Chosen, Possessed, Lost, Gaining

In his Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

“For in knowing Christ man knows and acknowledges God’s choice which has fallen upon this man himself; he no longer stands as the chooser between good and evil, that is to say, in disunion; he is the chosen one, who can no longer choose, but has already made his choice in his being chosen in the freedom and unity of the deed and will of God.  He thus has a new knowledge, in which the knowledge of good and evil is overcome.  He has the knowledge of God, yet no longer as the man who has become like God, but as the man who bears the image of God.  All he knows now is ‘Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (I Cor. 2.2), and in Him he knows all.” 

Put that against Paul's version of a Profit & Loss in Philippians 3, given the reality of Union: 

"Yet every advantage that I had gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake. Yes, and I look upon everything as loss compared with the overwhelming gain of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For his sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of everything, but I considered it useless rubbish compared with being able to win Christ. For now my place is in him..."

Our chosenness makes the choice for the availability of Union everyday, not our "choosing" to abide in Jesus. It is our chalking up only Jesus as our basis that unites the Heavenly Reality with our Experience-of-reality. As we learn the riches we possess in being possessed of Him, like Paul did, the "losses" we incur become as nothing. His choice of us sets us free from choosing. We are free to be the possessed ones.