To Know Him and Be Like Him
If you knew what it would take to spread the gospel message throughout the known world in the 1st century AD and you could manufacture in a lab the quintessential apostle, you would probably create someone much like Saul of Tarsus. He was not a perfect man; but, after Jesus changed his life, he understood that it took more than productive ministry efforts to live for the Lord wholeheartedly amid “a crooked and perverse generation” (Phil. 2:15).
Saul’s Credentials
God shaped Saul under the perfect conditions to function as a premier Christian apostle. He was a Jewish man zealous for the Law and the traditions of Judaism and a bona fide Old Testament scholar. He had studied under Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Supreme Court) and one of the most prominent Jewish rabbis of the 1st century. So, insofar as Christianity initially presented itself not as a brand-new religion but, rather, as the fulfillment of Judaism, Saul’s background was a major boon to understanding, formulating, and transmitting the fledgling church’s theology.
Furthermore, Saul knew well both the Jewish and Gentile worlds. Hailing from the port city of Tarsus, he routinely came into contact with Gentiles. He knew Gentile literature and philosophy (cf. Acts 17:28; Ti. 1:12); and he had considerable skill in writing, logic, rhetoric, and administration. On top of all that, he was a Roman citizen. So, Saul was a son of Abraham thoroughly steeped in Judaism yet ideally positioned to evangelize Gentiles. What more could you ask for in an apostle?
There was only one problem: As soon as Christianity began to spread, Saul took his stand with the church’s most violent persecutors. He was the poster child for the “Never Jesus” movement. With all the diligence and religious fervor he could muster, Saul trained his crosshairs on the followers of Jesus Christ and persecuted them relentlessly. Saul was one in a long line of religiously motivated persecutors who fulfilled Jesus’ prediction: “The time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service” (Jn. 16:2).
Saul’s Conversion
But Jesus had His own plans. Declining Saul’s rejection, the risen Christ confronted the Pharisee on the road to Damascus, as Saul was en route to persecute even more of Jesus’ followers (Acts 9:1–2).
The light of Jesus’ resplendent countenance shone with blazing glory. The persecutor fell to the ground, utterly astonished, bewildered, and disarmed. Jesus spoke. And Saul’s life was never the same again (vv. 3–9). He became an apostle—better known by his Greek name, Paul—and after his conversion, he set out to take the message of Jesus’ person, work, and Lordship all over the known world. He became, arguably, the single most influential human force behind the spread of Christianity during the Apostolic Era.
Paul’s Motivations
I sometimes wonder what I would say to Paul if I could speak to him today. I might be tempted to say, “Wow, Paul! Look at all you accomplished for the Lord! You wrote all these letters, you started all these churches, and you helped lead all these people to faith in Jesus.
What an impressive list of ministry achievements you’ve racked up!” And in response to such an outburst, I imagine Paul might reply, “Yes, by God’s grace I was able to accomplish a lot, but you’re missing the point. Life and ministry aren’t ultimately about getting things done; they’re about knowing Jesus and being like Jesus. Anything good that I managed to do in my life was simply an overflow and outflow of those two commitments.”
Paul laid out this very philosophy of life and ministry in Scripture nearly two millennia ago: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:7–8).
Paul used accounting terms in this passage. It’s as though he had a ledger in which he had recorded all his gains and losses—his credits in black ink and debits in red—throughout his life. And when he stood on the other side of his Damascus Road experience, he came to realize that all the things he had previously written on the “gains” side of the ledger were insignificant and worthless compared to the deeper privilege and the higher pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ. “Take everything I’ve racked up in the gains column and move it over to the losses column,” he essentially said. “Run my diplomas through the shredder and throw my trophies into the city dump because that’s how insignificant everything else is when measured against the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
And so, recognizing the great value differential between gains achieved apart from Christ on the one hand and knowing Christ as a Christian on the other, Paul launched into the heartbeat of his philosophy. The central motivating factor behind everything he attempted to do as a Christian was “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (v. 10).
If I were writing this epistle, I probably would’ve stopped writing there. Knowing Jesus? Sounds great! Experiencing the power of His resurrection—His glorious victory over sin, death, and hell? That sounds great too! Sign me up for both of them. But Paul went a step further and wrote something I would not have been so keen to write: “And [that I may know] the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (v. 10). In other words, Paul was so transfixed by who Jesus is that he wanted to be like Jesus in all things—not only experiencing His death-shattering resurrection power, but also sharing in His profoundly soul-wrenching sufferings.
So, Paul might have summarized his approach to Christian life and ministry by saying, “Everything that I once strove for now seems like nothing but a waste of time and resources because I’ve found something so much better: knowing and being like Jesus Christ.” For Paul, Christian life and ministry all boiled down to knowing Christ and being like Him.
Your Approach
What about you? Is it your heart’s desire that everything you do, think, and say would be an outflow and overflow of knowing Jesus and seeking to be like Him? If we aren’t careful, we can easily fool ourselves into thinking that the essence of spirituality is getting a lot of ministry stuff done for God—as if productivity and holiness were synonyms.
Ministering to others matters, and getting things done is necessary; but such pursuits will be lastingly effective only if they are done for the right reasons and with the right motives. And based on this passage, the right reasons and motives are that our ministry efforts should be an overflow of our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They should be a result of our desire to be like Jesus and to help others be like Jesus.
As you set about doing all the things that need doing, don’t just look at those things as ends in themselves. Rather, look at them as opportunities to know Jesus more and to be more like Him—because these motives ultimately will give them true and lasting value.
