Pressing on Together - Philippians 3:12-16

Sermon Series: Partners in Christ

It’s not uncommon to hear about former professional athletes experiencing a time of great depression when they retire from their sport. In fact, every once in a while you may even see a professional athlete who is way past his prime, but who simply refuses to retire. It’s a sad thing to hear about and watch as a fan. You wonder how guys who were on top of the world and who had so much success can be so discouraged just a year or two later. Or you watch guys who made such a legacy for themselves by being one of the best in their sport damage that legacy. Rather than starting as a wide receiver and catching multiple passes a game, they struggle to even get into the game and bounce around from one team to another just trying to find a place to play. Many of these athletes have been asked what their depression is the result of or why they won’t simply retire from their sport, and their answer is almost always the same – they miss the sense of competition and can’t find a way to replace it. There is something about striving for Super Bowl rings, and striving for World Series titles, and striving for World Championship titles that excites their hearts. For so long they have had their eyes fixed on those titles, those rings, and those trophies, and they have been striving hard after them. But when their bodies are no longer able to compete for those prizes like they once used to be and they have to give up the pursuit of those prizes then they become incredibly discouraged. Many try to remain close to the sport they played by working as coaches or commentators, but they still admit that those positions don’t bring the excitement they once had as a player.

When I think about athletes like this, two things come to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is in regards to these athletes. While I can’t even begin to imagine what chasing those titles and trophies must feel like, the reality is those trophies aren’t permanent, they don’t have eternal value, and they will ultimately fade and perish. So I’m heartbroken for these guys who struggle so much to plug back into society after their playing days are over. But on the other hand I think that the church has a lot that we can learn from the mentality of these men. While the prizes they may chase after aren’t of greatest value, there is a prize of greatest value and we should be as adamant about chasing after that prize as these athletes are about chasing after their trophies.

As we looked at the text of Philippians 3:1-11 last week, one of the points of emphasis for Paul was his desire to know Christ. He said in 3:8, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Then two verses later Paul declared again his desire, “that I may know Him . . .” (3:10). But as we transition into verse 12 this week Paul begins by informing the church at Philippi that he has not reached a state of knowing Christ perfectly or obtaining perfection in his own life, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect . . .” This statement contrasts sharply Paul’s way of thinking prior to coming to faith in Christ when he was living as a Pharisee. Last week when we gave some consideration to those things which Paul said he should have been able to take confidence in as a Jew, we noted that in verse 6 Paul described himself in this way, “as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” Paul used to look at his life in light of the Law and (by his own estimation) had deemed that he kept the Law perfectly. Paul used to believe that he was living a life without any moral imperfection – that he was by all accounts blameless. But after coming to faith in Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord Paul’s perspective changed. After encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9) Paul discovered that his behavior wasn’t honoring Christ – it was persecuting Him. And as a result of that encounter Paul began to learn that he couldn’t take possession of God and come into right relationship with God by his efforts to keep the Law, but rather that Jesus had come to take possession of him. This is one of the most amazing truths of the Bible and of Christianity! While sinful men and women were helpless to do anything on their own to be reconciled with their holy God, the Bible tells us that God pursued us by sending His Son to be born in the likeness of men and to die on the cross, suffering the wrath of God for the sins that we committed and deserved. This good news radically changed Paul’s life and has been changing the lives of individuals for the last two thousand years. The reality that Jesus – God, Himself – came and made Himself a substitute for us so that He might be able to take possession of us once again has captivated the lives of many, so that like Paul, they begin to do their best to “gain Christ and be found in Him” (3:8-9) and to “know Him” (3:10).

