NOTES for Php 3:7

There is a well-known truth: everything is known by comparison. It is not surprising that it also applies to the Christian life. But in what sense?

Of course, whenever a person experiences conversion, not necessarily to God or to Christ, but to any new faith for him, even a philosophical one, his first reaction as a new convert is a revaluation of all values, often a very radical one. But with the passing of time, as a rule, such a neophyte becomes less radical, and the less so the more he ceases to be a neophyte. It does happen otherwise, but that should probably already be regarded as an anomaly of spiritual development.

With Paul, however, as we can see, everything is different: his revaluation proved not only radical, but also very stable. The attitude he expresses here toward all his former knowledge is one he confirms throughout his entire Christian life. What is the matter here? Paul cannot be suspected of spiritual immaturity! As we can see, the issue lies elsewhere.

One could, of course, also say that a person who has experienced conversion to God and has set out on the path of righteousness often revalues his entire former life once and for all, especially if his life was sinful and incompatible with righteousness. But this cannot be said of Paul either: he chose God and the path of righteousness long before the meeting on the Damascus road. What, then, does he mean?

To understand Paul, one must perhaps live through what he lived through: the staggering experience of the reality of the risen Christ and of the Kingdom that entered the world with Him. Against such a background, everything former truly becomes something of little importance, or of no importance at all. The point is not that the Kingdom has no need of any human knowledge or human experience. The point, rather, is the quality of this knowledge and experience. After all, all our experience is by definition the experience of an untransformed world. Such experience inevitably proves limited. And, like everything belonging to the untransformed order of things, in the Kingdom it must change, be remelted, be transfigured. But this will become possible only if we do not cling to our knowledge and experience in their former, old quality. The most important thing here is to understand that in such a quality it is no more fit for the Kingdom than garbage is fit for the household. Paul understood this, giving up what had formerly formed the basis of his life, both religious and intellectual. In return he received far more: the living experience of the Kingdom, which transforms a person together with all his knowledge.