Week 36 — FRIDAY

A step further: “For we are the true circumcision, who worship God in spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh…. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:3, 7-8).

Yesterday, we meditated on, “rejoice in the Lord.” Here we take a step further and “glory in Christ Jesus.” To rejoice in the Lord is largely emotional; to glory in Christ Jesus is emotional and intellectual. You see in Him the eternal fitness, the rightness, the altogether satisfactory, just what you longed and sought for. You glory in Him with mind and emotion.

The point of glory here was that Jesus Christ had saved Paul from leaning on any outer prop to bolster his faith. These outer props which people leaned on—rites and ceremonies, sacrifices, circumcision, fasting, mutilating the body, discrimination between clean and unclean foods—all those were gone and Jesus Christ alone was the center of his glorying. Faith and life were reduced to simplicity.

“Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” “The surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus”—that sentence makes the Christian faith so different in degree that it becomes different in kind. When you know Him you know all that everybody else knows—plus!

Note “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ”—not of knowing about Him, or belonging to a system built up around Him—these are not necessarily transforming. In Latin America, where I have recently been, Christ is imprisoned within a system built up around Him, not immediately available, hence the people are not transformed. If they had an immediately available Christ whom they could know, they would know transformation.

O Lord Jesus, I gaze on Your surpassing worth and my heart and I are melted with gratitude and praise. And I say “No” to everything else. You have me and have me forever. I need nothing else. I want nothing else. Amen.

AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I glory in my possessions or in my person, my glory is precarious; if I glory in Jesus it is permanent.