PHILIPPIANS (14): Pursuing Christ (Philippians 3:7-14)

Christ pursued us in love from Heaven to earth and accomplished our salvation through His death and resurrection (2:5-11), and now we must respond to His offer of salvation. First, we must receive Him and His righteousness as a free-gift, which is the only firm foundation for our salvation and eternal life. Having received Christ's love and assurance, we should now return His love by pursuing Him in order to know and experience Him more. Possessing something legally is not the same as experiencing and enjoying it. Likewise, we possess every spiritual blessing of grace in Christ, but we can only appropriate His grace by drawing close to Him In these verses, Paul describes His personal pursuit of Christ, and how he was willing to forsake all other things, in order to gain more of Christ, because of the surpassing excellence of knowing Him. In particular, Paul desired to continually experience the overcoming resurrection life of Christ empowering Him to overcome sin and walk in victory. This involves rejecting all idols - the covetous lusts of the flesh and eyes, and the self-idolatry of pride (1John 2:15) - an idol is anything we value more than Christ and His Presence in us.