Love Christ, Desire Christ, Gain Christ
Christ should be our pleasure in our Christian life. We have been called into fellowship with Him to partake of Him, to enjoy Him as our everything (1 Cor. 1:9)….To expect some material and physical bliss in eternity may expose the fact that our present relationship with Christ is merely for what He can give us and do for us in the material and physical realm. Song of Songs shows us that our unique desire should be for Him and nothing else. To have a pure heart (Matt. 5:8) is to have a heart whose unique goal, aim, and desire is Christ Himself.*
The apostle Paul is an example of having Christ as one’s unique desire. He tells us in Philippians 3:7, “what things were gains to me, these I have counted as loss on account of Christ.” And in verse 3:8 he says “But moreover I also count all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, on account of whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse that I may gain Christ.”
May the Lord bring us into the same experience of counting all as loss to gain the unsearchably rich Christ (Eph. 3:8) now. Then we will have greater satisfaction with Him in New Jerusalem. Let us seek to know Him fully (Phil. 3:10) and pursue “toward the goal for the prize to which God in Christ Jesus has called me upward” (3:14).
* From page 11 of Ed Marks, The New Jerusalem—A Corporate Person, Affirmation & Critique Monograph, A&C Press, © Living Stream Ministry (2025).
Posted by Don on May 18, 2026
https://newjerusalem12.wordpress.com/2026/05/18/love-christ-desire-christ-gain-christ/
