Philippians 3:7

These verses answer a warning. In Philippians 3:1–3 Paul tells the church to beware of “dogs”, of “evil workers” and of “the concision”, people who mutilate the flesh. They were most likely Judaizers, Jewish Christians who insisted that Gentile converts be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be saved, or to reach a higher righteousness. The church at Philippi was mostly Gentile, and the same dispute ran through the whole early church, as the council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 and Paul’s letter to the Galatians show. Paul wrote to Philippi from prison, probably in Rome, around AD 60–62.

Paul meets these teachers on their own ground, and he calls what they offered “confidence in the flesh”. The word for confidence, pepoíthēsis, means confidence or trust. The verb translated “trust” later in the verse, peíthō, means to persuade or convince, and in its perfect and passive forms to trust, to rely on or to be convinced, and pepoíthēsis goes with that perfect sense of trusting. Flesh, sárx, in Paul’s letters often means human nature as it is apart from the Spirit of God. Here it takes in everything a person might lean on before God from his own side: ancestry, ritual, effort, religious performance and moral record.

“If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more.” Paul says this to strip such boasting of its value, since he had more of these grounds than any of his opponents and gave them all up. His judgment on confidence in the flesh comes from deep personal experience, and the Judaizers could hardly claim he misunderstood a life he had lived better than they had. There is irony in the care with which he lays out his credentials, only to count them as loss three verses later. The repeated word “flesh” keeps every one of them on the human side.

What Paul gives up is the hope of being accepted by God for what we are by birth or what we have done, and Scripture says the same plainly elsewhere. No one is justified by the works of the law (Romans 3:20). Paul writes to the Galatians, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16), and to the Ephesians, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). God has made Christ our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30–31), so all our trust and all the glory go to him.

Paul’s list runs from what he received at birth to what he gave himself to by choice: first circumcision, race and tribe, then his culture and language, then his party, his zeal and his record. Each item would have impressed the men troubling Philippi. Each also stood for something real in first-century Jewish life, where lineage, the law (above all circumcision) and the careful keeping of tradition marked a righteous man.

Verse 7 is the turning point of the passage: “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.” Every item of verses 5 and 6 belongs to “what things”: his circumcision, his descent, his tribe, his Hebrew heritage, his place among the Pharisees, his zeal and his blamelessness. By the standards of his society and his own former understanding they were real advantages, the things that gave him status, identity and standing before God and men.

Paul describes the change in the language of accounts. Gain, kérdos, is profit or advantage, what a trader makes. Loss, zēmía, is damage or detriment, a loss suffered. The verb “counted”, hēgéomai, means to lead, and figuratively to deem or consider. Paul has weighed his old assets and entered them on the other side of the ledger. The word “for” is diá with Christ as its object in the accusative, and in that construction it means “for the sake of” or “because of”. Christ is the reason for the new reckoning, and he is the standard by which everything else is measured.

Paul came to this reckoning when he met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–19). The cost was real. Giving up the very things that defined him meant losing his standing and facing the hostility of his former peers.

His reckoning follows the mind of Christ that he set before the Philippians in the chapter before: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:5–8). Christ laid aside his glory for our salvation, and his loss on the cross became our gain of righteousness, reconciliation and eternal life. Jesus taught that whoever loses his life for his sake will find it (Matthew 16:25).

“Yea doubtless” is emphatic, and verse 8 takes the reckoning of verse 7 further in three ways. Paul’s counting is present and continuing: “I count”. It takes in “all things”, everything earthly, along with the credentials he has listed. And it uses a far stronger word for their worth.

The reason is “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”. Excellency renders hyperéchō, to hold oneself above, to excel, and as a participle used like a noun, superiority. The knowledge of Christ stands above everything Paul once valued, beyond comparison. Knowledge, gnōsis, is knowing, the act of knowing, and its object here is a person. Paul calls him “my Lord”, kýrios, his own Master, so this knowledge is personal and belongs to a living relationship with Christ. In Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

“For whom I have suffered the loss of all things” moves from counting to what actually happened. The verb zēmióō means to suffer damage or to experience loss. Paul lost his reputation, his comfort and security, and the career he might have had in Judaism, and on his journeys he met physical hardship, prison and rejection. In a Roman world that prized honour, status and material gain, his words would have sounded shocking.

Verse 9 gives the deepest reason for Paul’s new reckoning, and it lies at the heart of the gospel. “And be found in him” states what Paul wants above all. Heurískō means to find, and to be found is to be discovered or recognized as one truly is. Paul wants to be found “in him”, en with autós, his whole standing defined by his union with Christ.

Then he sets two kinds of righteousness side by side. Righteousness, dikaiosýnē, means equity of character or act, and in Paul’s letters justification, a right standing before God and acceptance by him.

The first is “mine own righteousness, which is of the law”. “Mine own” is emós, simply “my, mine”. It is the righteousness Paul could call his because he produced it by keeping the law, nómos, the law of Moses. He had pursued it and excelled in it, as verse 6 says, and now he counts it insufficient.

The second is “that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith”. Faith, pístis, is persuasion, credence and conviction, and especially reliance upon Christ for salvation. “Through” is diá again, here naming the channel, and “by faith” uses epí, upon, naming the basis: this righteousness comes to us through faith and rests upon faith. “Of God” is ek with theós. Ek means from or out of, and the KJV’s “of” here means the same as “from”: God is the source of this righteousness, and it comes to us as his gift. Christós is Christ, the one in whom all of it is found.

What God gives is the righteousness of Christ himself. Christ kept the law perfectly, lived a sinless life, and offered himself as the spotless Lamb of God (John 1:29). In his death he bore the penalty for our unrighteousness, and his resurrection showed his victory over sin and death. He was made sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). God credits, or imputes, Christ’s righteousness to everyone who trusts him. The law itself reveals our sin (Romans 3:20). Paul sets out the righteousness of God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ in Romans 3:21–28, and he calls it the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel (Romans 1:17). It brings peace with God through Christ (Ephesians 2:13–16). This truth sets believers free from the impossible burden of earning what can only be given, and it anchors our hope in God’s unfailing grace.

Verse 10 turns from what Paul receives to what he longs for. “That I may know him” uses ginṓskō, the common verb meaning to know, to come to know, to perceive or understand. Often it means simply having information, and what gives it its depth here is its object: Paul wants to know Christ himself, in the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings and conformity to his death. That is knowledge gained by living in union with him. The one he longs to know is the Son of God made flesh, in whom the Father is perfectly made known (John 14:9). Jesus said, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

“The power of his resurrection” is the power that raised Jesus from the dead. Dýnamis means ability, force or might, including miraculous power. That power is at work in believers now, because the Spirit of him who raised Jesus gives life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11). It enables us to overcome sin and live a new life: “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3–5).

“The fellowship of his sufferings” means sharing in them. Koinōnía is partnership, participation, communion and sharing, and páthēma is suffering. Paul means the hardships, persecution and self-denial that come with following Christ and spreading his gospel, which draw a believer closer to him. He writes of sharing in Christ’s sufferings (2 Corinthians 1:5) and of carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:10–11), and he lists his own labours, beatings and dangers in 2 Corinthians 11:23–28. For the Philippians, who knew hardship themselves, suffering for Christ was a way into deeper union with him and a part in his mission.

Verse 11 names where knowing Christ leads: “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” The phrase “if by any means” is eí pōs, “if” and “somehow”. To attain, katantáō, means to arrive at, to reach a destination. The resurrection is the goal at the end of Paul’s road, and he is moving toward it with purpose. The word for resurrection here, exanástasis, means a rising again from the dead. Paul means the bodily resurrection of believers, Christ’s final triumph over death for all who are in him.

Christ’s own resurrection is the guarantee of ours. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25), and the word at the empty tomb was, “He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24:6–7). Christ is the firstfruits, and those who are his will follow him (1 Corinthians 15:20–23). He has won the victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:54–57), and he will give us glorified bodies like his own (Philippians 3:20–21). Believers are already united with Christ in his death and resurrection through baptism (Romans 6:3–5), and that union looks forward to the raising of the body. In the meantime our minds are set on things above, where Christ is (Colossians 3:1–4).

This hope was contested in Paul’s day. Many Greeks found bodily resurrection absurd, and at Athens some mocked when Paul spoke of it (Acts 17:32). Among the Jews its nature was debated, with the Pharisees and Sadducees on opposite sides (Acts 23:8). Paul makes the resurrection the goal of his whole life, against the scoffers and the half-believers alike.

These verses show a man who had every advantage that birth and religion could give, and who found all of it worth less than Christ. They show us God, who gives as a gift the righteousness that only he can give, and who gives it in his Son. Whatever we might be tempted to lean on before him today belongs on the same list as Paul’s pedigree: a Christian upbringing, years of church attendance, our service, our moral record or our knowledge of theology. God’s verdict over us rests on Christ, and his righteousness is credited to everyone who trusts him.

The passage also shows what knowing Christ holds. It holds the power that raised him from the dead, a share in his sufferings, the shaping of our lives into the pattern of his death, and at the end the resurrection of the dead. Paul counted every earlier gain as loss because he had found someone worth more than all of it together. The same Lord is offered to us, and in him the loss of all things becomes the way to gain everything.