Philippians 3:10, commentary and pictures

Paul's one ruling purpose from which nothing could divert him was to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings by being made conformable to His death. To know Him is more than knowledge about Him, it is gaining Him and being found in Him in personal fellowship as a personal Saviour. That knowledge was of such excellence that Paul counted former gains and all things as loss and refuse for it, worth more than any other treasure. The power of His resurrection is the power of His grace to save and make mind and heart and soul triumph over the lower nature, giving life to the soul dead in sin and keeping it from sin, and the same power will raise the body from the grave. Fellowship in His sufferings means absolute surrender of self and daily crucifixion to self, sharing His sorrow over sin and His selfless work to save the lost, and those who share His sorrow here will also share His joy and the glory to be revealed.

Paul's Aim and Setting

Philippians 3:10 states Paul's one ruling purpose and fixed resolution of life, from which nothing could divert him: to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings by being made conformable to His death. That knowing was the goal for which he counted former gains and all things as loss, pressing toward the resurrection and the prize of God's high calling in Christ. After Christ revealed Himself to him, this became his one aim and purpose in life.

The words came not from a human mind but are truths declared in vision to Paul, to whom God gave many revelations. They were recorded for the benefit of all who desire to be sincere, earnest, whole-hearted Christians obedient to all God's requirements. They are the fundamental principles of the law that declares the whole duty of man. They belong to Paul's testimony of counting former gains as loss for Christ as part of wholehearted Christian obedience to God's requirements.

Paul wrote without claiming to have already attained or to be already perfect. As one forgetting what is behind and reaching to what is before, he pressed toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. This pressing meant walking the one strait and narrow path, counting earthly gain as loss to win Christ and be found in Him with the righteousness of God by faith and not one's own righteousness of the law, in order by pursuit to attain the resurrection of the dead. He had rejected confidence in his own law-keeping to seek righteousness through faith in Christ, yet continued to pursue the goal Christ had called him to rather than claiming to have reached perfection or already attained the resurrection.

This aim followed Christ revealing Himself to Paul while he was blaspheming, persecuting the church and seeking to make others blaspheme and despising Christ. Paul then devoted his life to serving and honoring Him and winning souls to Him despite opposition from Jew and Gentile. He stayed faithful under continual hatred and malice from the Jews who were bitter against him and did all they could to hinder his work, and amid many infirmities and constant activity his fellowship in suffering was proven by a history of trials. While carrying many duties such as teaching, writing instructive letters, and working with his hands as a tentmaker for daily bread, and bearing heavy burdens to correct and help the churches, he kept this one fixed resolution that could not be diverted. Knowing Christ was worth more to him than any other treasure, even though he had persecuted the church, and he trusted Christ's grace to save even a former persecutor.

Paul's life of knowing Christ and resurrection power was true success. Those who did not know Christ saw it as sacrifice of fame, honor and greatness for suffering and disgrace. His enduring name among those who love God, and its place in the records above, contrasts with the forgotten lives of those who served the world.

What Paul pressed toward is the pattern for all who are mature. They are to walk by the same rule and follow Paul and those who walk as his example. They refuse the enemies of the cross whose end is destruction and whose mind is on earthly things. Keeping citizenship in heaven while looking for the Saviour to change the vile body to be fashioned like His glorious body, they stand fast as a people redeemed from iniquity and purified zealous of good works in watchful readiness for His coming.

Knowing Christ Personally

To know him is more than knowledge about him; it is to gain him and be found in him in personal fellowship, to receive him as a personal Saviour, to draw nigh to him and to live his life. This knowing is of such excellence that former gains and all things are counted as loss and refuse for it, for knowing Christ was worth more than any other treasure, and the soul constantly thirsts for greater knowledge of Christ Jesus as Lord. True free and undefiled religion is to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, demonstrated by love for Christ as Mary demonstrated by anointing him, by which she is joined to him and to the gospel through all time. It is kept by a constant sense of God's presence with the eye ever looking to Jesus the Author and Finisher of faith.

Knowing Christ is learned daily in the school of Christ and requires receiving Jesus with all his conditions and requirements. To have Christ is to have everything, held by simple faith that talks faith, acts faith, and lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, an experience to be practiced and taught to counteract error. As people behold the Redeemer, faith, adoration and love awaken and they grow into the likeness of the one they adore, and knowing Christ in this way grows from beholding his sacrifice and life of unselfish service. This knowledge and fellowship begin in this life with friendship with Jesus and following him in service, and lead to eternal joy and delight in his presence.

