10 My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death

This is a hard verse because it starts off “pleasant” with the idea of knowing the power of His resurrection and then moves into the “unpleasant” notion of having fellowship with His sufferings and being conformed to His death. The problem is we think in terms of pleasant and unpleasant but Paul does not separate the ideas mentioned. Instead, Paul put these things together and says they are his goal. Fellowship with Christ’s sufferings and conformity to His death are not bad things because they mean we are becoming more like Him which is not to say we are becoming divine but becoming selfless and understanding that sin has been defeated and we are alive to it no longer (reckoning ourselves dead to sin but alive to God (Romans 6:11)). We have to remember that Paul says the idea to become more like Christ and to know Him more which he launched in chapter 2 verses 5-11. It cannot be helped that the more we know Jesus the more we want to be like Him.

Just a thought,

Mike