When Paul received his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, not only was he struck down to the ground physically (Acts 9:4); so also all his efforts to establish his own righteousness before God were struck down with him. From that moment on he pursued, instead, to know Christ Himself as his righteousness. That is why he could boldly declare to Peter,

I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me! And the life I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
— Galatians 2:20

More than anyone else, the New Testament gives us this brother as our pattern of one who sought the Lord and served Him. And we need to be clear that in his seeking after the Lord, Paul was not attempting to perfect his own virtues, but to have Christ Himself as his righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30).

Before, he had been one who was so zealous to keep the law, but the vision he received of Christ revolutionized his entire life, including his spiritual seeking. As a result, he tells us that now he wanted to be

…found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ—the righteousness which is of God, based upon the faith—that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if by any means I may attain to the outstanding resurrection from among the dead.
— Philippians 3:9-11

In brief, he was now in an entirely different realm from what he had been in before he was saved, for he was no longer seeking to be righteous, but to know Christ.

Like Paul did before his conversion, when he was still Saul, we all have at least some religious element in our being that makes us want to establish our own righteousness before God. That is why we, like him, all need to be struck down and revolutionized by a vision of Christ! May we seek the Lord and ask Him to give us such an inward vision of Himself, one that will put an end to all our efforts at self-improvement and the goal of making ourselves spiritual or “Christ-like,” so that instead we seek, like Paul, to know Christ Himself living within us as our righteousness.

This is what it means to truly grow in Christ.

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—  29 April 2025 —