Yea doubtless; he very emphatically, in the Greek, expresseth his stronger resolution upon further deliberation.

And I count all things; as he had reckoned and rated when he was first wrought upon to entertain Christ, so at present he did not alter his judgment, in the valuation of any thing he had rejected; yea, he speaks universally, what he did but indefinitely, using the present tense with a discretive particle: he disesteemed, not only his Jewish privileges and exercises before, but his Christian after conversion, as of any worth to commend him to God, or as any matter to be rested on for his justification before God; showing he did not ascribe his being accepted to eternal life, unto his own works after he was renewed, and now had so many years served God in his apostolical ministry, performed such excellent works, planted so many churches, gained so many souls to Christ, passed through perils for the name of Christ. He remarkably puts in all, not only which he had before recited, but to all works as such whatsoever, yea, and to all whatsoever could be thought on besides Christ.

But loss; whatever they be in themselves, they are but loss or damage, of no worth to me, as to any dependence on them for acceptance with God.

For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; compared with the surpassing worth and excellency in the fiducial, experimental (as is plain from what follows) knowledge of Jesus Christ, in his person, offices, and benefits, wherein an eye of faith can discern transcendent mysteries, Isa 53:2; Joh 17:3; 1Jo 5:20; 1Ti 3:16; 1Pe 1:12; to be adored by the sincere servants of so excellent a Lord, Mar 5:30,33; to have an interest in whom, and to enjoy whom, every thing besides is despicable.

For whom I have suffered the loss of all things; for whom (he adds) he did not only account them loss, {as Phi 3:7} in his judgment and readiness to lose them, but he actually sustained the loss of them, Act 20:23; 1Co 4:13; 2Co 11:23, &c.: as to any plea for his acceptance, he suffered them all to go in this case, which he could not do till God, of his rich and insuperable grace, wrought this resolution in him, by his Holy Spirit; then he willingly did it.

And do count them but dung; yea, and upon a right stating of the accounts he reckoned he was no loser by the exchange, in that he did esteem them, in a just balance, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, 1Co 2:13, in point of trust, those excellent things with an excellent Christ, to be no better than dung, as we with the Syriac and others translate the word; or dogs, meat, refuse cast to the dogs, with others; and might agree with the gust of those, Phi 3:2, whom he calls dogs, Mat 15:26; Mar 7:27. Those much conversant in Greek authors do criticise largely upon the word, which is acknowledged on all hands to import things, if not loathsome, yet vile and contemptible, as chaff, &c.; and so not absolutely, but in their respect, did Paul account all things in comparison of Christ, even our good works proceeding from a heart sanctified but in part; he doth not mean of the substance, but quality of the trust or merit placed in them; not in themselves, but in regard of confidence in them, as to pardon and acceptance with God: not in point of sanctification, but justification, the apostle is here speaking to. So to rely upon them would not only comparatively, but positively, be greatest loss, as keeping from Christ, who is the greatest gain, for which the loss of all besides was to be sustained.

That I may win Christ; that he might gain him, and be assured of an interest in him, whom he had above described in his state of humiliation and exaltation, and enjoy communion with him, Mat 11:28; Luk 14:26,33; 2Co 4:6; 1Jo 5:12; of whom he would receive more, and for whom he would do more, aiming at the making of Christ himself his own, by some kind of propriety, 1Co 1:30.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

8. Yea doubtlessThe oldestmanuscripts omit “doubtless” (Greek, “ge“):translate, “nay more.” Not only “have Icounted” those things just mentioned “loss forChrist’s sake, but, moreover, I even DOcount ALL things butloss,” c.

for the excellencyGreek,“On account of the surpassing excellency (the supereminenceabove them all) of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.”

my Lordbelieving andloving appropriation of Him (Psa 63:1Joh 20:28).

for whom“onaccount of whom.”

I have suffered the lossnotmerely I “counted” them “loss,” but haveactually lost them.

all thingsThe Greekhas the article, referring to the preceding “all things”;”I have suffered the loss of them all.”

dungGreek,“refuse (such as excrements, dregs, dross) cast to the dogs,“as the derivation expresses. A “loss” is of somethinghaving value; but “refuse” is thrown away as not worthy ofbeing any more touched or looked at.

winTranslate, toaccord with the translation, Php3:7, “gain Christ.” A man cannot make otherthings his “gain” or chief confidence, and at the same time”gain Christ.” He who loses all things, and even himself,on account of Christ, gains Christ: Christ is His, and He is Christ’s(Son 2:16; Son 6:3;Luk 9:23; Luk 9:24;1Co 3:23).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Yea, doubtless, and I count all things [but] loss,…. Not only the things before mentioned, but anything, and everything else but Christ, or that stood in competition with him, or were short of him; as his natural and acquired parts; the whole compass of learning he had attained to; all that honour, credit, reputation, and popularity he was in for knowledge and devotion; all worldly substance, the comforts of life, and life itself; and all his righteousness since conversion, as well as before; of this no doubt could be made by those who knew him, his principles and his practices: and all this

for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: “by the knowledge of Christ” is not meant subjectively the knowledge that is in Christ, or which he has of others, either as God or man; but objectively, that knowledge which believers have of him, who know him not only in his person, as God over all, but as a Saviour and Redeemer, and as theirs; they know him in all his relations, and particularly as their Lord, not by creation only, but by redemption and grace, as the apostle did, putting an emphasis on these words, “my Lord”; thereby expressing his faith of interest in him, his great affection for him, and cheerful subjection to him. And this knowledge is not general, but special, spiritual, and saving; it is a knowledge of approbation of Christ above all others; a fiducial one, which has faith in him joined with it, and is both experimental and, practical, and, at least at times, appropriating; and though imperfect, it is progressive and capable of being increased, and will at last be brought to perfection. It is attained to, not by the light of nature, nor by the help of carnal reason, nor by the law of Moses, but by the Gospel of the grace of God, as a means; and the efficient cause of it is Father, Son, and Spirit; the Father reveals Christ in his saints; the Son gives them an understanding to know him; and the Spirit is a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; and this knowledge is very excellent: a spiritual knowledge of Christ is more excellent than a general and notional one, or than a knowledge of Christ after the flesh; and the knowledge of Christ under the Gospel dispensation, though the same in nature, is more excellent than that which was under the legal dispensation, by promises, prophecies, and the ceremonial law, in degree, extensiveness, and clearness; but the most excellent knowledge of Christ is that of the saints in heaven; yea, even there is an excellency in what the saints have here on earth, and a superior one to all other knowledge, if the author and original of it is considered: it is not of ourselves, nor by the assistance of men; it is not in the book of nature, nor in the schools of the philosophers; it is not of earth, nor earthly, but it comes from afar, from above, from heaven, from God the Father of lights; it is a free grace gift, a distinguishing one, and is very comprehensive, unspeakable, and unchangeable: and as to the object of it, it is Christ, the chiefest among ten thousands; who made the heavens, earth, and seas, and all that in them are, the sun, moon, and stars, men and beasts, birds and fishes, fossils, minerals, vegetables, and everything in nature; and therefore the knowledge of him must be superior to the knowledge of everything else; and, which adds to its excellency, it makes Christ precious, engages faith and confidence in him, influences the life and conversation, humbles the soul, and creates in it true pleasure and satisfaction; when all other knowledge fills with self-love, pride, and vanity, and increases sorrow; whereas this is not only useful in life, but supports, as under afflictions, so in the views of death and eternity; through it grace is received now, and by it glory hereafter; for it is the beginning, earnest, and pledge of eternal life. Well may the believer count all things but loss for it, as the apostle did; who adds, for further confirmation of what he had asserted,

for whom I have suffered the loss of all things; he dropped all confidence in his carnal privileges, and civil, ceremonial, and moral righteousness, for Christ and his righteousness; he parted with all for this pearl of great price; he lost his good name, credit, and reputation among men, and suffered afflictions and persecutions in various shapes; he lost the comforts of life, being often in cold and nakedness, in hunger and thirst, and was ready to suffer the loss of life itself for professing and preaching Christ:

and do count them [but] dung; or dog’s meat; see Php 3:2; what is fit only to be cast to dogs, as the word signifies; and intends every thing that is base, mean, and worthless; as the faeces of men, the dregs and lees of liquor, the falling of fruit, chaff, stubble, the dross of metals, dung, and what not: so he esteemed his carnal descent; his form and sect of religion, and zeal in it; his ceremonial and moral righteousness before and after conversion; and everything of the creature, or what was his own, and but flesh; being of the same opinion with the church of old, who reckoned her righteousnesses, the best, and the whole of them, as “filthy rags”. The apostle next expresses his end and views in this,

that I may win Christ; not get an interest in him, for this he had already, and he knew he had, and that he should never lose it; and besides, an interest in Christ is not a thing that begins in time, but commenced from all eternity; and is not gotten at all, not by good works, nor repentance, nor faith; for these, if right and genuine, are the fruits and effects of an interest in Christ, but is what is freely given. The apostle’s meaning is, either that he might gain or acquire a larger knowledge of Christ; and he cared not what pains he took, what expenses he was at, nor what loss he sustained for what he esteemed the most excellent, and for which he had already suffered the loss of all things; and if he had had more to lose, he could willingly part with it for more of this knowledge; compare Php 3:10; or his sense is, that he might gain by Christ, or that Christ might be gain to him, as he found him to be, and as he is to every believer; who by parting with all for Christ, gains much by him, as a justifying righteousness, acceptance with God, peace, pardon, life, grace, and glory.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Yea, verily, and ( ). Five particles before Paul proceeds (yea, indeed, therefore, at least, even), showing the force and passion of his conviction. He repeats his affirmation with the present middle indicative (), “I still count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge ( , the surpassingness, neuter articular participle of , Php 2:3) of Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Dung (). Late word of uncertain etymology, either connected with (dung) or from , to fling to the dogs and so refuse of any kind. It occurs in the papyri. Here only in the N.T.

That I may gain Christ ( ). First aorist active subjunctive of , Ionic form for with in purpose clause. Paul was never satisfied with his knowledge of Christ and always craved more fellowship with him.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Yea doubtless [ ] . Alla but, ver. 7, puts that verse in direct contrast with the preceding verse. Alla yea or verily, in this verse affirms more than the preceding statement, while oun therefore (not rendered), collects and concludes from what has been previously said : Yea verily therefore.

All things. An advance on those (things) of ver. 7.

For the excellency, etc. [] . On account of : because the knowledge of Christ is so much greater than all things else.

I have suffered the loss [] . Rev., better, I suffered; when I embraced Christianity. Lit., was mulcted. See on Mt 16:26, and cast away, Luk 9:25.

All things [ ] . Collectively. All things mentioned in vers. 5 – 7. Dung [] . Rev., refuse. Either excrement or what is thrown away from the table; leavings. The derivation is uncertain. According to some it is a contraction from ejv kunav ballw to throw to the dogs. See on filth, 1Co 4:13. Notice the repetition of gain, count, loss, all things, Christ.

Win [] . Rev., better, gain, corresponding with gain, ver. 7.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss” (alla menoun ge kai hegoumai panta zenian) “But rather or instead, I also deem all things (as a loss)” (einai) “to be” of earthly gain, honor, position, and fame, as empty, vain, or worthless in comparison with possessing and being possessed by Jesus Christ 1Co 9:19-27.

2) “For the excellency of the knowledge of Chris Jesus my Lord” (dia to huperechon tes gnoseos Christou lesou tou kuriou moi) “On account of (because of) the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,” the supreme thing which consists in the knowledge of Christ, the wisdom and righteousness of God, 1Co 1:30; Pro 1:7.

3) “For whom I have suffered the loss of all things” (di on ta panta ezemiothen) “on account of whom I suffered or experienced loss of all things, (pertaining to the flesh),” when he received Jesus Christ as his Savior and Master, Mar 8:34-37; Mar 10:28-30; Rom 8:1.

4) “And do count them but dung” (kai hegounai skubala) “and deem (them) refuse,” as the remains, left over of a banquet, to be cast away as garbage refuse, Jas 4:4.

5) “That I may win Christ” (hina Christon kerdeso) “in order that I might gain Christ” the continual fellowship of Jesus Christ or experience continuing fellowship with him, Joh 15:4.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

8. Nay more, I reckon. He means, that he continues to be of the same mind, because it often happens, that, transported with delight in new things, we forget everything else, and afterwards we regret it. Hence Paul, having said that he renounced all hinderances, that he might gain Christ, now adds, that he continues to be of this mind.

For the sake of the excellency of the knowledge He extols the gospel in opposition to all such notions as tend to beguile us. For there are many things that have an appearance of excellence, but the knowledge of Christ surpasses to such a degree everything else by its sublimity (183), that, as compared with it, there is nothing that is not contemptible. Let us, therefore, learn from this, what value we ought to set upon the knowledge of Christ alone. As to his calling him his Lord, he does this to express the intensity of his feeling.

