Philippians 3:8

Yea doubtless, and&c. Better, perhaps, Yea rather I even &c. He adds a twofold new weight to the assertion; "I count" (not only "I have counted"), emphasizing the presentness of the estimate; and "all things," not only specified grounds of reliance. Whatever, from any point of view, could seem to compete with Christ as his peace and life, he renounces as such; be it doings, sufferings, virtues, inspiration, revelations.

for Better, again, on account of.

the excellency More lit., the surpassingness. For St Paul's love of superlative words see on Philippians 2:9 above.

the knowledge&c. He found, in the light of grace, that "this is life eternal, to knowthe only true God, and Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). On the conditions and blessedness of such "knowledge" cp. e.g. Matthew 11:27 (where the word is kindred though not identical); John 1:10-12; John 10:14; John 14:7; John 17:25; 2 Corinthians 5:16; 2 Corinthians 10:5; Galatians 4:9; Eph 3:19; 2 Peter 3:18; 1 John 2:3-5; 1 John 3:6; 1 John 4:7-8. The Apostle sometimes speaks with a certain depreciation of "knowledge" (e.g. 1 Corinthians 8:1; 1 Corinthians 13:2; 1 Corinthians 13:8). But he means there plainly a knowledge which is concerned not with Christ and God, but with spiritual curiosities, which may be known, or at least sought, without Divine life and love. The knowledge here in view is the recognition, from the first insight eternally onward, of the "knowledge-surpassing" (Ephesians 3:19) reality and glory of the Person and Work of the Son of the Father, as Saviour, Lord, and Life; a knowledge inseparable from love. See further on Philippians 3:10.

Observe the implicit witness of such language as that before us to the Godhead of Christ. Cp. Ephesians 3:19, and notes in this Series.

of Christ Jesus my Lord Note the solemnity and fulness of the designation. The glorious Object shines anew before him as he thinks out the words. Observe too the characteristic "myLord" (see note on Philippians 1:3 above). There is a Divine individualismin the Gospel, in deep harmony with its truths of community and communion, but not to be merged in them. "One by one" is the law of the great ingathering and incorporation (John 6:35; John 6:37; John 6:40; John 6:44; John 6:47; John 6:51 &c.); the believing individual, as well as the believing Church, has Christ for "Head" (1 Corinthians 11:3), and lives by faith in Him who has loved the individual and given Himself for him (Galatians 2:20; cp. Ephesians 5:25).

for whom Lit. and better, on account of whom; in view of the discovery of whom.

I have suffered&c. Better, I suffered &c.; a reference to the crisis of his renunciation of the old reliance, and also of the stern rejection with which the Synagogue would treat him as a renegade. This one passing allusion to the tremendous cost at which he became a Christian is, by its very passingness, deeply impressive and pathetic; and it has of course a powerful bearing on the nature and solidity of the reasons for his change, and so on the evidences of the Faith. See on this last subject, Observations on the Character &c. of St Paul, by George, first Lord Lyttelton (1747).

The verb rendered "I suffered loss," "I was fined, mulcted," is akin to the noun "loss" used just above, and takes it up. There is a certain verbal "play" in this; he reckoned his old privileges and position loss, from a spiritual point of view, and he was made by others to feel the loss of them, in a temporal respect.

allthings] The Gr. suggests the paraphrase, my all.

dung Better, refuse, as R.V. margin. The Greek word is used in secular writers in both senses. Its probably true derivation favours the former, but the derivation popularly accepted by the Greeks ("a thing cast to the dogs") the latter. And this fact leans to the inference that in common parlance it meant the leavings of a meal, or the like. See Lightfoot here.

that I may win Better, with R.V., that I may gain; the verb echoes the noun of Philippians 3:7. There was no meritin his coming to a true conviction about "confidence in the flesh"; but that conviction was so vital an antecedent to his possession and fruition of Christ that it was as it werethe price paid in order to "gain" Him. Cp. the imagery of Revelation 3:17-18.

" That I may": practically, we may paraphrase, "that I might"; with a reference to the past. The main bearing of the passage is obviously on the crisis of his conversion; on what he then lost and then gained, but he speaks as if he were in the crisis now. Not unfrequently in N.T. Greek the past is thus projected into the present and future, where certainly in English we should say "might," not "may." Cp. e.g. (in the Greek) Matthew 19:13; Act 5:26; 1 Timothy 1:16; 1 John 3:5. It is true that the Apostle here uses the present, not the past, in the adjoining main verb (" I count"). But this may well be an exceptional case of projection of the wholestatement about the past, instead of part of it, into the present. Or may not the words "and do count them refuse" be parenthetic? In that case he would in effect say, what would be a most vivid antithesis, "I suffered the lossof my all, (and a worthless -all" I now see it to be,) that I might gainChrist."

He thus "gained" nothing less than Christ; not merely subsidiary and derived benefits, but the Source and Secret of all benefits. The glorious Person, "who is made unto us of God wisdom, even righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30), was now his own, in a mysterious but real possession.