That I May Know Him (2) - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
Philippians 3:10

That I May Know Him (2)
Paul counted everything in his past, his religious pedigree and all the accolades of men, as loss (Phil. 3:7). But in verse 8 he looks at his life at the time and counts everything loss for Christ: notice, "for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ!" This means much more than simply knowledge about Christ! Paul was not interested only in historical knowledge about Christ; he had that before he was saved. But he wanted ongoing personal, intimate, experiential knowledge of Christ.

This genuine, personal knowledge of Christ would also bring about a righteousness in Paul's life that he could never attain by his self-righteousness as a religious Pharisee (vv. 6-7). He realized as he wrote in Romans 4:1-8 that the righteousness of Christ was reckoned to him as a result of justification by grace, and he wanted to live that righteousness out more and more in his own life. Paul had a growing desire to continue to know Christ (3:10); as the Spirit of God would reveal more and more to Paul of the person, work, and glory of Christ, he could not get enough! He had an unquenchable thirst, and a deep craving to know more of Christ, to know the power of His resurrection in his own life! To experience what it truly meant to be crucified with Christ and to experience that it wasn't the old religious Saul that lived, but it was "Christ [who] lives in me": this was Paul's deep desire!

This was his priority in life, not because he was an apostle, but because he was a follower of Jesus Christ. He pressed on, reaching for Him with a single focus, with intentional living! Is this a priority in our lives?

Tim Hadley, Sr.