I’ve always found personal testimonies of faith in Christ to be uplifting and inspiring. In Philippians 3:4-9, Paul shared his own testimony. He explained that he had abundant reasons to boast about his background as “a Hebrew of the Hebrews,” a Pharisee, and “concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (vv. 5-6). These credentials could be called his religious résumé.
Contrast this with verses 7-9: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.”
So Paul had a religious résumé that he tossed out the window, as if he was saying, “This is who I used to be. These are the things I used to trust in. But my life changed when I was saved.”
Thirty years earlier, he had been on his way to Damascus to imprison believers when he had an encounter with Jesus Christ (see Acts 9). He said, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” (v. 6). After that, his life was devoted to being obedient to the will of Jesus. “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12).
At some point you’re going to have to tear up your own religious résumé. If you were raised in a religious home by spiritual parents and you’ve trusted in that for salvation, you’re going to realize at some point that God doesn’t have grandchildren. He only has children. You must devote yourself to a personal relationship with Him.
You need your own encounter with Christ—salvation always happens one generation at a time. Like Welsh theologian and poet John Dyer said, “A man may go to heaven without health, without riches, without honors, without learning, without friends; but he can never go there without Christ.”
So, what do you take pride in? What are you trusting is right before God? Churchgoing parents? An education from a Christian school? Those aren’t bad things—those are all good things. But as we’ve learned, a good thing can become a bad thing if it keeps you from the best thing. Whatever it is, if your faith is not in Jesus Christ alone, it’s all for show.
For Paul, gain and loss were like the profit and loss columns in an accounting ledger. Paul admitted that he had counted wrong for years (see Philippians 3:7-8). He spent his whole life working on his religious résumé, and he had all these things in the profit column. But then he realized he was bankrupt before God.
We can’t trust in our own goodness, our own merit, our own education, our own status, our own upbringing, or our own rituals. Whatever we rely on apart from Christ is rubbish when compared to the sweet-smelling fragrance of trusting in Jesus alone for salvation.
Shred your religious résumé and center your testimony on Jesus Christ and what He has done in your life.