When we look closely at verse 12 we can see that Paul anticipates a time in the future when he will know Christ perfectly and will be made completely perfect. Paul says “not that I have already obtained this . . .” As we look at the bigger picture of the NT we discover that a future day is coming when Christ will return to earth and gather those who are believers in Him to Himself. At that time His followers will be freed from sin and its effects and they will find themselves in the very presence of Christ where they will know Him perfectly and when they will be made perfect like Him. Paul was looking forward to this future day, but also had a true understanding of his present condition – he had not come to fully know Christ and was not yet fully like Him. But Paul didn’t let his present imperfection discourage him from pursuing Christ and growing in his relationship with Him. Verse 12 continues, “but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own.” Even though Paul may have been limited as a result of his imperfections, he didn’t allow those imperfections to paralyze him or cause him to give up in his pursuit of Christ. In fact, the opposite is true. Paul’s imperfections drove him to “press on” in pursuit of knowing Christ more and growing in his relationship with Him. The Greek word in the text that is translated in verse 12 as “press on” literally means “to run swiftly in order to catch a person or thing.” So as we begin to shed some light on Paul’s declaration we see a picture of one who understood his present imperfections and was driven by them to passionately chase after the One who loved Him and pursued Him in spite of those imperfections. Paul says that he wants to make Jesus his own. In other words, he wants to take hold of Christ so that he has full possession of Him, knowing Him and seeing Him completely and fully. Paul doesn’t want any characteristic or trait of Christ to be hidden from him and isn’t satisfied with knowing Jesus from a distance. He’s got Jesus in his sights and is running after Him.

A few months ago I was following what was transpiring in the life of a guy I went to seminary with. He and his wife were adopting a girl from Africa and everything seemed to be going as planned. He had even flown over to Africa in order to take possession of her and to bring her back to the United States. But just before it was time for them to come home, something went wrong and the government was unable to finalize the adoption. My former classmate, Josh, was forced to return the little girl to the orphanage and return home to the United States without her. But in the days and weeks that followed Josh and his wife began to do everything in their power to cause the adoption to go through. They didn’t half-heartedly look to make the little girl their own. They sent every email they could send, made every phone call they could make, and explored every avenue possible for taking possession of this little girl and bringing her home with them. It’s a situation that I can’t even begin to imagine. To love someone so deeply and passionately, but not really knowing her all that well. Their longing was to make the little girl their own so that they might know her more fully – to know how she would laugh when they tickled her, to know how she would clap her hands and dance when they sang “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” and to know how her unique personality would add to their family environment. They couldn’t know these things from such a great distance! They couldn’t discover these things through pictures and letters. The only way they could know these things was to take possession of her, to bring her into their home, and to make her one of their own children. That’s what they wanted more than anything and that’s what they pursued single-mindedly until a few weeks later the adoption was finalized and Josh was able to go back to Africa and bring the little girl home to their family.

This is what Paul’s pursuit must have looked like! Notice that the end of verse 12 tells us what the motivation for Paul’s passionate pursuit to make Jesus his own was. It wasn’t that Jesus was cute. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t have a decent home of His own. It wasn’t that Paul felt sorry for Jesus. It was the unimaginable grace of Jesus that caused Jesus to first make Paul His own, “because Christ Jesus has made me His own.” His encounter with Jesus had allowed him to catch a glimpse of His holiness, His splendor, and His majesty. And it was those characteristics that shed a new light on Jesus’ crucifixion. Paul was realizing that in addition to these other characteristics, for the holy and majestic Son of God to give His life on the cross as a substitute for Paul meant that Jesus was unbelievably loving, compassionate, merciful, and full of grace. Those glimpses into the nature of Christ only wet Paul’s appetite for more. Paul may not have fully known Christ yet and he may not have been made like Christ yet, but the glimpses of Christ he had seen had made Jesus worth pursuing with everything he had.

