That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death;
if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Dear Lord, as we gather together here this morning, it is the cry of our hearts that there may be nothing between us and Thyself. We pray that Thy light will search us and take away any darkness that may still be upon our hearts.
Oh, Lord, shine—shine upon us. May the glory of the Lord not only fill this place, but fill our hearts. Lord, we want to see Thy glory, and deliver us from all things that are not Thyself. Thou art our treasure, the only One for whom we seek.
Oh, fill us, O Lord. Glorify Thyself. We commit this time into Thy loving hands. We pray that Thy Spirit will break open Thy living Word and speak to each of our hearts.
Lord, we long to be Thine, wholly Thine, Thyself. May glory be unto Thee. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
We are sharing together on this matter of pursuing with passion. It is true that our life is a pursuit, but it is very important that we know what we are pursuing after.
For a long time we have been pursuing things under the sun. We think that these things will satisfy our lives. But thank God, gradually we discover, as Solomon said, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
There is nothing permanent, nothing eternal, nothing real, nothing that lasts forever. All our labour is vanity.
But thank God, by His grace, He opens our eyes. Saul of Tarsus, on his way to Damascus persecuting the church, thought that he was serving God. He thought that he was building up his righteousness, so that one day, when he appeared before God, he would pass.
But thank God, on the way to Damascus, a great light shone upon him. It blinded his natural eyes, but opened his inner eyes. He saw the Lord of glory.
That vision delivered him and turned him around from seeking the things under the sun to truly seeking the things in heaven.
He told us himself that, when this light shone upon him and this revelation was given to him, he began to count all things as loss. What he had considered gain in his past history, he now saw was all loss—worse than loss. It was refuse.
And it was all because of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. From that time on, he began to pursue Jesus with real passion.
After his long experience of pursuing Christ, Paul testifies to us. He shares with us his experience: what he had gone through, what he had discovered, and his experience of Christ Jesus. This is something that we would like to fellowship about together this morning.
We find in Philippians 3:8:
Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for Whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ.
Why did he do that? He said, “That I may gain Christ.” As our brother mentioned last night, Paul placed a qualifying clause behind it. What does he mean by gaining Christ?
And be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.
In other words, when Paul began to see the Lord, he gained Christ. What he had considered his own gain—the righteousness that he had accumulated through the years by keeping the law, the letter of the law—he now saw in a different light.
Through Christ Jesus, he received the real righteousness. His own righteousness, as the Bible says, was as filthy rags. It could not cover his nakedness.
Sometimes we think we are well dressed and covered before God. But actually, in the light of God, these are but rags. They cannot cover our nakedness before God.
By gaining Christ, Paul gained righteousness through Christ Jesus. To put it another way, we would say that he was saved.
As soon as he was saved, he immediately set before himself the goal, the mark. And the mark was to know Him. That was the pursuit of this young man: to know Christ.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is actually a most important step. When we are saved, what do we know of Christ?
We know Christ Jesus as our Saviour. We know that He died for us, that He forgave our sins, and that He gave us His own life—eternal life. We know that we are saved. We have gained Him.
What He did on Calvary’s cross brought us profit, and we are forever thankful for that. If ever we recall the day when we came to the Lord Jesus, we came as sinners, destined for death, with no hope and no God.
But when we came to Him, we looked at Calvary. We saw there that He died. He shed His blood for the remission of our sins. Our sins were all forgiven, and the heavy load upon us was gone.
Peace reigned in our hearts. Our relationship with God was restored. We could lift up our heads and say, “Abba, Father.”
We know the work of our Lord Jesus. It is His work on Calvary’s cross that saved us, delivered us from eternal death, and gave us life.
But, brothers and sisters, even after we have been saved, in our mentality it is still Christ for us. We are still centered upon His work and His death.
Now, we do not want to minimize His work or despise His death, because His work is the foundation and basis of our salvation. We are ever thankful for what our Lord Jesus has done for us.
But there is a danger. The danger is that, because we came to Him by His work, we look to His work instead of to Himself.
We want Him to do this for us and do that for us—to supply our every need. We look to Him to bless us. We are still so self-centered, as if even Christ Himself revolves around us. At the same time, we seek His blessings.
