Knowing Christ
For the week of July 5-11, 2026
FREE PREVIEW: Philippians 3:1-11 —Knowing Christ
This is a condensed preview of this week's full Bible study lesson, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Introduction
In Philippians 3, Paul does something most people never do: he opens his own ledger and reads off every asset he has ever possessed — his pedigree, his religious achievements, his moral record — and then, line by line, he moves all of it from the profit column to the loss column. Why? Because he has found something so valuable that everything else looks like rubbish by comparison. That something is a Person. The supreme ambition of Paul’s life, the treasure for which he gladly threw everything else away, was simply this: to know Christ.
I. The CAUTION against Confidence in the Flesh (vv. 1–3)
“Beware of the dogs; beware of the evil workers; beware of the false circumcision. For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:2–3).
Paul issues a sharp warning against teachers who insisted that Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the law to be truly saved. With biting wordplay, he calls their religious mutilation a counterfeit, and insists that the true people of God are marked not by an external rite but by an inward reality — worship in the Spirit, joy in Christ, and a deliberate refusal to place any confidence in human achievement.
II. The CREDENTIALS Paul Counted as Loss (vv. 4–8)
“However, I consider those things that were gain to me as a loss for Christ... and count them nothing but refuse, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7–8).
If anyone could have boasted in the flesh, it was Paul. He lays out an impeccable résumé — birth, pedigree, zeal, and a blameless record under the law. And then he renounces all of it. Everything that had once defined his worth he now regards as loss, even as garbage, because he has discovered that the surpassing worth of knowing Christ makes every other treasure worthless by comparison.
III. The CHRIST Worth Knowing (vv. 9–11)
“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed to his death” (Philippians 3:10).
Paul names the one thing his whole life now aims at: to be found in Christ, clothed not in his own righteousness but in the righteousness that comes from God through faith — and from that secure standing, to know Christ ever more deeply. To know the power that raised Him, to share in the sufferings that shaped Him, and to be progressively conformed to the One he loves. Not knowledge about Christ, but knowledge of Him.
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