Passage: Philippians 3:10-14

The Big Idea

Knowing Jesus isn’t a one-time event; we press on to know Him more. Paul names three “streams” that flow into one river of knowing Him: the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, and being conformed to His death. We are raised, we suffer, we die to self, and we’re raised again, and each cycle takes us deeper. This isn’t fleshly religious striving; it’s pursuing a Person. Forgetting what’s behind and reaching forward, we have one goal: to know Him.

Pressing On

Last time we saw the supremacy of knowing God.

A relationship with God is more valuable than anything in life.
Everything that distracts from a relationship with Jesus should be flushed away.
Growing in relationship with God means growing in trust, dependence and reliance on Him and His promises.
The biggest roadblock to knowing God is self-sufficiency.
Any thought that we don’t need God, that we’ve got it under control, that we’ll only open up parts of our lives to Him, or that we need to give Him our best efforts, will only hinder us from truly knowing Him.
He is our provider, the God of all grace. He wants to give to us like a good Father.
Knowing Him the way He wants to be known requires humility, faith and repentance: turning from self-sufficiency and flesh-centered thoughts and actions.

Now we learn how to press on to know the Lord, how to strive to know Him.

There’s bad striving and good striving in the Bible:

Bad striving is self-serving, self-sourced, self-loving and based on self-effort.
Good striving is surrender-based, Spirit-sourced, Jesus-loving and others-serving.

Paul says he wants to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, so that somehow he may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that he’s already arrived or been made perfect, but he presses on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of him. He doesn’t consider himself to have arrived, but one thing he does: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, he presses toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:10-14).

What’s the goal? To know Him. Nothing else.

How? Paul gives three ways we grow in knowing Jesus (2 Peter 3:18): the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings and being conformed to His death.

Which sounds most appealing to you?

1. The Power of His Resurrection: New Life

I was dead in sin.
I was a prisoner to whatever my flesh wanted.
Then God brought the gospel to my heart, I believed, and I was given new life!
When I stopped trying to make myself alive by my own efforts and simply confessed my deadness and sin to the Lord, He responded with the free gift of real life.
I knew the cross was where I deserved to go, but Jesus took my place there so I don’t have to.
He washed away my sins in His own blood, so now I can live a new life. I couldn’t know new life until I knew the cross.
Now I’m a home for the Holy Spirit, filled with a treasure of infinite value and power: the very life of Jesus.
Not only the humble servant Jesus, but the risen and glorified Jesus, who reigns over the universe, before whom every person, angel and demon will bow. The power displayed when He rose from the dead, bright, limitless and amazing, able to overcome every challenge.
And it’s given to us!
Not for us to wave around like a child with a loaded gun, but to guide and empower us from the inside to do His will.

The power of the resurrection is a way to know God. In fact, you can’t really know Him without experiencing it.

The Holy Spirit breaks the power of sin in your life. He’s more powerful!

If you’re struggling with a sin today, consider two possibilities:

You may not yet be saved. You need to confess your sin and believe from your heart that Jesus is sufficient. You need Jesus.
You may be saved but not yet walking in His victory. You need to confess your sin and believe from your heart that Jesus is sufficient, and He’ll give you the grace you need.
Both situations have the same solution! It’s so simple: Jesus. His real, powerful life given to us.

Get to know Jesus through the power He offers!

A relationship with God starts here, and it grows here too.
We need this resurrection touch again and again throughout life.
We call this the resurrection life: His risen life given to us by the Holy Spirit, His power and personality dwelling in our hearts. We become His home, His body, the vehicle through which He spreads His truth and love to the world and our own families.
Could you pass a written test on resurrection life? Maybe. But that’s not the point. It has to be experienced, through dependent relationship, asking for and receiving the Holy Spirit from God.
You can’t make this up. You can only taste and see that the Lord is good, and powerful!

I recently talked with someone who saw their own weakness and was scared to surrender completely to God, because they didn’t yet know the power God offers to those who come to Him.

2. The Fellowship of His Sufferings: A Deeper Invitation

This one doesn’t sound as fun.

We live in a broken, sinful world.
Sometimes we contribute to our own suffering.
But sometimes suffering simply comes upon us.
Paul isn’t talking about suffering we cause by our own hard-hearted choices, because Jesus never suffered that way.
Jesus suffered because of other people’s sin, and because it was the will of God.
He learned obedience through what He suffered (Hebrews 5:8). Not that He didn’t know how to obey, but He experienced the full dimensions of obedience as He was tested.
Think of Him in the garden, weeping, His sweat like drops of blood.
Think of Him beaten, whipped and nailed to the cross.

In suffering, we’re invited to share as sons and daughters of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus. In suffering, we’re invited to know God more deeply.

If life is about knowing God, we must embrace, accept and even rejoice in suffering. That doesn’t make it stop hurting. Jesus felt every bit of His pain. God’s goal isn’t always to take the pain away, but to let us know Him more deeply through it.

Maybe your suffering is your marriage. Maybe it’s your kids, your job or your “friends.”
Maybe it’s sickness, chronic pain or a disability.
All of it is an invitation to know God more deeply.
When you meet someone who has suffered the way you have, there’s a very special bond. It’s the same with Jesus.

Sometimes pain is the only way to learn something about God, and He’s willing to take us through it so we can know Him better. He won’t let us settle for shallow, comfortable Christianity.

3. Being Conformed to His Death: The Deepest School

It’s one thing to suffer. It’s another to die.
This is when things become absolutely impossible, when challenges and suffering go far beyond what you can handle.
Our energy, strength, wisdom, even our faith, are spent.
We say, “This is killing me! This is over my head!”
Circumstances, relationships, heartache. We know we’re done.
“Why? I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Jesus didn’t just suffer. He died.