Everything is based upon His work, no doubt, and thank God for that. He did all things for us. But if we make His work the goal of our pursuit, what will happen to our Christian life?
We will be like the Corinthian believers. These believers were morally corrupt and worldly. Yet through Jesus Christ and Him crucified, they were redeemed and saved.
But after they were saved, all they sought from Christ was His work: “Work this for me. Work that. Give me this. Give me that. Supply me. Support me. Bless me.” That was all they desired.
Because of this, they remained babes in Christ.
You know, a baby is always an attraction to everybody—not only to the eyes of the parents, especially the grandparents, but in the eyes of everyone. Every baby is pretty; every baby is lovely.
But we have to remember that a baby is one who depends on everything upon others. To put it in a bad way, a baby is the most selfish person in the world. Everything is for me. Everybody is for me. And he cannot wait, as if he has a right to everything.
Brothers and sisters, are not many believers today like this? We look to Christ Jesus and believe in Him, but what is our attitude toward Him? “Do this for me. I cannot wait. Right away. I am the important person.”
If we take that kind of pursuit, we will remain selfish Christians. We will remain babes in Christ. We will become carnal Christians.
Thank God, we are Christians; but we are carnal Christians. We still live according to the flesh. We live for ourselves, and Christ is for us. Thank God, He is for us.
There must come a day when, instead of seeking and depending only upon the work of Christ and being so self-centered, we begin to see that we want to know Him.
From His work we are brought in, and by His work we want to know Him—not merely enjoying what He has done for us, but wanting to know Him: what kind of a Person He is, what kind of a God we serve, His character, His very being.
We want to follow Him. We want to be like Him. We want to fulfil His desire and His purpose in us. Brothers and sisters, this will be a great day.
You remember John 6. Our Lord Jesus was full of compassion and love. He used five loaves and two fishes to feed five thousand people because He had compassion on them.
Because of this, the people sought after Him. But our Lord Jesus said, in effect, “You do not come to Me because of Me. You come to Me because of bread. Labour not for the food which perishes.”
Then our Lord began to share with them. He said that their forefathers ate the manna from heaven. It was given by God, but they still died.
But if you eat of Him and drink of Him, you will have eternal life. You will never die.
When people began to hear that—not only the people, but even many of His disciples—they began to say, “This is a hard saying. We do not understand this.” And they left Him.
Then our Lord turned to His twelve disciples, whom He had called especially to Himself, to be with Him and to train them. The Lord said, “Would ye also go away?” They were free to do that.
Thank God for Simon Peter. He said:
Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.
And we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God.
Brothers and sisters, there must come a day when you realize that it is not merely what He does for you, but He Himself.
He has the words of eternal life. He is the Son of God. We believe in Him. We have nowhere else to turn and no one else to follow. We are forever His. We are His.
A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, wrote a hymn called “Himself.” He said:
Once it was the blessing,
Now it is the Lord;
Once it was the feeling,
Now it is His Word;
Once His gift I wanted,
Now, the Giver own;
Once I sought for healing,
Now Himself alone.
So, dear brothers and sisters, are we always seeking something from our Lord Jesus—something of His works, something of His blessing toward us? Or are we seeking Himself?
We want to know Him. To know Him is eternal life. To know Him is to know His character. To know Him is to be transformed and conformed to His image. To know Him is to follow Him.
Do we really want to know Him? Do we make Him our goal, our mark? Is it toward Him that we pursue with passion?
We will not turn aside. We are willing to count all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
When this desire is created in our hearts—to know Him—we are set on the right course. This is the beginning of a real Christian life.
The Apostle Paul, through his long life of following the Lord, shares with us his own experience: how, step by step, one step at a time, he pursued Christ in order to gain Him.
He said, “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection.” The first thing in knowing Him is to know the power of His resurrection.
Now, brothers and sisters, we often think that what we need to know is His death. It is His death on Calvary’s cross that brings us into the family of God.
If our Lord Jesus had come into this world, lived for thirty-three and a half years on earth, lived a perfect life, demonstrated to us what God is like, and then returned to heaven without going through death, what would have happened to us?
Even today, there would be only one Man in heaven, and there would forever be only one Man. But thank God, He came down from the Mount of Transfiguration. He set His face toward Jerusalem. He went to Calvary, and there He died for us.
