Dear Ray,
God’s entire purpose for us is to impart His own life—Zoe—into our being and transform us into the image of His Son. This calling overturns everything we naturally consider important.
Christ is not the most important addition to our lives. He is our life. He does not take first place while everything else retains an independent claim upon us. His supremacy overturns the entire arrangement by which we assign value to our relationships, ambitions, convictions, comfort, and future.
“For to me, to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21).
Achievement, admiration, and religious activity cannot fulfill this calling. A life governed by the natural self has missed its purpose, however impressive it appears.
God is after the expression of His Son in us.
Our natural being continually assigns importance to things that cannot impart life. We want satisfying relationships, agreeable circumstances, recognition, security, influence, and a future that matches our expectations. We treat these desires as necessities. Then we invite Christ to help us obtain them.
But He came to become our life, and that requires an overthrow of what already governs us. What we regard as indispensable must surrender its authority. What we call gain must undergo the judgment of the surpassing worth of Christ.
Paul writes, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). He calls them rubbish, refuse, dung, “that I may win Christ.”
This is the collapse of an entire system of value. Everything that supplied identity, confidence, and standing loses its claim in the presence of something immeasurably greater.
We instinctively soften Paul’s words. We want to preserve a protected place for the things we treasure. Our natural being requires no encouragement to do this. It already knows how to defend its attachments and explain their importance. What it resists is the absolute supremacy of Christ.
Zoe is the divine life God gives us in His Son. Our calling reaches beyond adopting beliefs, improving conduct, or participating in a religious community. God intends His life to become our inward reality and the source of our living.
“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:11).
The life is in the Son. Nothing we acquire or achieve can compensate for the absence of an inward participation in Him.
The decisive question is therefore whether we are gaining Him.
Marriage cannot confer sonship. Friendship cannot impart Zoe. Being loved, included, and understood cannot accomplish our transformation into the image of Christ. We naturally build our sense of completeness around these experiences, and their instability becomes our instability. But Christ’s supremacy ends their authority to define our existence.
Misunderstanding and withdrawn approval cannot deprive us of this calling. God’s intention does not depend upon our preferred circumstances.
Christ remains our life.
Politics must undergo the same judgment. We follow candidates, defend parties, anticipate elections, and imagine that the decisive struggle is the struggle for control of the public world. Our attention becomes captive to events. Our emotional condition rises and falls with the fortunes of a movement.
Yet no candidate can impart Christ. No election can produce divine life. No political system can transform the natural man into the expression of the Son of God.
We can win every political argument and remain governed by ourselves. A party, nation, or ideology has no authority to become our hope, identity, or consuming passion.
And religious convictions receive no exemption.
We can explain Zoe and sonship without living by Christ. Attachment to our ministry, training, doctrinal understanding, or reputation for devotion can preserve the very self that the cross exposes.
Paul surrendered his religious credentials along with his other grounds for confidence. Nothing receives immunity because it carries a spiritual label. Whatever becomes a substitute for Christ must lose its place.
Even health must be brought under this judgment. Strength, longevity, and the preservation of our earthly existence cannot become the supreme purpose of living. Physical vitality is not Zoe. A longer life does not, by itself, fulfill God’s purpose.
The question is what our life is for.
Ray, this is the call to every one of us: cross the river to the other side, leaving everything behind.
Leave the old ground upon which our natural life has established its claims. Leave behind the authority we have given marriage, political beliefs, religious convictions, training, comfort, reputation, and health to determine our identity and purpose.
We cannot carry their supremacy into a life whose source and meaning is Christ.
Crossing the river means surrendering our ownership of the whole arrangement. We relinquish the demand that our relationships satisfy us, our convictions vindicate us, our training distinguish us, and our circumstances secure us. We abandon the expectation that Christ must preserve the world we have constructed around ourselves.
We do not wait for every attachment to approve of our departure. We do not negotiate a permanent throne for every former source of confidence.
We cross with nothing to claim as our life except Christ.
Everything else becomes secondary, tertiary—beyond comparison with the surpassing worth of gaining Him. Every competing treasure loses its hold.
Our marriage is not our life. Our politics are not our life. Our religious convictions are not our life. Our training is not our life. Our comfort is not our life. Even our physical vitality is not the eternal life God gives in His Son.
Christ alone is that life.
This is the purpose that must govern us: His life imparted, His Son formed within, His fullness increasingly expressed. Everything offered as His replacement is rubbish. Everything that competes for His supremacy is loss.
Let us cross the river, Ray. Let us leave the old supremacy of everything else behind and gain Christ.
Brent
