Gain or Loss

This meditation is taken from the Good Seed daily Bible calendar, published by GBV in Germany.

What things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yes indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Philippians 3:7.8

John Williams (1796-1839) planned to go into commerce. He and some comrades had decided to spend an evening in a pub. John waited for the arrival of the others on the pavement. It was cold, and night had already fallen.

Losing his patience, he was about to leave, when a familiar voice called, “John, what are you doing here in the cold? Come to a gospel meeting nearby with me.” He didn’t want to go, but suddenly decided to do so out of revenge on his friends. Hardly interested, he sat at the end of a bench without listening and seemed lost in thought. However, certain words caught his attention: profit, loss, gaining and losing. “Do they talk about commerce in this church? That’s interesting: it must be the first time!”

The text chosen by the preacher was: “What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

“That evening my eyes were opened,” John said later, speaking of his conversion.

Since then his life changed completely. His friends mocked him, but he broke off their relationship and prayed for them, having recognised the undeserved deliverance that God’s grace had brought about in his heart.

At the age of twenty he embarked for the Pacific islands. Through him hundreds of indigenous cannibals, affected by God’s grace, gave up their cruel customs to surrender their lives to Jesus Christ and give Him prime place.

Additional Note inserted – not from the calendar meditation:

The verse quoted from Philippians was written by the apostle Paul, who had many things before he came to know the Lord. See Phil 3:4-6. These things were what we can say ‘profit’ for Paul in the world. However, compared to the Lord Jesus Christ and what He has done for Paul and for all of us, the apostle then changes his view and counts the things he had – privileges, social standing, etc as loss, and in verse 8 he further counts these former/old things as dung. It is clear that Paul was a good accountant after doing all that counting. May we all be good accountants like Paul. We do not need to prepare 100% accurate profit & loss statements – this is in the world of business, but spiritually minded, we can be good accountants.