March 28, 2004

What It Means to Know Christ

Philippians 3:8-1

Knowing Christ was the burning core of Paul’s religion. We have no evidence that Paul ever saw, let alone met, the earthly Jesus, but that was not what he meant anyway. It is possible to see and meet someone, and still not know them. To Paul, knowing Christ did not mean satisfying his curiosity about what Jesus looked like, the color of his eyes and hair, his manner of speaking, and so on. Rather it meant knowing Christ in spiritual communion, knowing his heart, sharing his faith, knowing him in the fellowship of submission and obedience and, in consequence, becoming like him.

Why was this so important to Paul? Because before his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, he had lived on an entirely different basis: a basis which he calls “confidence in the flesh” (3). This meant several things for Paul. For one thing, it meant confidence in his pedigree: a member of the royal tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. For another, it meant confidence in his performance: a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, blameless in his observance of the Law. Yet for all that, he came to conclude that it was only after he found Christ that circumcision came to have its real meaning for him: the meaning which the Old Testament said it had, namely circumcision of the heart (Deuteronomy 30:6; Jeremiah 4:4, 9:25f). This permitted only one conclusion: that faith in Christ was what made one a member of the covenant. This could have only one consequence: placing Christ at the center of Paul’s religion.

Seeking to know Christ thus became the controlling passion of Paul’s life. In the epistle lesson he lays bare not only the intense conviction which powered this quest, but some of the specific ways in which he longed to know Christ, together with the reasons for them.

First, he wanted to know Christ in justifying faith(9). The central concern of the religious life is: How can a sinner be right with God? Paul places the alternatives in start contrast, with the constituent elements set out opposite each other to make the contrast clear. One possibility is “having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law”, the other is “one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”

The great human desire is to have a righteousness “of our own”. It seems to be so secure. It leaves us in control. It avoids dependence on anyone else. Paul had tried that, and, as he tells us in verse 4-6, had many reasons to be self-confident. But when he met Christ, he discarded it all as worthless lumber, because the only righteousness which is valid with God is the righteousness which comes from God as a gift.

John Wesley illustrates Paul’s point well. He tells us that, in his earliest years, he depended for his acceptance with God on three things. First, on not being as bad as other people. Second, on having what he quaintly calls “a kindness for religion”. And third, on reading the Bible, going to church and saying his prayers. But it was only in his heart-warming experience in an upper room on Aldersgate Street, London as he was listening to someone read Luther on the change God works in the heart through faith that “I felt my heart strangely warmed, I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and redeemed me from the law of sin and death.” Wesley had come to understand Paul perfectly.

Not only did Paul want to know Christ in justifying faith; he also wanted to know him in indwelling presence (10). This picks up and follows on from Paul’s understanding of justifying faith. Sometimes this is spoken of strictly as a relationship: having a right standing before God, being pronounced or accounted as being right. But Paul’s understanding is deeper than this. He understands justification as involving union with Christ, being “found in him” (9). Building on this he now proceeds to mark out a deeper dimension in which he wishes to know Christ. This may be called knowing Christ in indwelling presence, though ‘living identification’ would not be an inapt descriptor either.

What Paul means overall is that he wants to share the whole of Christ’s life: to live as Christ lived, to die as Christ died, to have the resurrection power of Christ coursing through his being. It is the last which he mentions first (10). He probably does so because it is the resurrection power at work in believers which enables them to live a new kind of life (Romans 6:4). But this resurrection life by definition is a resurrection from death: specifically, death to sin in which the power of sin was broken so that we are no longer held in its slavery (Romans 6:6-7). Paul desires, then, to share Christ’s sufferings that is to say, to have Christ’s cross transposed into his own life so that he may experience its emancipating power by bringing death to sin. For Paul to be ‘in Christ’ meant being ‘like Christ’.

Finally, Paul longed to know Christ in resurrection power: “If somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (11). Clearly, it is a different aspect of the resurrection of which he is speaking here than in the previous verse. There he was speaking of the resurrection of the soul from sin in the present; here he is speaking of the resurrection of the body at the end of the age.

There is something wistful about Paul’s use of the word
“somehow”. It means something like “if perhaps” or “if by any means”, and introduces a statement of purpose which is not altogether within the power of the speaker. In Romans 1:10 he uses it in reference to his desire to visit the church in Rome. Paul’s uncertainty does not spring from doubt, but from the awareness that he cannot accomplish this on his own. It is only by knowing Christ and being ‘in him’ that it is possible.

The Hebrew mind – and Paul was “a Hebrew of Hebrews” – repelled the idea of death. “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit?” asks the psalmist. “Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?” (Psalm 30:9). But for Paul the Christian a great change had taken place. Christ had been raised from the dead. His tomb was empty on the third day. And all those united with him by faith would be raised bodily when he returned on the last day.

Once I found myself listening in to a conversation between two elderly Christian women. They were discussing the life to come and what it would be like. They agreed that there were many things about it which they did not know. And then, in spontaneous unison, they said: “It will be better than this!” There is indeed, much about the life of heaven which we do not know. But we do know that it will be better, far better, far better than all our imaginings, than anything we have known on earth. Paul yearned that he would be among those who attained it, and he knew that “knowing Christ” was the key.

Throughout the passage he says that he wants to be “in Christ”, to “gain Christ”, to “know Christ.” Does he mean that at the time he was writing he was not “in Christ” and did not “know him”? Assuredly not. But there are two factors which probably account for his speaking in this way. One is that, some aspects of knowing Christ plainly lie in the future. The resurrection of the body is one. Another is that there seem to have been those in the Philippian church who believed that they had already received the whole of salvation, resurrection included. Paul therefore goes on to disclaim any such thing: “Not that I have already obtained this” (12); “I do not consider that I have made it my own” (13); “I press on toward the goal” (14). But he affirms that there is a completeness, a fulfillment, a perfection to the saving work of God in the present (15); and he urges the Philippians to share that attitude which he shares. The secret of it, from beginning to end, is the same: knowing Christ.