that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:10-11 ESV

 

Having expressed his dependency upon the grace of God for righteousness, Paul now proceeds to detail the benefits of knowing and being found in Christ. We can roughly break these benefits into three sections: knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection, sharing His sufferings, and attaining the resurrection of the dead.

KNOWING CHRIST & THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION // VERSE 10

The first benefit of being saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection. In verse 8, we described briefly the importance of knowing Christ, which Paul considered surpassing more valuable than his own religious works. Here the apostle emphasizes that knowing Christ is a fruit of the gospel itself. Too many envision the good news as a kind of Get-Out-of-Hell-Free card. By saving us from our sins, Jesus grants us access to heaven. Period. End of story. The gospel, however, promises us so much more than a pleasant place to spend eternity; it promises us Jesus Christ. Failing to understand the majesty of such a promise can only mean that the gospel itself is not understood. Jesus is the both the means and the goal of the gospel. He rescued us, and He is our great reward.

Of course, a new Christian who first believes the gospel knows something of Christ but will be hungry to know more of Him. How does he or she do this? We grow in knowledge of Christ through reading and understanding the written Word of God. The Bible is the special revelation of God to humanity; therefore, we come to know Him through the Scriptures. But the need to grow in our knowledge of Christ is not just for new Christians. Because Jesus is the eternal God, we will never know Him fully. Finite minds simply cannot understand entirely that which is infinite. Thus, to suggest that we already sufficiently know Christ is, first, a statement of supreme arrogance and, second, actually reveals that we do not comprehend even the basic divinity of Christ. We shall spend all of eternity coming to understand more and more of our Savior, yet we will never reach the end. Tozer captures what must be the heart of each Christian with these words:

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshiping soul:

We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink Thee, the Fountainhead,
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill. 

Does this describe you?

Are you pursuing God?

In Christ, the Father is revealed to us; therefore, our pursuit will not be in vain. God has commanded this of us: “You have said, ‘Seek my face’” (Psalm 27:8). May we answer with the psalmist: “My heart says to you, ‘Your face, LORD, do I seek’” (Psalm 27:8).

But the apostle does not stop at simply knowing Christ; instead, he also adds another phrase: and the power of his resurrection. Thus, being transformed by the gospel means knowing Christ and the power that raised Him from the dead. What then is the power of Christ’s resurrection? We should begin with the reminder that it is almost impossible to overstate the importance of the resurrection of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15:17, Paul bluntly states: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” Without the resurrection of Jesus, Christianity comes undone. There is no hope for the life to come, for us to be saved from our sins, if Christ remained in the grave. The gospel itself depends upon the resurrection. What can be more powerful than that? What knowledge on earth can compare to knowing that God Himself died for the sins of His rebellious creatures and rose from the dead to display His power for all to see? No truth is greater than this.

But how can we know the power of Christ’s resurrection? Romans 8:11 provides us with a clue: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” The Holy Spirit of God dwells within each and every believer, granting to us spiritual life in Christ here and eternal life with Christ in the age to come. Each Christian knows the power of Christ’s resurrection because it is the very power which saved us from being dead in sin. To believe the gospel is to experience the power of the resurrection.

Finally, notice that knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection are entwined with one another. This is no accident on Paul’s part. Rather, Christ cannot be known apart from also knowing the power of His resurrection. To deny the reality of His rising is to deny Christ Himself. We are only able to know Him because of His victory of the grave on our behalf.

SHARING THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST // VERSE 10

The second benefit of salvation is sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Like verse 29 of chapter one, we might be tempted to slide past this verse without giving it too much thought; however, it is crucial for understanding Paul’s joy in the midst of suffering. To understand this, we must first understand Christ’s sufferings. The afflictions of Christ were so essential to His life that Isaiah gave Him this description: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (53:3). As the hymn declares, “Man of sorrows, what a name for the Son of God, who came ruined sinners to reclaim”! And although Christ’s life was one of rejection and sorrow, the very pinnacle is the cross. In fact, Paul made such a claim already by placing the crucifixion of Christ at the very depth of His humiliation for us (2:8). The sufferings of Christ upon the cross are so central to the life of Christ that we can rightly declare that Jesus came to earth to die. His atoning death was the reason behind the glorious miracle of the incarnation. As with the resurrection, we cannot overstate the vast importance of the sufferings of Christ via the cross.

But what then does Paul mean about sharing in Christ’s sufferings? After all, wasn’t the whole point of the cross for Jesus to suffer in our place? Paul is certainly not implying that we must somehow add to the sufferings of Christ with our own. The blood of Christ is entirely sufficient to save. Instead, he is describing how we must become imitators of Christ, especially in suffering. If Jesus was the Man of Sorrows and we are His disciples, will we not also be marked by suffering? Jesus warns us of this very thing: “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Mark 10:24-25). As followers of Christ, we can only expect to suffer like our Lord suffered. The writers of the New Testament remind us often of this fact.

1 Thessalonians 3:2-3 | And we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this.

1 Peter 4:12-13 | Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something stranger were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

Christians are destined to suffer for Christ, and that should not be strange news to us. The disciple must be like his teacher. Christians must be like Christ.

