ALL IN...

“I count everything as loss compared to the priceless privilege, the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, and progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him. For His sake I have lost everything and consider it all to be mere rubbish, refuse and dregs, in order that I may gain Christ the Anointed One.” The Apostle Paul is “All In” here: Nothing is withheld from submission to the Lordship of Jesus because nothing of earth-life can “compare to the Priceless Privilege, the Overwhelming Preciousness, the Surpassing Worth, and Supreme Advantage” of knowing Christ and becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him.  What a standard of spiritual excellence Paul sets for all the saints!

Paul appropriated into his life the perfection, the purposes, the graces and the fragrance of the Person of Christ, through daily visits to the cross, counting everything else as dung, that he might progressive gain Christ... growing in Christlikeness. His burning desire for more -- to clothe himself with more of the character, virtues, values and attitudes of His Savior -- was captured in His poignant command: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” The Amplified Bible has it “Clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ.” Clothing Self with the Lord’s nature insures the death of Self… the death of indulging fleshly lusts. Insatiable hunger for more of Christ is evident in his lifelong pursuit to “Know Him”, no matter the loss, no matter the personal cost, his heart’s cry: “That I may know Him”! Would that my heart shed the same tears...

Father, help me to lay everything of this life at the feet of Your Beloved Son, counting it all as “mere rubbish, refuse and dregs”, that I may “gain Christ”, and be found in Him. “For my determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly, and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection which it exerts over believers, and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed in spirit into His likeness, even to His death, in the hope that if possible I may attain to the spiritual and moral resurrection that lifts me out from among the dead even while in the body.”

Sharing in the suffering of Christ produces spiritual transformation into His likeness – His nature – ultimately leading to our spiritual and moral resurrection lifting us out from among the spiritually dead even while in our physical body. WOW! There is a lot here for those who have an ear to hear!

“THAT I MAY KNOW HIM”

(Phil. 3:8-12, Amp. Bible modified; Rom. 13:14)