Counting It All Loss

Posted on March 25, 2025

By Linda Rex

April 6, 2025, 5^th Sunday in Preparation for Easter or Lent—How hard are you working at being a good person? Do you ever find yourself performing hard in an effort to make sure you are okay with God and other people? Sometimes we do not realize when we are depending upon ourselves rather than fully resting in Christ. And too often, when we are sharing our life in Christ with others, we throw people back upon their own ability to get themselves where they feel they need to be in relationship with God and others.

The apostle Paul reminds us in our New Testament passage for this Sunday, Philippians 3:4b–14, that we need to quit depending upon our own ability, our family history, our heritage, or any of those things we humanly count on, and to rest completely in Christ. When you consider Paul’s story, you can see that he experienced a tremendous about-face in his life when he encountered the resurrected Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). Nothing was the way it used to be after that conversation with the Lord.

Later on in his life, as he reached out to the non-Jews in the Roman Empire with the good news of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul experienced severe opposition. Those who insisted that keeping the law of Moses was essential for salvation were strong and even vicious opponents, who sought a following. These zealous opponents counted on their merits as law-abiding Jews, along with their positions of importance, and their background of impeccable ancestry—all of which were valued in that ancient culture.

But the apostle Paul had all these merits—even more so than his opponents. There was a time when he had valued everything his opponents valued. But then he met the risen Lord Jesus Christ. After that, all of these things he had valued before became worthless to him. In God’s kingdom, our human pedigree, our observation of certain laws and rites and rituals, gain us nothing. Paul considered these things to be of no use whatsoever—in fact, he considered them to be garbage, the kind of filth to be thrown on the trash heap. Paul had come to see that in the long run, these items cherished by his opponents were valueless, and needed to be tossed out and replaced with Jesus Christ, in his life, death, and resurrection. What needed to be embraced was a new life in Christ given to us in the person and presence of the Holy Spirit.

Possibly, we may say that no one values things like pedigree, position, or law keeping anymore. But within the context of our own educational venues, spiritual communities, denominations, or religious cultures, we often venerate people with the appropriate pedigree or certifications, and give less attention to those who are not so educationally well endowed, or culturally accepted. We celebrate those with the degrees, those who are part of the religious elite, and others who have achieved great financial, physical, material, even spiritual success from a human point of view. It’s hard to admit, but we easily slip into focusing on the human aspects of our life in Christ, and forget to embrace the true humility of our personal need for Christ. We can easily forget that our efforts to achieve a right relationship with God and with others actually does us no good in the sight of God.

The apostle Paul reminds us to lay ourselves and our own efforts on the altar, and to pick up instead, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has done the hard lifting—our life is in him. And Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.” It is Jesus Christ, living in us by the Holy Spirit, we are to trust in, rather than counting on ourselves and our own efforts.

Our response to all Jesus has done for us is meant to be a visceral pouring out of ourselves in gratitude and devotion to Jesus. This was demonstrated by Mary as she poured spikenard lavishly and in free abandon on Jesus’ feet, and then wiping his feet with her hair (John 12:1–8), even in the face of criticism and condemnation. Our response to Jesus is an internally motivated pouring out of ourselves in worship of and devotion to Jesus, not a forced, for show effort to get a response from Jesus or to win the praise of others. It’s true that Mary made some effort to procure the oil, and took some action in applying it to Jesus’ feet, but what we see happen is not slavish devotion driven by fear or an attempt to win God’s favor or love. Rather, it is an internal response driven by deep gratitude for the Lord’s intervention on behalf of her and her family, in raising her brother Lazarus from the dead. This is an expression of deep gratitude and devotion to Jesus—this is what drove her actions. And this is our response to God raising our “brother” Jesus from the dead, on our behalf.

In our call to worship psalm, the psalmist declares that God has done all that is needed for our salvation, therefore we rejoice: “When the LORD brought back the captive ones of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with joyful shouting; then they said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them.’  The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad” (Psalm 126:1–3 NASB). The point is, Jesus has saved us, is saving us, and will save us. Therefore, in response, our life is a praise song of gratitude and joy, as we rest fully in Jesus’ finished work, and let go of all our human efforts to get ourselves right with God and each other. The Holy Spirit, filling our hearts and minds, unites us with Christ, and we are never the same, ever again. Our lives, our relationships, and our actions are never the same again, because we are “in Christ.”

Our Redeemer and Savior, Lord of all, thank you for your faithfulness and goodness to us. Grant us the grace to surrender all our human efforts to save ourselves. Enable us instead to trust in you completely, allowing you to transform our hearts and lives by faith. We celebrate your mighty and wonderful work of salvation with gratitude and praise. Amen.

“… If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 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, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”     Philippians 3:4b–14 NASB

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