Trusting in Christ and Pressing on to Maturity
I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. But we must hold on to the progress we have already made. [NLT]
Phil 3:10-16
In the previous Gem I suggested you make sure to connect this new pericope with what has gone before it. I took you back to the beginning of Philippians 3:1. That is our immediate context. But you know by now that Paul wrote an epistle, a long letter. So long that is one of the books of the Bible. But it is a short one compared with Romans and Corinthians. Expect the whole letter to connect but for our immediate purposes we will focus on Paul’s current train of thought. We have seen that he came to the point of considering his past accomplishments and training to be worthless. He even uses the word dung to show how worthless he now thought it was. He has compared the way of the Judaisers (of whom he was one) to the new way in Christ. Compared with God’s way of making us right, the old way of following the Law was worthless in Paul’s eyes. It will never save you. Paul concluded the previous segment with this thought:
. . . For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.
Phil 3:9
Paul opens this new pericope or paragraph with a connected thought. God’s way of salvation is for us TO KNOW CHRIST.
- God doesn’t mean for us to know about Him.
- To know some facts about Him.
- To do an historical study on the Birth and Death of Jesus Christ.
- To go to Bible College and complete a Masters in Theology with a thesis on the Birth, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Validity of HIs Claims to be Messiah and its Significance for Today.
No, God and Paul mean for us to know Him. The significance and deep meaning of knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection is to come to know Him experientially. To put knowing Him into practice, not doing a study on Him. The verb Paul uses to open this section is γνῶναι which is an aorist infinitive of the Greek verb [γινώσκω] (ginōskō) which carries the idea of coming to know Him at a particular point in time and continuing on to know more Him fully. It is a personal, relational word. Or rather I should say it is a personal, relational process. It is the same word used in the Old Testament in Genesis where the text tells us that Adam knew Eve and as a result, Cain was born. (Genesis 4:1) Yes that sort of knowing. The intimate, personal process of coming to know another person. As in all human relationships, coming to know someone, really knowing them, takes time. You come to know them, the way they think, the way they act, the ways they have about them. You come to know and become aware of their habits and thought processes, and begin to understand that person’s philosophy on life, their opinions and thoughts on certain subjects and their likes and dislikes. When you know those kinds of things, you can begin to predict their likely thoughts, actions and reactions on situations and topics you have never talked with them about. You have come to the point of really knowing them. You could tell someone else, “I have never talked about that with him but I am sure that I could speak for him on that matter, because I know he thinks . . . . and he reacted that way in other situations at numerous times. so I conclude he would say . . . ”
Now you have the idea of what the verb [ginōskō] means in practical everyday terms. Coming to know a person means you learn to trust them completely because you know them so well. That’s right, it depends on faith. It is based on the degree to which you know the inner thoughts of that person to point where you can trust them completely, inside and out, explicitly and implicitly because you know them so well. That is the depth of meaning behind Paul’s opening words in this section. And notice he has written:
I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!
Phil 3:10-11
Well actually it is all connected because it one Greek sentence from verse 7 to verse 11.
The Literal Version comes the closest to capturing the sense of the flow of Greek with the following:
But, no, rather I also count all things to be loss because of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them to be trash, that I might gain Christ and be found in Him; not having my own righteousness of Law, but through the faith of Christ, having the righteousness of God on faith, to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, having been conformed to His death, if somehow I may attain to a resurrection out of the dead.
Phil 3:8-11
As I have told you before Paul’s thoughts are tumbling forth. Don’t panic, I am not about to resort to Propositional Analysis at this point. I try to use it sparingly. I know many of you find it hard to cope with. “So I have a question Ian?” This is Ian asking Ian a question.
“Why then, if this section is all one sentence, did you divide it into two different pericope?”
“Oh that is a good question, Ian. The difficulty lies in the fact that in Greek it is very easy to allow thoughts to tag on to the end of other thoughts in relative clauses. But it is not natural to do in English. Seemingly the English liked their sentences nice ‘n neat and tidy. No hanging bits with split infinitives, strings of participles and relative clauses. Fix up your prose boy, your sentences are too long.”
So it is a matter of conveying what Paul was meaning with his words and showing how they fit together. To do that it is sometimes necessary to split rather than to join. If you haven’t been following these Gems regularly then go back to look at Gem 1959, 1961 and 1967 to understand what I am talking about when I use the term Splitters and Joiners. It is all part of attempting to understand a section of Paul’s letter which is packed with goodies. I imagine this section may well end up being another Gem series. This is why Philippians is perhaps my favourite letter from Paul.
Stop and think about Paul’s statement in Phil 3:10-11 that I have given you above. They are not idle words. Neither are they theological precepts to be debated. They are Paul’s real life experience to the point where he wants to come to know this Christ better and better so he too can experience resurrection from the dead. If you think about this more deeply you will understand why I am writing this paragraph and you will understand Paul’s thoughts behind what he wrote so long ago. Remember again, Paul was a Judaiser who was soundly converted on the way to Damascus when he encounter the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth around AD 36. Oh Paul knew about this Jesus who had been crucified and was reportedly resurrected just a few short years before. As a trainee pharisee he had been so incensed at Stephen’s speech (a Hellenist’s view of Jewish history – Acts 7) that he began to persecute the followers of this Jesus. After a few years Paul came face to face with the One Whose followers he was hunting down to imprison or kill. Put yourself in his shoes. He was so radically changed that he went from Saul to Paul, from persecutor to preacher, from fanatic to fan. I say again, these are not idle words nor pious pontification. They are words which have been forged as a result of real relationship. Time for me to stop pouring out words and to give you a break to reflect and ruminate. Oh alright, I will stop with the R words and suggest you think about this some more before we start unpacking this passage – Philippians 3:10-16.
Read through Philippians 3:10-16 again and take time to notice the details. Look at the diagram I gave you in the previous Gem once more. This section is packed with goodies. I have told you that already. I am simply using repetition for emphasis.
My relationship with God is only as deep as my relationship to His Word.
Robb Thompson
How deep is your desire for the Word of life? Is it equal to your love for God or does it get easily reprioritised when other “important things” come along?
Ian Vail
Do you drink deeply at the fountain of living water or just rinse and spit?
Ian Vail
If you study the Bible and it doesn’t lead you to wonder and awe then you haven’t gone deep enough.
Ian Vail
(S)he who finds their own Gems comes alive to Bible study. Capture the thrill of digging deeper in God’s Word and you will never be the same.
Ian Vail