And I pray this, that your love may abound even more and more in knowledge and every kind of insight

More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things – indeed, I regard them as dung! ¹  – that I may gain Christ,

My aim is to know him, ¹  to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, ²  and to be like him in his death,

And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds ¹  in Christ Jesus.

Not that I have already attained this – that is, I have not already been perfected – but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me. ¹ 

Brothers and sisters, ¹  I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: ²  Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead,

And as you Philippians know, at the beginning of my gospel ministry, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in this matter of giving and receiving except you alone.