Continued from an earlier post on purpose and life in Christ…
The cross of Jesus Christ is the central purpose of the life of the Believer. For the Christian, life has no other purpose.
Jesus describes life in His kingdom like this:
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Matt 13:44-45
Jesus Christ is so central to the Apostle Paul’s life that when every other ambition, possession, and right has been denied to him, he can still count himself wealthy:
“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. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ” Philippians 3:7-8
But we can’t confuse the loss that Paul speaks of as something similar to the way that other life-paradigms work (i.e., I will focus on Christ, at the expense of loving my children). The good news of the cross is transcendent over such distinctions. Whereas ordinary purpose gains momentum at the expense of other aspects of life, a Christ-centered life gains momentum in the alignment of all aspects of life with it. So Paul says,
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31
and
“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:17
This harmonization of all of life in a God-ward direction is what Christians call worship:
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12:1
A life of worship of Jesus Christ has no room for any higher purpose. Jesus does not tolerate a distinctions between His purpose and our purpose. He will not stand by and let us spend our time on anything less than the unrelenting pursuit and praise of His beauty. He demands that all of life from diaper-changing to retirement be laid at His feet and counted loss.
As we place our careers, our families, our rest, and our dreams before God as a sacrifice, we find them strangely redeemed.
As we find our soul’s rest in Jesus, we find that our act of rest isn’t at war with our work. We’re slower to throw our phone through our monitor when the IT guy is slow to arrive. We find ourselves talking less about the shocking amount of unused vacation days we have. We stop sending ALL-CAPS EMAILS altogether.
Jesus gives us new jobs as ambassadors for the kingdom of God, and find that our act of work isn’t at war with our mission as Christians. We begin to look for opportunities to befriend and love at the water cooler. We aren’t as quick to put on our noise-canceling headphones on the plane so that the obviously talkative traveler next to us can’t start a conversation.
In short, the cross redeems our lives entire. We are slaves to Christ, and find that we have never felt so free.
There’s always been a cognitive dissonance for me on what “count but loss” means. You know when you learn something but you don’t learn it well, and whenever you try to remember it, you can’t quite be sure that you’ve got it down? That’s what “count but loss” is for me. How do you define it, explicitly?