knowledge
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, (3:8–9a)
The forceful phrase more than that is an untranslatable string of five Greek particles (lit. “but indeed therefore at least even”). It strongly emphasizes the contrast between the religious credits that do not impress God and the incalculable benefits of knowing Christ. In verse 7, Paul counted the religious credits in verses 5 and 6 as loss; here he expands that conviction and declares all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. The verb translated “I have counted” in verse 7 is in the perfect tense; the same verb translated here I count is in the present tense. That indicates that all the meritorious works that Paul had counted on to earn God’s favor, and any that he might do in the present or future, are but loss.
Paul abandoned his past religious achievements in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. The participle huperchon (the surpassing value) refers to something of incomparable worth. The word knowing in the Greek text is not a verb, but a form of the noun gnōsis, from the verb ginōskō, which means to know experimentally or experientially by personal involvement. The surpassing knowledge of Christ that Paul describes here is far more than mere intellectual knowledge of the facts about Him.
The New Testament frequently describes Christians as those who know Christ. In John 10:14 Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me.” In John 17:3 He defined eternal life as knowing Him: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” To the Corinthians Paul wrote, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6), while in Ephesians 1:17 he prayed “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.” In his first epistle John declared, “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). Salvation involves a personal, relational knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To the Greeks, gnōsis could describe secret, cultic, mystical communion with a deity. Those who were initiated into the mystery claimed to have ascended beyond the mundane knowledge possessed by the masses. They imagined that they alone enjoyed some personal experience of their deity. The Greeks often sought such an elevated state through drunken revelry. In the second century, the dangerous heresy of Gnosticism attempted to syncretize the Greek concept of gnōsis and Christian truth. Like their pagan counterparts, the Gnostics claimed a higher, truer knowledge of God than the average Christian experienced. But Paul uses gnōsis here to describe the transcendent communion with Christ that all true believers experience.
There is also an Old Testament context for gnōsis. The verb form was used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) to translate the Hebrew word yada. Yada often denoted an intimate knowledge, even a union or bond of love. It was sometimes used in Scripture as a euphemism for sexual intercourse (e.g., Gen. 4:1, 17, 25; 19:8; 24:16; Num. 31:17–18, 35; Judg. 21:11–12; 1 Sam. 1:19). It also described God’s intimate love bond with Israel: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2 nkjv). Thus, the word can have the connotation both of a transcendent knowledge and an intimate love bond.
Adding personal warmth to the rich theological concept of knowing Christ Jesus, Paul describes Him as my Lord. That threefold description encompasses Christ’s three offices of prophet, priest, and king. Christ views Him as the Messiah, the messenger or prophet of God. Jesus views Him as Savior, emphasizing His role as believers’ great High Priest. Lord views Him as sovereign King over all creation.
Salvation comes only through the deep knowledge of and intimate love bond with Jesus Christ that God gives by grace through faith. Commenting on the believer’s knowledge of Christ, F. B. Meyer wrote,
We may know Him personally intimately face to face. Christ does not live back in the centuries, nor amid the clouds of heaven: He is near us, with us, compassing our path in our lying down, and acquainted with all our ways. But we cannot know Him in this mortal life except through the illumination and teaching of the Holy Spirit.… And we must surely know Christ, not as a stranger who turns in to visit for the night, or as the exalted king of men—there must be the inner knowledge as of those whom He counts His own familiar friends, whom He trusts with His secrets, who eat with Him of His own bread.
To know Christ in the storm of battle; to know Him in the valley of shadow; to know Him when the solar light irradiates our faces, or when they are darkened with disappointment and sorrow; to know the sweetness of His dealing with bruised reeds and smoking flax; to know the tenderness of His sympathy and the strength of His right hand—all this involves many varieties of experience on our part, but each of them like the facets of a diamond will reflect the prismatic beauty of His glory from a new angle. (The Epistle to the Philippians [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1952], 162–63)
For the inestimable privilege of knowing Jesus Christ, Paul gladly suffered the loss of all things by which he might have sought to earn salvation apart from Christ. The apostle went so far as to count them but rubbish so that he might gain (personally appropriate) Christ. All efforts to obtain salvation through human achievement are as much rubbish as the worst vice. Skubalon (rubbish) is a very strong word that could also be rendered “waste,” “dung,” “manure,” or even “excrement.” Paul expresses in the strongest possible language his utter disdain for all the religious credits with which he had sought to impress man and God. In view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ, they are worthless. Paul would have heartily endorsed Isaiah’s declaration that “all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isa. 64:6).
The phrase in Him expresses the familiar Pauline truth that believers are in Christ, a concept found more than seventy-five times in his epistles. Believers are inextricably intertwined with Christ in an intimate life and love bond. “I have been crucified with Christ,” wrote Paul to the Galatians; “and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20).[1]
3:8 Paul now moves to develop the thought of the previous verse, drawing particular attention to this statement. The statement in question is in fact the one long, complex Greek sentence that encompasses verses 8–11! He begins by broadening the statement of the previous verse: I count everything as loss. In contrast to the perfect tense of the verb rendered count (hēgeomai) in verse 7, Paul uses the present tense in this verse. Paul’s settled mindset of counting his ‘gains’ as loss (3:7) is expressed in a continual counting of everything as loss (3:8). He moves from the specific things he has counted as loss (described in 3:5–7) to a much larger claim that everything is placed in the loss column. This shift is very important, because it excludes nothing. Paul insists that even those things that are good and beneficial in and of themselves ultimately must go in the loss column when it comes to one’s standing before God. Even the good works that we do can become a deadly ground for confidence in the flesh rather than an expression of our trust in Christ.
The reason for this radical form of spiritual accounting is given in the clause that follows: because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. The Greek word rendered surpassing worth (hyperechō) previously occurred in 2:3, where Paul exhorted the Philippians to ‘count others more significant [hyperechontas] than yourselves.’ As used here in 3:8, hyperechō means ‘to surpass in quality or value.’ It is knowing Christ Jesus my Lord that is of surpassing worth in comparison to all the things that could otherwise be considered gain. As the context makes clear, the kind of knowledge that Paul speaks of here is far from a bare intellectual grasp of information. It is instead the kind of personal knowledge that comes from close contact with a person. An example of this can be found in a first-century decree that refers to a citizen from the town of Olbia who ‘had advanced to personal acquaintance [gnōseōs] with the Augusti [i.e. the emperors Augustus and Tiberius].’ Paul himself will explain what it means to know Christ later in verse 10.
We must not rush too quickly past the extraordinary expression Christ Jesus my Lord. Each word is pregnant with significance. Although by this point in a Gentile context the title Christ may have lost some of its punch, it must be remembered that by this title the early Christians expressed their conviction that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Anointed One who was the fulfillment of the OT hope. Within a Greek context the term would have initially lacked such connotations; it would have simply referred to someone who was anointed, perhaps for a specific task. But there is little doubt that, within the preaching of the gospel in a Gentile context such as Philippi, Paul used the title Christ and explained its significance. The name Jesus means ‘Yahweh saves’ (cf. Matt. 1:21); as such it expresses the central message of the new covenant. The name focuses on the fact that Jesus is the Savior of God’s people, the one who rescues them from their sin. The title Lord emphasizes the sovereign reign of Jesus; He is the one to whom universal dominion has been given (cf. Phil. 2:9–11). The Greek noun kyrios (‘Lord’) was also the term used to translate the sacred divine name Yahweh in the LXX. As we saw in 2:9–11, the Father has bestowed this name on Jesus Christ. So when Paul speaks of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord he speaks of knowing the promised anointed one who was the fulfillment of the OT hope, the one who was sent to save His people from their sins, the one who has universal dominion and authority. In others, Paul thinks of Jesus as Messiah, Savior, and King all in one. And with the addition of the personal pronoun my Paul expresses his own personal commitment to this utterly unique person. The same Christ Jesus who has been given the name above every name and before whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess (2:9–11) is Paul’s personal Lord. Thus Jesus Christ is not merely Lord in some abstract sense but in a very personal sense.
Although most English translations begin a new sentence at this point, as we noted above, 3:8–11 is one sentence in Greek. Paul continues: For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things. This clause continues the thought of the previous one, but extends it. In the previous clause Paul spoke of counting everything as loss, which focuses on the decision of the will to regard everything as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ. In this clause Paul asserts that he has in fact lost all things. In other words, the language here goes beyond the arena of the mind into his actual experience.
But Paul is not content to stop there. Beyond losing all things for the sake of Christ, Paul claims I count them as rubbish. By rubbish (skybalon) Paul refers to something that is ‘useless or undesirable material that is subject to disposal.’ As a result the word has a range of meanings, including garbage or even dung. Perhaps the closest English equivalent is ‘crap.’ Which sense Paul has in mind here is difficult to say, and is ultimately beside the point since the thrust of what he says is quite clear. By comparison with the greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, everything is rubbish by comparison. By using this particular word Paul brings to a climax the stunning transformation that he has experienced. The very things that at one time were the basis of his identity, significance, and standing before God, Paul now regards as equivalent to that which is flushed away in the sewers. This word choice is all the more ironic in light of his pre-Christian identity as a Pharisee, who as a group placed great emphasis on purity and being ritually clean.
In the final clause of the verse Paul states the first of three purposes behind his spiritual calculus of counting all things rubbish: in order that I may gain Christ. The use of financial language continues with the use of the verb gain (kerdainō). The following clause seems to expand on what Paul means here, and as we will note that expression should be seen as having an already/not-yet dynamic. On the one hand, Paul has already ‘gained Christ’ by trusting in Him as the Messiah. Christ has become his. He is now in Christ and Christ is in him. Within his spiritual ledger the loss column reads EVERYTHING, while the gain column has but one entry: CHRIST. Or, as Paul puts it in Galatians 6:14: ‘But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’ At the same time, Paul anticipates an even greater experience of Christ when God consummates all of His promises in a new creation (Rom. 8:19–23). When seen from this already/not-yet dynamic, Paul is in effect restating what he affirmed in 1:21: ‘For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’
It quite easy to see the necessity of regarding our sin as loss for the sake of Christ, but the shocking claim that Paul makes here goes well beyond that. He claims that even those things that might be classified as credits belong in the loss column. They are no different from that which is flushed down the toilet. Repentance from sin is an obvious necessity; less obvious is the equally necessary repentance from our own spiritual pedigree. In comparison to Christ, everything else is dung. Even things that in and of themselves are good gifts from God must be placed in the loss column in order to gain Christ. The thoughtful reader cannot help but ask, ‘Have I counted all things as loss for the sake of gaining Christ?’ Nothing that is found in this world can compare to Jesus Christ. Just as He laid aside His privilege and personal comfort to take the form of a Servant to redeem His people (2:6–11), so too must His people lay aside all things in view of the surpassing value of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. J. I. Packer brings out this truth memorably:
When Paul says he counts the things he lost rubbish, or dung (kjv), he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind: what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God.124
This then is another reflection of the topsy-turvy Kingdom of God, in which ‘gain’ of one sort, if clung to, would bring eternal loss; while what we see as ‘loss’ will bring inestimable joy and blessing.[2]
3:8 / In truth, not only Paul’s personal heritage and achievement but everything in the world has been transvalued by Christ. So surpassing was the greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord that, by comparison with it, everything else was not merely valueless but had negative value. Whatever existed outside of Christ and the gospel that he had commissioned Paul to make known throughout the world was a dead loss, the sort of thing to be lost or thrown away, like so much rubbish, the merest street-sweepings. When he entered the service of Christ on the Damascus road, that meant the renunciation of all that he had chiefly prized up to that moment; it was a renunciation well worth making.
The knowledge of God was of paramount value in the eyes of the great prophets of Israel (cf. Hos. 6:6); for Paul the knowledge of God was supremely mediated through Christ, and in being so mediated it was immensely enriched. “Knowledge” (Gk. gnōsis) was a current term in the religious and philosophical vocabulary of Paul’s day; the “knowledge” that was widely sought and esteemed was partly intellectual, partly mystical. Some forms of the current cultivation of “knowledge” developed into the systems of thought that appear in the second century under the general designation of “Gnosticism.” Such “knowledge” was pursued in the Corinthian church, and Paul was not impressed by it: “Knowledge,” he said, “puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1). A community was helped to grow to maturity much more by love of God and love of one’s fellows than by the pursuit of knowledge. Knowing Christ Jesus my Lord is personal knowledge: it includes the experience of being loved by him and loving him in return—and loving, for his sake, all those for whom he died. It is not certain that here, as in his Corinthian correspondence, Paul is contrasting this personal knowing of Christ with inferior forms of knowledge: he is assuredly emphasizing that it is the only form of knowledge worth having, a knowledge so transcendent in value that it compensates for the loss of everything else.
To know Christ and to gain Christ are two ways of expressing the same ambition. If Christ is the one “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3), to know him means to have access to those treasures; but to know him for his own sake is what matters to Paul most of all.
Paul had never known the earthly Jesus. If, during Jesus’ ministry, Paul had learned anything about his teaching and activities, he would have disapproved. After Jesus’ arrest and execution, Paul thought of him with repulsion as one on whom, by the very nature of his death, the curse of God rested: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). Those who proclaimed such a person to be the Lord’s anointed, as the disciples of Jesus did, were blasphemers; the well-being of Israel demanded their extinction. And, quite apart from Paul’s antipathy to all that Jesus stood for, how can one enjoy a personal relationship with someone who has died and whom one never knew?
When God chose, on the Damascus road, to reveal his Son to Paul, the Son of God at the same time introduced himself to Paul: “I am Jesus,” he said. Immediately Paul was captivated by him and became his bondslave for life. “What shall I do, Lord?” he asked him, and his whole subsequent career was one of obedience to the answer that his question drew forth (Acts 22:7–10). In that moment Paul knew himself to be loved by the Son of God who, as he was to say, “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). For him henceforth the “first and great commandment,” to love the lord his God, was honored in his love for Christ, the image of God: “the man who loves God is known by God” (1 Cor. 8:3). A relationship of mutual knowledge and love was established there and then between the apostle on earth and his exalted Lord, and to explore the fullness of this relationship was from now on Paul’s inexhaustible joy. For him, in short, life was Christ—to love Christ, to know Christ, to gain Christ: “Christ is the way, and Christ the prize.”[3]
[1] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2001). Philippians (pp. 234–237). Moody Press.
[2] Harmon, M. S. (2015). Philippians: A Mentor Commentary (pp. 333–338). Mentor.
[3] Bruce, F. F. (2011). Philippians (pp. 112–114). Baker Books.
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