Thursday, October 22, 2009

Loss

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Philippians 3:7

"Notice now that he does not only say, But what was gain to me I later saw as indifferent, as unimportant -- no: as loss. To repent . . . does not mean to be liberalized, to become indifferent to what we formerly were, to the former objects of our devotion and the former conduct of our lives, but to be horrified by it all. . . . Recognition not of some imperfection but precisely of the guiltiness, perversity, and reprobateness of his glorious Pharisaism, irreproachable and upright as it was en sarki (in the flesh), recognition of the indictment not on his wickedness but on his goodness -- that is what came upon him dia ton Christon (for the sake of Christ), that was the meaning that Christ's work had for his attitude to these things."

Karl Barth, Epistle to the Philippians, page 97.

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