What does it mean to know Christ? In Philippians 3:10, we hear the apostle Paul’s heart cry: “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”
Paul, it seems, wanted to go beyond head knowledge, and even heart knowledge, and into experiential knowledge—in sum, to be in union with his Lord.
We, too, can identify with the desire to know our Lord, and even “the power of his resurrection”; but what about “the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death”? What are we to make of this somber note?
First, knowing the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings does not mean seeking a masochistic, self-flagellating kind of suffering. Oswald Chambers comments: “To choose to suffer means there is something wrong; to choose God’s will even if it means suffering is a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.”
Neither does entering this fellowship primarily mean experiencing physical suffering. I have experienced severe physical pain, but my pain was my own, identified only with me. Yes, the experience has given me insights into suffering, and through pain I have learned endurance; but this “personal” pain has not been sharing in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. Instead, by being with me in my pain, it has been Christ who has shared my sufferings.
Nor, I suggest, does the fellowship of his sufferings refer primarily to enduring personal hardship or persecution on account of our faith (although suffering for the sake of Christ may well be part of what is meant here). We cannot begin to understand this deep concept until we stop focusing on our own feeble attempts at cross bearing.
Knowing All Of Christ
Paul does not say, “I want to suffer for Christ,” but, “I want to know Christ,” with part of that process knowing the fellowship of his sufferings. Knowing someone in the biblical sense means knowing his or her innermost self.
Thus, in the deepest human relationships, knowing someone means more than doing things for the person, or being used or directed by that person. Knowing him or her means being at one with that person and, insofar as possible, entering into that one’s experience of life. We walk together through life with the best friend or with that marriage partner precisely because we are agreed—we have fellowship in our common interests and goals. What hurts him or her, hurts us. What brings that person joy, brings us joy.
Knowing Christ, then, means identifying with all that is of Christ. Therefore, in line with the Pauline principle “as with Christ, so with the believer,” knowing Christ means both the “high” of his resurrection power at work, and also the “depths” of sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings.
Why the latter? Because, inescapably, Christ was the Suffering Servant. As Immanuel, “God with us,” Jesus’ example of the life of compassion was not superficial, disembodied sympathy but such a complete identification with our human suffering and sin that he became a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief.
The cause of that sorrow? Yearning for all who have gone astray like lost sheep. And so we read that when Christ saw the multitudes he had compassion on them, as sheep without a shepherd. And ultimately he, the Good Shepherd, gave up his life for the sheep. The incarnate Word was God’s compassion worked out in action—the action of identifying with the desperate need of a sinful world, identifying so thoroughly that “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
So we realize that as Christ was the Suffering Servant, so we must be his suffering servants. Karl Barth puts it: “To know Easter means, for the person knowing it … to be implicated in the events of Good Friday.” None of us is greater than our Master; we cannot have the crown without the cross.
Called To Be Compassionate
What might this mean on a practical level? It means to live as Christ lived. It means obeying Christ’s command to us: “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (Luke 6:36, JB).
To have compassion is to have solidarity, union, oneness, “fellowship with” those who suffer. True Christlike compassion is not a sentimental sadness over anonymous suffering multitudes, but it is intimate, personal involvement.
When our Suffering Servant Lord had compassion on the multitudes, he reached out to touch and heal those many individuals with their varying physical, mental, and spiritual needs. It was one-on-one with Mary of Bethany that Jesus wept over Lazarus’ death. Christlike compassion is never a remote, secondhand experience, but a hands-on identification with the wounded one.
Christlike compassion also makes the first move. We read in the parable of the Prodigal Son that while this young man was afar off, the father saw him and had compassion, and he ran to embrace him in forgiving love.
Further, Christlike compassion is freely offered—never doled out selectively to those we deem worthy, such as “the deserving poor,” and withheld from those we deem unworthy, such as those who, we say, “brought it on themselves.” No, Christ touched not only the innocent child and the helpless blind man, but also the cheat Zacchaeus. One commentator says, “God’s pity goes towards both the good and the evil, the deserving and the wasteful. It is need alone that stirs God.”
In making the first move, and in being freely offered, Christlike compassion is vulnerable; it risks rejection. John 3:16 says God so loved the world that God gave his one and only Son for “whosoever” might believe; whosoever presupposes that this so-great compassion will not always be appreciated or accepted. So the compassionate one not only risks personal involvement, at whatever sacrifice to self, but also takes the risk of experiencing the pain of personal rejection.
Yet, as we ponder those risks, we must remember that both corporately and individually we humans have brought our own sinful condition on ourselves, and that it was while we were still sinners that Christ showed the ultimate compassion and died for us. God’s compassion is never isolated from God’s salvific work on our behalf: It is the visible manifestation of his heart of love. Christ’s compassion is freely and unconditionally offered to the whole undeserving world, but all too often it is we who call ourselves Christ’s disciples who would ration our compassion.
