Room With a View-Infinite Value of Christ

What could be so beautiful that everything up against it could begin to look like worthless garbage? That would cause a person to discard everything else to gain that one thing.

“I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.” Philippians 3:7-8 (NLT)

Paul had some kind of view. His perspective was completely changed not by what he studied but by what he saw. He was a zealous student of the law. But the law was powerless to change Paul. However, when he saw Jesus he was transformed from persecutor to worshipper.

Value is relative at least in our perception of what is valuable. Paul said “I once thought these things were valuable,” and “everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus”

I could live in a hut and be quite content if my perception was that was the best shelter available. If I had never seen or knew anything else existed or was even possible a hut would be great. I mean relative to no shelter at all a hut looks avant-garde. But what happens if I discovered there was something better than a hut. That there were actually things called houses. My perception of a hut would change. A hut would no longer look like such a great thing. In fact, I would most likely become dissatisfied with my thatch roof and dirt floors.

It is easy to spend our lives as Christians with eyes on everything but Christ. Maybe they are not on intrinsically evil things. We could even be doing a lot of “church” activities or day to day necessary responsibilities and not see Christ. We essentially live in a hut when we could be living in a house. Because we have such little revelation of Christ we value garbage as gold and gold as garbage.

Simply put we have a hard time discarding things that are worthless because we actually think they have value. We think they have value because we have seen so little of the one of “infinite value” Jesus Christ.

We need a revelation of Jesus Christ. The more we see Him the less valuable created things become.

Church programs will not do it. Christian television will not do it. Theological study will not do it. Not bad things even helpful in our quest for God. But these things will not transform what we value. Only an encounter with Christ can realign and rearrange us internally.

“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”