Philippians 3:12-13 — Press ON
Leave a CommentForget what lies behind and press on.
Philippians 3:12-13a
Straining Toward the Goal
12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
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The big idea
Paul could press on for three reasons: Christ Jesus had made him his own; he had learned to forget what lay behind and strain toward what lay ahead; and he was drawn by the upward call of God, whose prize is Christ himself. At the end of 2020 Geno urged the church to adopt that attitude – to let go of the year’s rancor, sins, broken expectations and even past achievements, and run toward Jesus.
Key takeaways
- “Christ Jesus has made me his own” carries no triumphalism. Paul did none of it; Jesus came after him on the Damascus road.
- Christ has embraced you fully, warts and all. If he could save Paul, the self-described chief of sinners, he can save anybody.
- Perfection is a mirage in this life. Be wary of anyone who claims to have arrived, and encourage one another’s next step.
- Paul may have been forgetting his religious credentials, his past as a persecutor, or even his own achievements – all of which are worth leaving behind.
- The church needs to leave behind the rancor and divisiveness that seeped in from the culture in 2020 and put on spiritual clothes.
- Healthy grief lets go of the expected future that included what was lost, and embraces the one that is true.
- The goal is a life well lived; the prize is Christ himself, waiting at the finish line to say, “Well done.”
It was the last Sunday of 2020. Someone had said they had never been so glad to see the ball drop in New York, and Geno, thinking laughter was good medicine, shared two memes about the year. He was hopeful for 2021, with a vaccine, wider testing and better knowledge of how to treat the virus. But he wanted to take a page from Paul and apply it to the cultural moment: forget what lies behind, and press on.
The text
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Paul says “I press on” twice, Geno observed, and for three reasons: because Christ has made him his own; by forgetting the past and leaning into the future; and because of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
1. Because Christ has made me his own
What has Paul not yet obtained? “Perfect” here means finished or completed; Paul had a race to finish. The verse just before speaks of the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:11), which requires a right relationship with God – a righteousness Paul always preached as a gift, through the forgiveness of sins and justification by faith in the work of Jesus on the cross. “You know this. This is the gospel.”
The fundamental reason Paul can press on is that Christ pursued him and “made me his own.” “There’s no triumphalism in this. There’s no, look what I did – I walked the aisle, I said the prayer, I became a better person, and my good things are going to outweigh the bad. Jesus did it all. Paul did none of it.” He is remembering the Damascus road, where he was headed to make Christians prisoners and corpses, and Jesus knocked him to the ground, blinded him and turned him around (Acts 9:3–9). The great persecutor became the great establisher of the church. “He stopped me dead in my tracks, and I could see I was going the wrong way because of his intervention, not because of my wisdom.”
So “not that I have already obtained this” does not mean earning salvation. It means Christ had embraced him and given him a task, and Paul spent the rest of his life, until Nero executed him, pressing on in gratitude and helping others receive the same gift. “Press on” is the word for pursuing, even persecuting – like a bloodhound on a trail. “That’s how hard I’m pursuing this grateful response to conversion.”
Then “a preacher moment.” Do you believe Christ has fully embraced you, with all your warts and wrinkles, your dark thoughts, twisted ideas and broken relationships? (“Pastor, are you calling me names?”) Or do you feel he has embraced you except for “this bit over here”? “I want to ask you to drop that idea as quickly as possible.” He is not happy about our sins, but he embraces us fully. How can you know? “If he can save Paul, he can save anybody,” the man who called himself the worst of sinners and killed Christians in the name of God (1 Timothy 1:13–15).
“There are no sweeter words than to say, I press on because he has embraced me.” If Jesus came after me and forgave my sins on the cross, “what could then disturb me?” Geno voiced the decision Paul would make: “I will not allow these things to destroy my peace or steal my joy. Jesus, I belong to you, and I want to embrace you even as you have embraced me.”
2. Forgetting what lies behind
The chapter moves through many emotions – the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, the greatness of the resurrection – and Paul still does not consider himself across the finish line. “Perfection is a mirage in this life,” a goal we reach only when we cross over into death. “If you come across anybody that says, I am perfect, you should run the other way.” Some streams of the faith teach that perfection can be attained in this life; Geno disagrees. We are broken and being sanctified in Christ, and the final sanctification comes at the end.
By this point Paul had walked with Christ about thirty years. He had prayed for people who were miraculously healed, possibly been raised from the dead himself, struck a man blind, been jailed and beaten nearly to death many times – “and he says, I have not attained it.” That calls for humility. “We are all in process. I don’t have to be who you are or where you are, and we don’t need to judge ourselves against each other.” So encourage the next step: “Man, you took that next step, praise the Lord” – not “you’ve got ten more to go.”
Watching Elf, Geno was struck by the scene where Buddy tells everyone “well done” – “that’s how Christians should be.” A woman has jogged through his neighborhood for years and lost a great deal of weight; a couple of years ago he told her what a good job she had done keeping it off. “She smiled so big.” Now he just says “good job” whenever he sees her. “Let’s walk in humility and encouragement, one for another.”
What was Paul forgetting? Nobody knows for sure, but there are three good suggestions. First, perhaps his advantages in Judaism – circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee – which he now counted as rubbish (Philippians 3:4–8). Second, his life as an enemy of the church; to dwell on that would crush his soul. “There are some things we need to purposely forget. If we’ve asked Christ for forgiveness and we’ve been forgiven, let them go.” Third, his own progress – jailed, beaten, preaching across Asia and Europe. Paul never rested on those laurels, and they were not what sustained his relationship with Christ.
3. What we need to leave behind
Geno spoke to the congregation, not the culture at large: what should Hope not let hang over it “like a wet blanket” into 2021? More than anything, he wanted to leave behind “the rancor and divisiveness that has infiltrated the body of Christ from our larger culture,” which had caused him great grief. The church had chosen sides over quarantining, masks, what constitutes racism and how to fight it, and who should be elected. “It seemed like 2020 was one long divisive argument… people adopted a bad mood about April and kept it.” Worst of all, rancor “began to put on spiritual clothes.” “It’s okay for us to have different opinions. It’s really wrong for us to divide ourselves and chew on one another. People began to ask, what side is Jesus on? What a ridiculous question.”
So put off those pseudo-spiritual garments and put on something else:
“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”
To “strain forward” is how a runner leans into a race – not a sprinter lunging at the tape, just running with intention and effort. A discouraged runner has run out of juice and only puts in enough effort to look like he is running. “Are you discouraged? Are you just going through the motions in your spiritual life?” Forget some things, drop them, and strain forward.
Carrying the weight of sin? Repent and walk away from it. Poor habits – staying up too late with the TV, eating the wrong food, never reading the Bible or praying consistently – “all of us are guilty at one time or another.” Broken relationships? Humble yourself: “I’m sorry, I was wrong” – “not ‘I was wrong, but so were you.’” Or, like Paul, let go of imagined privileges: the unspoken demand that others respect you, listen to you, honor your opinion, simply love you well. We place those demands on people and get hurt and offended when they are not met. “That person doesn’t owe me the honor of listening to me.”
Forgetting what lies behind also means grieving well. In 2020 people lost jobs, income, and the ability to be with friends. Many never named it as grief; it came out as “a bad mood all the time, irritable – that’s how grief comes out of many of us, surely how it comes out of me. Poor PJ.” Healthy grief, those who study it say, begins to imagine a future without what was lost – and that, Geno pointed out, is a form of pressing on. “Let go of the expected future and embrace the one that is true.” Hold on to the old one and “we will never grieve well, and we will never find healing.”
Saul of Tarsus, perhaps Gamaliel’s best student, surely expected a long life in Jerusalem as a respected teacher, maybe on the Sanhedrin stamping out heresies. Instead he wrote to Philippi as a heretic in chains. He had to learn to forget what lay behind. So: lay aside the sins that so easily entangle and run the race (Hebrews 12:1); let go of lost, expected futures and find Christ in the new reality; release the accomplishments we present to Christ as proof of our worth, “and simply land in his embrace. It’s enough. In fact, it’s more than enough.”
4. The upward call
Four prepositional phrases pile up in verse 14 – “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” – and the NIV renders it “the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Scholars say the upward call simply means “come up here”: the invitation to answer Christ’s call to salvation, take up the cross daily, know Christ and make him known. Paul, once “a man of hubris” toward Christians, wanted to bring ever greater glory to the one who loved and embraced him so deeply.
“So what motivates you? What gets you out of bed in the morning?” If you do not know, start asking: what am I giving my energy to? “Don’t waste your life. Don’t spend it in frivolous matters.” Knowing Christ comes with purpose: “I know Jesus, therefore I…” Every follower of Jesus has the same heavenward call, which is not the same as being a carpenter, a bank teller or a preacher; those are all ways of responding to it.
The upward call is the finish line, and there is a prize inside it for every runner who crosses. “The goal is the life well lived. But the prize you receive is Christ himself,” standing at the finish line with arms outstretched:
“Well done, good and faithful servant… Enter into the joy of your master.”
“I live for those words. I hope you do too.” He pictured Jesus greeting people in the room by name – “Good to see you, Binyam. Good to see you, Kevin, Melinda, Bethany. Well done.” “So in conclusion, let’s not fall short and forfeit the prize. Let us press on, forgetting what lies behind. Let’s figure out what we need to let go of, and let it go.” All our effort will be worth it.
He prayed for a spirit of repentance and a pursuit of the knowledge of Christ, for help to drop “like a hot potato” whatever ties our feet to the ground, for the church to leave the year’s divisiveness behind and press forward “in unity and humility and grace one for another,” and for anyone considering for the first time that Christ may be embracing them to turn and say, “I want Christ to be my own.” “Let that be a good way to bring a conclusion to this year.”