Pay the Price for the Wedding Feast (2)

Matthew 25:1-13 shows that we need to pay a price to enter the wedding feast.The reality of this wedding is the Lamb, Jesus Christ, with His wife, New Jerusalem.

One aspect of paying the price is to deny our self as the Lord commanded in the gospels. Another is in Philippians 3:7, “what things were gains to me, these I have counted as loss on account of Christ.”

In 3:8 Paul goes further, speaking about counting “all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…that I may gain Christ.” May we all have revelations of Christ motivating us to count everything else as loss.

To count former gains as loss allows us to gain Christ, be found living in Him, to know Him subjectively, and to regularly experience His resurrection and death (Phil. 3:8-10). The peak of these experiences is to “attain to the out-resurrection from the dead” (3:11), a goal which Paul pursued and we should also pursue.

A parallel expression for counting all as loss is in Hebrews 12:1-2—let us “put away every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us…looking away unto Jesus.” Every encumbrance is anything, all things, which impede our looking to Jesus, pursuing Him, and gaining Him.

The wedding feast will be full of exuberance and glory as the introduction to New Jerusalem. Let us count all things as loss (Phil. 3:7-8), pursue (3:12, 14), forget the things which are behind and stretch forward (3:13), and look away from encumbrances to Jesus (Heb. 12).

Posted by Don on October 30, 2026

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