These have I counted loss for Christ.' There is a possibility of exaggeration in interpreting Paul's words. The things that were gain' to him were in themselves better than their opposites. It is better to be blameless' than to have a life all stained with foulness and reeking with sins. But these gains' were losses,' disadvantages, in so far as they led him to build upon them, and trust in them as solid wealth. The earthquake that shattered his life had two shocks: the first turned upside down his estimate of the value of his gains, the second robbed him of them. He first saw them to be worthless, and then, so far as others' judgment went, he was stripped of them. Actively he counted them loss,' passively he suffered the loss of all things.' His estimate came, and was followed by the practical outcome of his brethren's excommunication.
What changed his estimate? In our text he answers the question in two forms: first he gives the simple, all-sufficient monosyllabic reason for his whole life --for Christ,' and then he enlarges that motive into the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.' The former carries us back straight to the vision which revolutionised Paul's life, and made him abjure all which he had trusted, and adore what he had abhorred. The latter dwells a little more upon the subjective process which followed on the vision, but the two are substantially the same, and we need only note the solemn fulness of the name of Jesus Christ,' and the intense motion of submission and of personal appropriation contained in the designation, my Lord.' It was not when he found his way blinded into Damascus that he had learned that knowledge, or could apprehend its excellency.' The words are enriched and enlarged by later experiences. The sacrifice of his earlier gains' had been made before the excellency of the knowledge' had been discerned. It was no mere intellectual perception which could be imparted in words, or by eyesight, but here as always Paul by knowledge' means experience which comes from possession and acquaintance, and which therefore gleams ever before us as we move, and is capable of endless increase, in the measure in which we are true to the estimate of gains' and losses' to which our initial vision of Him has led us. At first we may not know that that knowledge excels all others, but as we grow in acquaintance with Jesus, and in experience of Him, we shall be sure that it transcends all others, because He does and we possess Him.
The revolutionizing motive may be conceived of in two ways. We have to abandon the lower gains' in order to gain Christ, or to abandon these because we have gained Him. Both are true. The discernment of Christ as the one ground of confidence is ever followed by the casting away of all others. Self-dis-trust is a part of faith. When we feel our feet upon the rock, the crumbling sands on which we stood are left to be broken up by the sea. They who have seen the Apollo Belvedere will set little store by plaster of Paris casts. In all our lives there come times when the glimpse of some loftier ideal shows up our ordinary as hollow and poor and low. And when once Christ is seen, as Scripture shows Him, our former self appears poor and crumbles away.
We are not to suppose that the act of renunciation must be completed before a second act of possession is begun. That is the error of many ascetic books. The two go together, and abandonment in order to win merges into abandonment because we have won. The strongest power to make renunciation possible is the expulsive power of a new affection.' When the heart is filled with love to Christ there is no sense of loss,' but only of exceeding gain,' in casting away all things for Him.
