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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 may attain the resurrection from the dead. (vv. 7-11)

Author and pastor, Max Lucado, explains God's call to be like Christ in his book, Just Like Jesus. When Lucado's daughter, Jenna, was just a toddler, he took her to the park. She was playing in a sandbox when he went to a vendor to buy her an ice cream cone. When he returned to give it to her, he discovered her mouth was full of sand. Where he wanted to put a double dip, there was dirt.

Lucado writes, "Did I love her with dirt in her mouth? Absolutely. Was she any less my daughter with dirt in her mouth? Of course not. Was I going to allow her to keep the dirt in her mouth? No way. I loved her where she was, but I refused to leave her there. I carried her over to the water fountain and washed out her mouth. Why? Because I love her."

And God does the same thing for us. God loves us so much that living in dirt is not an option. God says, "Spit out the dirt, honey. I've got something better for you."

In many ways, we're like the toddler, Jenna. We're satisfied with our dirt -- our accomplishments, our tradition, our half-hearted attempts at faith. But God has something better in mind for us, like ice cream. God wants a true relationship with us where we cast off the dirt and seek to become like our master Savior, Christ. God wants us to press on and discover the righteousness of Christ.

The Apostle Paul knew what it was like to settle for a halfway-to-bad form of faith. He addressed this problem with the Christians in Philippi. He says the old legalistic ways of Judaism are empty rituals, clever methods, and mindless practices. If they were worth anything, then Paul could boast because he was a good Jew -- a Pharisee born in Israel who never broke any of the 613 Jewish laws.

But Paul regards his past accomplishments as a loss. In our English text, he even refers to it all as "rubbish" which is misleading. In the Greek, it is skybala. (Say it with me.) Besides being trash, it also means excrement. We have a few vernacular words that can simultaneously mean both of these. Most of which are not appropriate in the pulpit. But through the term skybala, you see the kind of contempt he has for his past accolades.

And Paul intends for us to hold the same kind of contempt for our faith accomplishments.

So you've served on the church board for twenty years? It's trash.

What's it mean to be born and raised in the church? Rubbish.

What's the worth of empty, mindless tradition? Skybala.

How should we count any accomplishments we have? It's all ... (insert your vernacular here).

What Paul says is that the important things are "knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" and "righteousness ... faith in Christ." Paul's goal is "to know Christ and the power of his resurrection." In other words, Paul wants to be committed to Christ and know him as Savior. To serve as Christ serves. To love as Christ loves. To live as Christ lives.

Like Paul, God wants us to mature in faith -- to make Christ our goal and consider everything else skybala.

(Max Lucado, Just Like Jesus [Nashville, Tennessee: Word, 1998], p. 4)