Seeking this experimental knowledge of a living Saviour is joined to a clear understanding of the Scriptures and calls for greater exertion to emulate the good works of the righteous. It requires a cultivated intellect and taxed memory, since intellectual laziness is sin and spiritual lethargy is death, and it means being united with his mind, which sanctifies the understanding and gives thought clearness and force. This knowing brings peace and joy in Jesus and the treasures of his love even in sickness and uncertainty about recovery, with assurance of being his child belonging to the Lord whether living or dying. It sustains trust and hope amid severe pain and moves the believer to follow his example of faithfulness, uprightness, tenderness and humility, copying his pattern by being exact in principle and upright in conduct. The verse also points to the need to rely on power beyond oneself and to lay hold of a power outside of self, praying earnestly for the Lord Jesus to instruct and teach how to resist the wiles of the devil and watch against temptation.

Power of His Resurrection

To know Christ includes experiencing the power of His resurrection, which is the power of His grace to save even one who had persecuted the church. That knowing is personal fellowship with Him, receiving His grace so that mind and heart and soul triumph over the lower nature, drawing nigh to Him and living His life. It is the soul's highest desire, replacing confidence in one's own law-keeping with trust in Christ's righteousness and saving power, counting all former gains and all things as loss and refuse for the excellence of knowing Him. It means renouncing one's own righteousness which is of the law for the righteousness which is of God by faith in Christ, learned daily in the school of Christ. To have Christ is to have everything, held by a simple faith that talks faith and acts faith and lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, an experience to be practiced and taught to counteract error.

That power means living through His grace with a renewed nature, growing into His likeness and rising higher in spiritual strength. Spiritual health and strength come through constant communion with God and Christ abiding in the heart by faith, so the lessons of the chapter must be carefully studied and practiced. The power of Christ's resurrection gives life to the soul dead in sin, breaks the dominion of evil, and through faith keeps the soul from sin.

The same power that gives life to the soul will raise the body from the grave. Knowing Christ includes following Him and sharing in the hope of His resurrection, for Christ was raised and those who follow Him will be raised from the grave when the last trumpet sounds. God pledges to those who follow on to know Him and who impart to others the knowledge they have received, that they also may know the power of Christ's resurrection. If they work on the plan of addition, Christ will work for them on the plan of multiplication.

Fellowship of His Sufferings

Sharing in His sufferings and being made conformable to His death means absolute surrender of self, soul, body and spirit, receiving Christ with all His conditions and requirements and making the kingdom of God first. It means walking the one strait and narrow path to heaven as God's witnesses, loving God supremely and neighbor as self, following Christ in everything and conforming life to His teachings while keeping His perfection in view. It accepts self-humiliation, self-denial, self-sacrifice and constant conflict with human passions, hiding self in Christ day by day under all trials, difficulties and temptation.

That fellowship means being daily crucified with Christ and daily sharing in His sufferings, dying to self daily in a crucifixion of self that every soul must experience. It is worked by the living breath of the Holy Spirit, which makes a humble person's life noble, pure and after Christ's likeness. Much knowledge does not lift a person in God's sight; childlike simplicity and Christlike humility do, and the one most nearly a child in faith, trust and devotion is great in God's sight and highest in His kingdom. This self-denying, self-sacrificing spirit reveals a missionary heart that seeks not to crush but to restore the moral image of God, taking rough stones from the quarry of the world into God's workshop where axe and chisel and hammer smooth rough edges and polishing prepares each as a living stone emitting light, so that when Christ is loved more than self His beautiful image is reflected in the believer.

It means sharing the sorrow and self-denial of His humiliating earthly life and being made like Him in suffering and in death. Christ left glory, labored and endured hardship and gave His life, leaving the royal courts of heaven, laying aside royal robes and crown of honor, and clothing divinity with humanity so humanity could touch humanity and divinity could lay hold of divine power for the fallen race. His life was not marked by love of ease and pleasure and self-exaltation, but He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, wounded for transgressions, bruised for iniquities, chastised to give peace and striped to give healing. Following Him is a step-by-step ascent on Him as the ladder from earth to heaven, each step bringing the believer closer to God, guarded by keeping the eyes fixed on God's glory. Because Christ has walked through distress, borne sin and the cross, and sympathizes with human weakness, a believer's painful trials can bring deeper communion with Him.

Fellowship in His sufferings means sharing His sorrow over sin and the world's grief and His selfless work to save the lost. It means sharing in loyalty to Him through obedience and doing His work even when others oppose that choice, trusting Him as personal Saviour and relying on God's promises rather than refusing His will. Believers may be called to this sharing as a definite part of knowing Him.

For God's ministers and all Christ's workers it means suffering for Christ and being crucified with Him and rejoicing in it. It means setting aside personal interests, comfort, pleasure, ease, desires and convenience, laying aside self-interest, selfish desires and self-comfort so they do not stand in the way of saving souls. Those engaged in saving souls are co-workers with Christ in disinterested benevolence and constant self-sacrifice, sacrificing and denying self to bring others to the knowledge of the truth, bearing a burden for those perishing and giving up personal interests to support the work, for a life unwilling to make such sacrifices lacks this fellowship. The apostles' desire to know Christ crucified was expressed through carrying the cross, setting aside convenience and pleasure to do good, preach and save others rather than seeking pleasure or convenience.

This self-denying path is entered by studying His life and character and copying His example, since His perfect humanity is the pattern for the character to be formed for eternity. It requires bearing the cross, denying self, and bringing the will into submission to God, for an outward form of religion or occasional sacrifice does not suffice if self remains unconquered. No one can expect to please self, live and act like the world, have its pleasures and enjoy the company of those of the world, and still reign with Christ in glory; seeking own interest and how best to please self instead of seeking to please God and advance His suffering cause dishonors God and the holy cause professed.

Believers share that fellowship when for His sake the love of money is not all-absorbing, they labor, deny self, cut off every superfluous want and bind about every needless expenditure, and use what comes into their possession to save souls without Christ and without hope. In this they cooperate with the Redeemer who for their sakes became poor that through His poverty they might be made rich, and therefore they should not seek ease or cling selfishly to what God has entrusted to them but use it for His glory.

Sharing Christ's sufferings comes through trials He permits because He does not always let His children have their own way. Christ gave His life to save souls perishing under sin and sorrow because His little flock is dear to Him, and when believers yield themselves to Him their trials work out for their good. When in trying circumstances where others fail to help in God's work, believers are to do their best without murmuring and without reproaching those who hinder God's purposes, trusting the Lord as their exceeding great reward who will judge with equity, knowing the time will come when neglect of duty and every selfish action with its consequences will stand out vividly.

It includes patiently enduring persecution, loss of home and possessions, imprisonment, torture and death for the truth with joy. Being falsely accused for Christ's sake is a way of suffering with Him, and accepting that suffering can be an act of consecration to God. It means being a partaker with Christ by patiently enduring unjust accusation, opposition and confederacy of evil men, and the burden of being brought into courts of law, giving depositions, losing time and bearing anxiety, accepting even more suffering if it is the Lord's will with submission to His will. Those who suffered for the truth could rejoice that this fellowship with Christ was theirs.

God tests His people by bringing close and cutting truth to purify faith like gold and purge away dross until Jesus presents them without spot or wrinkle. They overcome through trials and sufferings as Jesus overcame, not shunning the cross or the suffering part of religion, for suffering with Him is the way to reign with Him. Trials are an evidence of being children of God, permitted to test, to increase love and to perfect trust in Him, and Paul rejoiced in tribulation because he desired to share in Christ's sufferings to be conformed to His image and did not despair under great trials as though his Father in heaven were dead; through self-denial and suffering with Christ believers grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth.

Moses knew this fellowship when shown the first advent, the humble life in Nazareth, the ministry of love and healing, rejection by a proud nation, the agony in Gethsemane, betrayal, mockery, scourging and nailing to the cross, the resurrection and the ascension escorted by angels to triumphant welcome in heaven. Seeing the trials and sacrifices of the Son of God made his own trials and sacrifices appear small by comparison, and he rejoiced to have shared even in small measure in them. Fellowship with Christ's sufferings is connected with self-abnegation that reflects unselfishness, as seen in Jonathan and John the Baptist, who endured suffering in that spirit.

Those who partake of His sufferings are brought into profound sympathy with Him who became a man of sorrows and knew grief. Through this sympathy the follower is shaped into Christ's image and remains steadfast through trials and adversity because the soul is firmly grounded on the eternal Rock. Every act of self-sacrifice for others strengthens unselfish love and draws the giver closer to Christ, who became poor for others so they might be enriched.

The redeemed have experienced the conflict with sin and worked with Christ, giving them a knowledge of redemption that unfallen beings, including angels, could not gain through their own experience; they will bear witness to this knowledge. The one nearest to Christ in His kingdom is the one who has most deeply lived out His self-sacrificing love by giving, serving and sacrificing for others, even unto death; this fellowship is part of the path to that nearness.

Fellowship with Christ in His sufferings is a gift heaven bestows, the most valuable of all gifts heaven can give and bringing the highest honor, received by those who let the Lord lead them as co-workers and willingly and gladly give back what He entrusted to them. Being partakers means surrendering to God in unselfish service for humanity in cooperation with the Lord of glory and sharing His sympathies. This fellowship ennobles the worker, sweetens all toil, braces the will and nerves the spirit for whatever may befall, against obstacles, opposition, bitter heart-breaking discouragement and not seeing fruit of labor, surrounding the worker with a heavenly atmosphere that brings health to the body, vigor to the intellect and joy to the soul even before the great final reward at Christ's coming, while increasing Christ's joy and bringing honor and praise to His exalted name.

Those who share His sorrow also share His joy and the glory to be revealed, and are privileged to comfort others with the consolation God gives. Being baptized into His sufferings in order to inherit glory, believers face trials without shrinking but bear them with patience and joy because Jesus suffered to secure their rich inheritance. Seeing how much Jesus suffered to obtain so rich an inheritance leads to asking to share in those sufferings, knowing that through His poverty and sufferings believers are made rich.

Believers must be partakers of His sufferings here if they would share His glory hereafter. This calls for a life corresponding with profession, Bible holiness and a higher standard of piety as children of God and joint-heirs with Christ, earnestly seeking God, for a merely professed hope is not enough. Outward sacrifices of time or money do not show that self is subdued or the will submitted to God, and trials test fidelity where one who has not denied self or resisted desire for pleasure has little experience of this fellowship.

With only a little space of time left to work, nothing should be too dear to sacrifice for the salvation of the scattered and torn flock of Jesus. Those who now make a covenant with God by sacrifice will soon be gathered home to share a rich reward and possess the new kingdom forever and ever. It requires denying self and moving fast, because time is almost finished and those who have lately embraced the truth must learn in a few months what others learned step by step over years, unlearning much and learning again, and must have decision now to refuse the institution of the beast when the decree goes forth that all receive the mark of the beast and his image.

Few, even among those who claim to believe present truth, reach this experience of being co-laborers with Jesus Christ and partakers of His suffering. Those who live it are truly humble, devoted, God-fearing servants whose hearts are full of gratitude and thanksgiving because they are called to act a part in God's work, and those called to take part have reason for gratitude and thanksgiving.

Counting Loss for Righteousness

To know Christ in the sense of Philippians 3:10 requires counting all former confidence and every earthly gain as loss and refuse in order to win Christ and be found in Him, suffering the loss of all things for the surpassing worth of that knowledge. It means drawing near to Him and living His life in personal fellowship with Him, receiving His grace so that mind and heart and soul triumph over the lower nature. It requires making the kingdom of God first through self-humiliation, self-denial, self-sacrifice, and constant conflict with human passions, with absolute surrender of self, soul, body, and spirit. It is a daily work of hiding self in Christ and winning Him anew day by day under all trials, difficulties, and temptation, receiving Jesus with all His conditions and requirements. The soul that has tasted this thirsts constantly for still greater knowledge of Christ Jesus as Lord, laying hold of power outside of self and praying earnestly to be taught how to resist the wiles of the devil and watch against temptation.

This counting of loss means renouncing one's own righteousness which is of the law for the righteousness which is of God by faith in Christ. Former confidence in one's own law-keeping becomes worthless beside knowing Christ, and is replaced by trust in Christ's righteousness and saving power. That righteousness is received through the faith of Christ and is learned daily in the school of Christ. To have Christ in this way is to have everything, held by a simple faith that talks faith, acts faith, and lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It is an experience to be practiced and taught in order to counteract error, walked out on the one strait and narrow path as God's witnesses in love to God supremely and to neighbor as self, following Christ in everything and conforming life to His teachings while keeping His perfection in view.

Beholding Christ's sacrifice and life of unselfish service produces self-denial, sacrifice, humility, and freedom from worldly ambition and desire for earthly gain. Knowing Christ in resurrection power and in the fellowship of His sufferings is worth the loss of everything else. It therefore requires refusing worldly attractions and laying aside every weight and the easily besetting sin. This knowledge is joined to reliance on power beyond oneself rather than on self.

Paul pressed toward the goal in order by any means to attain the resurrection from the dead and the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, allowing nothing to divert him. He did not claim to have already attained or to be already perfect, but forgot what was behind and reached to what was before. The hope of seeing the face of God is worth all effort and sacrifice, and believers are to strive for this goal in the same way, pursuing Christ and leaving what is past to reach toward the heavenly calling. Knowing Christ, sharing the power of His resurrection, sharing the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death, and pressing toward the resurrection and the prize belong together as one aim.

Those who truly know Christ do not refuse His will but trust Him as a personal Saviour and rely on God's promises. They choose to share His sufferings by living His life of self-denial and enduring shame for His sake. Such loyalty through obedience and doing His work even when others oppose that choice is what it means to be a genuine medical missionary.