Philippians 3:7

Paul’s self-humbling 3:7

Paul formerly regarded all these things that he possessed and others as contributing to God’s acceptance of him. Yet he had come to learn on the Damascus road and since then that such fleshly "advantages" did not improve his position with God. Rather they constituted hindrances because the more of them that Paul had the more convinced he was that God would accept him for his works’ sake. Each of his fleshly advantages strengthened his false hope of salvation.

"While Christ did not consider God-likeness to accrue to his own advantage, but ’made himself nothing,’ so Paul now considers his former ’gain’ as ’loss’ for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. As Christ was ’found’ in ’human likeness,’ Paul is now ’found in Christ,’ knowing whom means to be ’conformed’ (echoing the morphe of a slave, Philippians 2:7) to his death (Philippians 2:8). Finally, as Christ’s humiliation was followed by God’s ’glorious’ vindication of him, so present ’suffering’ for Christ’s sake will be followed by ’glory’ in the form of resurrection. As he has appealed to the Philippians to do, Paul thus exemplifies Christ’s ’mindset,’ embracing suffering and death. This is what it means ’to know Christ,’ to be ’found in him’ by means of his gift of righteousness; and as he was raised and exalted to the highest place, so Paul and the Philippian believers, because they are now ’conformed to Christ’ in his death, will also be ’conformed’ to his glory." [Note: Fee, Paul’s Letter . . ., p. 315.]