Pressing Toward the Goal
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Intro
Paul, in chapter 3, has been showing the Philippians how they can have joy as disciples of Christ. He has done this, as we saw in our last lesson, by comparing what disciples of Christ, the true circumcision, put their confidence and trust in with what the false-circumcision (the Jewish false teachers) put their emphasis on.
The Jewish false teachers who he warns these brethren about were putting their trust and confidence in the flesh and in earthly things. They were trusting in their heritage, their circumcision, their study and knowledge of the law, and their own pursue of righteousness as being the reasons why they were saved. All of these things were an empty, vain pursuit for them without having faith in God.
Christians, in contrast to these, put their trust in and rejoice in only one thing (instead: one person) to be the reason why they can have true hope and peace: Jesus Christ. We put no confidence in the flesh. Christians see, as Paul did, that the death and resurrection of Jesus is what gives hope, and having a relationship with Jesus Christ is the greatest of treasures we can have in this life. Jesus is who we rejoice in. He is the one who gives us righteousness or forgiveness, and He is the one who will give us our final victory alongside Himself when He raises all from their graves. What a glorious hope to rejoice in and to look forward to.
We will pick up our study in verse 12. This is a challenging passage; a passage where Paul continues to show us his mindset regarding the things of this life and His future reward. He shows us what maturity in Christ looks like. As we study his mindset here, we will see that the main emphasis we see here in this passage is how he looks at his own self in time. This passage works very well into a three-point sermon. IT shows us Paul’s mindset about 1) his past, 2) his present, and 3) his future. These will be the three points we discuss this morning.
Body
The Present
In verses 12 and 13, Paul tells us his mindset about his current state before God. In verse 12 he says, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect”, then in verse 13 he says, “Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet…”
I don’t know about you, but my first thought as I read what Paul says here, after all of these lessons in the book of Philippians is, “wow, really?” Paul couldn’t say, “I have not yet achieved” or “I am not yet perfect.” That is almost surprising, but then in a sense, is not… I think any humble person, after describing the mindset of Christ in chapter two, would say the exact same thing! No matter where we are in our level of maturity, or even how others may see our level of maturity, we should all say, “I have not yet arrived.” I have not received the prize at the end of the race,” and until then, I still have work to do.
And just think about this for a moment, there are some great benefits to this kind of mindset. Just imagine you are running a race, and you get to the point where you think you have the race in the bag. You believe you are definitely going to win… what may be your tendency to do? You may begin thinking of the great prize you are going to win and what you are going to do with it… You may become distracted and lose focus… You may let up on how hard you are running because you feel you have a large enough lead… and all of this I think this is a mindset we can fall into as Christians. When we get the mindset that we are where we need to be… that we feel like we are ok just where we are at, we may tend to take the foot off of the gas pedal and begin to be content where we are. We may lose our passion… our zeal for the Lord… and we become luke-warm in our faith. And then the temptations of this life come, and because we have lost our zeal, the flesh, being weak… finds it so much easier to give in.
If we are content where we are as disciples, our standard is not high enough! Surely we have not received the prize of the resurrection. Surely we would all agree on this. But may it also be safe to say that we have not reached “maturity” or “perfection” as Paul yet? If Paul by this time could say of himself, “I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet,” where do we stand where we are right now? Paul had not reached the summit yet, why would we think that we have arrived where we are now?
Paul shows us that becoming a Christian is not the end-game. There is so much more to look forward to as disciples of Christ. Becoming a Christian and assembling with the saints is not the end-game. Being a member of a church that is organized like the church in the Bible, worships like the church in the Bible, and teaches the Biblical gospel IS NOT the end game. Being like Jesus must be the goal of every Christian. Being like Jesus, and desiring to please him in every area of our lives. We have a high standard that we are aiming to achieve, a standard that none of us has achieved yet. We need to remember the standard we are aiming for.
