Excellency of the Knowledge

Philippians 3:8 "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,"

I think a lot of times the emphasis of this verse is placed on the fact that Paul is dumping everything that the world values (and even some Christians value), and proclaiming it all to be a loss, complete and utter garbage, dung. And while this is a big statement, and something all of us should strive to be able to echo, if you shift focus a bit, I think you'll see the focus of the verse is in a different place.

The excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. This is Paul's focus in this verse, in his life. All that other stuff was gone and forgotten. The one and only thing that mattered was the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord.

What does that mean? Many people know of Jesus, many people claim to know Him, but only a true Christ follower knows the excellency of that knowledge. In the Greek, excellency is actually a verb meaning "to excel, to be superior, better than, to surpass." In other words, the knowledge of Jesus Christ as your individual Lord is actively better than anything else. It surpasses all those meaningless things Paul counted as loss and forgot about.

If you merely have knowledge of Jesus Christ, you are missing out. However, if you have knowledge of Him as your Lord, meaning you are surrendered to Him as King of your life, then you know exactly how superior that knowledge is to anything else.