Philippians 3:7

ἀλλὰ. So (or ἀλλʼ) אcBD2*, the mass of cursives, vulg syrr copt, Aug. אAG, 17, Cyr Al6 om ἀλλὰ.

7. ἀλλὰ ἅτινα. Almost, “But the kind of things which.” Ἅτινα is just more than ἅ. He thinks not only of the things as things, but of their class and character.—On the reading ἀλλὰ, see critical note.

κέρδη. Observe the plural. He had counted over his items of privilege and pride, like a miser with his bags of gold.

ἥγημαι. “I have accounted”; we may say, “I have come to reckon.”

διὰ τὸν Χριστὸν. “On account of the” (almost, “our”) “Christ”; not “for His sake” (ὑπὲρ τοῦ Χ.) but “because of the fact of Him”; because of the discovery, in Him, of the infinitely more than equivalent of the κέρδη of the past. MESSIAH, found out in His true glory, was cause enough for the change of view.

ζημίαν. Observe the singular. The κέρδη are all fused now into one undistinguished ζημία. And ζημία imports not only “no gain,” but a positive detriment. True, some of the κέρδη at least were in themselves good things; pedigree, covenant-connexion, zeal, exactitude, self-discipline. But as a fact, viewed as he had viewed them, they had been shutting out Christ from his soul, and so every day of reliance on them was a day of deprivation of the supreme Blessing.