Philippians 3:8

Philippians 3:8

I. "The knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord"; that is, the knowledge of our wants and of the means by which those wants may be most fully satisfied; the knowledge of sin and of salvation. Men's eyes in general are equally closed against both, for as none but Christians have anything like a true notion of their own evil, so also none but Christians look forward with any lively hope to the glory that shall be revealed hereafter. When our Lord was foretelling the state of the world in after-times, He more than once declared to His disciples that His Gospel would only in a small degree overcome the wickedness of the world; He says that "as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man," that as before the Flood men ate and drank, bought and sold, planted and builded, and thought nothing of God till His judgments burst upon them and destroyed them all, so it should be at the time when the Son of man should be revealed. Now how is it that so many of us are living exactly in the manner which Christ described?

II. Very often after baptism children are suffered to remain in complete ignorance of everything that concerns their salvation. The boy grows into manhood with a confirmed unchristian practice and scarcely any relics of Christian knowledge. And what is the issue? In the ordinary course of things, it is a sinful life and a hopeless death, unless God touches the heart with a sense of its danger, and in His power and mercy brings it to true and effectual conversion. Those who have grown up to youth or manhood without having yet fully embraced the offer of salvation through Christ are called upon to turn to Him and to believe on Him; and the threatenings addressed to the unconverted sinner are at present all in their full force addressed to them. Remember that he that doeth righteousness is righteous; that he that committeth sin that is, who is in the habit of carelessly committing it hath not seen Christ, neither knoweth Him, but is of the devil, who has been a sinner from the beginning.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. i., p. 28.

References: Philippians 3:8. J. H. Jellett, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 25; Homilist,4th series, vol. i., p. 68; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 288.