless. We may ask, "Why should it be
so? Why might not Christ take His place in our regard--His first, His
ideal, His incomparable place--and, at the same time, all the other
things take their place too, each in due order, as the true conception
of human life may imply, and as the claims of loyalty to Christ may
dictate? Why should not each take its place, more prominent or more
subordinate, on a principle of harmony and happy order? Why should life
be subjected to conflict and strain?" We may dream of this; but it will
not be. We are such persons, and the world about us is so related to us
now, that the "all things" are found continually claiming a place, and
striving to make good for themselves a place in our heart and life, that
will not consist with the regard due to Christ. They can be resisted
only by a great inward decision, maintained and renewed all along our
life, for Christ and against them. The nearest approach the believer
makes in this life to that happy harmony of the whole being which was
spoken of just now, is when his decision for Christ is so thorough and
joyful, that the other elements--the "all things"--fall into their
place, reduced into obedience by an energy that breaks resistance. Then
too, in that place, they begin to reveal their proper nature as God's
gifts, their real beauty and their real worth.
But then, in the next place, though the decision cannot be escaped, yet,
let us be assured, there is in this no real hardship. To be so called to
this decision is the greatest blessedness of life. There is that in
Christ for men, on account of which a man may gladly count all else but
loss, may count it abundantly well worth his while to make this choice.
Christ as binding us to God, Christ as the living source of
reconciliation and sonship, Christ as the spring of a continually
recruited power to love and serve and overcome, Christ as assuring to us
the attainment of His own likeness, Christ as the Revealer of a love
which is more and better than all its own best gifts--Christ discloses
to us a world of good, for the sake of which it is well done to cast, if
need be, all else away. It proves reasonable to reject the importunate
claim which other things make to be reckoned indispensable. It proves
natural, according to a new nature, to hold all else loosely, that we
may hold this one interest fast.
Yet this is not to be done or endeavoured by dismissing out of life all
that gives character and movement to human existence. Not so: for indeed
it is human life itself, with its complex of relations and activities,
that is to receive the new inspiration. The decision is to be made by
accepting the principle that life, throughout, must be life in Christ,
life for Christ; and by setting ourselves to learn from Him what that
principle means. Of the "all things" many must continue with us; but if
so, they must continue on a new principle: no longer as competitors,
certainly not as allowed competitors, but as gifts and subjects of
Christ, accepting law and destination from Him. Then, also, they may
continue to carry with them many a pleasant experience of our Master's
providential goodness. The effort to comply with Paul's example by
mutilating human life of some of its great elements has often been a
sincere and earnest effort. But it implies a distorted, and eventually a
narrowed view of the Christian's calling. For, short of suicide, we can
never deal with ALL things on that principle of simple amputation. Now
the Apostle says _all things_: "I count all things to be loss."
Let this, however, be noted, that loyalty requires something more than
merely a new valuation of things in our minds, however sincere that
valuation might be. It demands also actual sacrifice, when duty or when
faithful service calls for it. Paul's Christianity was prompt to lay
down, as circumstances in the course of following Christ might demand,
everything, anything, even that which, in other circumstances, might
retain its place in life, and be counted, in its own place, seemly and
welcome. Not only shall a man _count_ all to be loss for Christ: he
shall actually, when called upon, suffer the loss of anything or of all
things. No Christian life is without its occasions when this test has to
be accepted. Most Christian lives include lessons in this department at
the very outset. Some Christian lives are very full of them,--full, that
is, of experiences in which contented submission to privation, and
cheerful acceptance of trouble and danger, must approve the sincerity of
the esteem for Christ our Saviour which is the common profession of us
all. So it was with Paul. He had suffered the loss of all things.
It is because the "all things," in their infinite variety of aspect and
influence, tend so constantly to come into competition with Christ, to
our great hurt and danger, that they must be so emphatically repudiated,
and counted to be "loss." They are loss indeed, when they succeed in
taking the place they claim, for then they impoverish our life of its
true treasure. We may suffer this encroachment to take place
stealthily--all but unconsciously. All the more fit it is that we should
learn to assert loyalty to our Lord with a magnanimous vigilance. It
becomes us to set His worth and claims emphatically, with a "yea
doubtless," against the poor substitutes for which we are tempted
silently to exchange Him. If not, we are likely to come back to that sad
stage which has been already brought before us (ch. ii.), the condition
of those Christians who "all seek their own, not the things which are
Jesus Christ's."
Let us own, however, that men are trained in different lines of
discipline to the same great result. The lesson broke into the life of
Paul with astounding force at one great crisis. Some, on the contrary,
begin their training in little instances of early life, and under
influences working too gently to be afterwards recalled. Gradually they
grow into a clearer perception of the gifts Christ offers and of the
claims He makes; and each step of decision paves the way to new
attainments. The experience of all Christians, however diversified their
training may be, is harmonised in the fidelity of each to the light he
has, and of all to the Lord who calls them all to follow Him.
_THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST._
"Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the
loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may gain
Christ, and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine
own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith
in Christ, the righteousness which is of [from] God by [upon]
faith: that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and
the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His
death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the
dead."--PHIL. iii. 8-11 (R.V.).