There is a difference between knowing about someone and knowing them.
You can know everything about a person — their history, their habits, their preferences, their public record — and still be a stranger to them. Knowledge about is information. Knowing is relationship. And the gap between the two is not closed by accumulating more information. It is closed by presence, by time, by the kind of shared experience that cannot be transferred through a book or a lecture or a doctrinal statement.
This is the distinction Paul is drawing in Philippians 3:10 when he says: “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”
Not know about Him. Know Him. And the path Paul describes to that knowing is not the path most of us would choose.
The Man Who Wrote This
Before we receive this verse, we need to understand what Paul gave up to write it.
Philippians 3 begins with Paul cataloging his credentials — not to boast, but to establish what he is about to say he has counted as loss. Circumcised on the eighth day. Of the tribe of Benjamin. A Hebrew of Hebrews. As to the law, a Pharisee. As to zeal, a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the law, blameless.
This is not a modest resume. By every measure that mattered in his world, Paul was at the top. He had achieved what his tradition said was achievable. He had the credentials, the standing, the righteousness that could be observed and verified and pointed to.
And then he met Christ on the road to Damascus. And everything changed.
“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:7–8)
Rubbish. The word in Greek is skúbablon — refuse, waste, the kind of thing you throw away without a second thought. Paul is not being dramatic. He is being precise. Everything he had built, everything he had achieved, everything that had defined him — he counts it as waste compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
This is the man who then says: that I may know him. He has already given up everything to know Him. And he is still reaching.
The Power of His Resurrection
The first dimension of knowing Christ that Paul names is the power of His resurrection.
This is not merely the historical fact of the resurrection — though the historical fact is foundational. It is the ongoing, present-tense power of the risen Christ operating in and through the life of the believer. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that is at work in you (Ephesians 1:19–20). The resurrection is not just something that happened. It is something that is happening — the life of the risen Christ breaking into the present through the people who belong to Him.
To know Christ in the power of His resurrection is to experience that power — not as a theological proposition but as a lived reality. It is the power that transforms, that renews, that produces in us what we could not produce in ourselves. It is the power that makes dead things live and broken things whole and impossible things possible.
This is the first thing Paul wants. The power of the resurrection, not as a doctrine to affirm but as a reality to inhabit.
The Fellowship of His Sufferings
And then Paul says the thing that stops us.
“and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”
The fellowship of His sufferings. Not as a footnote to the resurrection power. Not as the unfortunate cost of discipleship that we endure on the way to the good stuff. As part of the knowing itself. As one of the two dimensions of what it means to know Christ.
This is not masochism. Paul is not saying that suffering is good in itself or that we should seek it out. He is saying something more precise and more important: that the path to knowing Christ runs through the same territory that Christ walked. And Christ walked through suffering. He walked through betrayal and abandonment and physical agony and the weight of the world’s sin. He walked through death.
And the people who know Him most deeply are often the people who have walked through something similar — not because suffering earns knowledge of Christ, but because suffering strips away the things that keep us at a comfortable distance from Him. The self-sufficiency that makes prayer feel optional. The comfort that makes dependence feel unnecessary. The illusion of control that makes surrender feel premature.
Suffering removes the distance. And in the removal of the distance, Christ becomes more real.
Not the Absence of God
The product description for this tee says something that deserves to be said slowly: suffering is not the absence of God. It is often where He is most present.
This runs against everything our instincts tell us. When things are going well, we feel close to God. When things fall apart, we feel abandoned. The silence of suffering feels like absence. The unanswered prayers feel like evidence that no one is listening.
But the biblical witness is almost uniformly the opposite. The psalms of lament — the ones that cry out “where are you?” and “how long?” and “why have you forsaken me?” — are not the psalms of people who have lost their faith. They are the psalms of people who are still talking to God in the middle of the worst moments of their lives. The lament itself is an act of faith. You do not cry out to someone you believe is absent.
And the testimony of the people who have walked through the deepest suffering is almost always the same: He was there. Not in the way I expected. Not in the way I asked for. But there — more present, more real, more tangible than He had ever been in the comfortable seasons.
The fellowship of His sufferings is not a punishment. It is an invitation into the place where the distance collapses and the knowing becomes real.
The Ones Who’ve Sat in the Dark
This tee was made, the description says, for the ones who’ve sat in the dark and still called Him good. For the ones who’ve walked through grief, doubt, and fire — and found Christ more real on the other side.
If that is you — if you are in the dark right now, or if you have been and you know what it cost — then Philippians 3:10 is not a verse about spiritual achievement. It is a verse about where you already are.
The fellowship of His sufferings is not something you have to seek out. It finds you. And when it does, it is not evidence that God has abandoned you. It is evidence that you are on the same road He walked. That the path you are on is the path that leads to knowing Him — not knowing about Him, but knowing Him, in the way that only shared experience makes possible.
Paul had given up everything. He had the credentials and the achievements and the standing, and he counted them all as rubbish. And from that place of having lost everything, he was still reaching — still pressing toward the knowing that he had not yet fully arrived at, still running toward the Christ who had already caught him.
That I may know him. Not a slogan. A surrender. And the most worthwhile pursuit of a human life.
Carry It
The To Know Christ Cotton Tee is rooted in Philippians 3:10 — for the ones who’ve walked through the dark and found Him faithful. Tultex unisex fit, 4.5 oz. ring-spun cotton. Made to order in Royal Blue, Heather Purple, and Cardinal.
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