Sermons

Sermon # 1023
January 9, 2011
Philippians 3:7-15
Dr. Ed Pettus

“To Know Christ”

Last Sunday I preached on keeping the Lord always before us. Today is along those same thoughts in that we keep the Lord always before us by our knowledge – that is, getting to know Jesus Christ. The reading from Philippians speaks of the value of knowing Christ: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings.”

Knowing Christ surpasses all things for Paul. We are told that if we have lots of money we will be happy or if we get more stuff, we will be satisfied. If we conform we will be liked. If we accept things as they are we will be balanced. But none of these things are biblical thoughts. The Bible teaches us that there is nothing more important to our lives than knowing God.

The apostle Paul is a classic example of a disciple seeking Christ. He is one of the most important figures in the church of Jesus Christ. Paul was also an important figure before his life as an apostle. He was a Pharisee in the Jewish religion, a very high position. He had all the credentials that made him well known and respected. Paul had a certain status, reputation, and I imagine if he were alive today we would want to meet him as much as any celebrity or famous athlete. But Paul had enemies as well, because the Church had enemies. When Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians he was in prison because of his faith. The Church at Philippi encountered teachers who sought to add requirements to the gospel and sought to confuse Paul’s message. Those enemies would often use their credentials to elevate their own importance and seek to bring credibility to what they taught. Paul was as qualified as anyone of his day and perhaps more so because of his background both as a Jew and an apostle of Christ. Yet Paul regarded all his status and all his credentials as nothing compared to the value of knowing Christ. Paul “boasted” of his status in order to show that it meant nothing to him when it came to knowing Jesus.

Paul wanted to know Christ. Nothing else mattered to him. He didn’t just give up things he could not have cared less about, but he counted everything, even the things that meant the most to him, as garbage in comparison to knowing Christ.

If we were to take the time to look closer at scripture we would find many more references to knowledge than we might expect. Jesus says this: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life means knowing God and Christ. This also means that eternal life is not something we look to in the distant future or only in heaven, but eternal life is now in knowing God. The more we know, the greater our awareness of the life God gives us.

John tells us in 1 John: “Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments” (1 John 2:3). Obedience to God’s commands is a way of knowing that we know! We have assurance of knowledge when we do what God calls us to do. We develop a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. A real relationship is not in knowing about someone, it is in knowing someone personally. Anyone can read the Bible and know about Jesus, but one who receives Christ and obeys Christ and seeks to be like Christ, this is the one who gets to know the person of Christ.

What does it take to get to know someone? It takes time. It takes talking and listening. It takes sharing life experiences. As we learn more about one another and get to know one another we may begin to share more; we care more for each other, we receive care and give care. We get to know Jesus also by reading and studying his life and his words. We get to know Jesus by what he did and by what he commands us to do. We know more about Jesus through the letters of the early church and how they understood and knew Jesus.

Paul knew that Jesus laid down his life and Paul laid down his own life each day for Christ, and yet, Paul said he had not yet obtained the closeness to Christ for which he was constantly searching. “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this 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 heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus”. There is always more depth to this friendship with Christ. There is more depth to Christ and more depth to the human person, but we live for the most part on the surface of our lives. We become seduced by the superficial, by appearances, by possessions, by the empty promises of a world that never wants to look below the surface. Our tendency is to hide, to mask ourselves so that the surface of our lives is all that is seen.

Paul wanted to get to the depth of Christ, to the resurrection and to his sufferings. We may want to share in his resurrection until we think about it awhile and realize that in order to share in the resurrection we must first die. Die to self, die to the world, die to sin…therefore, we must first become like him in his death. To be like Christ is to share in his suffering and death so that we may also share in his resurrection. Symbolically we do that through our baptism, going under the waters, dying to self, to be raised out of the waters to new life. That is one of the meanings of baptism and in light of Philippians it means we share with Christ in his suffering and resurrection. True friendships share in the ups and the downs of life. To really know someone is to know both the joys and the sufferings of that person. My best friends are among those whom I have shared great tragedies and we have also shared experiences of celebration.

We know something of Christ’s suffering when we suffer, and we take comfort in knowing that Christ understands our suffering because he has suffered himself and has been with us through our own suffering. Paul said in Philippians 1:29: “for it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” That means that trusting and suffering are both gifts granted by God. Eugene Peterson renders that passage beautifully when he says: “There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting.” We share in Christ’s suffering by paying attention to our pain, by learning from it, by trusting that God will bring us through it to something better on the other side. Walter Brueggemann, when writing about the story of the blind man Bartimaeus, says: “Had [Bartimaeus] not cried out in pain, he never would have some to a new life of discipleship” (p. 56, Finally Comes the Poet). That is, our suffering will lead us to knowing Christ, for Christ has suffered, and even more, Christ has suffered for us.

After Paul talks about sharing in the suffering of Christ he moves to the metaphor of running (and I think that by linking suffering and running Paul shared the same view of running that I do). Paul uses several phrases that allude to the Greek athlete, “pressing on, straining forward,” and “reaching the goal.” It takes a little more effort to run. Dallas Willard says that grace is not opposed to effort, but grace is opposed to earning. That is, we do not get to know Jesus in order to earn our salvation, but when Christ has entered our lives we continue to make every effort to know him. Effort. It takes effort to get to know Jesus.

We value that which we give our time and effort and resources. The value Paul placed on knowing Christ may cause us to ask ourselves about the value we place on knowing Christ. We all may ask ourselves that question, “Do we value knowing Christ?” “Do we consider everything else as nothing compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ?”

One of the ways we keep the Lord always before us (Psalm 16:8) is to know Christ. In my experience, the more one knows Christ, the more we want to know. Paul knew that he could seek his goal to know Christ because Christ already knew him. He could seek because he had been found. This is the Christ who knows us already; we can make it our goal to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and his suffering. Get to know Christ through your own struggles and joys. Get to know Christ through prayer and fellowship and the scriptures and worship; get to know Christ, press on toward that goal, forgetting what lies behind for our prize is not on this earth but is God’s heavenly call. If we have any other goal in mind, anything less than total commitment, we will stumble and fall. Let us strain forward to what lies ahead. Let us press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.