In God’s economy, there are no ration books for compassion. God so loved, God gave. Jesus had compassion and healed. As he did to the disciples of old, today our Lord brings us in contact with hungry multitudes and says, “You give them to eat.”
And this is precisely why we are to enter into the fellowship of his sufferings. Henri Nouwen explains: “We are broken in order to become bread which can be given as food to others.” We are to be as Christ to them today.
So this profound concept of identifying with Christ to the extent of sharing in the fellowship of his sufferings hits us right where we are. Christlike compassion is not an abstract ideal to be studied in an academic seminar. It is an action word to be practiced daily in a suffering world, as we each confront the question: “Who is my neighbor? To whom can I be as Christ today?”
Eyes That See
We cannot begin to identify with the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings unless we know the sufferer in our midst. All around us are people who are suffering. One may be severely depressed, another in physical pain or struggling to overcome a handicap. Another may be working through grief, or feeling the pain of a broken relationship. Others may be burdened by the weight of discrimination, while another is silently enduring an abusive situation.
So whatever it may be, I assure you that in your community there is suffering if you will have eyes to see and ears to hear. This is the point of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. Like the priest and the Levite, we can become so busy that we fail to project Christlike compassion. We can all get so caught up in our own endeavors that we are unaware of the needs on our own doorstep. We all need the eyes and ears of the Samaritan, able to discern where God’s work needs to be performed.
No one should compartmentalize compassion. There is no room for thinking, “While I’m so busy at work and at home, someone else will have to take care of the compassion end of things.”
Mark 9 tells us that after the tremendous high point on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus descended into the valley of suffering and need. And down in that valley, a demon-possessed boy’s father pled with Jesus, “Have compassion on us and help us.”
Oswald Chambers offers another insight, writing: “Being seated together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus does not mean lolling about on the Mount of Transfiguration, singing ecstatic hymns, and letting demon-possessed boys go to the devil in the valley. Being in Christ means being in the accursed places of this earth as far as the walk of the feet is concerned.… The characteristics of saints after identification with the death of Jesus is that they are brought down from the ineffable glory of the heavenly places into the valley to be crushed and broken in service for God. We are here with no right to ourselves, for no spiritual blessing for ourselves; we are here for one purpose only—to be made servants of God, as Jesus was. Have we allowed our minds to be brought face to face with this great truth?”
So listen again to that agonized father’s cry: “Have compassion on us and help us.” All of us involved with Christian ministry of some sort are most visibly Christ’s agents today, and others look to us to be as Christ to them. Have we positioned ourselves so we can hear their cry, “Have compassion on us and help us”? Or are we so busy with our own affairs that we pass by?
Now, to be fair, those who passed by in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan were not going on to do something nefarious. We don’t read, “They were too busy to stop because they were on their way to embezzle the synagogue funds, or plot the assassination of Herod.” The priest may well have been hurrying to a liturgical workshop; the Levite might have been late for a service at Jericho.
But no matter how upright such people, Christ’s word of commendation was only for the one who had compassion, the one who saw with God’s eyes, the one who stopped and identified with suffering. Significantly, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus emphasized active compassion for others as one measure of recognizing his followers.
Knowing the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings means we cannot remain selfishly at a personal high point, only taking in Christ’s resurrection power, but that we must go deeper and from that resurrection power draw the strength to descend into the valley of human need. Thus, Henri Nouwen concludes that, whatever our career paths, and no matter how compelling our career needs, when all is said and done, every Christian is called to “the great vocation of compassion.”
Confronting Ourselves
As we are confronted with Paul’s heart cry “That I may know him,” we must each ask ourselves: Do we truly, honestly want to know him on his terms? Do we want to turn from protecting self to becoming vulnerable, broken bread for others as Christ was broken for us? Do we want to risk becoming so dead to self that we become like Jesus in his death? Do we want all that?
Inescapably, those are his terms. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and he commanded, “Be compassionate.… Love one another as I have loved you.… Only then can you understand what it means to take up your cross and follow me.”
So we see that Paul’s heart cry in Philippians 3:10 is not some mystical, emotional excess, but the yearning of one who in practice would be a true disciple, an obedient servant.
Knowing the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings will be inevitable for the one who sincerely prays “that I may know him.” Hebrews 2:10 tells us that God made Christ “perfect through suffering.” Christians cannot begin to grow up into the fullness and stature of Christ if they attempt to by-pass the suffering process. If we would know Christ, we must go on to know the fellowship of his sufferings.
Paul’s prayer cuts to our very core, to the thoughts and intents of our hearts, and forces us to face the hypocrisy of wanting the resurrection power without the vocation of compassion. Yet only when we go on and enter into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and so live compassion-filled lives will we be able to say that we truly know Christ.
