Knowing The Power

Texts: Philippians 3:7-14

Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah

April 28, 2024

Paul said, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.” How did Paul think this could happen? What did he mean? And how can you and I know Christ and the power of his resurrection?

Apparently the resurrection is beyond a one time event.  It is something that has power to do something in our lives even now.

The verb Paul uses for “to know” almost always means personal knowledge. Paul is not seeking simply intellectual knowledge. He doesn’t just want to merely know the story of Jesus’ resurrection, or some interesting facts about it, or its theological implications. He wants personal experience of Christ and his resurrection power.

Paul believes there is something about Jesus Christ risen from the dead for his life, something for his living, something that will make all the difference in his day-to-day living.

It’s like Paul is saying this: “My determined purpose is that I may know Him…that I may become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly. And…come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection...”[1]

There is something in Christ’s resurrection that is present for us today for our living. It isn’t just about when we die we go to be with the Lord.  There is a now. Paul doesn’t want to just celebrate it he wants to know and experience it. It didn’t just happen to Jesus. There is something available to the believer.

The late Brennan Manning, former Catholic priest, recovering alcoholic, and much-read writer who dedicated himself to writing and speaking about the good news of the unconditional love of God, said, “The Resurrection of Jesus must be experienced as more than a past historical event.  Otherwise, ‘it is robbed of its impact on the present.’”

One of the challenges for us as Christians is for the resurrection to be anchored in present experience. This is something that happened so long ago.  We keep it alive by honoring it for a Sunday every year and hearing it in church here and there.  But is that all there is?  Not according to Paul.

Knowing the power of Jesus’ resurrection as a present experience involves:

1.     the cross.

2.     a radical change of our ambitions and aim in life.

3.     living a transformed life.

Knowing the power of Christ’s resurrection involves the cross. Paul not only wrote that he wants to know the power of Christ’s resurrection, but he adds that he wants to participate in Christ’s suffering and become like him in his death.

Maybe we would like to skip over that part. Suffering and death? I don’t know that Paul was speaking so literally, but I know this… You’ve gotta be dead before you can be resurrected. Paul saw the resurrection in light of the cross. The cross was not only central to his faith but it was central to his lifestyle and his ministry.

If the power of the resurrection is not a personal and present experience in our lives maybe it’s because we haven’t died. The cross doesn’t have a place in our daily living other than we know we are forgiven. We fill our lives to the full with ourselves and all the things we want and then we can’t figure out why Christ seems so distant in personal experience. It’s our will instead of his will.  We look for the smooth path instead of the faithful path. We haven’t been shaped by his death.

If we are consumed with trying to preserve ourselves, we will never really live.

The essence of Christian spirituality is imitating, as best we can, the self-giving sacrificial love of Jesus. Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it.”[2]

The mystery, the paradox, and the power of knowing resurrection life in the here and now is dying to ourselves so that we can live to God. It is dying to our selves, our ego needs, our agenda, so that God’s life can be in us.

Where do you need to die so that the power of the resurrection can be known? An attitude?  Something material? A relationship? A habit?

Unless there is death there can be no life. But when we die, oh the life God can bring.

Paul wants to know the sharing (the fellowship) of Christ’s sufferings. Part of the power of the resurrection is knowing that in all our sufferings – when we are insulted, put down, betrayed, when we struggle to understand God’s will, in illness, or frustrations– we can become more like Jesus because we have gone through something of what he went through. Things may be hard, but they cannot stop God’s final and ultimate purpose for our lives.[3] And they certainly cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

We don’t know the power of Christ’s resurrection unless we also know his sufferings and his death.

Knowing the power of the resurrection means a radical change in the ambitions of our life.

J.B. Phillips wrote his contemporary translation of the New Testament in the late 1940’s.  This is how he puts Paul’s words in Philippians 3: “How changed are my ambitions! Now I long to know Christ and the power shown by His Resurrection.”

How changed are my ambitions!

There is a sense in Paul of leaving behind a former way of life in order to gain a new and different life – a truer, deeper, more lasting life. All the things he once thought valuable and important don’t look that way in light of knowing Christ and having the full experience of who he is.

Paul the scholar, Paul the learned, privileged man, Paul the spiritual elitist, Paul the powerful, influential religious leader had to die in order that Paul could submit fully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and get on God’s agenda for his life.

Maybe you’ve had an experience of something so huge in your life – maybe good, maybe really hard – and it absolutely changed your perspective on life.  All the things you thought were so important looked totally different after that.

You know, Paul is sitting in a Roman prison when he writes this.

What are your main ambitions?  What is really important to you?            Some only want Christ as long as he helps us reach our goals. As long as he is moving our agenda along we are good with Jesus. The Lord wants to direct us and guide our lives but not until we die to our own plans and get on his agenda.

