He Had the Better Upbringing and He Counted It Loss

There is a particular pride available to somebody raised the way we were raised, and it is almost impossible to see from inside because it does not feel like pride at all.

It feels like gratitude. It feels like being glad for what you were given, and being glad for what you were given is not a sin, and that is exactly what makes this so hard to get a look at.

He was in it from birth. He knew the songs before he could read. He has never done any of the things that people talk about doing. He has an unbroken record of belonging to something that has been careful for four hundred years, and he did not build any of that, and he knows he did not, and he thanks God for it regularly.

And under all of it there is a floor, and the floor is made of that record, and he has been standing on it his entire life without ever having identified it as a floor.

Paul had the same floor, a better version of it, and he itemizes it in Philippians 3 in detail before doing something violent with it.

He lists it and four of the seven are inherited

Read the inventory, because the order is doing something.

Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. (Philippians 3:5-6, King James Version)

Count them and notice which are which. The first four are things done to him or true of him before he could speak: the rite on the eighth day, the stock, the tribe, the household he was raised in. He contributed nothing to any of them.

Only the last three are his own doing.

That ordering is exact and it is the reason this passage belongs to a second generation reader more than to anybody. Paul is not primarily listing achievements. He is listing an inheritance, and putting his own effort on top of it, and treating the whole stack as one thing.

You are holding a stack you did not build most of, and Scripture itemizes it before touching it. Philippians 3:5 lists the inherited items first, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that a person's belonging is witnessed rather than inherited from a household.

What he does with it is a trade, not a demolition

Then the verse, and the verb matters enormously.

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. (Philippians 3:7)

Counted. It is an accounting word. He moved a column. He did not burn the items and he did not deny that they had been gain; he says they were gain, in the past tense, as a fact about them.

What changed is which side of the ledger they sit on, and why: for Christ. The reclassification happens because something arrived that made the old column unnecessary rather than because the old column turned out to be worthless.

That is an important distinction for anybody who loves the tradition they were raised in. Nothing here requires a person to say the four hundred years were nothing, or that their grandmother's faith was a waste, or that the household was a mistake. Paul says none of those things about his own.

He moved a column. That is all he did, and it changed everything.

You are able to move a column without denying a single item on it. Philippians 3:7 says counted rather than destroyed, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who guides into that kind of precision rather than into a demolition.

The strongest word in the passage is about knowing

Then verse 8, and the reason for the trade is named, and it is a Person rather than a doctrine.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. (Philippians 3:8)

The excellency of the knowledge. And then, at the end, that I may win Christ, which is the language of pursuit rather than of renunciation.

The strong word in the middle, the one everybody notices, is not there to insult the items. It is there to establish a ratio. Set beside knowing Him, the whole stack is what a man scrapes off a plate, and Paul is being deliberately crude to make the size of the gap unmistakable.

And my Lord. Possessive. A man who has been standing on an inheritance his whole life does not usually have a possessive relationship with the Person; he has one with the inheritance. That two-word phrase is the thing the whole passage is trading up to.

You are able to have a possessive relationship with the Person rather than only with the inheritance. Philippians 3:8 says Christ Jesus my Lord, and it is by the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:3, that anybody says Jesus is Lord in that possessive way at all.

Jeremiah says what a man is allowed to glory in

The Old Testament makes the same move and names the three floors people usually stand on.

Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

Three prohibitions and then one permission, and the permission is knoweth me.

I would add a fourth to the list of floors, because it is the one this community stands on and Jeremiah's era had it too: let not the raised man glory in how he was raised. It is the same class of thing. It is real, it is a genuine advantage, and it will not hold weight.

And notice the permission is not a lesser thing. It is the largest of the four and it is the only one available to everybody, including people who have none of the other three.

You are permitted to glory in knowing Him, and it is the one floor that holds. Jeremiah 9:24 gives that as the single permitted boast, and it is the Spirit who searches the deep things of God, 1 Corinthians 2:10, by whom that knowing happens.

What replaces the floor

The practical question is what a person stands on the morning after they notice the floor, and Paul answers it.

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:30-31)

Made unto us. Four things, and all four are described as being made over to a person from outside them.

That is the replacement floor, and its whole quality is that it was not assembled. A floor a man built can be inspected, and a man who has built one will inspect it, every night, forever. A floor made over to him from outside is not available for inspection, because he did not lay any of it and would not know where to start.

You have been given wisdom and righteousness from outside yourself. 1 Corinthians 1:30 says Christ is made unto us those things, and it is the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 6:11, named as the one by whom a person is washed and sanctified and justified.