It is His death that redeems us. It is His death that brings us into the family of God. Therefore, our emphasis is often more upon His death.
But, brothers and sisters, as you read the New Testament and open the Book of Acts, you see that when Peter and the eleven first preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, their emphasis was on resurrection.
Their emphasis was: “Let all the house of Israel know that the One whom you have crucified, God has raised from the dead, and He is now crowned and anointed as Lord and Christ.”
In other words, we are not explicitly called merely to believe in the death of the Lord Jesus in order to be saved, even though His death is essential and true. What we are called to believe is His resurrection life.
When the early apostles preached the gospel, their emphasis was always upon the resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
You remember Romans 10:9:
If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
We are saved by believing that God raised Him from the dead, and by confession with our mouths. Why is it so? Because if our Lord Jesus went to Calvary and died, but was never raised again, how would we know that God had accepted His sacrifice?
The gospel emphasizes the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. It is by His resurrection that we receive life.
The first thing to know about the Lord Jesus, after we have received the benefit of His death, is to know the power of His resurrection.
The Lord Himself tells us:
I am the resurrection, and the life.
Calvary is His work. His death is His work. But so far as He Himself is concerned, He is life.
He said:
I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.
The Lord Himself is not death; death was His work. The Lord Himself is life. He is eternal life. He is resurrection life.
He has gone into death, robbed death of its power, and come out in victory. This is the power of His resurrection.
Thank God, brothers and sisters, we who have believed in the Lord Jesus have His life in us. It is not a life of death; it is eternal life.
This life is powerful. There is nothing more powerful than resurrection life, because it overcomes even death.
Who can overcome death? Once you are swallowed by death, you never come out. But our Lord Jesus entered into death, overcame it, and came out in victory. He holds the keys of death and Hades.
The life that God has given to us in Christ Jesus is an overcoming life. It is a life that is above everything. There is nothing that can conquer that life.
This power of resurrection life is in every one of us who believes. Therefore, the first thing in knowing our Lord Jesus Himself is to experience the power of His resurrection.
We are living in this hostile world. Once we belonged to this world, and because we belonged, it was easy. But now we do not belong to this world. We belong to our God and to our Lord.
Living in this alien world and running against the current is not an easy task. How can we, as believers, live in this hostile world? We need power—the power of resurrection life.
If our Lord Jesus had left us on this earth merely to fight in our own strength, we would have no chance. But thank God, He gave us resurrection life within us.
He is proving to us that His life in us is more than able to overcome every obstacle, every trial, and every tribulation. No Christian can live on this earth by himself.
The only way we can live on this earth is by the power of His resurrection. Is this not true in our own experience?
After we believe in the Lord Jesus, we try to overcome temptations. We try very hard. We even pray very hard. But the more we try and pray, the less able we are to overcome. Why?
Because no Christian can live the Christian life by himself or herself. It is time for us to wake up and see that we cannot live the Christian life.
But thank God, we can, because we have the power of His resurrection in us. If we truly turn to Him in all things, there is nothing above us; all things will be under our feet.
The first thing in knowing Him is to know His life. That is knowing Him—not merely knowing His teaching.
Sometimes we who have been Christians for years have heard a great deal. We have read a great deal. We know a great deal. But that does not help us. That does not make us grow in Christ.
Only when we experience His life, the power of His resurrection life, do we begin to really know Him.
I believe that more or less every one of us who has believed in the Lord Jesus has, in some small way, experienced the power of resurrection in our lives. But unfortunately, we still lean upon ourselves, and that is our problem.
If only we can know the power of His resurrection—and we must know it by experience. Perhaps after many failures, when temptation comes, we know it is wrong. We try to fight against it, put our whole strength against it, and pray very hard. But it does not work.
After many failures, we begin to remember that we have a life within us that is able. To know the power of His resurrection is to know Him, because He is life.
The second step is to know the fellowship of His sufferings.
The word sufferings is plural. In other words, there are a number of kinds of suffering. To put it simply, there are two kinds of the sufferings of Christ.
One is vicarious suffering. This is when our Lord Jesus bore our sins in His body and was crucified on the cross.
He went to the winepress, as it were, all by Himself. He bore the wrath of God over sin all by Himself. Because of what He did for us, we are atoned for, redeemed, and saved.
No one can share in that kind of suffering. No one is qualified to have any part in it. We only reap the fruit of that suffering. Thank God for that.
But there is another kind of suffering, which we may call non-vicarious suffering. This is the suffering in which He calls us to have fellowship with Him.
Fellowship simply means sharing the same thing with Him. As He has suffered, so we will suffer with Him.
When our Lord Jesus came into this world, one thing He suffered was obedience to His Father. He was a Man, having His own will. Even though He was sinless, He had His own will.
But throughout His life, our Lord Jesus never for one moment followed His own will. He was always waiting for the will of the Father, and He was obedient to it.
He told us Himself, “I cannot do anything by Myself. I cannot say anything on My own. My time is not Mine.” Everything was according to the Father who sent Him.
He came to do the will of the Father. Whatever the Father said, He said. Whatever the Father did, He did. Whatever the Father’s time was, that was His time.
Do you think that is easy? It is very hard for us to be obedient to God. We want this and we want that. We want to be free. We want to have our own opinion and our own way. We choose for ourselves.
Obedience involves suffering. Your flesh will suffer. You have to deny yourself, withhold yourself, and put yourself to death before you can truly be obedient.
Our Lord Jesus was obedient to the Father even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
You remember when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, how He prayed:
Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done.
As the perfect Man, the sinless Man, the cleanest Man on earth, to have all the sins of the world placed upon Him and all its defilement laid upon Him was unbearable so far as human nature was concerned. But He said, “Not My will, but Thine, be done.” He drank the cup to the full.
Brothers and sisters, this is a kind of suffering that He calls us to share with Him. Do you find it hard to deny your own will and do the will of Another?
Is not our pride hurt? “Who am I to listen? I can do anything that I want to do.” But, brothers and sisters, the Christian life is a life of obedience.
The Lord Jesus said:
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
And He said:
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
The Lord wants us to fellowship with Him.
You know, brothers and sisters, today’s Christianity often tells us that Christ has suffered for us; therefore, we do not need to suffer. Suffering is almost a foreign word to Christians today.
We think that if we believe in the Lord Jesus, there will be no suffering, only blessing. But if you read the Word of God, this is not so. The Word of God is full of suffering.
As our Lord Jesus suffered for the will of God, so we also must suffer.
Has that thought, that mindset, ever come to us? Why is it that we rebel against God? Remember that God is God.
We do not want to suffer; we want to be blessed. We think that we believe in the Lord Jesus for this reason: He has suffered all, so that we need not suffer anymore.
Brothers and sisters, it is not that kind of suffering. It is the suffering of obedience to God.
Have you ever suffered in obedience to the will of God? If you have, you know Him. That is what He is. That is His character. That is His life.
Not only that: when our Lord Jesus was on earth, He suffered for righteousness’ sake. The world is wicked. The world is full of unrighteousness.
If you want to live a righteous life in this unrighteous world, you have to suffer.
That is why our Lord Jesus, while He was on earth, suffered so much. He suffered the opposition of the scribes, the Pharisees, and the evil authorities because He refused to do anything that was not right in the sight of God.
Do we ever suffer with Him for righteousness’ sake? Or are we taking the easy way, trying to mingle with the world and escape any suffering?
It is a real trial for believers today. But if you want to know Him, you have to know His righteousness and suffer for it.
What misunderstanding, what persecution—even unto death—came to our Lord Jesus. The same thing will happen to those who follow Him and learn of Him.
There are many things our Lord Jesus suffered for the sake of the church. How He travailed. How out of His side came blood and water to build the church.
We who follow the Lord, as the Apostle Paul said, must travail for the church, that we may see the church being built. Do we suffer for that, or do we think the church is merely a place of pleasure?
Our Lord Jesus also suffered because of His sympathy, His passion, and His compassion toward the world. Whenever a person suffered, He suffered.
Are we like that? Do we truly take upon ourselves the character of our Lord Jesus? That is knowing Christ.
Sometimes we wonder why the first thing we know is the power of His resurrection, and then we know the fellowship of His sufferings. I think now we know.
Unless we know the power of His resurrection, we have no way to fellowship with His sufferings. Thank God, He has provided.
The Christian life is not a life left to ourselves. The Christian life is a calling, and with that calling He has already supplied the power.
By the power of His resurrection life, we are able to share with Him in His sufferings.
Today people look at suffering as something foreign to Christians. Christians, they say, should not suffer. What kind of Christianity do we have today?
The way of the cross is narrow. You have found it, but it leads to life. Brothers and sisters, this is true Christianity. This is really knowing Christ. Are we ready for it?
Then we find: “becoming conformed unto His death.” His death has already brought us life. It is by His death that our sins are atoned for. It is through dying with Christ on the cross that we live in Christ today.
But here we find that we ought to be conformed to His death.
You remember Romans 12:2:
And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Once we were conformed to this world. The world is like a mould, and we were all conformed in that mould. Out of that mould, we came out alike.
But God has delivered us out of this world and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Our Lord’s death is also a mould.
It is more than merely that He died for us. It is a mould, and we are to be conformed into that mould. What does it mean?
It means one thing: His death put everything that is outside of God to death.
Is it not true that in our lives, even after we believe in the Lord, there are still many things in us that are not of God? Some may be sin, some may be of the world, some may be of ourselves, and some may even be from the enemy.
Anything that is not of God died in the death of Christ. We ought to be conformed into that death. Only after we are conformed to His death will we be transformed and conformed to the image of Christ.
As the Apostle Paul says, “I die daily.” Death works in us, that life may work in others. This is the way of the Christian life.
The Apostle Paul was pursuing, step by step, experiencing all these things. But even so, he said, “If by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.”
He does not sound certain or presumptuous. He says, “If by any means I may attain unto the out-resurrection from among the dead.”
Brothers and sisters, we have to remember that the word translated “resurrection” here is not merely the usual word for resurrection. In the original Greek, it is out-resurrection.
The Bible tells us that all who believe in the Lord Jesus and have died will, at the coming of the Lord, when the trumpet sounds and the Lord returns, be raised.
The dead who died in the Lord Jesus will all be raised, changed, clothed with incorruptibility, and caught up to meet the Lord in the air. That is the resurrection of the just.
The resurrection of the unjust will wait until one thousand years later. But here we find the out-resurrection.
The Lord Jesus said:
I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live.
There is nothing uncertain about the resurrection of believers. It is sure. Why, then, did Paul say that he might attain unto the out-resurrection from among the dead?
Because the Bible tells us of a resurrection called the first resurrection. You find this in Revelation 20.
The first resurrection is the out-resurrection. It is not another resurrection, because all the righteous will be raised together. But out of the resurrection of the just, there will be some whose resurrection is the out-resurrection.
What is the difference? Those who have part in that out-resurrection will reign with Christ for one thousand years. You find that in Revelation 20.
That is what Paul was looking for. Who will come to this out-resurrection? Only those who know Him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, and conformity to His death.
These are the people who may attain unto the out-resurrection from among the dead. It is the time to receive the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, even the Apostle Paul said, “I do not say that I have arrived.” He wrote this letter while he was in a Roman prison, yet he said, “I do not say that I have arrived.”
“I forget the things that are behind me, and stretch myself out with all my effort toward the mark. I pursue.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, this should be our attitude. Do not come to a time when you sit down and say, “That is enough. I have arrived. I have it.”
Not until Paul wrote 2 Timothy, before his martyrdom, did he have this assurance:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved His appearing.
Brothers and sisters, are we waiting for the return of the Lord? Are we ready for His return?
If we pursue with passion, by the grace of God, He will enable us to attain. But if we abuse the grace of God, we will have to weep in outer darkness.
May the Lord have mercy on us.
Dear Lord, Thou hast shown us the way to know Thee. We thank and praise Thee because Thou hast shown us that the way is the way of the cross.
We thank Thee that Thou hast already prepared and provided for us resurrection life—Christ in us, the hope of glory.
Oh, we thank Thee for the mystery of the gospel. We pray that each and every one of us here, by Thy grace, will pursue, stretching out toward the mark, until we hear Thy voice:
Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.
We give Thee glory in Thy precious name. Amen.