Yet also pay attention to the particular wording here: and may share his sufferings. I cannot recall whether it was a book or a podcast where I was first introduced to this idea, but it is a crucial distinction to make: Paul, along with the early Christians, considered themselves to be suffering alongside Christ during their afflictions. Today, however, a strong tendency exists to take comfort that Christ suffers alongside us in our sorrows. Instead of being comforted that we are with Christ, we are comforted that Christ is with us. The difference is subtle, but this is not a splitting of hairs. One view gives us the honor of suffering alongside Christ, while the other essentially gives Christ the honor of suffering alongside us. Christ is the focus of the first, while we are the focus of the second. We are each called to suffer with Christ. And yes, Jesus promises to be with us until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20), but our joy in the midst of suffering is that we (like the apostles) are “counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41).

The final phrase of verse 10 is an interesting one. As we suffer with Christ, we become like Him in His death. The NASB’s translation is more preferable: being conformed to His death. Just as form and conform are related words in English, so is the Greek word here related to the word used for form in verses 6-7 of chapter two. Just as Jesus took the form of a servant when dying for us upon the cross, so we are conformed to Him through our sufferings for the gospel. In this way, the life of the Christian is cruciform. We live in the shadow and shape of the cross, and it impacts every aspect and facets of our lives.

By the way, in case it has not become obvious yet, the letter of Philippians increasingly becomes the bane of Nominal Christianity. Cultural (or Nominal) Christianity has also been called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, and it is nothing like what Paul has been describing here. These “Christians” give no concern to knowing Christ, only to escaping hell. They do not desire to be conformed to the death of Christ, only to live as comfortably as possible in this life and in the one to come. They are not driven by a love of God but by selfish motives. Cultural Christianity goes against everything that Paul is presenting before us.

ATTAINING THE RESURRECTION AT ALL COSTS // VERSE 11

The third and final benefit of being saved by the gospel is attaining the resurrection of the dead. First of all, we should remind ourselves what resurrection Paul is referring to here. Within the Christian faith, two resurrections must be believed in order to remain orthodox: the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the dead. Having already discussed Jesus’ resurrection, the resurrection of the dead is the future resurrection of all mankind either to everlasting life or everlasting death. Thus, the common conception of us spending an eternity in heaven floating on clouds with harps and angel wings is not presented by the Bible. Instead, followers of Christ will be raised back to life in glorified bodies that are no longer capable of sin, and we will live forever with the Lord upon the New Earth. Heaven, therefore, is not a mystical dreamworld. It is the reality, and this life is the dream. We will live forever in the physical presence of Jesus Christ our Lord. Because being with Christ will be our great reward, we must understand that even our resurrection is about knowing Christ. And this, again, is why the resurrection of Jesus is so crucial. His raising from the dead is the pledge of our resurrection with Him to come.

The resurrection is, therefore, an essential doctrine of the faith, which helps to explain Paul’s language for attaining the resurrection by any means possible. But what exactly does that phrase mean? Should we be desperately looking for a means of attaining the resurrection? Was Paul not confident in the sacrifice of Christ to give him eternal life? No, and no. The apostle has just finished ranting against attempts to earn salvation through human effort, meaning that the resurrection is also a gift from God through faith in Christ. Instead, Paul is pointing to the intimate connection between attaining the resurrection and being conformed to the death of Christ. He is looking to the resurrection as His final goal, the finish line, and against such a magnificent promise, the present sufferings are a light momentary affliction. Once again, this isn’t saying that we are justified by our cruciform life, but the evidence of the gospel is the daily death of self as we come to know Christ more and more.

In short, those who will not die with Christ here will not live with Christ in the resurrection. But of course, I’m not talking about martyrs exclusively. Each day we are given the choice of living for our own glory or the glory of Christ, to yield to our desires or to die to self. If we have no willingness to pour out our lives for the sake of Christ, then we cannot hope in the being with Him for eternity. If we do not treasure Him above all things now, how can we expect to treasure Him in the life to come?

Brothers and sisters, attaining the resurrection of the dead must be our goal. Our eyes must be fixed upon spending our eternity in the presence of Christ. By doing so, we will live differently in this life. The sufferings of this world will be nothing but transient pains leading to our future glory. The temptations of this world will become mere trifles in comparison to our enjoyment in Christ. How often, therefore, do you think of our eternal rest with the Lord? John Owen gives this warning:

Why are men so stupid? They all want to go to heaven. Nobody wants to go to hell. Most, like Balaam, would ‘die the death of the righteous’ and have their ‘latter end like his’. Yet few make any effort to get right ideas of heaven, to see if the true heaven really would satisfy them and make them eternally happy. They are stupidly content with vague ideas of heaven or deceive themselves with their own ideas of heaven. But those who have been taught heavenly truths and who profess that their chief desires lie in these truths, yet who neglect to meditate on them, show that, whatever they claim to be, they are still earthly and carnal. (Spiritual-mindedness, 70)

Does that describe you?

Do you enjoy Christ here on earth? If not, you will find no enjoyment of Him in heaven.

Does your life here revolve around the crucified and risen Savior? If not, heaven will be entirely unpleasant for you since heaven is all about Christ.

But if knowing Christ is your greatest joy now, you will know Him by sight in the resurrection, which indeed is joy unspeakable and full of glory.