| The more I read the Bible, the more I am convinced: It is not enough to call oneself a Christian to be saved. In fact, many people who call themselves Christians will find themselves on the wrong side of eternity. There is only one thing for which life is worth living. The apostle Paul understood this. Therefore, I will take a brief (and by no means comprehensive) look into Paul's life, drawn primarily from Philippians 3. Everything was going right in Paul's life before he became a Christian. He was born into a wealthy Jewish family and Tarsus, and also inherited his father's Roman citizenship--essentially, a backstage pass into the Roman world that the vast majority of people did not receive. Furthermore, he was a Jew, an Israelite, a member of God's chosen people. Unfortunately, in those days, Jews regarded themselves as being superior over everyone else, because of their special covenant status with God. They forgot that they were supposed to be a nation of priests, living righteous lives so that all the nations would see their light and come to faith in Jehovah God. However, Paul was not only a Jew; he was a Pharisee. He had studied under the widely-renown Rabban Gamaliel, who even today, is considered one of the greatest Jewish teachers of all-time (he is one of only a handful who received the prestigious title "Rabban"). If he were alive today, Paul would be one of the world's preeminent lawyers and scholars, his expertise in his field rivaling that of such intellectual heavyweights as Newton, Einstein, and Hawking in their respective fields. Unfortunately, if the Jews had problems with spiritual arrogance, the Pharisees, a popular sect of Judaism that prided itself on strictly following the Law of Moses (of which the Ten Commandments were foremost), had even worse problems. In Matthew 23, Jesus called them out for their spiritual pride and hypocrisy, and by no means did He take it easy on them. Nevertheless, Paul called himself "blameless" when referring to the righteousness found in the Law. This does not mean that he thought of himself as perfect; there has been only one perfect Man, and Paul was not him. However, whenever Paul sinned and broke the Law, he would exercise the provisions that the Law made for such a breaking, offering sacrifices in the Temple in order to atone for his sins. That is why Paul could call himself blameless before the Law. Paul's credentials do not stop there. He was a passionate Pharisee, even going so far in his zeal for preserving Judaism that he persecuted Christ's church, torturing and killing many Christians, both men and women. I once heard a sermon by N. T. Wright about Paul's persecution of the church, and his subsequent conversion to Christ, where Wright paralleled the early church to World War II Jews, and Paul to Adolf Hitler. I have seen short clips of Hitler giving speeches, and he was one of the most fired-up and passionate (and evil) people I have ever seen. I imagine that Paul was similar to that; I do not know if he was as loud or vehement in his hatred, but in his heart, he surely felt it for the church just as strongly as Hitler did for the Jews. However, when Paul encountered Jesus on that hot, dusty road to Damascus, he was changed. I happen to think that the seeds of conversion had been planted in the soil of Paul's heart earlier, when he witnessed Stephen's arrest, defense, and execution, and that those seeds sprouted when Jesus invaded his hate-filled world, dispelling the darkness with His marvelous Light. (Sidenote: Could you imagine what happened when Paul walked into his first church service not long after his conversion? It would have been like Hitler donning a yarmulke and going to synagogue, or Osama bin Laden being baptized and receiving communion. Paul's conversion--now that's the power of the good news of Jesus Christ.) In Philippians 3:4a-6, Paul lists off these amazing credentials. If there was anyone who could be proud of his accomplishments, it would have been him. However, in 3:7-8, Paul has a stunning reversal: 7 "But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ," Many of you have probably heard that in Greek, "rubbish" refers to garbage. Well, imagine, if you will, the foulest-smelling garbage you have ever smelled in your life. When I was younger, I went with my father to the dump once or twice in order to get rid of some items that were too big for our trash can. I cannot begin to describe the olfactory assault that was carried out on my delicate nose. Also, I once found the rotting carcass of an opossum in our backyard. Finally, there was the mostly-eaten yogurt cup that had been left in my mother's car, where it sat, baking in the summer sun, for at least two or three days. We thought an animal had died in there. To Paul, that was what all of his life's accomplishments were worth to him: a rotting opossum carcass, bloated and black in the oppressive summer heat. The only thing that mattered to him was "knowing Christ Jesus [his] Lord" (v. 8). Knowing Jesus personally and intimately was worth so much to him ("surpassing value") that everything else smelled like death and decay. Nothing else counted. Nothing else mattered. Paul got it. And since then, nothing has changed. Knowing Jesus is the only thing that ultimately matters in life. He must be our all-consuming passion. He must be our definition of reality. All our accomplishments, all our accolades belong in a toxic dump, where they will marinate in their vile liquids, giving off noxious fumes--and they will go there, regardless of whether or not we know Jesus. At the end of the day, at the end of all days, we will either have Jesus, or we will have nothing. It is as simple as that. Let us get to know Jesus.
I am convinced that these are the saddest words in the Bible: "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"
(Matthew 7:23, emphasis mine)
You'll roll right past those pearly gates |