This is the next arena for knowing Him, graduate-level Christianity. He takes us deeper than new life and suffering. Six feet deeper!

We can’t match His death. But we can taste it and share in it.

Jesus was the Lamb of God who went silently to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:7).
On the cross He quoted Psalm 22.

We taste this kind of death when everything depends on the faithfulness of Someone else.

Psalm 22 traces that path. The sufferer cries, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” He calls day and night with no answer. He remembers that the fathers trusted God and were delivered, but he feels like a worm, mocked: “He trusted in the LORD; let Him rescue him!” He is surrounded by enemies like bulls, lions and dogs. He is poured out like water, his bones out of joint, his heart melting like wax, his strength dried up, laid in the dust of death. His hands and feet are pierced. They divide his garments and cast lots for his clothing. Yet he cries, “LORD, don’t be far from Me; hurry to help Me!” And then the turn: “You have answered Me!” He will declare God’s name to his brothers and praise Him in the assembly, because God has not despised the suffering of the afflicted, nor hidden His face, but heard when He cried. And the psalm ends with all the ends of the earth turning to the LORD (Psalm 22:1-27).

We taste this death when we surrender to God’s will in suffering, even unto death, and the only One we can trust to see what we’re going through, or to deliver us at the right time, is God.
Jesus could have saved Himself, but He submitted to God’s will and trusted God’s goodness. That didn’t mean an absence of pain!
Jesus was thinking of others, serving others, by giving His life.
That’s what we strive for.
We’re not excited about dying, but we accept the broken, humble, painful part of serving in this world.
Paul says, death is at work in us, but life in you (2 Corinthians 4:12).
We die like Jesus to bring life to others, just as He did.
This is the deepest level of knowing the Lord.
And it’s where making Him known becomes natural. How can you introduce someone to a Person you’ve never really met?

And around again

After we “die,” we go back to the top of the list: the power of the resurrection. And the cycle repeats. We wait on Him at each stage, and we grow in knowing Him more deeply and really every day.

We are raised. We suffer. We die. We are raised. We suffer. We die.

I didn’t expect my first “death” experience. I remember a season so dark that death felt closer to me than life. But His joy and grace came and raised me up. Those have been the most powerful times in my spiritual life. There have been many such experiences since, and each one has led to new life.

Resurrection Living Now (3:11)

Paul wants to attain the resurrection from the dead. What is he reaching for?

Resurrection living. Resurrection life.
He’s not only talking about the end times. He’s talking about now!
He wants resurrection life in the middle of a dead world.
He wants Jesus to live through his body in this world, in front of dead and dying people, and he knows it happens through knowing the Lord.
I have been crucified with Christ; it’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

Not Done Yet (3:12)

Paul hasn’t arrived. Not enough relationship yet!

Can you imagine a good marriage where someone says, “I think I know you well enough. I’m done”?

Paul was a leader of the whole early church.
He’d known God for decades.
Yet he wants to press on to know Him more! Striving!
He’d been through resurrection, suffering and death many times, yet he wanted more.
Don’t just tell me what you do for the Lord. Tell me about your suffering, your dying and His resurrection power. Tell me how you praise God for His goodness and grace in knowing Him!
On the road to Damascus, Jesus took hold of Paul.
Before that, Paul boasted in his actions. After, in what he’d suffered for Christ.
Before, in the life he built. After, in the life Jesus gave him.
Jesus took hold of Paul for relationship, and Paul wanted more of that relationship.
He wanted to keep answering Jesus’ call: “Come, follow Me.”

One Thing (3:13)

One thing I do?

“Paul, you did lots of things! You planted churches, preached, wrote much of the New Testament…”

No. It’s one thing: growing to know the Lord and helping others know Him. Everything else is just an arena where we strive to know Him.

Take marriage. It’s an arena for knowing the Lord: weakness, selfishness, repentance, restoration, forgiveness, unity, joy, suffering and dying to self. To live is Christ, and to die is gain. The same goes for parenting, work and even having fun.

Forgetting what’s behind, reaching for what’s ahead

God’s kingdom grows in our lives in two directions: upward and forward.
Man’s way tends to be inward and backward.
“Tell me about yourself.” We look inward for answers, and soon we’re looking backward.
Looking back can have its place, but we serve a God of resurrection, new creation and new life. That can’t be explained only by looking in or back. It’s like searching a graveyard for life.
We press forward and reach upward. The Lord is forward and upward.
Past defeats don’t have to prevent present progress.
Past blessings don’t guarantee present progress.
We take steps each day and reach out each day to Jesus: the next time in the Word, the next prayer, the next conversation, the next gathering. We walk by faith. We grow in grace. We reach for more and more.

The Prize (3:14)

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

I’m eager. I’m hungry. I press. But it’s not fleshly religious striving (no confidence in the flesh). It’s a Person we’re pursuing!
The goal is already stated: to know Jesus.
The prize is every blessing that comes with knowing Him: provision, ability, joy.
The upward call? Heaven’s call is, “Come and get to know Me. Come, follow Me!” That was Jesus’ call to each of His disciples, not “Clean yourself up first.”
So get into the Word. Let Him speak to you, and respond.

Grace Takeaway

Knowing God is our one aim, our one pursuit. We press on to know Jesus more each day, through resurrection power, through suffering and through dying to self. Think of them as the dates we go on with Jesus. Some are fun. Some are dangerous. Some are hard. But we do all of it with Him, and each one takes us deeper into His love. Our only aim is to do life with Jesus.

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How to Think About Knowing the Lord, Part 2