Philippians 3:10 and 11 speak of both death and the out-resurrection from among the dead (Gk.). The death here is the lovable, all-accomlishing death of Christ. In the previous message we saw the many things that Christ's death has accomplished on our behalf. In this message we come to the result or the issue of being conformed to Christ's death: that we may attain unto the out-resurrection from among the dead. Death is the condition for our attaining to the out-resurrection. Hence, in these verses we have both the condition and the goal. The Greek word translated "attain" in verse 11 actually means "arrive at." This indicates that Paul desired to arrive at a certain goal, the goal of the out-resurrection.
Many Christians are not clear about the goal of their Christian life. After we believed in the Lord Jesus according to God's New Testament economy, we were baptized. The significance of baptism is to terminate our natural being and to be germinated with the divine life. In baptism the natural life is buried, and a new life rises up. Baptism, however, is simply the beginning of our Christian life. Our Christian life also has a goal, and this goal is the out-resurrection. This term "out-resurrection" means that every part of our being will be resurrected. When we were baptized, our old life, our natural human life, was terminated and buried, and a new life, the divine life, which is Christ, rose up from within. At that time, we began our Christian life and walk. The Christian walk involves a long process, and it takes us a long way. At the end of this walk is the goal at which we need to arrive. As we have pointed out, this goal is the out-resurrection, the extraordinary resurrection. The way toward this goal is the process of resurrection.
On the day we were baptized, we should have realized that our old man, the natural man with the old life, was buried. Through that burial, the divine life, the eternal life, rose up within us, and our Christian walk began. A new life had come to live in us with the goal of bringing our whole being into resurrection. Between baptism and the goal there is the long process of arriving at the out-resurrection. Although our baptism signified that our old man had been buried and that another life had risen up to live in us, we did not live according to what was signified by our baptism. Most of the time we lived by our natural life, not by Christ. Because we still live so much by our natural life, the process of resurrection must continue.
The Epistle to the Philippians is composed in such a way that if we do not have experience, we shall have difficulty understanding it. Remember that verses 8 through 11 of chapter three are one long sentence. In verse 8 Paul says that he counts all things loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord. Furthermore, in verse 9 he tells us that he desires to be found in Christ in such a condition that he does not have his own righteousness out from the law, but that he has God Himself lived out of him as his righteousness. All this is for the purpose of experientially knowing Christ, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings and also of being conformed to His death in order to arrive, by any means, at the out-resurrection from among the dead.
Arriving at the out-resurrection is the result, the issue, of being conformed to Christ's death. To be conformed, molded, to the death of Christ means that we remain always in His death. If we remain in Christ's death, allowing ourselves to be molded into its likeness, the outcome will be that every part of our being will be gradually resurrected.