Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 180 · June 29
Knowing Him
“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;”
You can read everything ever written about a person and still not know him the way his oldest friend does. The friend has sat with him through hard days and knows him from the inside.
That is the kind of knowing Paul is after, and his readers in Philippi understood why. He writes to them as a prisoner, telling them that "my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace." They had seen him suffer for Christ when he first came to their city, and now they were going through it themselves: "Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me." So "the fellowship of his sufferings" was not a phrase Paul had to explain to them.
Read the order he puts things in: "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." Knowing Christ comes first. And in the sentence, the power of His resurrection stands before the suffering, holding it up. The next line shows that Paul had not arrived either: "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Then he says it outright: "Not as though I had already attained."
So may you know Christ the way a friend knows a friend, and not only know about Him. May His power come first for you, as it does in Paul's sentence. When following Him costs you something, may you find Him there with you, and find that it is fellowship with Him. And may you be free of the idea that Paul had reached a place you cannot. He was still pressing on, and the Christ who took hold of him has taken hold of you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 180 is Out of the Pit (Psalm 40:1-2).