PROPER MATH

2 + 2 STILL = 4

“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 in order that I may gain Christ.” Phil. 3:8

These words occur in the page of autobiography in which Paul employed his own experience as an argument in appealing to his spiritual children in Philippi. They refer to a mental and spiritual activity. The two exercises were separated by at least thirty years. The first took place when Christ broke through upon him in all the radiant glory and revolutionizing power of His risen life. The second took place as he wrote, in prison, and amid all the difficulties and trials created by his Apostolic ministry. Between the time when he counted his gain loss and abandoned everything, and this hour, what experiences he had passed through! Nothing had occurred which in any way altered his first reckoning and decision; and so, to the "I counted" of the first revelation, he added the "I count" of the present experience. And this should always be so. We are never more in peril than when we are trusting to a past experience. Yet how often it is done! We remember the day when the light broke upon us. It was a very real thing. It changed our entire outlook. It compelled us to reconsideration of all the facts of life; we abandoned our previous philosophy and rethought everything we had learned and then we obeyed. We turned our backs upon all sorts of gains, counting them as merely worthless things. We yielded to the call and glory of the life in Christ. It was all excellent. But what about the present? Is the old attitude maintained? Are the activities of today those of the first days? Do we think the same?  Do we see that the knowledge of Christ as Savior and Lord is higher than all the secular and religious knowledge Paul had learned in his scholastic training as a Pharisee. Similarly, it is higher than any knowledge one could ever acquire from modern science or philosophy, or from any other discipline. Or have we gone back to the abandoned things? Do we allow ourselves to seek again the lower things? It is only as we can express the decision of the past in terms of the present, the "I counted," as "I count," that there is any real value in the past.