Philippians 3:4b-14 Commentary

The Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to pack this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with poetic and vivid imagery. Commentaries on the CEP website from 2016 and 2020 delve into some of these images.

However, preachers whom the Spirit prompts to move in a slightly different direction might consider Paul’s imagery of “taking hold” (12, 13). It, after all, offers a way to organize and proclaim the apostle’s description in Philippians 3 of what he so passionately longs to possess.

Paul’s longing to seize, however, has its genesis in a kind of “letting go” of his very impressive set of credentials. We’re not surprised that he felt “confident” [pepoithenai] in his “flesh” [sarki].* The apostle once felt he had every reason to believe that he was in a faithful relationship with God through his devout adherence to Torah.

After all, what The Message paraphrases as Paul’s “pedigree” was spotless: he was born into the nation of Israel; his parents circumcised him when he was eight days old; he was a member of the tribe of Benjamin. Both the apostle’s background and his upbringing were, in other words, that of a faithful Israelite.

What’s more, Paul adds in verses 5b-6, he wasn’t just raised to be a faithful God-fearer. He also grew up to become a devout observer of Torah. He became a Pharisee who shared his understanding of the law with other Jews. Paul was, on top of that, so “zealous” [zelos] about protecting God’s honor that he “persecuted [diokon] the church.” He also kept Torah “faultlessly [amemptos].”

Preachers might point to the superlative nature of Paul’s obedience. He didn’t just persecute the church. The apostle did so zealously. He didn’t just keep Torah. Paul did so, as The Message paraphrases verse 6b, “meticulously.” He’d clearly worked hard to amass an extremely impressive set of credentials. He was what The New Living Translation paraphrases as “a real Hebrew if there ever was one.”

Christians sometimes think of such efforts to be in relationship with God through the keeping of the Law as heavily taxing. Yet as the New Testament scholar Jane Lancaster Peterson notes, Philippians 2’s Paul was at one time “not a person burdened by the Torah and his inability to keep it – quite the opposite. He took deep pride in keeping it, as a way of life.”

Yet Paul goes on to admit in verse 7 that what he was once so proud of, what he once considered “profit” [kerde] he now considers “loss” [zemian] for Christ’s sake. Everything in which he’d invested a lifetime of religious vigor he now considers to be relatively worthless. The apostle now thinks of his pedigree and credentials to which he’d tenaciously clung is mostly fit for, in the words of The Message, tearing up and throwing out with the trash.

In fact, Paul uses the word zemian (“loss”) twice in the space of just two verses. It’s interesting that the online resource Bible Hub suggests that that Greek word can also be translated as “damage.” That leaves open the possibility that Paul is suggesting that his former religious life wasn’t just worthless. It also damaged his understanding of both God and himself.

Paul’s now considers his impressive pedigree, as he continues in verse 8, to be a “loss compared to the surpassing greatness [hyperechon] of knowing [genoseos] Christ Jesus” his “Lord, for whose sake” he “has lost [ezemiothen] all things.” His newfound relationship with Jesus Christ has now replaced everything that he’d once considered so valuable.

The apostle can deal with this loss because God has replaced what he has lost “with a righteousness [dikaiosynen] … which is through faith [pisteos] in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is through faith.” (9) Anyone who knew Paul might have assumed that he was a very righteous person who observed Torah faithfully and eagerly.

However, the apostle insists that God has graced him with a far greater righteousness that he has received with his faith in Jesus Christ. The Spirit has convinced him that he can’t obey God fully enough to be in a healthy relationship with God. The apostle came to learn that the only faithfulness that was sufficient was Christ’s faithfulness that the Spirit graciously granted him.

Yet the apostle goes on to point out that while God has already given him so much, he eagerly longs for even more. In verses 10-14 Paul leans forward into what he knows God graciously still has to offer him. “I want to know Christ,” writes the apostle there, “and the power of his resurrection [dynamin tes anastaseos] and the fellowship [koinonian] of sharing in his suffering [pathematon autou], becoming like [symmorphizomenos] him in his death, and so, somehow attain [katanteso] to the resurrection [exanastasin] from the dead.”

These are theologically loaded concepts that are hard to fully understand. Yet they show that Paul longs for a closer relationship with Jesus. He, in fact, wants to be so close to Christ that he wants to experience both the power of his resurrection and somehow share in his suffering. The apostle who’d once poured so much time and energy into observing Torah now wants to pour all his time and energy into cultivating a close relationship with Jesus Christ.

In a section that’s somewhat mysterious, little may be more mysterious than Paul’s longing to “attain to the resurrection from the dead.” It, after all, almost seems to suggest that he longs to do something that will merit his resurrection with God’s saints at the end of measured time.

But the Greek word katanteso (“attain to”) doesn’t necessarily imply some kind of reward after a striving is completed. It can, in fact, mean little more than to “arrive at.” So Paul may simply be voicing his prayer that his close relationship with Jesus Christ find its ultimate fulfillment in his participation in the resurrection from the dead into God’s glorious presence in the new earth and heaven.

Paul, however, knows that he’s not yet arrived, either at the kind of close relationship with Christ or, obviously, at the resurrection from the dead. So in verse 12 he vows to “press on [dioko] to take hold of [katalabo] that for which Christ took hold of [katalempthen]” him. The apostle has essentially let go of his pedigree and credentials so that he may, through the power of the Holy Spirit, reach out for the Christ who reached out to him.

As he writes to Philippi’s Christians he’s, of course, still reaching. Paul hasn’t yet fully grasped [kateilephenai] the relationship for which he longs. So he’s still “straining forward” [epekteinomonos] … toward the goal [skopon] to win the prize [brabeion] for which God has called [kleseos]” him “heavenward [ano] in Christ Jesus.”

This is a picture of an apostle who has become single-minded in his pursuit of what God has offered him. He’s no longer hung up on his sometimes spiritually sordid past. Paul isn’t stuck on his religious pedigree or credentials. He’s straining forward to his goal of knowing the crucified and resurrected Christ Jesus.

We can almost picture this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul, exhausted and worn down by both his work as an apostle and the Empire’s abuse of him. Yet while he may be figuratively staggering, he refuses to stop running. Philippians 3’s apostle is relentlessly pressing on toward the finish line that is complete union with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In another commentary on this site, Scott Hoezee recounts a story Fred Craddock used to tell the story about a missionary family in China whom the communists forced to leave the country sometime after they seized power in China. Soldiers told the members of that family that they had two hours to pack up before these troops would escort them to the train station. The soldiers would permit them to take with them only two hundred pounds of their belongings.

This prompted two hours of arguments over what the family should take. What about the vase that was a family heirloom? And their typewriter that was brand new that they just couldn’t leave behind? And some books? On and on it went, putting stuff on the bathroom scale and taking it off until finally they had a pile of possessions that totaled two hundred pounds on the dot.

When the soldiers returned just as and when they’d promised, they asked, “Are you ready?” “Yes.” “Does your stuff weigh two hundred pounds ?” “Yes, two hundred pounds on the dot.”  “Did you weigh the kids?”  “Um, . . . no.” “Weigh the kids!” At that moment the family let go of the vase, the typewriter, and the books because was trash compared to the surpassing value of the children.

Craddock said that sometimes events crash into our lives in such a shocking way that we are instantly forced to view what we have and treasure in a new light. We can let go of what had once been valuable to us because it has come to mean absolutely nothing to us.