Profit and Loss

"What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things." (Philippians 3:8)
     In Philippians 3, Paul speaks in terms of profit and loss. He is using a spiritual "ledger" if you will. This is a personal testimony about his discovery of the reality of the parables Jesus told in Matthew Chapter 13.
     "The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it." (Matthew 13:44-46, NIV)
     For Paul, nothing was worth keeping in order to gain the treasure. That included what the world would consider to be good things - his religion, his good upbringing, his morality, his faithfulness to the Torah of Moses, his zeal to be faithful to God. What could be wrong with those? He answers this question in verse 9: None of these things compared to having a righteousness that was not his own from the law, but the righteousness of Christ, which is by faith. This is what is so hard for so many to grasp - that God is absolutely unimpressed with our good deeds, our efforts to please Him that do not arise from faith in what He has already done.
     This, along with the Incarnation of Christ, is what separates Christianity from every other religion of the world. Every one of them depends on pleasing God through human effort. That includes Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christian-like cults, as well as atheism and agnosticism, and even secularism. Press most Americans (including faithful church-goers), and they will say they believe in God, but they will also say that the way to heaven is by being good enough and hoping that their good works outweigh their bad ones when God puts them on the final scales.
     Brothers and sisters, the symbol of our faith is not a set of scales! It is a cross! Ours is an alien righteousness. We would be utterly hopeless if righteousness were not granted to us through the substitution of Christ on our behalf. He who fulfilled the law to the letter was pronounced guilty, so that we who had no hope could be pronounced righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is the treasure that Paul discovered on the road to Damascus. As a result, he bundled up all of his works, good and bad, and filed them in the "loss" column of his ledger. He only had one asset in his asset column - Christ - and it was more than enough.
    An old Puritan saint named David Dickson once said in a sermon, "I have made a heap of all my bad works AND of all my good works, and I have fled them both to Christ" (emphasis mine). Until we flee ALL of our works, including our best ones, we have not yet fully discovered and appreciated the Treasure that is Jesus Christ, who accomplished the ultimate good work at Calvary on our behalf. Can we say, in our heart of hearts, with the hymn writer:
     "Could my tears forever flow, could my zeal no languor know,
     These for sin could not atone, Thou must save, and Thou alone,
     In my hand no price I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling."
     (Augustus Toplady, Rock of Ages, verse 2)
     That's the only treasure worth keeping.
     "And Christ is the head of the Body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead so that in everything He might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him. ... In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Colossians 1:18-19; 2:3, NIV) So let's total things up like this is true.