In verse 13 Paul re-emphasizes what he has already said in verse 12, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.” But he also makes clear that he’s not making an emotional charged statement out of a response of anger, frustration, or discouragement. He’s given consideration to his condition. He’s looked at the evidence thoughtfully and the clear conclusion is that he hasn’t fully taken told of Christ and made Him his own. The knowledge of Christ he does possess is just a fraction of how much he desires to know Christ. So Paul shares with the church two disciplines he uses for accomplishing the main verb and main idea found in verse 14, “pressing on toward the goal” – both of which incorporate the imagery of running. The first he says is this, “forgetting what lies behind . . .” When runners are running a race their sights and minds are fixed on the finished line. They are constantly looking forward and straining hard to move forward. They don’t look over their shoulders admiring what they have already passed or giving thought to the hurdles they have already jumped over. They concentrate on what lies before them. When Paul says, “forgetting what lies behind . . ,” what Paul is making reference to will probably surprise many of you. Paul wasn’t telling the church at Philippi that he was daily working to forget all of the horrible things he did in the past as a persecutor of the church. We know that Paul wasn’t proud of those things, but those weren’t the things Paul was talking about. Paul was talking about all of the things he had accomplished so far as a believer in Christ. Paul hadn’t stopped moving forward so that he could look back and admire his work as an evangelist, recalling all the people that he led to faith in Christ. He hadn’t stopped moving forward so that he could look back and admire his work as a church planter, recalling all the churches that he successfully launched. And Paul hadn’t stopped moving forward so that he could look back and admire his work as a disciple maker, recalling all of the young men he trained and who were leaders among the churches. While all of those things were good and admirable things Paul was disciplining himself to forget those things in the sense that he wouldn’t allow his accomplishments of the past to become trophies of admiration. He wasn’t going to allow himself or his Christianity to be defined only by the things he had already accomplished.

This is a discipline that many believers in Christ need to grow in today. We love to look back on our Christianity and to locate one or two moments when we felt like we were really putting our Christianity on display. For many believers in Christ the temptation is to make trophies out of their confession of Christ as Savior and Lord and their baptism – and they love to admire those trophies. There are churches that are filled with individuals who claim to be believers in Christ who, apart from sporadic attendance at church, have no fruit in their lives demonstrating that they either love Jesus or are following after Him. But don’t challenge those individuals on the genuineness of their love for Jesus because they’ll be quick to tell you when they made a confession of faith in Jesus and when they got baptized. G Walter Hansen says, “[Paul’s] decision to consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ was only the beginning of a daily discipline to press on toward the goal. The authenticity of faith in Christ cannot be measured only by the intensity of one’s initial decision to receive Christ. Receiving Christ is a lifetime adventure.” For other believers in Christ the temptation is to make trophies out of their past service. There are those in our churches claiming to be believers in Christ who haven’t done anything to serve others or serve the church in years because they feel like a mission trip they went on years earlier or a service they performed years earlier completed their service to God and Christ. G. Walter Hansen says of Paul, “he did not keep turning over in his mind the good old days of active service before he was imprisoned.” And Marvin Vincent says, “He does not use the memory of what God has wrought in him and through him to encourage self-satisfaction and relaxation.” But this is what so many believers in Christ are doing today. They’ve quit running hard as believers in Christ because they think too much on the past and are satisfied with what they have done. So Paul says we have to get into the discipline of actively and intentionally forgetting what lies behind us.

The second discipline that Paul uses to help him continue to “press on toward the goal” is “straining forward to what lies ahead.” The picture again is of a runner stretching towards and trying hard to get to what lies in front of him. This is why forgetting what’s behind you is so important – you can’t focus on and strain towards what’s before you when your body and head are turned around and focused on what’s behind. This is hugely problematic for our churches today. With our churches full of individuals who are too busy admiring past trophies there is no way that we can collectively have our eyes fixed on Christ before us. You have to even wonder if they realize the glory of the one before them. Which do we really want to characterize us? Do we want to be believers enamored by our past accomplishments? Or do we want to be believers enamored by our Savior and straining hard towards him? For Paul, Jesus was so incredibly extraordinary that he was captivated by Jesus and was continuously striving after Him.

Using those two disciplines (i.e. “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies head”) Paul moves to his main verb and his main idea in verse 14, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Here is the example of Paul and the model of faith that he holds up to the church at Philippi – regardless of what you already know or what you’ve already accomplished, regardless of how tired and exhausted you are, there is still more to know about Jesus so keep pressing on to know Him. Paul told the church at Corinth something very similar. He said in 1 Corinthians 9:24, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” We’ve got to understand that Jesus is the goal and the prize – not material wealth, not health, and not even heaven itself. The greatest reward and the greatest goal in life is to know God and to know Jesus more and more. This is the ultimate reward and the very thing that Jesus died for. The apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.” When Paul encountered Jesus and discovered that the holy and majestic King of all kings loved him and had gone through unimaginable lengths to make Paul His own, Paul made Jesus His goal. So whatever circumstance Paul found himself in he was resolved to continue to strive after Jesus and to know Jesus more.