Part of knowing the power of his resurrection is letting God change our ambitions. Christ becomes so personal and present that everything we once thought was so important looks very different.

Knowing the power of Christ’s resurrection means we live a transformed life.

One of my favorite authors is Wendell Berry.  He is a farmer, poet and writer in Kentucky. He is a Christian with a deep social conscience. He wrote a poem called “Practice Resurrection.” One of the lines in Practice Resurrection is “every day do something that won’t compute”

That is exactly what the resurrection is. No one expected it.  No one could calculate it.  No one could fully comprehend its power. It works against this very world of death and darkness. I doesn’t compute.

Wendell Berry writes:

Love the Lord.

Love the world.  Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium.  Plant sequoias.

Expect the end of the world.  Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable.  Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

Practice resurrection.[4]

The poem is longer and has a lot more in it. But one of the reasons I like it is that Wendell Berry makes a concrete connection between resurrection and anchoring it in daily life.

Paul practiced resurrection by doing what did not compute. In other words, he didn’t live by the terms of this world.  He lived on God’s terms which are often very different from this place.

It was why he could tell the Philippians Christians to whom he was writing from his Roman prison cell to take heart about his situation because it was actually helping to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. And why he could say to them even in hard circumstances, “Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!”

What’s wrong with you Paul?  “I am practicing resurrection.”

They thought by locking him up his fervor for the gospel would cease and this Jesus stuff would subside. Paul does what doesn’t compute. The facts were that we was in prison, faced possible death, separated from the believers, unable to do what he wanted, yet he was joyful. He was joyful though he had all the facts. Something bigger and greater moved his life.

In an interview in 1985, Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, exemplified what it means to be joyful even though you have all the facts. This was right during the rule of Apartheid in South Africa, which inflicted incredible misery, cruelty and suffering on black people. What made Apartheid even worse was that the government used the Bible and Christian principles to justify it. But Tutu persevered for a change not by taking up a sword, but by practicing resurrection. And Apartheid was eventually dismantled.

Bishop Tutu said that if it were not for his faith he would have given up long ago.  He would have been hate-filled and bitter.  But he said, “In the middle of our faith is the death and resurrection.  Nothing could have been more hopeless than Good Friday – but then Easter happened, and forever we have become prisoners of hope.”[5]

Knowing the power of the resurrection is being able to see the world not as a place of ultimate death and defeat, but as the place that is waiting for God’s ultimate victory.[6]

Whatever struggle you face right now ultimately it can’t sink you. You belong to God, are held by God, and his life is over you. You are being led by the God who takes what is dead and brings life.

It doesn’t compute! Life out of death?  Gladness in suffering?  Wanting to become like him in his death? Yet, this is what resurrection faith is.

Jesus’ whole life didn’t compute. Though he possessed the highest place with the Father he emptied himself and took the lowest place. When they abused him, he loved in return. When they crucified him, he prayed for his executors to be forgiven.

He didn’t come to accumulate as much money, experiences, and applause as he could get. He came to give his life away. Instead of embracing religious figures, he embraced sinners, women, hot-headed fishermen, and financial cheats.

He had no time for Pharisees with all the answers, and had lots of time for Pharisees who had real questions. Instead of saving himself through the power that created the universe which was on his finger tips he remained on that cross.

Instead of rejecting Judas, he lets him be and even shared Communion with him. Instead of taking up a shield and sword, he took up a towel and basin and washed his disciples’ feet. Though he was rich, for our sake he became poor. Though he was innocent, he took the blame and the punishment. Though he was dead for three days he came alive again.

And someday, as Paul goes on to write, “by the power than enables him to bring everything under his control, he will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

It is this life that Paul wanted to know.  Did he ever get there?  We don’t know. As of that writing Paul said he hadn’t attained it yet, but he said, “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

And so we as Christians press on to know the power of Christ’s resurrection in our daily living.

Living under the cross because it’s been transformed.

Changing our ambitions, our desires, our aim.

Living in a different way, in a transformed way, utterly contrary to a death-conditioned world.

Like Paul, this is the power we want to know.

Prayer: O Lord, we praise you that you are risen.  May your life flow into and through our lives.  Make us living witnesses to you.  Help us to know more and more of you.  Amen.

[1] The Amplified Bible

[2] Mark 9:34,35

[3] See Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning, p. 109

[4] See full poem at bottom.

[5] Prisoner of Hope: An Interview With Desmond Tutu, Sojourners Magazine, February 1985.  This comes from a sermon by Lanny Peters of Oakhurst Baptist Church, Decatur Georgia, March 27, 2005, www.oakhurstbaptist.org

[6] Will Willimon