If You Have Jesus, You Have Everything

This world and all its fullness will not satisfy the utmost longings of the soul. But if we have Christ and nothing else, we have everything. In this brief clip, Derek Thomas considers what it means to be crucified “to the world” (Gal 6:14).

Transcript:

Paul glories in the cross because he sees the cross not simply as a death and therefore one to which we might render sympathy, but he sees it as redemptive and saving and reconciling and justifying. He sees the gospel in the cross, God's good news of eternal life for sinners through the satisfaction and substitution of the work of Christ on our behalf. And so, he says "by which the world has been crucified to me." And I think he means this in the sense that the world had nothing to offer him, not in the sense that Paul didn't have a world and life view, not in the sense that Paul couldn't appreciate art or music or architecture or sports or hobbies or whatever, not in that sense, but in the ultimate sense the world had nothing to offer him, the world in its fallenness, the world in its vanity had nothing to offer him. There was something about even the beauty that there is in the world would remind him of ruined castles where the beauty had faded. And in the sense that Mick Jagger would've put it, "I can find no satisfaction," that which would satisfy the soul, that which would satisfy the sinner in need of redeeming grace. He cannot find it in the world. What profit is there if I gain the whole world and I lose my soul? You know, do the math. If you have the world, you have the world. You have the whole world, but you don't have Jesus. What have you got? And it's nothing. What if you don't have anything, but you have Jesus. You've got everything.