“How can I know Christ? How can I enter into a deeper relationship with Him?”

Any Christian who is healthy before the Lord will often ask himself such questions; if we don’t, it indicates we have become complacent in our seeking after the Lord.

If we do desire to pursue Christ, then we must seek Him in His word, and in particular, we need to spend time to consider Philippians 3:7-11. This is because, in the entire New Testament, this portion, more than any other, shows us the way to know Christ.

(In the Old Testament, the Song of Songs also focuses on the matter of how we can grow in Christ and develop our relationship with Him; it does so using the picture of a love story between a seeking young maiden and her beloved. It is very good to spend some time, every few years, to study this book as well; one very good, and very practical, exposition of it is The Song of Songs: a Divine Romance, by Brother Titus Chu.)

So, here in Chicago, we just finished a study of this portion of the word. Of course, we went through these verses consecutively. As you do that, you can see there is a real progression in our coming to know Christ. First, we count our gains as loss because of Christ (v. 7); then we count all things as loss because of the excellence of the knowledge of Christ, even suffering the loss of all things and counting them as refuse, that we may gain Christ (v. 8). Then, we are found in Christ (v. 9), so that finally, we can come to know Christ in our experience (v. 10).

But just today, as I was still considering these verses and this matter of how to know Christ, I was helped by looking at them, so to speak, in reverse. Because when we view them in that way, we will understand that we cannot truly come to know Christ, as we see in verse 10, unless we are first found in Him, as we see in verse 9.

So, what hinders us from knowing Christ? Very often, it is the fact that we are found in so many other things besides Christ. Perhaps we are pursuing a good education, or advancement in our career. Or, we may be following a certain sports team or spending time in one hobby or another, or on some other kind of interest.

There may be nothing wrong with any of these things in themselves, and even with being very diligent in such pursuits; but, we must not become occupied with such things to the point that others find us in them, and not in Christ.

In fact, even in the spiritual realm, it is so easy to become focused on the Lord’s work, to the point where we lose touch with Christ Himself, so that we are just Christian workers, rather than followers of Christ.

Whenever this happens, it will indeed be difficult for us to know Christ as we should.

What is the antidote to being distracted in such a way? For this we need to go back still further, to the beginning of this section, that is, verses 7-8. Here we see that, to truly be found in Christ, as spoken of in verse 9, we need a deeper experience of what it means to experience “loss” for the sake of Christ. We should seek the Lord for His mercy to grant us such a vision of Christ, so that we come to the point where, like Paul, we realize all else truly is “refuse” when compared to Christ, and count it as such.

Only when we have such a deep realization will we forsake such things and be found, practically speaking, in Christ. Then, even as we pursue a career or these other things, when ones contact us, they will still have a sense, even if they can’t say exactly what it is, that “Here is a person in Christ.” And with such a firm foundation of being found as one who is in Christ, we may then go on to know Him in the deepest way.

Note: Not too long ago I also covered these verses in a series I did for The Christian Faith Podcast; you can access that via the links below.

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— 30 May 2026 —