Text: “that I may know him [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11, ESV).

Context: A prison letter, that’s what Philippians is. The apostle Paul was writing to this congregation of Christians in Philippi (present-day Greece).

Paul had several reasons for writing to them:

• to thank them (1:3)
• to remind them of the faithfulness of God, especially amidst trials (1:6)
• to encourage them to love and serve one another (1:9)
• to remind them to have courage amidst opposition (1:27-30)

The list could easily continue of reasons Paul wrote to these people he loved.

Teaching: I would guess that Philippians 4:13 is one of the most decontextualized and misapplied and misinterpreted verses in all the Bible: “I can do all things through him [Christ] who strengthens me.” It’s often reduced to kitsch on jerseys, helmets, and coffee mugs. And many folks have no idea what the letter of Philippians is all about. It’s written by a Christian man who is incarcerated for telling the truth in a pagan world system, and that system’s leadership hated the truth and the heralds of that truth. Here, that herald is Paul in the 1st century A.D.

That’s why it’s so easy to miss this whole verse: “that I may know him [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11, ESV).

When’s the last time you heard of Christians being taught that verse fully and in context?

More often than not, Christianity gets pitched like it’s candies of blessing for children rather than divine doctrine for theological battle.

Paul teaches that we are to embrace suffering that comes by virtue of laboring faithful in Christian ministry. We’re to count the costs, in other words. We’re to know that because Christ suffered, his people will suffer. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Christianity is not candies of blessing for children but rather divine doctrine for theological battle.

Encouragement: To be encouraged from the Scriptures is foundational, but that entails not glossing over the hard parts, not ripping verses from their context, not turning verses into t-shirt slogans, but instead living them out via transformed lives as those who’ve counted the costs, who’ve spent times of depth in the Scriptures, and who, by God’s grace, are allowed to fight on another day.