For whom I have suffered the loss of all things He expresses more than he had done previously; at least he expresses himself with greater distinctness. It is a similitude taken from seamen, who, when urged on by danger of shipwreck, throw everything overboard, that, the ship being lightened, they may reach the harbour in safety. Paul, then, was prepared to lose everything that he had, rather than be deprived of Christ.

But it is asked, whether it is necessary for us to renounce riches, and honors, and nobility of descent, and even external righteousness, that we may become partakers of Christ, (Heb 3:14,) for all these things are gifts of God, which, in themselves, are not to be despised? I answer, that the Apostle does not speak here so much of the things themselves, as of the quality of them. It is, indeed, true, that the kingdom of heaven is like a precious pearl, for the purchase of which no one should hesitate to sell everything that he has (Mat 13:46.) There is, however, a difference between the substance of things and the quality. Paul did not reckon it necessary to disown connection with his own tribe and with the race of Abraham, and make himself an alien, that he might become a Christian, but to renounce dependence upon his descent. It was not befitting, that from being chaste he should become unchaste; that from being sober, he should become intemperate; and that from being respectable and honorable, he should become dissolute; but that he should divest himself of a false estimate of his own righteousness, and treat it with contempt. We, too, when treating of the righteousness of faith, do not contend against the substance of works, but against that quality with which the sophists invest them, inasmuch as they contend that men are justified by them. Paul, therefore, divested himself — not of works, but of that mistaken confidence in works, with which he had been puffed up.

As to riches and honors, when we have divested ourselves of attachment to them, we will be prepared, also, to renounce the things themselves, whenever the Lord will require this from us, and so it ought to be. It is not expressly necessary that you be a poor man, in order that you may be Christian; but if it please the Lord that it should be so, you ought to be prepared to endure poverty. In fine, it is not lawful for Christians to have anything apart from Christ. I consider as apart from Christ everything that is a hinderance in the way of Christ alone being our ground of glorying, and having an entire sway over us.

And I count them but refuse. Here he not merely by words, but also by realities, amplifies greatly what he had before stated. For those who cast their merchandise and other things into the sea, that they may escape in safety, do not, therefore, despise riches, but act as persons prepared rather to live in misery and want (184) , than to be drowned along with their riches. They part with them, indeed, but it is with regret and with a sigh; and when they have escaped, they bewail the loss of them. Paul, however, declares, on the other hand, that he had not merely abandoned everything that he formerly reckoned precious, but that they were like dung, offensive to him, or were disesteemed like things that are thrown awayin contempt. Chrysostom renders the word— straws. Grammarians, however, are of opinion, that σκύβαλον is employed as though it were κυσίβαλον — what is thrown to dogs. (185) And certainly there is good reason why everything that is opposed to Christ should be offensive to us, inasmuch as it is an abomination in, the sight of God. (Luk 16:15.) There is good reason why it should be offensive to us also, on the ground of its being an unfounded imagination.

That I may gain Christ. By this expression he intimates that we cannot gain Christ otherwise than by losing everything that we have. For he would have us rich by his grace alone: he would have him alone be our entire blessedness. Now, in what way we must suffer the loss of all things, has been already stated — in such a manner that nothing will turn us aside from confidence in Christ alone. But if Paul, with such innocence and integrity of life, did not hesitate to reckon his own righteousness to be loss and dung, what mean those Pharisees of the present day, who, while covered over with every kind of wickedness, do nevertheless feel no shame in extolling their own merits in opposition to Christ?

(183) “ Par son excellence et hautesso;” — “By its excellence and loftiness.”

(184) Pierce adduces the two following instances of the same form of expression as made use of among the Romans—Plautus says, (Trucul. Act 2:0, sc 7, ver. 5,) when speaking of one that was chargeable with prodigality — “ Qui bona sua pro stercore habet, foras jubet ferri ,” (“ who counts his goods but dung, and orders them to be carried out of the house.”) Thus, also, Apuleius, (Florid, c. 14,) speaks of Crates, when he turned Cynic: “ Rem familiarem a.bjicit velut onus sterootis, magis labori quant usui; ” — (“ He casts away his goods as a heap of dung, that was more troublesome than useful.”) — Ed.

(185) Such is the etymology given by Suidas, τὸ τοῖς κυσὶ βαλλόμενον — “what is thrown to dogs.” — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

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.

Translation and Paraphrase

8. Indeed I verily (still) count all things (to be) loss for the overwhelming gain of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them as only (items of) refuse (dung, or filth), so that I may gain (or win) Christ.

Notes

1.

Pauls past decision (stated in Php. 3:7) to count all things loss for Christ was still his present attitude, as stated in Php. 3:8.

2.

How shall we describe the excellent knowledge of Christ which so entranced Paul? It is extensive, useful, cheering, satisfying, profound, authoritative, uplifting, purifying, helpful, transforming! (The expression the knowledge of Christ includes both the knowledge about Christ and the knowledge we gain through fellowship with Him.)

3.

What things did Paul gain in Christ?

(1) He gained the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. (Php. 3:8; Php. 3:10 a). This is life eternal that they should know thee,

the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Christ Jesus. (Joh. 17:3)

(2) The justification (or righteousness) that comes through faith. Compare Rom. 1:17; Rom. 3:21-22.

(3) A knowledge (experimental knowledge) of the power of Christs resurrection (Php. 3:10).

(4) Partnership in Christs sufferings (Php. 3:10).

(5) Identification with Christ in his death (Php. 3:10).

(6) Assurance of the resurrection unto eternal life (Php. 3:11).

4.

Paul surely suffered the loss of all things. He lost his job, his reputation, his safety, his former friends, and finally his life. However, he also gained many things that were worth far more to him than all he lost.

5.

Refuse (Gr. skubala, pl. of skubalon) means dung, filth, refuse. (Lidell & Scotts Lexicon).

6.

Pauls supreme wish now was to gain (or win) Christ as his own, and to be found in Christ. We should endeavor to make Pauls feelings our feelings. To gain Christ and be found in him involves much more than merely to receive Christ as savior. It seems to have meant to Paul that he wanted to be absorbed completely into the nature, work, fellowship, and presence of Christ. May God help us to desire to gain Christ to the degree that Paul desired him.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(8) For the excellency of the knowledge.The word excellency is here strictly used to indicate (as in 2Co. 3:9-11) that the knowledge of Christ so surpasses all other knowledge, and, indeed, all other blessings whatever, as to make them less nothing. As Chrysostom says here, When the sun hath appeared, it is loss to sit by a candle. The light of the candle in the sunlight actually casts a shadow. How that knowledge is gained we learn in Eph. 3:17-18, That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith: that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may . . . know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.

Dung.The word appears to mean refuse of any kind. The sense adopted in our version is common. Dr. Lightfoot, however, quotes instances of its use for the fragments from a feast, and remarks on the old derivation of the word from that which is thrown to dogs, which, however etymologically questionable, shows the idea attached to the word. This use would suit well enough with the ideas suggested by the retort of the name dogs on the Judaisers.

I suffered the loss of all things.There seems to be here a play on words. These things were (he has said) loss; he suffered the loss of them: and the loss of a loss is a gain.

That I may win (properly, gain) Christ, and be found in him.The line of thought in these two clauses is like that of Gal. 4:9, Now that ye have known God, or rather are known of God. The first idea suggested by the context is that of gaining Christ, finding Him and laying hold of Him by faith; but this, if taken alone, is unsatisfactory, as resting too much on the action of man. Hence St. Paul adds, and be found (of God) in Him, drawn into union with Him by the grace of God, so that we may dwell in Him, and He in us, and be found abiding in Him in each day of Gods visitation.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

8. I count all things At his conversion the apostle esteemed them all loss, and now, anticipating a question as to his present judgment, he affirms that he continues to so esteem them.

The excellency The supereminence of the knowledge of Christ above blood, birth, legal zeal, and observance.

Loss of all things In those terrible three days of darkness at Damascus he absolutely forsook all in surrendering to Christ, and on going forth he found all actually gone; his earthly prospects were blasted, his high fame withered, his name covered with scorn, and his life in peril from his countrymen. And now, after years of a life of toil, suffering, and trial, he esteems them only as dung mere worthless refuse as respects their power for the salvation of the soul.

That I may win Christ Better, gain Christ, thus preserving the contrast. The for Christ, and for whom, are now explained. To receive and possess him as a Saviour, and to be joined to him in a vital union, is a gain in comparison with which all else is truly vanity.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Yes truly, 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,’

Yes, truly, he had counted, and now did count, all his past achievements and struggles as loss, all that he had held dear as dross, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his LORD. And for His sake he had experienced the loss of all things, counting them as rubbish fit only for the garbage bin, in order that he might gain Christ, because he had recognised that in Christ alone all that was good could be found. Once he had Christ he needed nothing more.

‘The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my LORD.’ The ‘knowledge’ spoken of here is not academic knowledge (oida) but personal knowledge by experience (gnosis). He had not just learned about Christ, he had come to know Him personally in his own experience and to build on that knowledge by further experience (compare Jer 31:34; Hos 6:6) And it was something so wonderful that he could only speak of ‘excellency’. God had said, ‘let light shine out of darkness’ and He had seen the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2Co 4:6). And it was the knowledge of Him as perfect sacrifice, personal Saviour and sovereign Lord. It was true saving knowledge.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Php 3:8. I count all things but loss I have thrown away all things:“Have willingly parted with all my advantages and expectations from the law; that I might gain or secure Christ.” It is not by any means improbable, that a sentence of excommunication might have been pronounced against St. Paul, or at least that his goods might have been confiscated; as we know other believing Hebrews, though probably no one of them so obnoxious to their brethren as himself, were actually treated. (See Heb 10:33-34.) And if this were the case, it gives great force to the words, For whom I have suffered, &c.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Phi 3:8 . is the climactic but, still, much more , giving a corrective reference of the sense, signifying that with the previous there has not yet been enough said. Comp. on 2Co 7:11 . In the it is implied, that “ rem praesentem confirmet, autem conclusionem ex rebus ita comparatis conficiat,” Klotz, ad Devar . p. 663. Hence : at quidem igitur . The before (after . ) serves also to help the climactic sense, outbidding what has been said previously: etiam , i.e. adeo . It is consequently to be explained: but, accordingly, I am even of opinion that everything (not merely what was meant by in Phi 3:7 ) is a disadvantage . It is clear, withal, from the following . . . that is meant indeed without restriction , of all things, goods, honours, etc. (comp. also Hofmann), but in so far as they are not made subordinate to the knowledge of Christ . The explanation of others, according to which is intended to oppose the present by way of correction to the perfect (Calvin and others, including Winer, p. 412 [E. T. 552], and the explanation hitherto given by me), is incorrect, because , and not the aorist , was employed previously, and the perfect already involves the continuance of the opinion in the present, so that no contrast of the tenses would logically be elicited. The climactic contrast lies rather in the fact that the second is a much more comprehensive one than the first, in fact, one without exception ( ).

. . .] on account of the surpassingness of the knowledge of Christ; that is, because this knowledge, to which I have attained, is a possession which excels in value everything else; the eminent quality of a possession attained is the ground ( ) for estimating other possessions according to their relation to that one, and consequently, if they stand to the latter in a relation hindersome to us, for looking upon them no longer as something advantageous, but as hurtful. As to the neuter adjective used as a substantive with the genitive, in order to the more prominent setting forth of the attribute, see Bernhardy, p. 155 f.; Winer, p. 220 [E. T. 294].

; this is the fundamental sum of the whole contents of Christian knowledge. This saving knowledge is the necessary intelligence of faith (comp. on Joh 8:32 ), and grows with the experience of faith (Phi 3:10 ; Eph 3:16 ff.).

] for the sake of whom, i.e . for the sake of possessing Him; comp. afterwards .

] the whole , not general like previously (Hofmann), but: which I possessed , Phi 3:5-7 . This more precise definition by the article results from , in connection with which the aorist is to be noted, by which Paul denotes that great historical turning-point in his life, the event of his conversion; through that event he has lost all his (pre-Christian) valued possessions, [158] and thenceforth he has them no more . Luther erroneously interprets: “ considered as harm; ” and the emotion and force of the expression are only weakened by the frequently given reflexive sense (see Beza, Calvin, Heinrichs, Flatt, Hoelemann, van Hengel, and many): I have made myself lose , a meaning, besides, which cannot be shown to belong to the passive form of the aorist of this verb (not even in Luk 9:25 ). The future passive form (see Khner, ad Xen. Mem . iii. 9. 12, Thuc . iii. 40. 2) is invariably damno afficiar .

