Christ . . . The One Thing Necessary!

Philippians 1:9-11: And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Commenting on what it means to approve what is excellent in verse 10, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote:

The difficulty in life is to know on what we ought to concentrate. The whole art of life, I sometimes think, is the art of knowing what to leave out, what to ignore, what to put on one side. How prone we are to dissipate our energies and to waste our time by forgetting what is vital and giving ourselves to second and third rate issues. Now, says Paul, here you are in the Christian life, you are concerned about difficulties, about oppositions and about the contradictions of life. What you need is just this: the power to concentrate on that which is vital, to leave out everything else, and to keep steadily to the one thing that matters.
(The Life of Joy: Philippians, vol. 1, pp. 54-55.)

The Apostle Paul came preaching one thing:

1 Corinthians 2:2: For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

He boasted in one thing:

Galatians 6:14: But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

One thing is of first importance:

1 Corinthians 15:3-4: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures . . . .

We proclaim one thing in the Lord's Supper:

1 Corinthians 11:26: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

May we approve what is excellent and proclaim that Jesus Christ and Him crucified is all!