In the third chapter of the Letter to the Philippians, we have one of the most heartwarming affirmations of loyalty to Christ that has ever been made. “Indeed,” says the apostle in verse 8, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”. There are two words in this “declaration of dependence” that will repay closer study: “everything” and “knowing”.
“Everything”
The passage is often used by way of exhortation and there is no doubt that this is a profitable extension of the apostle’s thought. In my own case, for instance, there might be a need to renounce pride in technical achievements, with the undue expenditure of time and energy that might go into any such achievements. But it is legitimate to apply a passage to ‘fresh situations only after we have explored and understood its original setting. What then were the specific things that Paul counted as “loss” or ‘refuse”?
We are not left to speculate whether it might have referred to worldly prestige or a place on the Sanhedrin. Paul has just given us his list, in that section commencing at v.4, where he claims that he too had “reason for confidence in the flesh”. He had been born of Hebrew parents, of the tribe of Benjamin. He had been circumcised in the approved way. He had been trained as a Pharisee. And he had demonstrated his own righteousness by his close attention to the minutiae of the law.
Do you notice anything about this list? Of course you do: they were all Jewish things. All the things Paul the apostle repudiated were things Saul the Pharisee counted most dear’ -dear not in some emotional sense only, but as the grounds of his confidence. All his assurance of God’s favour in this life, all his hopes for, a life to come, had been based on his position as a Jew, on his natural, physical descent from Abraham. We are, of course, familiar with Paul’s rejection of Judaism, and with the fact that much of the opposition to his preaching certainly the most bitter and ruthless of it came from those we term Judaisers. What he rejects in favour of God’s gift of grace is primarily a righteousness from below, a confidence based on his own goodness. But implicit in this is a factor we may well have failed to contemplate. There had been a change in the basis for his hopes and expectations. High on the list of things he now counted as loss must have been “the promises to Abraham”.
To express it as baldly as this is, of course, to go too far. What Paul now rejected were not all the promises, but specifically those that were related to natural descent from Abraham. If we have not been through the exercise before, it is worth considering which of the promises were in this category. Certainly there were some; the promise of deliverance after a period of slavery had its literal aspect, though we may well detect a spiritual counterpart. The promise of a land, whose boundaries were spelled out in detail, was a Jewish affair and must surely remain so, even though the capital of Israel should become also the capital city of the world. But the greater blessings, those of an eternal nature, were in reality addressed to the People of God.
Down through the ages these undoubtedly included many Jews — we have the names of some of them recorded in Heb. 11. But they are included not because they were Jews but because they showed by their faith that they were God’s people. They shared the faith of Abraham, his confidence in God’s provision. Nor does this surprise us. When certain Jews demonstrated their reliance on “the flesh” — on physical descent from Abraham — Jesus himself had rebuked them with the words (John 8:39), “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God”.
It is exactly the same principle that Paul enunciates in Phil. 3. In v.2 he has warned against those “who mutilate the flesh”. These, he is saying, are now in a rather new position. In the past they might have been sons of Abraham, though not necessarily so. Now, however, they cannot be God’s people, for in persevering in their own dependence on circumcision, and insisting that others share that same dependence with them, they declare also their inability to accept the grace of God, and the fullness of the provision he has made in Christ Jesus. They have forfeited any claim to be the People of God and the Christian community now fulfills that role: “For we are the true circumcision, who worship God in spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh”. Not that all who say “Lord, Lord” will finally appear as true members of that community, any more than all Jews as children of Abraham; they are under exactly the same need to demonstrate that faith in God’s provision which obtained under the Old Covenant.
“Knowing”
The point to note here is that Paul’s delight is not in knowing about Jesus, as a set of theological propositions. When we think about it, it is doubtful whether a set of propositions ever moved anyone to a sense of “surpassing worth”. Certainly we cannot imagine anyone being glad and rejoicing at the prospect of being “poured out” for a set of propositions, as Paul declares himself to be for Christ in 2:17. No; Paul meant knowing Jesus as a friend; as a Saviour; as a living Lord, by whose. Spirit the lives of mortal men and women were transformed to things of beauty and greatness. Again this is not an unfamiliar thought, but has roots in the Old Testament. In the pleadings of Hosea, for example, we find strong emphasis on the abiding joy and value in knowing God; and the context makes it clear that this means not so much listening to the priest talking about God as living in a continuing state of closeness to him and obedience to his will.
So then, we are not here preaching a virtue of ignorance about Jesus. Knowing Jesus is not to be attained by intuition, and not to be equated with sentimentality. Knowing Jesus without knowing a good deal about him is unthinkable. But it remains true that thousands have learned all the “right” answers about Jesus, and never come to know him.
Righteousness from God
Having disposed of the negatives, Paul goes on in v.9 to describe the positive basis of ‘his hope: to “be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith”. Here we see the same subtle tension between work and works as we have encountered, e.g., in Eph. 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them”. The good works are our good works; the good work is God’s.
So here: lest we think that by any means —our good deeds, our right doctrines, our baptism — we can earn salvation, we are told that the only source of righteousness is that of Jesus, offered to us by God as a gift. And lest we think that we can have that righteousness by a passive acceptance, the role of our responsive faith is stressed. And if any should think that is passive, let him ponder the action-packed verbs of v.13f: “One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”.
A Lack of Assurance?
The more clearly we grasp that eternal life is a gift bestowed by God’s grace, and not a human attainment, the more our doubts as to its reality vanish. Yet a few verses remain to cause perplexity, and it is ironical that one of them occurs in the midst of this very affirmation of the grounds of Paul’s hope. It is found in v.11, which in the RSV reads: “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead”. If possible! Can it be that after all he has said Paul is still doubtful about attaining that goal?
I believe this would be quite a false inference; but unfortunately it becomes necessary to delve more deeply into the original in order to grasp the real intent of the passage. However, we can see how unlikely it is that Paul was voicing doubts when we look at his other expressions:
- in the chapter itself, e.g., v.20f, “But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body . . .”
- in other passages like Rom. 6:8, “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him”..
Looking then at the structure of the passage, we find that the Greek does not necessarily convey the “if possible” of RSV, nor the “by any means” of AV. More literally, the words mean “if how I may obtain”; and a logical expansion of that cryptic phrase, in the light of the context, would be “if that is how I may obtain the resurrection from the dead”. That is, by knowing Jesus and his sufferings, as against the way in which I used to trust.
It might be thought that this interpretation leaves the following verse without an adequate foundation: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on . . .” But of course the translators aimed at self-consistency; and if we find one verse unsatisfactory it may well affect our understanding of an adjacent verse. In fact, there is an obvious weakness in the RSV’s “obtained this”. If “this” refers to sharing Christ’s death symbolically in baptism, then Paul had obtained it. If it refers to the literal sharing of Christ’s-sufferings (bearing in mind that Paul, wrote this letter while awaiting trial) then it is equally obvious that he had not. If it refers to his physical resurrection, it is perfectly obvious that this is reserved for the future. And if it refers to “the power of his resurrection”, the statement simply is not true, for Paul had experienced abundantly the power of the risen Lord, as he testifies in 4:13, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me”.
But in fact there is no “this” in the Greek. The passage is better rendered as in RV, “Not that I have already obtained”; or perhaps, “Not as though I had arrived”. And here we can, see a continuation of the main thrust of Paul’s message: in his Pharisee days, he had seen himself arriving — by the diligence of his own efforts. Now he has come to see the sequence of events more clearly, such a possibility is ruled out. The first stage is that Christ has reached out for him; and while we lesser mortals do not experience the blinding light and the voice from heaven on the Damascus road, it is still true for us that initiative is with the Lord and not with us. There remains, not a passive acquiescence but a lifetime of active co-operation, seeking from above the particular field of endeavour in which that ongoing process should be concentrated. As RV renders v.12, “. . . I press on, if so be that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus”.
I like the picture Karl Barth draws in commenting on this passage, of a runner “who stretches out in unspeakable longing towards apprehension . . . content not to have apprehended, content to stretch out empty hands”. But not content that they shall remain for ever empty. Acknowledging that mortal man has nothing in his hands that would not be an affront to his Creator, yes; but by the same token confident that fullness can come, and will come, through Jesus, “by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself”.
The Solution