The Apostle's Ground of Trust.
I. When such general homage is paid to earnestness as in our own time, what wonder if some people should mistake it for religion; and if a man should imagine that because he is zealous in the activities of benevolence, warmly attached to certain Church organisations, and in some measure sympathetic with the spiritual forces which they embody, he is really a partaker of the undefiled religion of the Bible! It is no marvel if a man accustomed to earthly standards of arbitration should imagine that the goodness which has been so cheerfully acknowledged on earth will be as cheerfully acknowledged in heaven, and that he who has passed muster with the world will not be sent abashed and crestfallen from the judgment-seat of God. You may be early initiated into the ordinances of the Christian Church; you may have come of a long line of spiritually illustrious ancestry; you may give an intellectual assent to the grand harmony of Christian truth; you may be zealous in certain activities of benevolence, and in certain matters connected even with the Church of God itself; and yet you may gain all this world of honour and lose your own soul.
II. Notice the compensating power of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. This compensation runs through creation; it seems to be a radical law both in the physical and spiritual government of God. Trust that Cross for yourselves; take hold of it; it is consecrated. In all circumstances of your history, in all exigencies of your mortal lot, take firm hold of the Cross.
W. M. Punshon, Sermons,p. 384.
I. Is that man's normal state loss in order to gain? Certainly not. In God's own case it is not so. Has not God perfect and complete happiness? Was there any amount of loss sustained by Adam in order to gain? Was there any progress dependent upon loss? The idea is an absurdity. It was not so. Then how did it come to pass that loss ever came to be sustained in order to gain? I need scarcely say that all loss in the universe is involved in sin, it is sin that has brought loss, and nothing else, and we all feel it and realise it. We have lost paradise, we have lost the image of God, we have lost our inheritance, we have lost everything, by sin. Then comes the question, Is it the law in regard to a sinful being that there is loss in order to gain? Does the suffering of loss bring gain? I say distinctly not, not as a necessary rule. There may be always loss and no gain. Yet, though loss does not bring gain with it, there never can be gain to a sinner but through loss. A man may suffer loss and have no gain, but no sinner can ever get gain but by suffering loss.
II. Look at the first principle in this matter; look at the Saviour and then at the saved. How was it with Jesus? Did not He suffer loss in order to gain? He must needs suffer, if He is to be a Saviour; He must needs sustain loss; He must lay aside the robe of His glory, He must take our nature upon Him, He must die in that nature, He must suffer the curse of that nature, or He cannot be a Saviour. But He did do it. Then the gain of salvation was the gain of Christ. And as regards ourselves, whatever stands between the soul and Christ must go, whether it is what the world calls good or bad; whether it is gross immorality or integrity, honesty, and uprightness; whether it is the love of pleasure or of wealth; whether it is the love of wife, husband, or child. The creature must give way to God; if the heart is to be filled with all the precious things of God's salvation in Christ, the creature must give way.
A. Molyneux, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 120.
References: Philippians 3:7; Philippians 3:8. J. Jackson, Sermons before the University of Oxford,p. 1; Philippians 3:7-9. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiii., No. 1357.