. . .] not to be taken as independent (de Wette, Baumgarten-Crusius, Weiss), but, in keeping with the climactic flow of the discourse, as still in continuous connection with . . . ; hence . . . is not, with van Hengel, to be put in a parenthesis. Paul had become loser of all these things for Christ’s sake, and he holds them as not worthy of possession, but as rubbish! , [159] refuse (such as sweepings, dung, husks, and the like); Sir 27:4 ; Plut. Mor . p. 352 D; and see Wetstein ad loc.; frequently in the Anthol ., see Jacobs, Ach. Tat . p. 522, ad Anthol . VII. p. 173, IX. p. 208. Comp. the similar figurative expressions and , 1Co 4:13 .

. . ] The design in the . : in order to gain Christ , not the aim of (Hofmann), there being no reason for such a retrospective reference. The gaining of Christ, i.e . the appropriation of Him by means of the fellowship brought about through faith, is that, which for him is to take the place of those former which he has lost , and so he looked to this gain in his ; it is present to his view as the one and highest gain at which he has to aim. It is true that Paul has Christ already long ago (Gal 2:20 ; Eph 3:17 ; 2Co 13:3 ); nevertheless, this is from its nature a development, the completion of which still lies before him. Comp. Phi 3:12 ff.

[158] Observe here, also, the shrewdly contrived correspondence of in ver. 7 f., and in ver. 8, in which the former expresses the idea of damnum, detrimentum, and the latter: I have become loser of. It might be reproduced in Latin: “etiam censeo omnia detrimentum ( i.e. detrimentosa) esse propter quem omnium detrimentum ( i.e. jacturam) passus sum censeoque ea esse quisquilias.”

[159] Not to be derived from , quod canibus projicitur, but from ( ). See Lobeck, Pathol. p. 92.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2153
CHRIST, GAIN TO THE BELIEVER

Php 3:8-9. For whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him; not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through, the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

RESPECTING doctrines, as mere subjects of controversy, we need not be anxious; it is as influential principles that we are called to examine and maintain them: and, in this view, we cannot too earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. That which is, above all other subjects, important to the soul, demands our attention at this time: and the Apostles zeal, in relation to it, shews with what holy jealousy we should conduct our investigation of it, and with what determination of heart we should hold fast that which shall approve itself as the truth of God. The two points to be noticed are,

I.

The way of salvation, as stated by the Apostle

He speaks of being found in Christ, clothed in a righteousness not his own. Let us consider what he means.
The Lord Jesus Christ has wrought out a righteousness for sinful man
[He has come from heaven for that purpose: he has assumed our nature, that he might suffer and obey for us: for us he has suffered the full penalty due to our sins; and obeyed in all respects that law which we have violated. All this he has done as our Substitute and Surety; so that if the law require its penalties to be enforced, we can reply, that we have already sustained them in the person of our Lord: and if it require perfect obedience to its commands, we can reply, that we have already obeyed it in the person of our Lord: so that it has no ground whereon to condemn us: on the contrary, supposing us to be found in Christ, and to be one with Christ, which every true believer is, we may look up to God with confidence; having a righteousness of his own appointment; a righteousness commensurate with all the demands of law and justice; a righteousness wherein we may stand before him without spot or blemish.]
This righteousness is to be apprehended by faith
[In no other manner can it be apprehended. It exists not in us, but in the Lord Jesus Christ; whose it is, and by whom it is imputed to us; and who is therefore called, The Lord our Righteousness [Note: Jer 23:6.]. If it be said, that, though it is Christs righteousness, and not ours, we yet may earn by our good works an interest in it; I answer, that we may as well earn salvation itself, as earn an interest in that righteousness whereby we are saved. The effect will be the same in either case: salvation will be of works, and not of grace; and every person who shall be saved, will have a ground of glorying in himself, as having purchased that whereby he is saved. But the Gospel salvation utterly excludes glorying [Note: Rom 3:27.]: and it is by faith, on purpose that it may be by grace [Note: Rom 4:16.]. In truth, any attempt to purchase it would utterly make it void; and, however glorious it be in itself, it would profit us nothing [Note: Gal 5:2-4.]. The Apostle, in our text, carefully excludes all his own righteousness from bearing any part in his salvation, and declares his reliance to be only and exclusively on that righteousness which is of God through faith in Christ. We say, then, respecting this righteousness, that it is the righteousness of God: it is the righteousness of God without the law: it is the righteousness to which both the law and the prophets bear witness: it is the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ: and it is unto all, and upon all, them that believe [Note: Rom 3:21-22.].]

All who are united to Christ by faith, shall be saved by it
[By faith we are united unto Christ; and become one in law with him, even as a wife becomes one with her husband: and exactly as he was made sin for us who knew no sin; so we, who had no righteousness of our own, are by faith made the righteousness of God in him [Note: 2Co 5:21.]. There is no exception of persons: all, whether Jews or Gentiles, and whether their sins have been of greater or less enormity, shall be equally accepted, if only they believe in him: for his blood cleanseth from all sin [Note: 1Jn 1:7.]; and all who believe, shall be justified from all things [Note: Act 13:39.].]

Such being the way of salvation, as stated by the Apostle, let us notice,

II.

His feelings in relation to it

To obtain an interest in the righteousness of Christ was his supreme desire
[If any man who ever lived might have had a righteousness of his own, the Apostle Paul might. His conduct previous to his conversion, though mistaken, was yet as exemplary, and as strictly conformable to the dictates of his conscience, as any mans could be [Note: ver. 46.]. And, subsequent to his conversion, his whole soul was so entirely given up to his God and Saviour Jesus Christ, that he was not in any respect a whit behind the very chiefest Apostles. Yet, so conscious was he of the defects which accompanied his best services, that he disclaimed utterly all dependence on his own works, and desired to be found in Christ; not having his own righteousness, which was of the law, but the righteousness which was of God through faith in Christ. And why did he desire this, but because he knew that no other righteousness than that of Christ could ever justify him before God? He was perfectly convinced of this; so convinced, that when the Apostle Peter acted in a way that was likely to bring this truth into doubt, he reproved him openly, before the whole Church [Note: Gal 2:11-16.]. Nay more; so strenuous was he in vindicating this truth, that he denounced a curse even against an angel from heaven, if one should be found ignorant or impious enough to maintain any doctrine that was opposed to it [Note: Gal 1:8-9.]. He knew that the salvation of every human being was bound up in it; and therefore he would give place, no, not for an hour, to any created intelligence in relation to it [Note: Gal 2:5.].]

In comparison of this, he regarded all other things with the utmost contempt
[All other things he counted but dung, that he might win Christ. A stronger expression he could not have used. He not only willingly sacrificed, but held in perfect abhorrence, every thing that should stand in competition with an interest in the Redeemers righteousness. And he spake not this as a sanguine man, who knew not what difference might take place in his mind, when he should be put to the trial. No; he had been brought to the test; and had actually suffered the loss of all things, and yet counted them but dung. He had actually experienced what he was now affirming; and he gave this testimony with an assurance that would not admit of a moments doubt. He was like a man, who, having found the pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it; and never regretted for an instant the sacrifice he had made. The terms which he here uses in opposition to each other, loss and gain, are such as may lead us to a yet more appropriate illustration [Note: , .]; that of a ship-wrecked mariner, who as Paul himself advised, casts out the tackling, and the very food from the ship, in order to preserve the lives of those who are on board [Note: Act 27:19; Act 27:38.]. He takes no account of that which he loses: he is intent only on his gain: and, if he may but secure safety to the crew, he is content. Thus the Apostle, having gained Christ, considered as no better than dung all that he had parted with to secure so rich a portion.]

Address
1.

The worldly Christian

[What a contrast is there between the Apostle Paul and you! He counted the whole world but dung for Christ; and you count (what shall I say?) Christ himself as of no value, in comparison of the world. The things of this world you will have, whatever you may be necessitated to pay for them. Pardon of sin, peace of conscience, yea, and all prospects of eternal glory, you will sacrifice for the things of time and sense. Your own soul, and the Lord Jesus Christ, are held cheap, in comparison of some fleeting vanity. The language of your heart is, Let me gain pleasure, riches, honour; and then it signifies nothing what I may lose Judge ye, my brethren, whether these desires of yours can be right. Verily, either Paul must have been a wild, deluded enthusiast, or you are unworthy to name the name of Christ. Reflect, I beseech you, ere it be too late: and choose, not those things which perish with the using, but that good part which shall never be taken away from you.]

2.

The self-righteous Christian

[And what greater resemblance have you to this Holy Apostle? He utterly discarded all hope in his own righteousness, that he might be found in Christ; but you are holding fast your own righteousness, and accounting the idea of being saved by anothers righteousness as a dangerous delusion. This pride of yours is harder to subdue than any corporeal lust. It was this which caused the Pharisees to reject the Saviour They would not submit to the righteousness of God. Hence they perished, whilst millions of idolatrous and ungodly Gentiles embraced the Gospel. I pray you, think what you are doing; and before you determine to persist in your self-righteous views, see whether your righteousness be better than that of Paul. He had no slight ground of glorying, as a Jew: but what had he as a Christian? There he was surpassed by none: none ever did more for their Lord than he; none ever suffered more: yet could he find nothing in himself wherein to trust, and therefore he sought to be found in Christ alone. Thus also must you do: nor, if you refuse to do it, can you ever behold the face of God in peace.]

3.

The lukewarm Christian

[Many, alas! embrace the principles of the Gospel as principles, but never feel that interest in them which the Apostle did. They have suffered no loss for Christ, because they have never manifested such love to him as condemns an ignorant and unbelieving world. Had Noah never built an ark, he would never have been made such an object of derision as he was to the antediluvian world; and, if Lot had never vexed his righteous soul with the ungodly deeds of those who lived in Sodom, he would never have incurred, as he did, their contemptuous displeasure. You too, if you followed the Lord fully, would find, that the offence of the cross is not ceased: but that now, as formerly, they who are born after the flesh will persecute those who are born after the Spirit. In a word, if you valued and served the Lord Jesus Christ as the Apostle Paul did, you would surely be called to make some sacrifices for him: for all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Deceive not yourselves, my dear brethren: it is not a divided heart that Jesus will accept: you must feel the constraining influence of his love, and be animated by it to live to Him who died for you, and rose again. Then only will you be approved of him, when you give yourselves wholly to him in body, soul, and spirit. The lukewarm follower he will cast off with abhorrence [Note: Rev 3:16.]. And let me ask, Is this unreasonable? Did he give up the glory of heaven for you; and will you account much of any sacrifice you may be called to make for him? Did he endure the curse of the law for you; and will you grudge to suffer any thing for him? Be in earnest, then: first, to form a proper estimate of Christ; and, next, to give up every thing that may stand in competition with him. So shall his righteousness be yours, and his glory be given you for an everlasting possession.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

Ver. 8. And do count them but dung ] Dog’s dung (as some interpret the word , quasi ), or dog’s meat, coarse and contemptible. Paul’s sublime spirit counts all dung, yet is content, for Christ, to be counted the offscouring of all things.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

8 .] But moreover (not only have I once for all passed this judgment, but I continue to count , &c. The contrast is of the present to above) I also continue to esteem them all (not, all things , which would require or (see below) before , emphatic) to be loss on account of the supereminence (above them all: , . Chrys. On the neuter adjective (or participle) construction, see ref. and 2Co 4:17 ) of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord (‘quod Dominum suum vocat, id ad exprimendam affectus vehementiam facit.’ Calv.), on whose account (explained by below) I suffered the loss of ALL THINGS (now, emphatic and universal. Or, it may be, “them all,” as Ellic.: but this almost involves a tautology; and, besides, stands too far from for the to be reflexive), and esteem them to be refuse, that I may (by so disesteeming them: gives the aim of what went before) gain Christ (not, as the rationalizing Grot., ‘Christi favorem:’ no indeed, it is Christ Himself, His perfect image, His glorious perfection, which he wishes to win. He has Him now, but not in full: this can only be when his course is finished, and to this time the next words allude) and be found (now, and especially at His coming, ‘evadam:’ not as Calv., ‘Paulum renuntiasse omnibus ut recuperaret (urgrammatical) in Christo.’ Cf. ref. 2 Cor.) in Him (living and being, and included, in Him as my element), not having (specification of . , but not to be joined, as Lachm., al., with , which would make this latter superfluous) my own righteousness (see on Php 3:6 ) which is of (arising from) the law, but that which is through (as its medium) the faith of (in) Christ (a construction of this sentence has been suggested to me, which is perhaps possible, and at all events deserves mention.