We all have more room for growth in Christ, and we each need to with humility see that we have work to do. This is how Paul continues his thoughts in verse 12. After saying he had not yet obtained it or have become perfect/mature, he says, “but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” As long as he is granted life by God, every today that the Lord gives him, he is going to aim for the goal. This is why Jesus died for him. This is why Jesus died for you and me: so we can be like Jesus and so we can glorify Him now and when we are raised to reign and be with Jesus in eternity
Keeping the racing analogy going, Paul was not going to let up. He was going to live the present with a mindset that said, “I have work to do. I have to keep running hard. I need to make sure I win this race. Jesus put so much into me receiving the reward. I need to make sure today that it was not in vain.”.
The Past
Next, let’s talk about Paul’s mindset towards the past. In verse 13, Paul says, “but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind…” Forgetting what is behind… what is he talking about here? What he is NOT saying is this: get everything that happened before today out of your mind. He is not saying to erase the past from our memories. THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. And remember, Paul says this right after he was just talking about his past, a past that many of his contemporizes would have looked at and said, “wow, you have accomplished a lot.” If Paul is saying “erase your past from your memory,” he would be very inconsistent here… But this is NOT what he is saying…
But what is Paul saying. We began to see the answer to this question in our last lesson, Paul, after coming to Christ, learned to look at all of these things in his past differently. He learned to look at all of his earthly accomplishments as being fit for the trash in comparison to getting Christ… These things were losses for him… And he was willing to give up all of the prestige and accomplishments so he could have a relationship with his Lord Jesus.
Paul would not allow his past to be what define him. Surely Satan would do all that he could to remind Paul of all that he accomplished, and even all of his sin to try to cause him to stumble. Just think of all of his past failures: all of the persecution he brought on Christians: his approval of the stoning of Stephen, tearing other Christians out of their homes, throwing them into prison, causing them to blaspheme Christ. Later on, Paul shows that in his mind, without the mercy of Jesus, he is the worst of sinners… There were so many things Satan could use to try to discourage Paul, but Paul made up his mind to fight those temptations and to set his mind on Jesus instead of himself.
This is a difficult mindset for us to have at times. We all bring baggage to our relationship with Christ. For some of us there are consequences of our sinful past that becoming a Christian doesn’t erase. Or maybe we have made decisions in our past that have negatively impacted us or our loved ones. We all have things that Satan uses to try to tear us down and to distract us. Obviously, it is near impossible to completely remove the past from our minds… There are always reminders all around us of who we used to be… but what do we do when Satan tries to use these negative things in our past to tear us down?
Or how do we respond when Satan uses our accomplishments and all of the good things we have done in the past to try to move us to pride? Paul had many good things that he talked about in verses 5-6. Satan can bring up all of our wonderful past accomplishments to distract us also. Our accomplishments in our work… in school… our spiritual accomplishments and victories… all of these can be used by Satan against us to move us to pride… how do we respond at these times…
In all of these things, how do we “forget what lies behind” as Paul says in verse 13? I believe it begins by deciding that we are going to look at these things in a helpful way instead of a way that discourages us. How we think about our past, or how we think about anything, is a matter of choice. No one controls our thinking for us, including Satan. When we reflect upon things that we have done that are not pleasing to God, it can fill us with sorrow and self-pity, and lead us to depression. But we need to choose not to go down that path. YOU CAN CHOOSE NOT TO GO DOWN THAT PATH. Choose to allow the reminders of your sin to not lead you to despair, but instead to remember the grace that God has given you in Christ. This is how Paul learned to look at his negative past. In , “I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am…” He learned to think about the immeasurable amount of grace that God showed him in forgiving him of what he had done. Reminders of his sin humbled him, and it made him a harder working servant of God. Paul continues in verse 10 of , “…and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Reminders of our past can bring blessing if we learn to think rightly about these things.
And when Satan uses all of the good things that we have accomplished to try to get us to fall into the sin of pride, there are a couple responses we need to have. First, we can think like Paul does in . All of these “great” things we have done are rubbish in comparison to gaining Christ. Nothing that we have done or have accomplished can compare with what God has done in me and for me. And these accomplishments were not all done on our own power. Don’t forget about the Lord. Why do you have the lot you do in life… May it be the case that the Lord has blessed you? May it be because the Lord has put you where you are because He wants to see these circumstances lead you to be more like Christ; to grow closer to Him? Instead of being moved to pride, be moved to thanksgiving! What does Paul say in ?
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you…”
We need to forget what lies behind by not allowing anything in our past to hold us back from faithfulness to Christ. As brother Gary Henry puts it, “We cannot allow the past to keep us from doing today’s work.” We cannot allow our past successes or our past failures to stop us from doing the work that we must be doing today for the Lord! Our successes and our failures need to drive us to the Lord; to be grateful to Him for His daily mercy and providence in our lives.
And our third point...
The Future
Paul says in verse 13 that he forgot what lies behind, and regarding the future, this was his mindset: He says that he is “straining forward to what lies ahead.” Then in verse 14 he says, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
Paul made it his goal to be determined in reaching his prize, and he tells us this in terminology that is not “comfortable terminology.” He uses verbs that show putting every fiber of your being into action to achieve victory. Our translations use many different words to bring this idea across: “reaching forward, pressing on, straining forward, stretching forward, and pursuing the goal.” These are all words that make this sound like dedicated effort and hard work.
ILLUSTRATION: Thinking about a race once again. When running a race, you plan ahead. You decide from the get-go that you are going to give yourself fully to this race… You want to give your best. Then you train with this kind of mindset. My favorite translation is the ESV, which says that he was straining forward to the prize. This brings to my mind the final stretch of the race. You are pushing and pushing yourself, and when you get to the finish line you strain every muscle to push your body forward to cross the finish line and break the tape right before the one you are competing against.
Does this describe our walk with Christ? Do we have this kind of determination? Are we straining forward, are we giving everything we have to reach the finish line? This is the kind of mindset we need to be seeking to have. God is calling us to Himself; to His presence. And we need to be giving all that we are to achieving what Christ has purchased us to achieve.
There is no place in the church for those who desire comfortable Christianity… Comfortable... and Christianity… These two words contradict each other!
God’s people are those who fight and strain and press on… They get their hands dirty… They look for opportunities to do more for others… They don’t make excuses why they can’t work… The heart that has experienced the grace of God will desire to do God’s will and to grow in Christ. God is working in His people to desire His will and to do His will () … And His will more often than not takes us out of our comfort zones.
Paul continues in verse 15, “Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind…” If we want to reach maturity or reach the finish line victorious, this is the kind of mind we need to have.
We are headed in the direction of gaining the very presence of our Lord and our God in eternity. We realize, as Paul puts it in verse 20, that “our citizenship is in heaven.” We focus our minds, not on earthly things, but on the things of God, living based on where our citizenship lies. Heaven is what we are living for now. Not this life.
I am encouraged in how Paul finishes verse 15. “and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.”
You may be feeling conviction right now that you are not living up to this standard… Guess what, what Paul promises here in this verse is being fulfilled RIGHT NOW! It is usually the case that He uses lessons like this to do this; to show us that we are not thinking as mature Christians should.
There is a lesson in this for us… As we live in the present, we need to leave ourselves open to correction in our thinking. We need to be open to being molded by God so we can, as he puts it in verse 16, “be of the same mind” and walk “according to what we have already attained” from God. We must be open to seeing that we are wrong in our lives… That is difficult no matter how long we have been following the Lord… But it is necessary if we are going to stay in the race and be victorious in the race.
Conclusion
Paul then closes this section in encouraging the Philippians to follow the example that he (and others) are giving them in having this kind of mindset. He says, “Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern.”
He says this because he does not want these brethren to fall prey to the Jewish false teachers who had their minds focused on earthly things, things that could rob them of their hope and their joy. Paul and his coworkers gave them humble, godly examples to follow if we are going to be kingdom citizens. We see in Paul that having joy in Christ begins with having the right mindset about this life.
- “The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Where is your mindset regarding your past successes and failures physically and spiritually? Where are you currently? Are you content with what you achieved? Are you happy with where you are right now? Or are you living for the future, pressing/straining forward to be more and more pleasing to God each day, making positive, and at times, painful changes and sacrifices to become more like Christ.
The example that Paul gives us shows us the road we need to take to have peace with God. Where are you on your journey? Are there things in your past or your present that are keeping you from pleasing the Lord and straining towards the goal?