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But whatever were gains to me\u2026 I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ\u2014the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ\u2014yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7a, 9-11)

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There are many little tangents one could take out of these beautifully dense verses.\xa0 We\u2019ll stick with just one.\xa0 The same one I\u2019ve been harping on the whole way through: our union as Christians with the death and resurrection of Jesus.\xa0

But here Paul throws an odd twist into it.\xa0 It does not show up in the usual order of death, then resurrection.\xa0 Instead, Paul begins with resurrection\u2014then talks about suffering and death before returning to resurrection again.\xa0

I see a circle here.\xa0 Every day we begin in the resurrection life of Jesus.\xa0 A new day: a gift of life to be thankful for.\xa0 Not simply because we woke up on the right side of the ground\u2014but because we have life in Jesus!\xa0 We wake up into a sure hope that gives purpose and direction to our giving and our grieving, our working and our washing, our studying and our suffering.\xa0 What we wake up into is a life in Christ, a Christian life\u2014a new life filled with new mercies every morning.\xa0

As we move through each new day\u2014we find that this Christian life also calls us to take up our cross and follow Jesus in his humble, self-giving, submissive way.\xa0 On this side of eternity, resurrection life is not yet ours in fullness.\xa0 We still must die to ourselves and to our sins and all these other things that fall away in the all-surpassing glory of knowing Jesus.\xa0 We have to reckon with and die to our rage at the bad driver in front of us, we have to loosen our grip on our status, accomplishments, and wealth that we have or desire to have, we have to confront and suffer our way through a still sin-broken world where nothing is as it ought to be.\xa0 But, as we do: suffering with Jesus and letting our ambitions and sins die in his death, the Spirit forms the new, resurrection life of Christ ever more fully within us too.\xa0

Sometimes this happens slowly over years and decades.\xa0 And sometimes we can see the full course of this rhythm of life-suffering-death-life all in one day or moment.\xa0

However that is: this is the picture of life lived like a slinky.\xa0 Round and round it goes down through the years\u2014an endless spiral of rising and dying and rising again until Christ is formed in us.\xa0 This is how we come to know Christ and the power of his resurrection at work in us and come to believe more fully that yes: this Christ who is bringing us to life in the little, daily things, can also be trusted to keep his promise to raise us to life at the end of all things.\xa0

So while there is much suffering still to be endured and many things in our lives that we still must die to, it is worth remembering as Paul does here that the first and final word of the journey with Jesus is life.\xa0

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