Christian witness is so often judged merely by activity and keenness, but these of

themselves cannot produce acceptable service in the sight of the Lord. His truth must be

the foundation and substance of all service first and foremost, and to err here is to err

everywhere else. On the other hand we should avoid a knowledge of the truth without

zeal. Such knowledge is cold and lifeless and produces no fruit for the Lord. The truth,

rightly held, should certainly lead to warm response. The Lord wants all the keenness

possible from His children, but first of all directed by His truth for the present age and a

knowledge of His will.

(7) "As touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless" (3: 6). The

Apostle does not say he was blameless in the sight of God, but, as far as the observance

of the law was concerned, he was blameless. We can now therefore understand the

Lord's warning "I tell you except your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the

Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5: 20). It is

not that men are called to produce a higher decree of the same righteousness of the

Scribes and Pharisees, but rather they are brought into contact with a different kind of

righteousness, as Paul now explains, the righteousness which proceeds from God and is

accorded to faith.

This leads him now to the other side of the balance sheet, for what we have here is a

statement of liabilities and assets and the advantages of birth and attachment to God's

earthly people which he formerly set down in the column of assets, he now transfers to

the column of liabilities, for in Christ he has something that is so infinitely better, that he

must now seek to set it forth in seven further statements. Before he does this, he gives

the reason for this dramatic revaluation:

"Everything as loss", that is anything that previously he would have counted as

advantage to him. This goes wider than the religious privileges he enjoyed through being

one of God's chosen people Israel. It included everything which might be reckoned as

good by the natural man. It was as though the Apostle put them all in a parcel and

consigned them to the refuse heap, so worthless were they in comparison with the

excellency of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must distinguish between knowing about a person and actually knowing him. Paul

is not here thinking of facts pertaining to Christ, as getting to know Him personally by

faith. A close bond was formed between the Saviour and the Apostle on the Damascus

road, and this became more intimate and deeper and wholly absorbing as time went on.

There is no doubt that Paul conceives of God in terms of Christ. For him, getting to

know Christ, was getting to know God, and with this there was nothing earthly that could

compare with it, not even his religious beliefs that once meant so much to him as a

Pharisee. In fact he tells us that for Christ's sake he had suffered the loss of all things, or

forfeited everything. This would possibly include personal property which could have