That sounds an anti-climax after 'Gain' and 'Be in Him.' These phrases
seem to express a much more intimate relation than this, but we must
note that it is no mere theoretical or intellectual knowledge which is
intended. Such knowledge would need no surrender or suffering 'the loss
of all things.' We can only buy the knowledge of Christ at such a rate,
but we can buy knowledge about Him very much cheaper. Such knowledge
would not be worth the price; it lies on the surface of the soul, and
does nothing. Many a man amongst us has it, and it is of no use to him.
If Paul had undergone all that he had undergone and sacrificed all that
he had given up, and for his reward had only gained accurate knowledge
about Christ, he had certainly wasted his life and made a bad bargain.
But as always, so here, to know means knowledge based upon experience.
Did Christ mean that a correct creed was eternal life when He said,
'This is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ
whom Thou has sent?' Did Paul mean the dry light of the understanding
when he prayed that the Ephesians might know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge, in order to be filled with all the fulness of God?
Clearly we have to go much deeper down than that superficial
interpretation in order to reach the reality of the New Testament
conception of knowledge. It is co-extensive with life, and is built upon
inward experience. In a word, it is one aspect of winning Jesus. It is
consciousness contemplating its riches, counting its gains. As a man
knows the bliss of parental or wedded love only by having it, or as he
knows the taste of wine only by drinking it, or the glory of music only
by hearing it, and the brightness of the day only by seeing it, so we
know Christ only by winning Him. There must first be the perception and
possession by sense or emotion, and then the reflection on the
possession by understanding. This applies to all religious truth. It
must be possessed ere it be fully known. Like the new name written upon
the Apocalyptic stone, 'No one knoweth but he that receiveth it.'
The knowledge which was Paul's life's aim was knowledge of a Person:
the object determines the nature of the knowledge. The mental act of
knowing a proposition or a science or even of knowing about a person by
hearing of him is different from that of knowing people when we have
lived beside them. We need not be afraid of attaching too familiar a
meaning to this word of our text, if we say that it implies personal
acquaintance with the Christ whom we know. Of course we come to know Him
in the first instance through the medium of statements about Him, and we
cannot too strongly insist, in these days of destructive criticism, on
the absolute necessity of accepting the Gospel statements as to the life
of Jesus as the only possible method of knowing Him. But then, beyond
that acceptance of the record must come the application and
appropriation of it, and the transmutation of a historical fact into a
personal experience. We may take an illustration from any of the
Scriptural truths about Jesus:--For instance, Scripture declares Him to
be our Redeemer. One man believes Him to be so, welcomes Him into his
life as such, and finds Him to be such. Another man believes Him to be
so, but never puts His redeeming power to the proof. Is the knowledge of
these two rightly called by the same name? That which comes after
experience is surely not rightly designated by the same title as that
which has no vivification nor verification of such a sort to build on,
and is the mere product of the understanding. There is nothing which the
great mass of so-called Christians need more than to have forced into
their thoughts the difference between these two kinds of knowledge of
Christ. There are thousands of them who, if asked, are ready to profess
that they know Jesus, but to whom He has never been anything more than
a partially understood article of an uncared for creed, and has never
been in living contact with their needs, nor known for their strength in
weakness, their comforter in sorrow, 'their life in death,' their all in
all.
To deepen that experimental knowledge of Jesus is a worthy aim for the
whole life, and is a process that may go on indefinitely through it all.
To know Him more and more is to have more of heaven in us. To be
penetrating ever deeper into His fulness, and finding every day new
depths to penetrate is to have a fountain of freshness in our dusty days
that will never fail or run dry. There is only one inexhaustible person,
and that is Jesus Christ. We have all fulness in our Lord: we have
already received all when we received Him. Are we advancing in the
experience that is the parent of knowing Him? Do new discoveries meet us
every day as if we were explorers in a virgin land? To have this for our
aim is enough for satisfaction, for blessedness, and for growth. To know
Him is a liberal education.