“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death” (Phil. 3:10).
Note these expressions: “Christ,” I want to know “Him.” And this is how he wanted to know Him–by “power”–I want to know the power of His resurrection, he declared. And “fellowship”–the fellowship of His sufferings. And then comes “conformity”–conformed to His death. All real Christian experience consists in “knowing Christ” and drawing on His infinite resources.
Paul prayed for three things: 1) a closer friendship with Christ; 2) a fuller experience of God’s power; and 3) a truer identification with the Saviour’s sorrow.
A Closer Friendship with Christ
Had Paul not known Christ before? If so, then what did he mean by asking for that knowledge now? Here Paul longs for that close, intimate, sacred, unbreakable and divine fellowship, a fellowship given in answer to the fuller knowledge of Christ. He wanted to know a whole Christ, and that with a full knowledge. He was deeply conscious that now he beheld only darkly, that his knowledge was only partial (1 Cor. 13:12). Now he desires to possess that clarified vision; greater knowledge alone could satisfy his soul.
A Fuller Experience of God’s Power
What is the meaning of this phrase, “the power of His resurrection”? It is sometimes interpreted as meaning the efficacy of His resurrection–that is, that it refers to the results of it. But may it not also refer to the power by which Christ Himself was raised from among the dead? We think so, and for this reason, that in the letter to the church at Ephesus this is the idea distinctly communicated (Eph. 1:19-20). There Paul prayed that these Ephesians might know the power of God–the very power that God put forth in raising Christ out of death. It is not, therefore, too much to say that the idea in the Epistle to the Ephesians had been transferred to his letter to the Philippians. Paul wanted to have that same resurrection power exercising its influence in the region of his spirit-life, as it had done in the body of Christ. Note two things:
First, that power was a life-giving energy. Look at the historical scene–Christ lies dead. But with the first streak of the dawn of the morning of the resurrection, He lives! How? A new life is His in the eternal power of God. It is called “God’s resurrection power.” He lives, nevermore to die. Paul grasps the meaning of all this, and as he grasps his share in it, he exclaims, “That I may know the power of His resurrection!”
Second, that power was liberating energy. Have you ever asked who undid the bands which bound Christ? The power which created life undid them. Christ was liberated as well as quickened. It was liberty Paul wanted–full, decided liberty: liberty from the power of sin (Rom. 6:6), from the service of sin (6:14), and from the reign of sin (6:12).
A Truer Identification with Sorrow
The highest form of divine service is that of suffering. Deity itself could go no further than the cross. There were two kinds of sufferings connected with Christ: 1) those incidental to the human nature by reason of its weakness–but this does not refer to them; 2) other sufferings, the result of a divine, a holy, a spotless life. It was because of envy they drove Him to the cross (Mt. 27:18). They could not bear His purity, His virtue, His divinity. There was too much light for their darkness to bear. The partnership in Christ’s sufferings means “carrying the cross” for Him in the sense of “bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:13). It is daily following in the steps of Him who endured the gainsaying of sinners against Himself. O that we may know Him like this!