Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of
Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the
surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Philippians 3:7,8.
In Philippians 3 Paul lists his attainments, his successes. First
there is his inherited Jewish privileges; then his Jewish attainments.
But when he met Christ, they all proved worse than useless. Earning
merit with God through keeping laws he now regards as leading only to
failure and despair. Salvation is something received, not earned.
Paul’s not knocking ‘success’ as such. The Book of Proverbs was among
his ‘inspired’ Scriptures. It’s simply that a wrongly-motivated
success-orientation can lead to all kinds of evils, and living in past
successes can be more disastrous than wallowing in our failures. A
competitive success-orientation that produces proud winners, and losers
who feel they’re ‘nobodies’ has got to be wrong. But the problem is
not with success or failure, as such, but with human pride. We can’t
escape competitiion, comparisons with others, in a world of unequal
talents. And everyone is accountable to God for the gap that exists
between our ‘actual’ and our potential. Let’s not glory in mediocrity:
the average and the good are the enemies of the best.
Release me, Lord, from any bondage I have to either failure (and
despair) or success (and pride). For your glory. Amen.