It consists in making predicative; “not having as my righteousness that righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ”), the righteousness which is of (answering to , as its source, see Eph 2:8 ) God on my faith (built on, grounded on, granted on condition of, my faith. It is more natural to take with , which it immediately follows, than with Meyer to understand another to attach it to. The omission of the article is no objection, but is very frequent, where the whole expression is joined as one idea. Chrys., al., join with , as if it were . . , which of course is unallowable: Calv., Grot., Bengel, make the infinitive dependent on (“describit vim et naturam fidei, quod scilicet sit Christi cognitio.” Calv.), which is also inadmissible, for , as Mey. observes, is never joined with a genitive article and infinitive: and when with a genitive, not the nature but the object of faith is described by it),

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Phi 3:8 . . Probably ought to be read (see crit. note supr. ), as its absence in some good authorities is accounted for by the ease with which it could be omitted (so D omits it in 2Co 11:16 ; [41] D [42] F [43] G in Rom 8:32 ; B in Rom 9:20 ). Almost = “Nay, that is a feeble way of expressing it; I can go further and say,” etc. suggests a contrast to be introduced, adds emphasis, while , gathering up what has already been said, corrects it by way of extending his assertion ( can scarcely be translated, representing, rather, a tone of the voice in taking back the limitations implied in ). “Nay rather, I actually count all things,” etc. We cannot well see, in view of the natural translation of , how the emphasis could be laid on any other word than . There is no need for contrasting and . He does not compare present and past. already expresses the fixed decision to which he has come. He has spoken of regarding his important Jewish prerogatives as “loss” for Christ’s sake. Now he widens the range to . This is the goal of Christian life. It is not to be divided up between Christ and earthliness. It is not to express itself in attention to certain details. “If we should say some things, we might be in danger of sliding into a one-sided puritanism” (Rainy, op. cit. , p. 191). . . . . . . . An instance of the extraordinary predilection of the later language for forming abstract substantives from adjectives and participles. Cf. 2Co 4:17 , . Probably = “the surpassing (or supreme) thing which consists in the knowledge,” etc. “We beheld His glory.” That glory outshines all this earth’s guiding-stars. . . This knowledge on which Paul is so fond of dwelling is, as Beysch. well expresses it, “the reflection of faith in our reason” ( op. cit. , ii., p. 177). It is directly connected with the surrender of the soul to Christ, but, as Paul teaches, that always means a close intimacy with Him, from which there springs an ever-growing knowledge of His spirit and will. Such knowledge lays a stable foundation for the Christian character, preventing it from evaporating into a mere unreasoning emotionalism. The conception, which is prominent in Paul’s writings, is based on the O.T. idea of the knowledge of God. That is always practical, religious. To know God is to revere Him, to be godly, for to know Him is to understand the revelation He has given of Himself. Cf. Isa 11:2 , Hab 2:14 . It is natural that in the later Epistles this aspect of the spiritual life should come into the foreground, seeing that already the Christian faith was being confronted by other explanations of man’s relation to God. To know Christ, the Apostle teaches, is to have the key which will unlock all the secrets of existence viewed from the standpoint of religion. . It was as , the exalted Lord, that Paul first knew Christ. And always it is from this standpoint he looks backwards and forwards. To recognise this is to understand his doctrinal teaching. . . = “the sum-total” as opposed to a part. (So also Holst.) Perhaps in contrasting . and , as in the similar contrast in Phi 3:7 , he may have in view our Lord’s words in Mat 16:26 . In N.T. only the passive of is used with various constructions. [It gives good sense to regard . . as a parenthesis, and thus to make . along with its parallel depend on . In this case the Apostle speaks from the standpoint of his conversion. See J. Weiss, Th. LZ [44] . , 1899, col. 264.] . The derivation is uncertain. It is most probably connected with , “dung”. It is often used in this sense itself, but also in the wider meaning of any “refuse,” such as the remains of a banquet. See a large collection of exx. from late writers in Wetstein and Lft [45] . , and cf. the apt parallel in Plautus, Truc. , ii., 7, 5, Amator qui bona sua pro stercore habet . Probably ought to be omitted, although there is great divergence in the authorities. (See crit. note supr. ) It might easily be inserted as parallel to the preceding . . . “That I may win Christ.” There is nothing mechanical or fixed about fellowship with Christ. It may be interrupted by decay of zeal, the intrusion of the earthly spirit, the toleration of known sins, the easy domination of self-will, and countless other causes. Hence, to maintain it, there must be the continuous estimating of earthly things at their true value. Accordingly he looks on “winning Christ” as something present and future, not as a past act. (As to the form, an aorist is found in Herod., Joseph., LXX, etc. See Khner-Blass, Gramm. , ii., p. 457.)

[41] Codex Claromontanus (sc. vi.), a Grco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

[42] Codex Augiensis (sc. ix.), a Grco-Latin MS., at Trinity College, Cambridge, edited by Scrivener in 1859. Its Greek text is almost identical with that of G, and it is therefore not cited save where it differs from that MS. Its Latin version, f, presents the Vulgate text with some modifications.

[43] Codex Boernerianus (sc. ix.), a Grco-Latin MS., at Dresden, edited by Matthi in 1791. Written by an Irish scribe, it once formed part of the same volume as Codex Sangallensis ( ) of the Gospels. The Latin text, g, is based on the O.L. translation.

[44] . LZ. Theologische Literaturzeitung .

[45] Lightfoot.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Philippians

THE GAIN OF CHRIST

Php 3:8-9 R.V..

It is not everybody who can say what is his aim in life. Many of us have never thought enough about it to have one beyond keeping alive. We lose life in seeking for the means of living. Many of us have such a multitude of aims, each in its turn drawing us, that no one of them is predominant and rules the crowd. There is no strong hand at the tiller, and so the ship washes about in the trough of the waves.

It is not everybody who dares to say what is his aim in life. We are ashamed to acknowledge even to ourselves what we are not at all ashamed to do. Paul knew his aim, and was not afraid to speak it. It was high and noble, and was passionately and persistently pursued. He tells us it here, and we can see his soul kindling as he speaks. We may note how there is here the same double reference as we found in the previous verses, gaining Christ corresponding to the previous loss for Christ, and the later words of our text being an expansion of the ‘excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.’ No man will ever succeed in any life’s purpose, unless like Paul he is enthusiastic about it. If his aim does not rouse his fervour when he speaks of it, he will never accomplish it. We may just remark that Paul does not suppose his aim to be wholly unattained, even although he does not count himself to ‘have apprehended.’ He knows that he has gained Christ, and is ‘found in Him,’ but he knows also that there stretch before him the possibilities of infinite increase.

I. His life’s aim was to have the closest possession of, and incorporation in, Christ.

His two expressions, ‘that I may gain Christ and be found in Him,’ are substantially identical in meaning, though they put the same truth from different sides, and with some variety of metaphor. We may deal with them separately.

The ‘gain’ is of course the opposite of the ‘loss.’ His balance-sheet has on one side ‘all things lost,’ on the other ‘Christ gained,’ and that is profitable trading. But we have to go deeper than such a metaphor, and to give full scope to the Scriptural truth, that Christ really imparts Himself to the believing soul. There is a real communication of His own life to us, and thereby we live, as He Himself declared, ‘He that hath the Son hath life.’ The true deep sense in which we possess Christ is not to be weakened down, as it, alas! so often is in our shallow Christianity, which is but the echo of a shallow experience, and a feeble hold of that possession of the Son to which Jesus called us, as the condition of our possession of life. Christ is thus Himself possessed by all our faculties, each after its kind; head and heart, passions and desires, hopes and longings, may each have Him abiding in them, guiding them with His strong and gentle hand, animating them into nobler life, restraining and controlling, gradually transforming and ultimately conforming them to His own likeness. Till that Divine Indweller enters in, the shrine is empty, and unclean things lurk in its hidden corners. To be a man full summed in all his powers, each of us must ‘gain Christ.’

The other expression in the text, ‘be found in Him,’ presents the same truth from the completing point of view. We gain Christ in us when we are ‘found in Him.’ We are to be incorporated as members are in the body, or imbedded as a stone in the foundation, or to go back to the sweetest words, which are the source of all these representations, included as ‘a branch in the vine.’ We are to be in Him for safety and shelter, as fugitives take refuge in a strong tower when an enemy swarms over the land.

‘ And lo! from sin and grief and shame, I hide me, Jesus, in Thy name.’

We are to be in Him that the life sap may freely flow through us. We are to be in Him that the Divine Love may fall on us, and that in Jesus we may receive our portion of all which is His heritage.

This mutual possession and indwelling is possible if Jesus be the Son of God, but the language is absurd in any other interpretation of His person. It is clearly in its very nature capable of indefinite increase, and as containing in itself the supply of all which we need for life and blessedness, is fitted to be what nothing else can pretend to be, without wrecking the lives that are unwise enough to pursue it–the sovereign aim of a human life. In following it, and only in following it, the highest wisdom says Amen to the aspiration of the lowliest faith. ‘This one thing I do.’

II. Paul’s life’s aim was righteousness to be received.

He goes on to present some of the consequences which follow on his gaining Christ and being ‘found in Him,’ and before all others he names as his aim the possession of ‘righteousness.’ We must remember that Paul believed that righteousness in the sense of ‘justification’ had been his from the moment when Ananias came to where he was sitting in darkness, and bid him be baptized and wash away his sins. The word here must be taken in its full sense of moral perfectness; even if we included only this in our thoughts of his life’s aim, how high above most men would he tower! But his statement carries him still higher above, and farther away from, the common ideas of moral perfection, and what he means by righteousness is widely separated from the world’s conception, not only in regard to its elements, but still more in regard to its source.

It is possible to lose oneself in a dreamy mysticism which has had much to say of ‘gaining Christ and being found in Him,’ and has had too little to say about ‘having righteousness,’ and so has turned out to be an ally of indifference and sometimes of unrighteousness. Buddhism and some forms of mystical Christianity have fallen into a pit of immorality from which Paul’s sane combination here would have saved them. There is no danger in the most mystical interpretation of the former statement of his aim, when it is as closely connected as it is here with the second form in which he states it. I have just said that Paul differed from men who were seeking for righteousness, not only because his conceptions of what constituted it were not the same as theirs, though he in this very letter endorses the Greek ideals of ‘virtue and praise,’ but also and more emphatically because he looked for it as a gift, and not as the result of his own efforts. To him the only righteousness which availed was one which was not ‘my own,’ but had its source in, and was imparted by, God. The world thought of righteousness as the general designation under which were summed up a man’s specific acts of conformity to law, the sum total reached by the addition of many specific instances of conformity to a standard of duty. Paul had learned to think of it as preceding and producing the specific acts. The world therefore said, and says, Do the deeds and win the character; Paul says, Receive the character and do the deeds. The result of the one conception of righteousness is in the average man spasmodic efforts after isolated achievements, with long periods between in which effort subsides into torpor. The result in Paul’s case was what we know: a continuous effort to keep his mind and heart open for the influx of the power which, entering into him, would make him able to do the specific acts which constitute righteousness. The one road is a weary path, hard to tread, and, as a matter of fact, not often trodden. To pile up a righteousness by the accumulation of individual righteous acts is an endeavour less hopeful than that of the coral polypes slowly building up their reef out of the depths of the Pacific, till it rises above the waves. He who assumes to be righteous on the strength of a succession of righteous acts, not only needs a profounder idea of what makes his acts righteous, but should also make a catalogue of his unrighteous ones and call himself wicked. The other course is the final deliverance of a man from dependence upon his own struggles, and substitutes for the dreary alternations of effort and torpor, and for the imperfect harvest of imperfectly righteous acts, the attitude of receiving, which supersedes painful strife and weary endeavour. To seek after a righteousness which is ‘my own,’ is to seek what we shall never find, and what, if found, would crumble beneath us. To seek the righteousness which is from God, is to seek what He is waiting to bestow, and what the blessed receivers blessedly know is more than they dreamed of.

But Paul looked for this great gift as a gift in Christ. It was when he was ‘found in Him’ that it became his, and he was found ‘blameless.’ That gift of an imparted life, which has a bias towards all goodness, and the natural operation of which is to incline all our faculties towards conformity with the will of God, is bestowed when we ‘win Christ.’ Possessing Him, we possess it. It is not only ‘imputed,’ as our fathers delighted to say, but it is ‘imparted.’ And because it is the gift of God in Christ, it was in Paul’s view received by faith. He expresses that conviction in a double form in our text. It is ‘through faith’ as the channel by which it passes into our happy hands. It is ‘by faith,’ or, more accurately, ‘upon faith,’ as the foundation on which it rests, or the condition on which it depends. Our trust in Christ does bring His life to us to sanctify us, and the plain English of all this blessed teaching is–if we wish to be better let us trust Christ and get Him into the depths of our lives, and righteousness will be ours. That transforming Presence laid up in ‘the hidden man of the heart,’ will be like some pungent scent in a wardrobe which keeps away moths, and gives out a fragrance that perfumes all that hangs near it.

But all which we have been saying is not to be understood as if there was no effort to be made, in order to receive, and to live manifesting, the ‘righteousness which is of God.’ There must be the constant abandonment of self, and the constant utilising of the grace given. The righteousness is bestowed whenever faith is exercised. The hand is never stretched out and the gift not lodged in it. But it is a life’s aim to possess the ‘righteousness which is of God by faith,’ because that gift is capable of indefinite increase, and will reward the most strenuous efforts of a believing soul as long as life continues.

III. Paul’s life’s aim stretches beyond this life.

Shall we be chargeable with crowding too much meaning into his words, if we fix on his remarkable expression, ‘be found in Him,’ as containing a clear reference to that great day of final judgment? We recall other instances of the use of the same expression in connections which unmistakably point to that time. Such as ‘being clothed we shall not be found naked,’ or ‘the proof of your faith . . . might be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ,’ or ‘found of Him in peace without spot, blameless.’ In the light of these and similar passages, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that this ‘being found’ does include a reference to the Apostle’s place after death, though it is not confined to that. He thinks of the searching eye of the Judge taking keen account, piercing through all disguises, and wistfully as well as penetratingly scrutinising characters, till it finds that for which it seeks. They who are ‘found in Him’ in that day, are there and thus for ever. There is no further fear of falling out of union with Him, or of being, by either gradual and unconscious stages, or by sudden and overmastering assaults, carried out of the sacred enclosure of the City of Refuge in which they dwell henceforth for ever. A dangerous presumptuousness has sometimes led to the over-confident assertion, ‘Once in Christ always in Christ.’ But Paul teaches us that that security of permanent dwelling in Him is to be for ever in this life the aim of our efforts, rather than an accomplished fact. So long as we are here, the possibility of falling away cannot be shut out, and there must always rise before us the question, Am I in Christ? Hence there is need for continual watchfulness, self-control, and self-distrust, and the life’s aim has to be perpetual, not only because it is capable of indefinite expansion, but because our weakness is capable of deserting it. It is only when at the last we are found by Him, in Him, that we are there for ever, with all dangers of departure from Him at an end. In that City of Refuge, and there only, ‘the gates shall not be shut at all,’ not solely because no enemies shall attempt to come in, but also because no citizens shall desire to go out.

We should ever have before us that hour, and our life’s aim should ever definitely include the final scrutiny in which many a hidden thing will come to light, many a long-lost thing be found, and each man’s ultimate place in relation to Jesus Christ will be freed from uncertainties, ambiguities, hypocrisies, and disguises, and made plain to all beholders. In that great day of ‘finding,’ some of us will have to ask with sinking hearts, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’ and others will break forth into the glad acclaim, ‘I have found Him,’ or rather ‘been found of Him.’

So we have before us the one reasonable aim for a man to have Christ, to be found in Him, to have His righteousness. It is reasonable, it is great enough to absorb all our energies, and to reward them. It will last a lifetime, and run on undisturbed beyond life. Following it, all other aims will fall into their places. Is this my aim?

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

excellency = excelling. Greek. huperecho. See Php 2:3.

knowledge. App-132.

Lord. App-98.

suffered, &c. Greek. zemioo. See 1Co 3:15.

be dung = to be dung. Greek. skubalon. Only here.

that = in order that. Greek. hina.

win = gain. kerdaino. Occurs sixteen times, translated gain except here, and 1Pe 3:1. First occurance: Mat 16:26.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

8.] But moreover (not only have I once for all passed this judgment, but I continue to count, &c. The contrast is of the present to above) I also continue to esteem them all (not, all things, which would require or (see below) before , emphatic) to be loss on account of the supereminence (above them all: , . Chrys. On the neuter adjective (or participle) construction, see ref. and 2Co 4:17) of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord (quod Dominum suum vocat, id ad exprimendam affectus vehementiam facit. Calv.), on whose account (explained by below) I suffered the loss of ALL THINGS (now, emphatic and universal. Or, it may be, them all, as Ellic.: but this almost involves a tautology; and, besides, stands too far from for the to be reflexive), and esteem them to be refuse, that I may (by so disesteeming them: gives the aim of what went before) gain Christ (not, as the rationalizing Grot., Christi favorem: no indeed, it is Christ Himself,-His perfect image, His glorious perfection, which he wishes to win. He has Him now, but not in full: this can only be when his course is finished, and to this time the next words allude) and be found (now, and especially at His coming,-evadam:-not as Calv., Paulum renuntiasse omnibus ut recuperaret (urgrammatical) in Christo. Cf. ref. 2 Cor.) in Him (living and being, and included, in Him as my element), not having (specification of . ,-but not to be joined, as Lachm., al., with , which would make this latter superfluous) my own righteousness (see on Php 3:6) which is of (arising from) the law, but that which is through (as its medium) the faith of (in) Christ (a construction of this sentence has been suggested to me, which is perhaps possible, and at all events deserves mention.

It consists in making predicative; not having as my righteousness that righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ), the righteousness which is of (answering to ,-as its source, see Eph 2:8) God on my faith (built on, grounded on, granted on condition of, my faith. It is more natural to take with , which it immediately follows, than with Meyer to understand another to attach it to. The omission of the article is no objection, but is very frequent, where the whole expression is joined as one idea. Chrys., al., join with , as if it were . . , which of course is unallowable: Calv., Grot., Bengel, make the infinitive dependent on (describit vim et naturam fidei, quod scilicet sit Christi cognitio. Calv.), which is also inadmissible, for , as Mey. observes, is never joined with a genitive article and infinitive: and when with a genitive, not the nature but the object of faith is described by it),

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Php 3:8. , yea) There is an amplification of the language, namely, in the employment of this particle, and then by the emphatic addition [Epitasis. Append.] of synonymous terms; also in the fuller appellation of Christ Himself.- , even I count) , even, intensifies the force of the present tense in , I count. Righteousness, not only at first, but always throughout the whole career of the saints, is of faith.-, all things) not only those which I have now mentioned, but all things.–, …, for-of the knowledge, etc.) Construed with I count[37], and refer to this, Php 3:10-11, , that I may know.- , the excellency of the knowledge) Excellency properly belongs to Christ; but when He is known, the knowledge of Him likewise obtains excellency.- , of my Lord) The appropriation of the [Saviour by the] believer.-) not only I counted them loss, but in reality I cast them away.-) There is an amplification here in regard to the believers self-denial as to all things: , loss, is incurred with equanimity; are hastily thrown away, as things not afterwards to be considered worthy either to be touched or looked at. The Hebrew word, , contains an Antanaclasis[38] in relation to the Pharisees;[39] see P. Zornii, T. 2. Opusc. sacr. p. 514. Gataker says: marks out any worthless thing, that is to be cast away, such as the excrements of animals, the dregs and grounds of liquors, the dross of metals, what falls from plants, the refuse of the crops, the bran of meal, the crumbs of the table, the wipings of the hands, which are destined for the dogs.[40] See this very fully in Adversar. misc. posth. cap. 43.-, that) The two things are incompatible, both to retain other things and to win (obtain) Christ.- , that I may win and he found) Each of the two is antithetical to , loss. He who loses all things, not even excepting himself, wins Christ, and is won in Christ. Christ is his, and he is Christs. More still, Paul speaks as if he had not yet won.

[37] On account of the excellency, etc., I count all things loss: not with , to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge.-ED.

[38] The same word, in the same context, used in a double sense. See Append.-ED.

[39] Of whom Paul, ver. 5, had said he was one, a Pharisee, Th. Pharash, in the sense separate: and yet one who counted all else but Christ , in the sense .-ED.

[40] According to the derivation assigned to , , as , from .-ED.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Php 3:8

Php 3:8

Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss-He carries the thought further, not only were the services of the Jewish law and the persecutions loss, but he counted blessings gained in the knowledge and service of Christ so immeasurably safer as to everything else, that all else was nothing compared with it.

for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord:-[This sets forth the idea of a business transaction, exchanging what was worthless and even ruinous for what was a treasure of surpassing worth. (Mat 13:45). Knowledge here signifies his whole experience in Christ. It reaches far beyond mere intellectual knowledge, includes faith, service, sacrifice, and is analogous to the phrase to be in Christ-the spiritual knowledge by which the individual becomes one with Christ, so that his whole life is lived in Christ and he has no consciousness of being apart from Christ. It is a knowledge that is constantly developing as the intimacy with the Master becomes closer until it reaches the culmination when it constitutes the whole secret of the Christian life.]

for whom I suffered the loss of all things,-The threefold emphasis upon his renunciation, twice in this verse and once in the preceding verse, is very similar to the self-abnegation of Christ. 2: 7, 8). Paul is now a man in Christ Jesus who dominates the world of manhood for him-Christ Jesus my Lord. [For Christs sake Paul did suffer the loss, yea, all things, the sum total of his old lifes values. His own family probably regarded him as a disgrace to Judaism. His Pharisaic fellow members considered him a deserter from the cause. The Jews in general regarded him as a renegade. He had paid the price for Christs sake. But it was worth the price. He had no regrets.]

and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ,-For Christ he had given up all things, and counted them as refuse to be turned from, that he might gain Christ. [He was not a madman in reckless values; it was the greatest bargain of his life. He lost the Jewish world to gain Christ the Lord of all.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

doubtless: Num 14:30, Psa 126:6, Luk 11:20, 1Co 9:10, 1Jo 2:19

I count: Act 20:24, Rom 8:18

the excellency: Phi 3:10, Isa 53:11, Jer 9:23, Jer 9:24, Mat 11:25-27, Mat 16:16, Mat 16:17, Luk 10:21, Luk 10:22, Joh 14:7, Joh 14:20, Joh 16:3, Joh 17:3, Joh 17:8, 1Co 2:2, 2Co 4:4, 2Co 4:6, Gal 1:16, Eph 1:17, Eph 1:18, Eph 3:8, Eph 3:9, Eph 3:18, Eph 3:19, Col 2:2, Col 2:3, 1Pe 2:7, 2Pe 1:3, 2Pe 3:18, 1Jo 5:20

my: Luk 1:43, Luk 20:42-44, Joh 20:13, Joh 20:28

for whom: Phi 3:7, Mat 19:27-29, 1Co 4:9-13, 2Co 11:23-27, 2Ti 4:6

but dung: 1Ki 14:10, 2Ki 9:37, Job 20:7, Mal 2:3

win: Mat 13:44-46, Heb 3:14, 1Jo 1:3

Reciprocal: Gen 47:19 – buy us Exo 37:9 – cherubims spread Num 6:9 – shave Num 18:30 – the best Num 24:11 – the Lord Jos 5:14 – my lord 2Ki 7:15 – had cast away 2Ch 30:22 – the good Job 2:4 – all that Job 9:31 – mine Psa 8:1 – our Psa 45:11 – Lord Psa 45:16 – Instead Psa 73:25 – Whom Psa 148:13 – for his name Pro 3:14 – General Pro 4:7 – Wisdom is Pro 8:11 – wisdom Pro 8:18 – and righteousness Pro 8:35 – whoso Pro 23:23 – Buy Ecc 3:6 – and a time to cast Ecc 7:12 – the excellency Son 1:16 – thou art Son 5:16 – most Son 8:1 – I would Isa 2:20 – cast Isa 45:17 – Israel Isa 51:7 – ye that Hos 2:20 – and Jon 1:5 – and cast Mat 18:8 – and cast Mat 19:29 – or brethren Mat 22:44 – my Lord Mar 1:18 – forsook Mar 9:47 – thine Mar 10:30 – an hundredfold Mar 13:15 – General Luk 2:11 – the Lord Luk 5:11 – they forsook Luk 9:29 – General Luk 14:26 – any Luk 14:33 – General Luk 17:10 – General Luk 17:31 – he which Luk 18:23 – he was very sorrowful Joh 10:14 – am Joh 13:13 – call Act 27:18 – the next Rom 7:17 – it is no more 1Co 12:31 – show 2Co 5:16 – know we no Gal 4:12 – be Gal 6:14 – God Eph 4:5 – One Lord Eph 4:13 – the knowledge Phi 3:13 – I count Phi 4:11 – I have 2Ti 1:12 – for I Heb 7:14 – Our Lord Jam 1:10 – in

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

DISOWNED

Christ Jesus my Lord, for Whom I have suffered the loss of all things.

Php 3:8

These words of St. Paul seem very definite when we begin to think about them. They appear to contain an allusion to some definite circumstance in his past life, of which we hear nothing, or next to nothing, elsewhere.

I. What loss had St. Paul suffered?How comes it that during the greater part of his apostolic career he is evidently a poor man? The conclusion is irresistible: St. Paul must have been disowned by his family. He had become one of those of whom our Lord speaks, who had left home, and brethren, and father, and mother, and lands for His Name.

II. Christianity does not make any appeal to the mass of mankind to sell all that they have and follow Christ.It is only in exceptional cases that this appeal is made, and sometimes those to whom the suggestion comes cannot rise to the height of this counsel of perfection. Like the young man with great possessions, they go away sorrowful. Yet, if one reads the obituary notices in the newspapers, it is almost startling, I think, to see how many men and women nowadays do give up their fortune, their lifetime, sometimes even their life itself, to the service of Christ and the good of their fellow-men. Little is known of their lives by the world at large; but they have heard their Masters call, and have left all and followed Him. These are the chosen few, spiritual natures, gifted with an exceptional enthusiasm.

III. To the mass of men the appeal which Christianity makes is something different.It bids us do our duty, follow our conscience, take our stand on our moral and religious principles without counting the cost. We must be ready with St. Paul to suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Christwe must be ready, I mean, to risk losing much that we value for the sake of what we hold sacred. The man of high principle differs from the unprincipled man in that he would do this unhesitatingly. The perfect Christian differs from the imperfect Christian in that he would do it willingly and gladly for the sake of the love that he bears to Christ. We are not, I dare say, called upon to give up our inheritance or to break entirely with those nearest and dearest to us, as was St. Paul; but, none the less, the claim which Christianity makes on our religious life is an exacting one.

Rev. Dr. H. G. Woods.

Illustration

Every one who has acquaintance with the practical side of missionary work amongst the Jews will quickly realise that the Jew who begins to inquire seriously about the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ to be the Messiah and Redeemer of Israel quickly becomes a marked man amongst his fellows. When once a Jew has been baptized, he has broken definitely with his past. He is so completely ostracised by kith and kin that he is regarded as dead to them, and unless Christian people come to his aid he cannot but drift lower and lower till all be lost.

ST.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

(Php 3:8.) – But indeed, therefore, I also count or continue to count them all to be loss. Winer, 53, 7 (a), says that may be rendered at sane quidem. Klotz, Devarius, 663, etc. The puts the two tenses, past and present, into contrast; while the qualifies , and gives it special significance, and does not, as Rilliet supposes, connect itself with , as if there were a climax-what things were gain, these I counted loss; yea, doubtless, I count even all things loss. This exegesis would require, as Meyer says, the verbal order to be . Nor can mean all things absolutely. It has not the article, indeed, but the meaning is limited by the context-all things of the class and character described-the things of which he says immediately that he had suffered the loss. The estimate was not a hasty conclusion from fallacious premises, nor the sudden leap of an enthusiasm which had for a moment urged him. It was his calm and deliberate judgment still. And again he adduces a reason-

-on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. The participle is used as a substantive. Bernhardy, p. 156; Matthiae, 570. There is no occasion to supply any noun. Thucydides, says Jelf, abounds in neuter participles thus used. 436, . Besides this way of expressing abstract notions, there are several other points of resemblance between the style of the Greek historian and that of the apostle. There is a comparison implied in the epithet. It transcends all the things to which the apostle has referred. Still, there is no occasion, with Am Ende and Rheinwald, to resolve the phrase into . The apostle does not refer to the knowledge simply, but to one feature of it, its superior excellence, in comparison with which all things are accounted loss. That knowledge has for its object Christ Jesus, whom the apostle names in a burst of veneration and attachment- my Lord. Let the elements of loss be calculated. The gains were:-circumcision performed without any deviation from legal time or method-membership in the house of Israel, and connection with one of its most honoured tribes-descent from a long line of pure-blooded ancestry-adherence to a sect, whose prominent distinction was the observance of the old statutes-earnest and uncompromising hostility to a community accused of undermining the authority of the Mosaic code, and a merit based on blameless obedience to the law. These, once gloried and confided in, were counted as a loss, for the sake of a superior gain in the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Chrysostom has a long and not very satisfactory argument to show, that the heretics who abused the law could not plead, for their vilification of it, the apostle’s language in this place. He does not say the law is loss, but I count it loss. The true reply is, that it is not to the law in itself, but to his misconception of its position and of his own relation to it, that the apostle refers. Jerome on Habakkuk, referring to the same abuse of the apostle’s words, says he does not refer to the law as such, but has in view doctrinoe Pharisoeorum et precepta hominum, et Judoeorum. Augustine, also, has more than once written in a similar strain.

The apostle was surely justified in making such a comparison. He was no loser by the loss he had willingly made, for the object of knowledge was the Divine Saviour. To understand His person and character, with His work and its relations, and so to understand them through a living interest in them, is surely knowledge of superior excellence. Is it not super-eminent knowledge to know Him as the Christ, not simply because He has been anointed with the oil of gladness, but because we too have an unction from the Holy One,-to know Him as Jesus, not simply because He wears our nature, but because we feel His human heart throbbing in unison with ours under trial and sorrow,-to know Him as Prophet, not simply because He is Light, but because we are light in Him,-to know Him as Priest, not simply because He has laid Himself on the altar, but because the blood of sprinkling is manifest upon our conscience,-to know Him as Lord, not simply because He wears a crown and wields a sceptre, but because we bow to His loving rule and gather the spoils of the victory which He has won and secured? The apostle made a just calculation; for neither ritualism, nor Israelitism, nor Pharisaism, nor zealotism, nor legalism could bring him those blessings with which the knowledge of Christ was connected; nay, until they were held as loss, this gain of gains could not be acquired. The apostle repeats-

-for whom I have suffered the loss of them all. It serves no purpose, with van Hengel and Baumgarten-Crusius, to make this clause a parenthesis, for it is closely connected with the succeeding one. On account of whom, that is to say-Christ Jesus, my Lord. The , as qualified by the article, refers to the things already specified -all these things. It is wrong in Chrysostom, then, to describe them as , and in a-Lapide to write thus-non tantum bona Judaismi, sed omnia quoe mundus hic amat et miratur. The one accusative is still retained with the passive, as in Mat 16:26. Winer, 32, 5. Van Hengel and others needlessly differ from Wiesinger, Meyer, and De Wette, in giving the passive form a middle signification.

-and do count them to be refuse. The infinitive is omitted by Lachmann, as not being found in B, D3, F, G, nor is the correspondent Latin term in the Vulgate and in many of the Latin Fathers. But it occurs in A, D1, E, I, K, in almost all the versions, and Greek Fathers. One can more easily account for its omission than for its insertion. The contemptuous term is usually derived from (Suidas, sub voce), much in the same way as Stamboul, the name of the Byzantine capital, is compounded of . It signifies refuse, sweepings, manure, , stercora. Sir 27:4. The Greek Fathers understand it to mean husks, chaff, , and they contrast it with . It expresses not only the utter insignificance which the apostle now attached to the grounds of his former trust, but the aversion with which he regarded them, especially when placed in comparison with Christ. For the end was-

-that I may gain Christ. The verb is used in correspondence with in Php 3:7, and in contrast with and . The clause with expresses the great purpose of the apostle, in order to attain which he had made the previous estimate and suffered the previous loss. The phrase is somewhat peculiar. One is apt to smile at the gambling figure of Heumann-obolum perdidi, amicum accepi. Nor is the meaning merely, to gain the favour of Christ, as Grotius, Am Ende, and Wilke suppose; nor yet is it simply to be a Christian, as Krause weakens it. Robinson virtually agrees with Grotius, and many others are somewhat vague in their explanations. To win Him is to have Him-the idea of gain being suggested by the previous mention of loss. Nor can we say that the verb is explained by the following clauses, or by any one of them in particular. They are elements indeed of this gain; but the term Christ seems to denote Him in every aspect, and to win Him is to enjoy Him in every aspect. It is to have Him as mine, and to feel that in comparison with such a possession all else may be regarded as truly loss. To the apostle Christ was so identified with the truth, that when he gained Him he gained the highest knowledge; so identified with life, that when he gained Him he was endowed with the noblest form of it; and so identified with spiritual influence, that when he gained Him his whole nature was filled with power and gladness. The name of Christ, so used, covers His entire work and relations, and, as Wiesinger says-Christ comes as gain in the place of the loss he has suffered. And the possession of Christ is real gain compared with Hebrew lineage, the seal of Abrahamic descent, or devotedness to the Mosaic ritual and law.

Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians

Php 3:8. The first half of this verse reneats the thoughts of the preceding one, and Paul extends it to include all things, not only those Jewish claims which he once trusted. He became aware of this great advantage through the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord, Suffered the loss of all things. This denotes a complete sacrifice by Paul of whatever would hinder him from wholehearted service to Christ, regardless of how near and precious they may have seemed. Yea, he did not count his own life valuable enough to sacrifice Christ for It (Act 20:24). Do count them but dung. The last word is used figuratively, meaning something that is worthless and objectionable. It is not enough for a disciple of Christ Just to “ease up” or lessen his interest in the things of the world, he must snurn them as he would a vessel of filth.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Php 3:8. Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss. Now he refers to the abiding state of his mind. He made the great sacrifice at first, and as it were cast overboard all which had seemed valuable in his Jewish life, and since that he is prepared to sacrifice himself and all besides for the service on which he has entered. And as he found no merit or value in his privileges and eminence as a Jew, so he lays no stress on what he may do or suffer as a Christian. It is not I, but the grace of God that was with me. All this extinction of the natural pride of man was not without many a struggle, we may be sure, and made up part of what he includes afterwards under a communion in the sufferings of Christ.

for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. The first preposition may be taken in the same sense as for Christ in the previous verse, that is, for the sake of the excellency or it may perhaps better be understood as by reason of. The apostle has learnt much of Jesus since the day when he first heard His voice, and the surpassing worth of what he knows makes all else poor in comparison therewith. This excellent Knowledge is life eternal. For to know God and Christ (and no man cometh unto the Father but by him) constitutes eternal life. How then can anything in this world be mentioned in comparison with it! But St. Paul does not rest satisfied without the personal application. He knows Jesus as his own Lord, and this it is which makes the knowledge most precious. At first he had only said, Who art thou, Lord? (Act 9:5), but the fuller knowledge of Jesus has taught him to say now, my Lord.

for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. The verb is cognate with the noun rendered loss above, and intimates that the surrender was self-made; the Greek would perhaps be more nearly represented by the whole instead of all things. It is for Christ the personal Saviour that all this has been done, not merely for the knowledge of Him. The Jesus whom St. Paul, last of all the apostolic band, had seen is the being worthy of all this, for He had been dead and is alive again, thus manifesting the power of His resurrection.

and do count them but dung. This rendering of the noun is a common one, but Dr. Lightfoot has shown that the sense of refuse, signifying those remnants of a meal which were thrown to the dogs, is probably what was meant here. If this be adopted, then the Bishops further remark is apposite, that whereas the Jews regarded all but themselves as the dogs, hardly worthy of the crumbs, now the strict Jew (St. Paul) looks upon all that he had so highly valued before in the light of refuse, and so makes those who cling to such observances to be the dogs, rather than the Gentiles whom they had so much contemned.

that I may gain Christ. This is the true gain, and the identical word as in the original should be preserved to show how the one thought pervades the apostles mind. He has cast off what he formerly deemed gain, but for all that he has another and richer gain. He has lost something, but has gained for more.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Php 3:8-11. Yea doubtless Not only when I was first converted, but I still account both these and all things else, how valuable soever, to be but loss. Having said, in the preceding verse, that he counted his privileges as a Jew, and his righteousness by the law, to be loss, or things to be thrown away, he here adds, that he viewed in the same light all the things which men value themselves upon, and on which they build their hope of salvation: such as their natural and acquired talents, their knowledge, their moral virtue, and even their good works; yea, and all the riches, honours, and pleasures of the world; all the things in which people seek their happiness. For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord In comparison of, and in order that I may attain, the experimental and practical knowledge of Christ, as my Lord, as my teaching Prophet, my atoning and mediating Priest, my delivering and ruling King, reigning in my heart by his grace, and governing my life by his laws. For the apostle evidently had a respect here to all the offices and characters of Christ, and intended what he says to be understood of sanctification and practical obedience, as much as of illumination and justification. And he accounted all the things he speaks of as worthless, not only because they were ineffectual to procure for him acceptance with God, but because in themselves they are of little value in comparison with the true knowledge of Christ, and of the way of salvation through him; blessings which the apostle so regarded, that he despised all other knowledge, and every human attainment, as things comparatively unworthy of his care, while pursuing his way to eternal life. For whom I have actually suffered the loss of all things Which the world esteems, admires, loves, and delights in. It seems probable, from this, that he had been excommunicated by the Jews in Jerusalem, and spoiled of his goods: a treatment which some others, who were not so obnoxious to the Jews as he was, met with after they became Christians, Heb 10:33-34. And I count them but dung So far am I from repenting, that I exposed myself to the loss of them. The discourse rises. Loss is sustained with patience; but dung is cast away with abhorrence. The Greek word, so rendered, signifies any vile refuse of things, the dross of metals, the dregs of liquors, the excrements of animals, the most worthless scraps of meat, the basest offals, fit only for dogs: in such a light did the apostle view every thing that would engage his dependance for justification, or stand in competition with Christ for his affection. That I may win Christ May have him for my Saviour and Lord; may have an interest in all the offices that he sustains, and in all he hath done and suffered for the salvation of men, and may be made partaker of the benefits which he hath procured for me. And be found in him

Vitally united to him by faith and love; not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law That merely outward righteousness prescribed by the law, and performed in my own strength; but that which is through the faith of Christ That justifying, sanctifying, and practical righteousness which is attained through believing in Christ, and in the truths and promises of his gospel. See on Rom 4:6-8; Eph 4:22-24; 1Jn 3:7. The righteousness which is, , of, or from God Which is the gift of his grace and mercy, and not procured by my merit; and is from his Spirit, not effected by my own strength, through the instrumentality of faith alone; a faith, however, productive of love, and of all holiness and righteousness. The phrase in the original here, , the righteousness of, or from God, is used, says Macknight, I think only in this passage. It is opposed to mine own righteousness, which is from the law, a phrase found in other passages, particularly Gal 3:21. Wherefore, since the righteousness from the law is that which is obtained according to the tenor of the law, the righteousness from God by faith, is that which comes from Gods accounting the believers faith to him for righteousness, and from his working that faith in his heart by the influences of his Spirit. That I may know him In his person and offices, in his humiliation and exaltation, his grace and glory, as my wisdom and righteousness, my sanctification and redemption; or, as my complete Saviour; and the power , the efficacy; of his resurrection Demonstrating the certain truth and infinite importance of every part of his doctrine, the acceptableness of the atonement made by him for sin, (see on Rom 4:25,) opening an intercourse between earth and heaven, and obtaining for me the Holy Spirit, to raise me from the death of sin unto all the life of righteousness, (Joh 16:7,) assuring me of a future and eternal judgment, (Act 17:31,) begetting me again to a lively hope of a heavenly inheritance, (1Pe 1:3,) and raising my affections from things on earth to things above, Col 3:1-2 : and the fellowship of his sufferings Sympathizing with him in his sufferings, and partaking of the benefits purchased for me thereby; as also being willing to take up my cross and suffer with him, as far as I am called to it, knowing that if I suffer with him, I shall also be glorified with him. See the margin. Being made conformable to his death Being dead to the world and sin, or being made willing to confirm the gospel by enduring the tortures of crucifixion as he did, should it be his will I should do so. If by any means Having attained an entire conformity to my great Master, and done and suffered the whole will of God; I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead Unto that consummate holiness and blessedness, which he will bestow upon all his people when the dead in Christ shall rise first, and be distinguished with honour and glory proportionable to the zeal and diligence which they have manifested in his service.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

ARGUMENT 9

LEGALISM

8. As to the law a Pharisee; As to the righteousness which is in the law being blameless. The Pharisees were the orthodox wing of the Jewish Church, the Sadducees the heterodox, and the poor Essenes living in the deserts and slums, the holiness people. Though Paul stood on the acme of orthodoxy, with an irreproachable Christian character, looked upon as an Israelite in whom there was no guile, a double graduate with a diploma from the Greek college of Tarsus, and another from the rabbinical university of Jerusalem, as a preacher in the popular Church without a peer, yet he was an alien from God and stranger to grace, traveling the broad road to hell. O the millions who are this day in the same awful dilemma, fully assured that they are bona-fide Christians serving God, while they are unconverted sinners, worshipping Satan! What is the trouble? Like Paul, they are legalists. They fill pulpits and pews, and, I awfully fear, constitute the rank and file of the popular Churches at the present day. Their name is legion. You meet them in every land. Though they are very religious, they have no salvation. Like Paul, they are perfectly honest; yet they walk in Satans midnight, and will soon drop into hell, unless God, in mercy, shall shed light on them, as in case of Saul, while he journeyed to Damascus. The Holy Ghost is the only revelator of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every soul walks in darkness till he reveals Him to him, as in case of Saul. What is this awful legalism? Satans greased plank, on which he shoots millions through the Churches into hell. It is simply a religion of good works, such as Saul and myself had from our infancy (for my life, like his, was irreproachable from the cradle, being as good a Church member before conversion as afterwards). The great masses of Church members at the present day are dumb in the pews, from the simple fact that they have no experiences to tell; they are depending on Church loyalty, legal obedience, and good works to save them. It is awful to contemplate the responsibility of pastors who help the devil to palm off his wholesale delusions on their members, encouraging them to believe that they are Christians, because they are true and faithful to what they call the Church; meanwhile they are as ignorant of the New Testament Ecclesia, the Church of God (consisting only of the souls called out of the world and separated unto God), as the Hottentots of Africa. All of this legalistic religion, which fills the world today, is nothing but self- righteousness, filthy rags, in the sight of God, and a millstone around the necks of the poor, deluded devotees, dragging them down to hell.

9. And may be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is, through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is from God, upon faith. Nothing but the righteousness of Christ will ever fortify a soul against the severities of the Divine judgments. Can I have the righteousness of Christ? Our wonderful Christ has three righteousnesses. He has a righteousness peculiar to his Divinity and essential to it, which he will ever retain, and never impart to you or me. He also has a righteousness peculiar to his humanity and essential to it. This he will never confer on you or me. Besides, he has a third righteousness, arising from perfect obedience to the Divine law, actively throughout his probationary life, and passively when he suffered the full penalty of the violated law as our substitute. This third righteousness, which is neither essential to his humanity nor Divinity, nor in any way necessary to his perfect mediatorial Messiahship, he procured for you and me and all of Adams ruined race. This perfect righteousness God is delighted freely to impute to every sinner who, in hearty repentance and radical abandonment of all sin, in the profound realization of his utter fitness only for hellfire, by simple faith alone casts himself, in a moment of despair, on the mercy of God in Christ. These sinning-religion people have never learned the first principles; but poor, deluded legalists, like Saul before he was converted, having a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, having no personal acquaintance with God, they walk in spiritual night, die as they live, honored with complimentary funerals over their dead bodies, while their souls are in hell.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Verse 8

But loss for, &c.; of no value in comparison with.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

3:8 Yea doubtless, and I count {e} all things [but] loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them [but] dung, that I may {f} win Christ,

(e) He shuts out all works, those that go before, as well as those that come after faith.

(f) That in their place I might get Christ, and from a poor man become rich, so far am I from losing anything at all.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Paul’s greater goal 3:8-11

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Paul had regarded his advantages over other people as what put him in an especially good position with God. However, he had come to realize that absolutely nothing apart from Jesus Christ’s work on the cross was of any value in his gaining God’s acceptance. No good works improve our standing before God. They are all like filthy rags (Isa 64:6). Consequently Paul came to regard them as "rubbish." From then on he continued to take this view of things.

The Greek word translated "rubbish" (skybalon) occurs only here in the New Testament. Its derivation is uncertain, but it appears to have referred to excrement, food gone bad, scraps left over after a meal, and refuse. In extrabiblical Greek it describes a half-eaten corpse and lumps of manure. [Note: Hawthorne, p. 139.] Thus Paul meant that his former advantages were not only worthless but strongly offensive and potentially dangerous.

What he had learned to value was Christ Jesus his Lord. Consequently coming to know Christ, entering into a deeper and fuller appreciation of His person and work, was of primary importance to Paul. This knowledge (Gr. gnosis) is the kind that one obtains only by personal relationship. It is different from the knowledge we gain through objective academic study (Gr. oida), though information is part of our growing personal knowledge of Christ. To gain this fuller knowledge of Christ Paul had let everything else in life go. To use the language of Php 2:6, Paul did not regard anything else in life worthy of retaining. All he wanted was a fuller and deeper experiential appreciation of his Savior.

"You and I know about many people, even people who lived centuries ago, but we know personally very few." [Note: Wiersbe, The Bible . . ., 2:86.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 11

THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST.

Php 3:8-18 (R.V.)

MR. ALEXANDER KNOX, in a letter to a friend, makes the following remark: “Religion contains two sets of truths, which I may venture to denominate ultimate and mediatory: the former refer to God as an original and end; the latter to the Word made flesh, the suffering, dying, rising, ruling Saviour; the way, the truth, the life. Now I conceive these two views have almost ever been varying, in the minds even of the sincerely pious, with respect to comparative consequence; and while some have so regarded the ultimate as in some degree to neglect the mediatory, others have so fixed their views on the mediatory as greatly and hurtfully to lose sight of the ultimate.” This writer refers to Tillotson on one side, and Zinzendorf on the other, as instances of these extremes; and indicates that perhaps his own leaning might be a little too much in the former direction.

It can hardly be doubted that there is something in this suggestion. In the guidance and training of the soul some aim mainly at right dispositions towards God and His will, without much dwelling on what Knox calls mediatory truths; because they assume that the latter exist only with a view to the former; and if the end has been brought into view and is coming to be attained, there is no special need of dwelling on the means. Others aim mainly at receiving the right impressions about Christ dying and rising, and at complying with the way of salvation as it is set forth to us in Christ; because they are persuaded that here the secret lies of all deliverance and progress, and that the end cannot otherwise be reached. And Mr. Knox suggests, with truth most likely, that such persons have often so occupied themselves with what may be called the means of salvation that they lose sight in a great degree of the end to which all tends-life in God, life in fellowship with His loving goodness and His holy will.

What application these views may have to divergences of our own day it would take too long to consider. Mr. Knoxs remark has been referred to here in order to throw light on the mental attitude of Paul. Paul will hardly be accused of losing sight of the ultimate truths; but certainly he delights to view them through the mediatory truths; and he strives to reach the ultimate victory, through the most realising application to his heart and life of what those mediatory truths embody and disclose. Through the mediatory truths the ultimate ones reveal themselves to him with a wealth and an intensity otherwise unattainable. And the eternal life comes into experience for him as he takes into his soul the full effect of the provision which God has made, in Christ, to bestow eternal life upon him. That order of things which is mediatory is not regarded by Paul only as a fitting introduction, on Gods part, to His ultimate procedure; it is also in the same degree fitted to become for the individual man the medium of vision, of assurance, of participation. In other words, Paul finds God and makes way into goodness through Christ; and not through Christ merely as an embodied ideal, but through union to Christ Divine and human, Christ living, dying, rising, redeeming, justifying, sanctifying, glorifying. He never pauses in any of these, so as to fail in looking onward to God, the living God, But neither does he pass on to that goal so as to disregard the way unto the Father. If he could have foreseen the method of those who are striving in our day to bring men to the blessedness which Christianity holds out by dwelling exclusively on Christian ethics, he might have sympathised with their ethical intensity; but he would surely have wondered that they failed to find in Christianity more pregnant springs of motive and of power. Perhaps he would even be moved to say, “O foolish Galatians (or Corinthians), who hath bewitched you?” Not less, it must also be said, might he wonder at many a gospel preacher, who rehearses the “way of salvation” until the machinery clanks and groans, unable apparently to divine-unable, at least, to bring out-that glory of God in it, that wonderful presence and influence of infinite holiness, goodness, and pity, which make the gospel the power of God.

We, meanwhile, shall do well to imitate the charity of Mr. Knox, who cordially owned the Christian piety of those who might go too far either way. Few of us, indeed, can dispense with the charity that is tender to partial and imperfect views. But if we are to understand Paul, we must find our way into some sympathy with him here; not only as he is seen on this line to have attained so far in saintship, but as he is seen to be sure that this way lay much more-that on this line his road lay to the glory that should be revealed. He could contemplate the practice and growth of piety in many lights; yet it came home to him most evidently as growth in the knowledge and in the appropriation of Jesus Christ.

He has cast away for the sake of Christ the treasures so much valued by the Jews, and many a treasure more. But what he would chiefly impress on the minds of those to whom he writes is not so much the amount of what he has cast away, but rather the worth of that which he has found, and more and more is finding. The mass of things set down for loss is a mere steppingstone to this central theme. But though he tells us what he thought and felt about it, most of us learn but slowly how much it meant for him. When we sit down beside the Apostle to learn his lesson, we become conscious that he is seeing what we cannot descry; he is sensitive to Christ through spiritual senses which in us are torpid and undeveloped. Christ holds him all through. It is faith, and love, and gratitude; it is self-devotion, and obedience, and wonder, and worship; and, through all, the conviction glows that Christ is his, that “in Christ” all things have changed for him. In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin. He hath made me accepted in the Beloved. I live; yet not I, but Christ. In Christ, old things have passed away, all things are made new. Christ is made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” The intense heat of this conception of Christ, it must once more be said, gives its distinctive character to the religious life of Paul. May we not say that the lamentable distinction of a great deal of current Christianity is the coldness of mens thoughts about their Saviour? The views of many may be characterised as “correct, but cold.” Only what can be more incorrect, what can more effectually deny and controvert the main things to be asserted, than coldness towards our Saviour, and cold thoughts of His benefits? This we “should hold to be unpardonable. We never should forgive it to ourselves.

“For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.” Christ had come into the life of Paul as a wonderful knowledge. Becoming thus known to him, He had transformed the world in which Paul lived, and had made him conscious of a new order of existence, so that old things passed away and all became new. The phrase employed combines two ideas. In the first place, Paul felt Christ appealing to him as to a thinking, knowing nature. Various influences were reaching him from Christ which bore on heart, will, conscience: but they all came primarily as a revelation; they came as light. “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus.” In the next place, this discovery came with a certain assuredness. It was felt to be not a dream, not a fair imagination only, not a speculation, but a knowledge. Here Paul felt himself face to face with the real-indeed, with fundamental reality. In this character, as luminous knowledge, the revelation of Christ challenged his decision, it demanded his appreciation and adherence. For since Christ claims so fundamental a place in the moral world, since He claims so intimate and fruitful a relation to thee whole state and prospects of the believing man, acquaintance with Him (at least, if it be acquaintance in Pauls style) cannot pause at the stage of contemplation: it passes into appropriation and surrender. Christ is known as dealing with us, and must be dealt with by us. So this knowledge becomes, at the same time, experience.

Hence, while in ver. 8 (Php 3:8), the Apostle speaks of himself as encountering all earthly loss that he may know Christ, in ver. 9 (Php 3:9), it is that he may gain Christ and may be found in Him. Christ so came into the field of his knowledge as to become-the treasure of his life, replacing those things which heretofore had been gain, and which now figured as loss. When Paul turned from all else to know Christ, he turned, at the same time, to have Christ, “gaining Him,” and to be Christs, “found in Him.”

Christ, in fact, comes to us with commandments, “words,” {Joh 14:23} which are to be kept and done. He comes to us, also, with promises, the fulfilment of which, in our own case, is a most practical business. Some of these promises concern the world to come; but others apply to the present; and these, which lie next us, either are neglected, or are embraced and put to proof, every day of our lives. Besides all this, Christ comes to us to fix and fill our minds, and to endear Himself to us, in virtue simply of what He is. So viewed, He is to be owned as our best Friend, and indeed henceforth, with reverence be it said, by far our nearest Relation. This is to be, or else it is not to be. Each day asks the question, Which? Pauls Christianity was the answer to that question. How his answer rings in all our ears! Our Christianity also is making its reply.

Both as to knowledge and as to experience the type was fixed from the first: there could be no doubt about either. But both were to deepen and widen as life went on. Christ was apprehended at first as a wonderful Whole of good; but so that indefinite fields of progress were continually to open up. In the very first days a knowledge dawned, for the sake of which all else was counted loss; yet a world of truths remained to know, as well as of good to experience, for the sake of which also all else should continue to be counted but loss. This, in fact, is only one way of saying that Christ and His salvation were realities, divinely full and worthy. Being real, the full acquaintance with all they mean for men can only arise in a historical way. Paul therefore emphasises this, that real Christianity, the right kind of Christianity, just because it has found a treasure, is set on going on to find that same treasure still further and still more. {comp. Php 1:9} If the treasure is real and the man is in earnest, that will be so. Such had been the course of his own Christian life from the first. Now, though many years have disciplined him, though changing experiences have given him new points of view, still, no less than at the first, his rejoicing in the present goes hand in hand with reaching onward to the future. The one, in fact, is the reason of the other. Both are rational, or neither. He has counted all to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge which has broken upon his soul: and still he presses on, that he may know; for the same strong attraction continues and grows.

Before passing to details, something more should perhaps be said of this magnificent generality, “the knowledge of Christ.”

Christ is first of all known historically; so He is presented to us in the Gospels. His story is part of the history of our race. He passes through youth to manhood. We see Him living, acting, enduring; and we hear Him teaching-wonderful words proceed from His mouth. We contemplate Him in His humiliation, under the limits to which He submitted that He might share our state and bear our burdens. In the pathways of that Jewish life He discloses a perfect goodness and a perfect dignity. We see especially that He cherishes a purpose of good will to men which He bears to them from the Father. It overflows in all His words and works, and in the prosecution of it He moves on to lay down His life for us. This is the beginning of the knowledge of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Much may as yet be undefined; many questions may crowd on us that receive as yet no precise answer; nay, much may seem to us as yet to be strangely entangled in the particulars of an individual and of a provincial existence. But this presentation of Christ can never be dispensed with or superseded; and, for its essential purpose, it never can be surpassed. For this is the Life. “The Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and show unto you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.”

This vision, which the Gospels set before us, was also before the mind of Paul. And words of our Lord, delivered in His earthly ministry, and preserved by those who heard Him, were treasured by the Apostle of the Gentiles, and reproduced to guide the Churches as need required. Yet there is a sense in which we may say that it is not exactly the Christ of the Gospels who comes before us in the Pauline writings. The Christ of Paul is the Lord who met him by the way. It is Christ dead, risen, and ascended; it is Christ with the reason and the result of His finished work made plain, and with the relation unveiled which He sustains to men who live by Him; it is Christ with the significance of His wonderful history for believers shining out from Him-Christ vestitus Evangelio. Now He has gone up above all worlds. No longer is He hedged about by necessities of mortal life; no longer tied by earthly bonds to some places and some men and one nation. He is glorified; all fulness dwells in Him; all Gods purposes are seen to centre in Him. And then, by His death and resurrection, the tie between Him and His people is unveiled to faith, as it could not be before. They are one with Him-in Him redeemed, endowed, triumphant, glorified. Every Christian privilege and attainment, every grace, every virtue and good gift, takes on a celestial character, as it is seen to be an element in our fellowship with Christ. The state of Christians is seen reflected in their Head. And, in turn, Christ is seen, as it were, through the medium of the relation which He sustains to them, and of the wealth of good arising to them by it. It is Christ as He is to His people, Christ as He is set in the centre of the world of good that radiates to them all, whom Paul wonders at and worships. And he finds all this to be rooted in our Lords death upon the cross, which was the crisis of the whole redemption. All that follows took character and efficacy from that death.

A special insight into all this was included in the wisdom given to Paul. And yet this view of things does not turn out to be something diverse or alien from what the Gospels set before us. Rather it is the gospel story revealing its native significance arid virtue along many lines which were not so distinct before.

But now all this, in turn, leads us to the third aspect of the case. What Christ is and what He does may be described; but there is a knowledge of it which is imparted practically, in the progressive history of the believer. According to the Christian teaching, we enter, as Christians, on a new relation; and in that relation a certain blessed well-being is appointed to us. This well-being is itself an unfolding or disclosure of Christ. Now this well-being comes home to us and is verified in the course of a progressive human experience. Life must become our school to teach us what it all means. Life sets us at the point of view now for one lesson, now for another. Life moves and changes, and brings its experiences; its problems, its conflicts, its anxieties, its fears, its temptations; its need of pity, pardon, strengthening; its experience of weakness, defeat, and disgrace; its opportunities of service, self-denial, fidelity, victory. For all those occasions Christ has a meaning and a virtue, which, in those occasions, is to become personal to ourselves. This makes knowledge indeed. This becomes the vivid commentary upon the historical and the doctrinal instruction. Life, taken in Christs way, along with prayer and thought, manifests Christs meaning, and makes it real to us, as nothing else can. It furnishes the stepping-stones for passing onward, in the knowledge of Christ.

This also was Pauls condition, though he was an inspired man. He too was fain to improve his knowledge in this school. And when we take all three aspects together, we shall see how truly, for Paul and for us, the knowledge of Christ is, on the one hand, so excellent from the first, that it justifies the great decision to which it calls us; and, on the other hand, how it creates a longing for further insight and fresh attainment. The latter we see in the Apostle as plainly as the former. From the first, he knew in whom he believed, and was persuaded that for His sake all else was to be resigned. Yet to the end he felt the unsatisfied desire to know more, to gain more; and his heart, if we may apply here the Psalmists words, was breaking for this longing which it had.

It was remarked above that the “excellency of the knowledge of Christ” in ver. 8 (Php 3:8), corresponds in the Apostles thought to the “gaining” of Christ and being “found in Him” of ver. 9 (Php 3:9); and this may be the best place to say a word on these two phrases. To gain Christ, points to a receiving Christ as ones own; and the Apostle uses the phrase so as to imply that this finding of Christ, as One who is gained or won, was still going on; it was progressive. Clearly also the alternative is implied, that what is not gained is lost. The question in the Apostles life, about which he was so decided, was about no less than losing or gaining Christ. The phrase “be found” points to the verification of Pauls relation to Christ in his history and in its results. That relation is contemplated as something that proves true. It turns out to be so. We shall best understand the phrase as referring, not to some one future date at which he should be so found, but rather to present and future alike. As men, or angels, or God, or Christ might view him, or as he might take account of his own state, this is what he would have found in regard to himself. Every way he would be found in Christ. The form of expression, however, is specially appropriate here, because it fits so well into the doctrine of righteousness through Christ, which the Apostle is about to emphasise. A similar remark applies to the expression “in Christ” so frequently occurring in the Pauline writings. This is usually explained by saying that the Apostle sets before us Christ as the sphere of his spiritual being-in whom he lived and moved-never out of relation to Him, and not so related to any other. Such explanations are true and good: only we may say that the pregnant strength of the expression seems to be weakened even by the best explanations. The relation in view is too wonderful ever to be adequately described. The union between Christ and His Church, between Christ and the believing man, is a mystery; and like all objects of faith, it is dimly apprehended by us for the present. But the certainty of it, and its wonderfulness, we should never allow ourselves to overlook. Christ is able to bring men into fellowship with Himself, to assume responsibility for them, to represent their interests and to care for their good; and men may receive Christ into their lives; with a completeness on both sides which no explanations can adequately represent. The identification with Christ which the phrase suggests naturally fits what follows.

Now the Apostle goes more into detail. He tells us what were for him the main articles of this good state of being “found in Christ.” He indicates, with a certain eager gratitude, the main lines along which the benefits of that state had come into experience, and along which he was pressing on to know the fulness of Christ. First, in Christ he has and shall have not his own righteousness, which is that of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. Then, secondly, he has in hand a practical knowledge of Christ, culminating in the complete deliverance of the resurrection. It includes two aspects or elements: Christ known in the power of His resurrection, and Christ known in the fellowship of His sufferings.

The first thing then which rises distinctly into view in connection with being found in Christ is the possession of the new righteousness. We have seen already that value for righteousness such as is of law, and hope Of achieving it, had been associated with Pauls old days of Jewish zeal. He then stood on the law, and gloried in the law. But that had passed away when he learned to count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. Ever after, the contrast between the two ways of seeking “righteousness” continued to be fundamental in Pauls Christian thinking.

The law here in view was the whole revealed will of God touching mans behaviour, coming as a will of authority, requiring obedience. The discussion in the earlier chapters of the Epistle to the Romans makes this plain. And Pauls way of keeping the law, in those old days, though it was necessarily too external, had not been so merely external as is sometimes supposed. His obedience had been zealous and resolute, with as much heart and meaning as he could put into it. But law-keeping for righteousness had been the principle of it. The Jew was placed under a law; obedience to that law should be his pathway to a destiny of incomparable privilege and gladness. That was the theory. So believing, Paul had given himself with zeal to the work, “living in all good conscience before God.” A great change had now befallen him; but that could not imply on his part a renunciation of Gods law. The law, better understood indeed, and far more inwardly apprehended, still retained for Paul its great outlines, and was reverenced as Divine. It was holy and just and good. It was felt still to shed its steadfast light on human duty, awakening and illuminating the conscience; and therefore it revealed most authentically the moral situation, with its elements of failure, and danger, and need. The law stood fast. But the scheme of life which stood in keeping the law for righteousness had passed away for Paul, vanishing in the light of a new and better day.

Here, however, we must ask what the Apostle means when he speaks of the righteousness which is by the faith of Jesus Christ, the righteousness which is of God unto or upon faith. Great disputes have arisen over this question. We must endeavour to find the Apostles main meaning, without involving ourselves too much in the mazes of technical debate.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary