In Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, the poet begins by stating two roads diverged in a yellow wood. It was a time of choice. We get no indication of what came before. We only receive an ambiguous declaration of the result of taking the road less traveled, that it has made all the difference. We are left to wonder whether this decision, this exchange of one path for another, was worth it.
Not so with the Apostle Paul. He tells us clearly what he left behind. In Philippians 3, he writes, If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless (vv.4-6). He had pedigree. He had external conformity to the law. He had a bright future ahead of him as a leader of a major religious group. Perhaps he would have become a famous rabbi.
And he gave it all up. And what did he receive in return? In terms of his earthly experience, he tells us. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman - I am a better one: with far greater labors, for more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches (2 Corinthians 11:23-28).
To us, it looks like Paul got a bad deal. Who of us would make that exchange? But that is not Paul’s assessment. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I might attain the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:7-11).
Saints, we are not Paul. But each of us has had and will have losses for following Christ. The question for you and me is, “Is it worth it?” Paul would say yes but will we?