Unfortunately there are too many in our churches who don’t currently share this resolve. G. Walter Hansen says, “The pressures of the surrounding pagan culture dampen and even extinguish the enthusiasm and determination of Christians to press on to maturity in their obedience to the call of God.” We’ve simply quit running the race. So Paul exhorts the church at Philippi (as he does the churches today) in verses 15 and 16, “Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.” We have to begin by putting our past accomplishments behind us. We have to keep progressing in our faith past our confession of Christ as Savior, past our baptism, and past our previous times of service in ministry. Then we have to fix our eyes once again on Christ – not just think about it, but really do it. We have to press on to know Him more. For some of you that is going to mean being more regular in your church attendance. I’m not being legalistic here, just making an observation. Attending a church worship service takes the least amount of effort of anything else we can do to know Jesus more. It’s being spoon fed if you will. You can come to church, sing a few songs, listen to a message from the Bible and leave without putting in very much effort at all. And for some of you that simple regular attendance is hard. So the first step for you in pressing on is simply going to be more involved corporate worship. Listen, we had a young lady one Sunday morning who was feeling so bad that she needed to go to the emergency room at the hospital. But her desire to know Christ more led her to make the decision to come and participate in church first. Immediately afterwards she was taken to the emergency room and admitted to the hospital for several days. Now I’m not saying that if a heart attack begins to set in on your way to church on a Sunday morning that you come to church first and then go to the emergency room. I’m just using this young lady as an example of what it looks like when we are really pressing on toward the goal of knowing Jesus more. For others of you, pressing on toward the goal of knowing Jesus more is going to mean being more disciplined in your prayer time and reading. We can’t know Jesus more if we aren’t spending time talking with Him in prayer. We can’t know Jesus more if we aren’t reading about Him in the Bible. So some of us need to press on towards the goal of knowing Him more by doing some of these things. Still for others of you, pressing on toward the goal of knowing Jesus more is going to mean taking yourself out of your comfort zone. We won’t ever come to know Jesus’ power in our lives if we are only doing what we know we can do and accomplish on our own. So some of us need to challenge ourselves to serve in ways that take us out of our comfort zone. Others of us need to challenge ourselves to share our faith in Jesus more. And others of us need to challenge ourselves by stretching our minds and reading books that will stretch our understanding and our knowledge of Jesus. None of these things are easy – but this is what it means to press on and to strive towards the goal of knowing Christ more. “Faith is not simply a decision in the past or a static state of existence; faith is running a race, straining toward what is ahead” (G. Walter Hansen).

Unlike former professional athletes, the pursuit of the goal and prize of knowing Christ more is a pursuit we never have to give up. Sadly though, many believers have, choosing to relax and be satisfied with their past experiences and accomplishments. And what’s worse, unlike former professional athletes who become deeply saddened when they can no longer pursue their prizes, these believers in Christ who have stopped their pursuit of knowing Him aren’t saddened one bit. This can't be a description of those called to be partners in Christ. If you’ve laid aside your pursuit of knowing Christ fully let me exhort you to follow the example of Paul – to make it a daily practice of forgetting your past accomplishments, fixing your eyes on the goal of knowing Christ more, and then pressing on to make Him your own. If the Church is going to continue to make Christ known and advance the good news of the gospel every runner has to have his eyes fixed on Christ and striving towards Him. And if there are brothers and sisters in Christ who are a part of your church who have laid aside their pursuit of Christ, pray that God would put a desire in their heart to know Christ more and to get back in the race. Jesus’ name won’t be made great by a Church that doesn’t passionately want to know Him. When we are satisfied with just a little knowledge of Christ, we communicate to the world around us that He’s really not worth knowing.

Connection Point Questions for Discussion: