To Know Him

"My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death" (Phil. 3:10)

There is no greater joy. No greater gain. No greater goal. For just as Paul has said, I "count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil. 3:8).

How radical does this sound? Everything as loss. Yet that is the brilliance of Paul's thinking and the wonder of knowing Christ. The apostle does not negate the worth of relationships, or prestige, or reason. However, He speaks to the reality that Christ is far more precious than all these things.

Christ, because of who He is and what He has done, is of infinitely more worth than anything else we can gain either in heaven or on earth. Anything else can fall by the wayside of the mind and, in the ultimate sense, be counted as nothing. The worth attributed to the things that we possess- money, power, relationships, etc.- is ultimately found in their ability to help us gain more knowledge of Christ.

I was asked within the last couple of weeks, "Jared, if God is so great and incomprehensible, why do we study Him in theology?" A fair question, if you might ask.

"Well," I responded ", you know people. And you can have a relationship with one person your entire life and still not know everything about them. Yet you pursue that knowledge of them so that you can know them deeper and better. This is the same with God. We cannot know everything about Him (and infinitely so) for He is incomprehensible. Yet we pursue knowledge of Him so that we can know Him deeper and better." And He permits this pursuit because, in fact, He initiated it.

Here is the beauty of theology, that we can grow in our understanding and knowledge of our Savior. To open God's Word and let the truths that are written on our hearts and mind, then to share those truths to those around us in exhortation and encouragement. To let the men and women of present and of old preach and expose truths into our lives, so that we may grow in the knowledge and likeness not ultimately of them, but of Christ.

There is not greater joy than to know Christ.