"Getting to Know You"--Philippians 3:8-11

When I was in first grade, I had the opportunity to be in my local high school’s production of the musical “The King and I.” I played one of the many children of the King of Siam, which introduced a slight problem—I was supposed to be Oriental, but I had extremely blonde hair at the time. But of course, in theatre, they have ways of overcoming such obstacles, so they just sprayed my hair with this black gunk every night and away I went. I had only one line in the whole production: toward the very end, when Miss Anna was preparing to head back home to England, I stood up and said “We will be afraid without you!”

One of the most beloved songs from that musical is the song “Getting to Know You.” Even if you’ve never seen the musical, I’ll bet you’ve heard at least a portion of that song. One of the more famous verses of that song says, “Getting to know you/getting to know all about you/Getting to like you/getting to hope you like me.” I think that verse captures very well the excitement and the uneasiness that are both present as you’re getting to know someone for the first time.

Getting to know someone can be a very exciting process. You get to learn about a new person, find out about their life story, perhaps find out about some common interests that the two of you might have. But it can also be an uneasy time as well because we all want to be well-liked and accepted by other people. The other person is getting to know us as well, and we want them to like us.

I think this excitement and uneasiness also exist as we get to know Jesus more and more. Obviously, there is excitement as we learn more about His deep love for us and the peace that we can experience in our lives by following His example. But there’s some uneasiness as well as we get to know Jesus—not because of what He learns about us, because we know that He already knows everything about us. No, there’s some uneasiness because of what we learn about ourselves in light of Him. We start to realize how sinful we really are; we see our attitudes and our actions in light of God’s holiness, and that can be a very unsettling thing.

But however unsettling it may be to gain a more intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ, according to Scripture the value of such a knowledge far surpasses anything that might be compared to it. In our study of Philippians today, we are going to see the value of knowing Christ in every manner of life. We’ll see that:

Knowing Jesus in every way is worth more than everything.

Would you turn with me please to Philippians 3:8–11? Last week we saw how Paul had a change in his values when he became a Christian. He used to think that his religious resume was a source of gain in his relationship with God. He used to think that his heritage and his own accomplishments had made him right with God, but when he embraced Christ he realized that his former perspective was actually a net loss to him because it was actually a hindrance in his relationship with God. Today we will see what Paul now considers to be valuable in his Christian life. Let’s start reading in v. 7, and then we’ll study the message of vv. 8–11 [READ 3:7–11]

Let’s take a look first of all at the value of knowing Jesus, and then we’ll look at what that knowledge involves.

I. Nothing compares to the value of an intimate knowledge of Jesus (vv. 8–9)

In v. 7, Paul had said that he now considers his former mindset about his religious resume to be a hindrance to his relationship with Christ. He broadens that idea now in v. 8 when he says, “More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Now note carefully what Paul is saying here—he is not taking an ascetic view of life which says that nothing has any value. He’s not saying, “Possessions? Relationships? It’s all worthless.” No—he’s talking about comparative value. He is saying that whatever value we may assign to the various parts of our lives, there is an infinite chasm between the value of those things and the value of an intimate knowledge of Jesus. (Now Paul is obviously talking about a born-again person gaining a more intimate understanding of Jesus. The idea here is not conversion but spiritual growth for someone who is already converted).

You can picture in your mind a set of old-fashioned scales where two objects were placed on either side of the scale to determine its weight as compared to the other object. What Paul is saying is that if you could place an intimate understanding of Jesus on one side, there is nothing that you could place on the other side that would even come close to the same value—not material things, not a fat bank account, not social status or power, not even earthly relationships.

And Paul goes on in the rest of v. 8 to describe just how wide the gulf really is. We see that the actions of his life show it when he says, “for whom I have suffered the loss of all things.” If Paul was exaggerating here, it wasn’t by much. Paul had lost pretty much everything in his service for Jesus. He had once had a pretty good social standing within the Jewish community, but he lost that when he embraced Jesus. He seems to have lost whatever possessions he may have had throughout his life. He may have lost his relationships with family members when he converted. At this point, he had lost his freedom as we awaited trial in Rome.

Paul really had lost everything, but his attitude reveals that he still had his sights set on the most valuable thing of all—knowing Jesus through and through. At the end of verse 8 he says, “[I] count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.” The old King James Version says, “I count them but dung.” That really captures the graphic nature of this word. He is basically thinking of household waste—be it human waste, table scraps, spoiled food—anything that is fit only to be thrown out and discarded. So when Paul contemplates the possibility of gaining a more intimate knowledge of Christ, that’s how he thinks about everything else so that there will be no competition in his mind with the goal of knowing Christ.

Now that sounds pretty extreme to our modern minds, but perhaps that’s just because we’re constantly told to place our highest value on other things. We are bombarded every day by a billion-dollar industry called the advertising industry that tells us how much value to place on everything from a new car to deodorant. It’s hard for us to cut through all of that, but perhaps that’s why the Lord allowed Paul to lose everything—so that he might see clearly in order to teach the rest of us.

Now in v. 9 he goes on to reiterate that he doesn’t want to slip back into his old mindset of basing his standing before God on his own efforts to obey the rules [READ v. 9]. Here again is the fundamental difference in mindset that Paul described in v. 7—the basis for his relationship with God was faith in Jesus Christ, not his own efforts to follow the rules. And Paul wanted at every moment to be found in Christ—to be found in that mindset of dependence on Jesus.

So now we’ve seen the value of knowing Jesus, but what does that knowledge involve?

II. Knowing Jesus involves understanding and embracing the attitude that carried Him through His life, death, and resurrection (vv. 10–11)

Let’s read again what Paul says here in vv. 10–11 [READ vv. 10–11]. Here again in v. 10, Paul expresses his desire to know Jesus, and throughout this passage Paul has been using the Greek word that describes knowing someone through an intimate relationship with them. It is the kind of knowledge where you know what another person is thinking, you know how they will react in certain situations because you’ve been with them through the up and downs of life. It’s like the knowledge that you sometimes see that elderly couples have of each other. They’ve been together perhaps for 45 or 50 years, and they’ve shared every conceivable circumstance together, and now they can finish each other’s sentences because they know what the other one is thinking.

That’s the way that Paul wants to know Jesus, so that He would know what Jesus would think in a given situation; so that He would know how Jesus would react in a particular circumstance. And Paul goes on to further clarify this knowledge by saying that he wants to know “the power of His resurrection.” Jesus certainly exhibited tremendous power throughout his life, but never more so than when he rose from the dead. For all of our advances in this world, for all of the ways that we’ve learned to harness the power of nature and the human body, we have not and will not gain power over death. But Jesus had that power, and Paul said that he wanted to know that power in his own life, certainly in the resurrection that he looked forward to, but also in the moments of weakness in life that we all encounter. He wanted to know that power of Jesus in his moments of fear and fatigue and weakness and sickness and doubt—the same power that carried Jesus through His life and allowed Him to remain faithful to God the Father at every moment.

But then Paul says that he also wants to know “the fellowship of His sufferings.” This idea doesn’t sit with us quite as well as the idea of power does. We like the sound of power! We’d love to share in the power that Jesus had, but we don’t want the pain, do we? But nevertheless, suffering was a real part of Jesus’ life as well. He was rejected by some of His own family members, betrayed to death by one of his closest friends. He sacrificed some of the comforts of life in order to conduct his ministry. He put up with gossip and rumors and false accusations, and of course he ultimately endured even beatings and crucifixion, all because it was the plan of God the Father to show His great love for us.

And dare I say, that one of the reasons that we may lack this deep, relational knowledge of Jesus is because we don’t want to share His sufferings. We don’t want to be rejected by other people for choosing to serve God rather than choosing to make them happy. We don’t want to give up some of the creature comforts that we enjoy in order to serve other people. That whole way of thinking rubs us the wrong way because it doesn’t resonate with our sinful nature, but if we want to have a deep, relational knowledge of Jesus, sacrifice and suffering are part of the package because that was part of His life, and if we are to imitate Him, then that will part of our lives as well.

But then, I think Paul answers perhaps the biggest question we have at this point—how can we have a knowledge of Jesus like this? How can we get to know Him in this intimate way? I think the answer lies in the last phrase of v. 10—“being conformed to His death.” I really think this should be translated “by being conformed to His death;” in other words it can read “that I may know Him by being conformed to His death.” That’s a subtle part of the Greek grammar that I think is fully appropriate to bring out in the translation here.

So in other words, Paul is telling us how to gain this knowledge of Jesus—we can do so by being conformed to His death. Now I don’t think Paul is saying that we have to actually experience crucifixion; I think he is pointing our thoughts back to 2:5–11 where he described the humble attitude that Jesus had in His death, His willingness to follow the plan of God the Father even though it lead to a painful and humiliating death like crucifixion.

So therein lies the key to this intimate knowledge of Jesus—it comes as we embrace the same humble mindset that carried Him through every moment of His life. If we will embrace that mindset that made Jesus willing even to die in order to obey God the Father, then we will start to learn to think how Jesus thought about life; we will come to know what His attitude was; we’ll gain insight about how He would react in the situations that we face, and in so doing we’ll come to know Jesus more and more.

Paul then wraps up this thought in v. 11 by stating one of His purposes in gaining this knowledge of Christ. He states that he desires this knowledge “in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Now this statement sounds a bit unusual at first, as though Paul isn’t certain whether or not he actually will be raised from the dead. But if we look a bit closer, we can see that Paul is not doubting the fact of his resurrection, he is simply uncertain about the nature of his resurrection. In other words, as we know from other passages, Paul is confident that he will be resurrected, as we will all be resurrected, but he just doesn’t know yet precisely what the resurrected life has in store for him. Let me point out a couple of things that will help you understand this.

First, in this verse Paul uses a Greek word for resurrection that is slightly different from the usual Greek word for resurrection. Paul added a prefix to the word that seems to indicate that he is thinking about a smaller, unique class of resurrected people, and when we read this in light of the context of vv. 12–14, we see who Paul has in mind. In vv. 12–14, Paul talks about his passionate desire to receive the prize that God offers for faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

The New Testament makes it clear that we as God’s children will receive rewards for our faithfulness to Jesus when he establishes His kingdom on this earth. So what Paul is saying in v. 11 is that he wants to know Jesus intimately so that he might be part of that unique group of resurrected souls who hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Paul wants to gain those rewards in the resurrection life, and in order to do that he desires to know Jesus deeply so that he might know how he should live.

Friends, I hope you have been captivated by the vision of what it means to know Christ and the value of that knowledge. I think we can all agree that we want to pursue something in our lives that truly counts, something that has real lasting value. We don’t want to wake up one day and realize that we’ve spent our time chasing things that don’t really matter. But we can be confident that if we will pursue an intimate relationship with Jesus more than anything else, we will have sought for and found the most valuable thing upon which we could possibly base our lives, something that has value not just in this life but in the next as well.

So I think the challenge for us today is to make sure that we don’t allow anything in our lives to compete with the value that we place on our relationship with Jesus. The other aspects of our lives do have their own value, but their comparative value is nothing when we weigh them against the value of knowing Jesus. So ask the Lord today to help you see where your perspective may need to be changed, and ask Him to help you keep your value system correct.

"Workin' For the Man"--Philippians 2:12-13

Have you ever received a gift that made you want to be a better person, or that made you want to strive to do your very best? That’s a very common response when we receive a gift that overwhelms us because of the generosity behind it. Oftentimes a gift like this has nothing to do with money—it could be the handing down of a family heirloom, or an act of service or sacrifice.

Perhaps you’ve heard war stories that have captured this phenomenon. Sometimes we hear of acts of heroism where one soldier sacrifices his life to save another soldier, and the surviving soldier is so moved by this act that it affects the rest of his life. The surviving soldier lives the rest of his days remembering the gift of life that he received, and he is moved to live a good life because of it.

This phenomenon is also captured beautifully in the story Les Miserables. Perhaps you have seen the movie or the musical versions of that story. The story follows the life of a convict named Jean Valjean, who is given his parole after 19 years in prison and is told to report to a particular town. As he travels to this town he spends the night one evening with an elderly bishop, and when Valjean sees the valuable silverware that the bishop has, he steals it and runs away. The next day, Valjean is caught by the police and returned to the bishop for identification. But rather than press charges against Valjean and send him back to prison, the bishop tells police that he gave the silverware to Valjean as a gift and that they are to release him at once. Valjean is so moved by this gift of grace that he spends the rest of his life trying to do good for other people.

I’m sure you can see how the idea of responding like this to a gift is right at home in the Christian life. According to the Bible, we have been given an extraordinary gift by God—the gift of salvation—and in light of this gift we are to live in a different manner than before, in a manner that will honor God, who gave us the gift. In our study of Philippians thus far, Paul has expressed this idea clearly 1:27 when we wrote, “Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” The gospel is the good news about the gift of salvation, and we are to live in a way that is worthy of this glorious gift.

As we continue on today in chapter 2, we are still unfolding what it means to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel. We have seen so far that it means to willingly endure persecution for Jesus’ sake; it means to live in unity with fellow Christians; and it means to embrace the humble mindset of Jesus. But lest we think that we’re doing this on our own, we receive an important reminder today in 2:12–13, where we will see that…

The Christian life calls us to live out the work that God is performing in us.

Would you turn with me please to Phil. 2:12–13? Let’s read these verses, and then we’ll take a look at the command in these verses, the attitude that we’re supposed to have with this command, and the reason that we’re supposed to follow this command with this attitude. [READ vv. 12–13].

Let’s take a look first of all at the command in these verses…

I. We must work toward spiritual growth in the Christian life

Paul starts in v. 12 by commending the Philippians for their continued obedience to God even though he wasn’t there watching over them at the moment. They weren’t behaving the way we did at times when we were children—mom turned her back for five minutes, and we were trying to eat the cookies that we weren’t supposed to touch. No, the Philippians were obeying even though Paul wasn’t there, and he commanded them to keep it going by telling them to “work out your salvation.”

Now this command has caused a lot of confusion because it seems to contradict what the Bible says about receiving forgiveness from God. What does he mean “work out your salvation?” Doesn’t the Bible tell us that we can’t earn salvation by our works? Wasn’t it Paul himself who wrote in Romans 4:5, “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness?” What are we to make of this command?

I think this confusion can be cleared up by comparing the way that we use the word “salvation” to the way that the Bible uses the word “salvation.” What we will find is that we tend to use the word in a more restricted way than the Bible does.

In the Bible, the word “salvation” is used at various times to refer to three different aspects of one unified process. The first aspect is the one that we normally mean when we use the word “salvation”—it is the moment that we receive forgiveness from God by placing our faith in Jesus. The fancy theological term for this aspect is justification. This refers to the moment that we receive forgiveness, are reborn spiritually, and adopted into God’s family, and I cannot stress enough that good works have nothing to do with us receiving this aspect of salvation. This is the aspect of salvation that is described in verses like Eph. 2:8–9—“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The second aspect of this process is what we usually call spiritual growth or “living the Christian life.” The theological term for it is sanctification, and rather than being a one-time, momentary thing like the first aspect, this aspect is an ongoing process in our lives. This aspect does involve good works as we live out our calling to be ambassadors for Christ. But what you may not realize is that the Bible uses the word “salvation” to describe this aspect of the process as well. We see this in verses like Phil. 2:12 here and in verses like 1 Peter 2:2 which says, “like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.”

The third aspect of this process occurs when we receive our resurrected, heavenly bodies. The theological term for this is glorification. We see this aspect in verses that talk about salvation as something that is still to come in the future. A perfect example of this is the last part of Romans 13:11, which says, “for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed.” Now perhaps you’re thinking, “Wait, don’t we have salvation when we believe?” The answer of course is “yes”—we have the first aspect of salvation and we set out on the second aspect of salvation, but while we’re alive we’re still waiting for this third aspect of salvation, which is what Paul has in mind here. We see this aspect also in 1 Peter 1:5, which says, “[we] are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

Now, to help us clear up any confusion about this command in Phil. 2:12, we need to note how we generally use the word “salvation,” because normally when we use it, we are referring only to the first aspect of this process. Thus, as we read Scripture and encounter the word “salvation,” our thoughts generally turn toward this first aspect of the process, but as you can see that will create some confusion for us in verses like this, because here it seems that Paul is talking about the second aspect of this process. So if that’s the case, then he’s not telling us to work to earn forgiveness from God; rather, he’s telling us to work to grow spiritually, or as Eph. 2:10 puts it, he’s telling us to live out the “good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

So that is what we are commanded to do here, to put our salvation to work, you might say. And as we do, Paul says that we are to do so with a certain attitude…

II. We should work toward spiritual growth with an attitude of fear toward God

In giving his command, Paul also instructs the Philippians to have a certain attitude. He tells them to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” and we see from v. 13 that he is talking about a fear of God. If you have read much in other portions of Scripture, you’ve probably run into this idea of fearing God quite often. In fact, the Bible repeatedly praises an attitude of fear toward God as a healthy spiritual mindset. The book of Proverbs in particular talks frequently about the benefits of this mindset. Why don’t you turn with me to Proverbs and we’ll read a few of the verses that praise this attitude:

[READ 9:10; 10:27; 14:26–27; 15:33; 16:6; 19:23; 22:4]

So it’s not hard to see that the fear of the Lord is a very beneficial thing, but what kind of attitude is this exactly? It sounds kind of strange to say that we should fear God because one of the glorious truths of the gospel is that when we place our faith in Jesus, we are established in a relationship of peace with God.

So what does it mean to fear God? It doesn’t mean that we fear that he’s going to harm us. He certainly will discipline us when we need it, but remember, that is not for our harm. We can compare the fear of the Lord to that melting feeling that we experience when we meet someone important and powerful, like the governor or the president. If you’ve ever had an experience like that, its very common to feel weak and uneasy, and psychologically to feel very small in comparison to that person.

A few years ago I had the experience of seeing President Bush’s motorcade drive past my former church in Kansas City. I was able to walk right up to the road as he went by. I didn’t meet, and in fact I didn’t even see him, but I experienced that feeling because I felt very small and insignificant compared to the tremendously powerful and influential man who passed by me.

That’s the idea behind the fear of the Lord—it’s the proper recognition of who we are in relation to God. One author put it this way: “To fear god means to acknowledge His superiority over man, to recognize His deity and thus respond in awe, humility, worship, love, trust, and obedience.”* This attitude is well illustrated by the disciples in the gospels, when the authors tell us that when Jesus performed some of his miracles the disciples became afraid or amazed. They weren’t afraid that Jesus was going to hurt them, but they realized that they were dealing with someone who was much greater than themselves.

So we are called to have this attitude toward God, and as we see in v. 13, it’s not simply because we are dealing with God, but because God is dealing with us. In v. 13 we discover why we should have this attitude and why we should obey this command.

III. We should have an attitude of fear toward God because of who He is and what He is doing in us

Let’s read v. 13 again, and let me begin reading from the command in v. 12 [READ v. 12b-13]. Here is the reason that we should work out our salvation; here is the reason that we should fear and tremble—because God himself is dealing with us! God is giving us godly desires and the strength to act upon them. What we have here is both an encouragement and a very sobering reality. It’s an encouragement because as we strive for spiritual growth, we’re not doing it alone—in fact we’re simply cooperating with the work that God is doing in us. But its also a very sobering reality because we see that God wants to accomplish his good pleasure in this world through us, which means that we have a very important role to play, and we don’t want to be found neglecting God’s work within us.

This lesson means that when we have godly desires, it is not merely our upbringing coming out, or some vague notion of seeking the welfare of our community—it means that God is at work in us and we therefore need to act!

If I may say so, friends, I believe this lesson reveals that the Christian life is a dreadfully serious matter! If we don’t think that living out our faith is a serious matter, we’re not just “missing out”—we are resisting the work of God! That is a very sobering thought, and as Paul says it should lead us to have an attitude of astonishment and wonder, an attitude of fear as we understand who we are in relationship to God.

Now when I say that our faith should be a serious matter, I don’t mean that the Christian life should be grim or gloomy. Philippians reminds us that there should be joy in the Christian life, and joy oftentimes produces happiness and light-heartedness. But Christian joy is not the same as ignorant bliss. If you’ve seen the movie Finding Nemo, do you remember the character of Dora, who joined up with Nemo’s dad? That is ignorant bliss! Or you can think of the character Goofy from some of the Disney cartoons. Christian joy is uplifting to the soul, but our souls should always be anchored by the sobering reality that God himself is working in us to accomplish his good pleasure in this world.

So although we might take ourselves lightly, we must not take our calling as Christians lightly. God is leading us to join in his mission in this world against sin and Satan, with all of the sacrifices that such a mission requires of us. We are called to be ambassadors for Christ in a world that does not want to hear our message, a place with a ruler in the Devil who will oppose us at every turn.

But we should remember the encouragement of this passage as well, that as we seek to work out our salvation, we are merely cooperating with God’s work in us. God is on the job, and when the struggles of this life overwhelm us, we will find in God both the desire and the strength to live for what pleases him, so that we might continue on the way.


* Roy B. Zuck, “A Theology of the Wisdom Books and the Song of Songs,” in A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, ed. Roy B. Zuck (Moody Bible Institute, Chicago Illinois. 1991) pg 215.