How do you THINK you get to know Christ?

Paul’s goal in life is to know Christ more and more - see Philippians 3:10. He has thrown away everything else he has ever achieved to focus on this one ambition.

It is a wonderful ambition for all of us who have come to know Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour. To have a life goal like Paul: that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. The trouble is the end of that sentence mentions sufferings and death. Can we not know Christ without these things?

A change of thinking

Philippians has a lot to say about about our thinking. Look at how many times the concepts of our minds and our thinking are scattered throughout the letter: 1:9, 2:2, 2:5, 3:15, 3:19, 4:2, 4:7-9

Paul explains he used to think very differently in Philippians 3:3-11. He thought he was serving God when he was persecuting the church. He thought Jesus of Nazareth was a fake Messiah and a blasphemer. He was determined to rid his name from the earth in his zeal for the honour of Israel’s God. Then Israel’s God spoke to him from glory and introduced himself with the name Jesus Acts 9:1-5. Paul had to rethink everything.

Paul realised he did not know God at all. And Jesus was offering him a fresh start. To tear up his entire CV. Throw away all his privilege, credentials and achievements, and instead to have a fresh start in a relationship with Jesus. It was a no-brainer. Paul recognised the surpassing worth of a relationship with Christ. Even though it meant losing everything he had ever achieved, he saw it all for what it really was: dung! Excrement! Filthy, defiling, guilt! That Christ was offering to take away and give him what he had been seeking all his life: righteousness. A right standing before God. All his attempts to earn it had achieved the very opposite, and had accumulated guilt and wrath before God. He deserved to be squashed like an impertinent mosquito by the Son of God. Yet instead, Jesus, in his amazing grace, offered Paul himself. And if he accepted Jesus as Lord Jesus would remove all his guilt and make him righteous before God. It was indeed a no-brainer.

Now that he had finally achieved what he had been seeking all his life you would think Paul would relax. But Paul becomes more ambitious than ever. Not now to achieve acceptance with God – but to know Christ more and become like him. Paul realised now that life was not an exam in which he had to earn acceptance with God, but an opportunity in which he could get to know God from a secure relationship of acceptance. His ambition changed from striving for righteousness, to seeking a deeper relationship. But how?

Suffering as an opportunity

Paul had come to realise, much to his shock, that God had become a man, suffered and died a humiliated death on a Roman cross. Not because it was out of character but because it was God’s very nature to do so. God was more humble than Paul ever imagined. Paul had not known God at all and now was determined to use the rest of his life to really know God in a deep and personal way. And part of that was only possible in this life so he was determined not to waste a moment.

Real, deep fellowship with Christ is not only found through peaceful meditation on his word and prayer. It must start there of course, but it must lead on to costly service and sacrifice for God and the gospel, if we are going to experience real fellowship with Christ: what Paul calls here the fellowship of his sufferings.

Just like the modern concept of lived experience e.g. that you can’t really know what it is like to live as a black person in America unless you are a black person in America. This is the Christian version: we can’t really know Christ unless we allow him to take over our life and lead us through what he went through. The way of the cross. Rejections, sufferings, hardship and for some like Paul, even an early death – all for the honour and glory of God.

Paul realised that this is a passing opportunity. There will be no suffering in glory. If we are to know Christ in this way, it must be granted to us now. It had been granted to the little church at Philippi to suffer for the gospel (1:29), and Paul is trying to help them change their thinking to see it as a privilege and opportunity.

Maybe he needs to change our thinking as well. We generally avoid all forms of hardship and suffering. But Paul teaches us that suffering hardship for Christ and his gospel is a privilege and an opportunity that will bring us near to Christ in a way that will not be possible beyond this life. That is something worth thinking about.