PRESSING ON: 2016
Have you made your New Year’s resolution yet? Go ahead
and take a moment; write down the first thing that comes to mind; don’t
hesitate or think about it too long. “I resolve to ____________ in 2016.”
One
thing I resolve to do in 2016 is lose ten pounds. I would like to feel less
snug in the waist of my pants. Now, to be honest, this is my annual resolution.
When
Sharon and I got married, I weighed 120 pounds. In our first year of marriage I
gained twenty pounds — that’s what contentment does to a guy. And over the
years my contentment has grown. So I resolve to continue to grow in contentment
with my wonderful wife but to do so without the weight gain.
As many
of you know, New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken (not that I will
cease to grow in love with my wife, but that I will not lose the ten pounds). For
some reason we don’t take resolutions seriously. These “goals” are loosely
made, kind of like “wishing well” wishes. We don’t really feel the gravity of
these commitments.
If you
have made a resolution for 2016, I sincerely hope that you achieve it.
As
followers of Jesus there is one goal I hope we will all resolve to attain. Paul
expresses it simply in his letter to the Philippians: I want to know Christ. Paul’s intensity in
this desire is such that he says he considers everything worthless compared to
knowing Jesus. Let us resolve together then, to make 2016 a year in which we strive
to know our Lord Jesus better than we ever have, to grow in relationship with
Him and be like Him.
How will
you achieve that goal as a personal resolution? To grow in your relationship
with Christ you have to forget what is behind you while grasping all that God
has set before you. This is the essence of our text in Philippians 3:10-16.
1. Forgetting what is behind…
a) What was behind
Paul? As Paul looked ahead to his goal of knowing Christ better, he
realized that there were things he needed to leave behind. “Forgetting what is
behind…” he said. What was behind Paul that needed to be forgotten?
As I
considered the letter to the Philippians as a whole, I saw three things that
Paul hints at which would hinder growing in relationship to Jesus.
Bitterness: Paul
could have been bitter about his circumstances. We can surmise from chapter one
that Paul was in chains and in prison. If that was not cause for
disappointment, Paul shares that some people were taking advantage of his
imprisonment to advance their own agendas with the gospel. Some were even
trying to discredit Paul as a preacher of the gospel. They pointed to his
imprisonment as evidence of his powerlessness.
Paul
does not succumb to bitterness. Instead, he focused on what God could do
through his imprisonment. Read 1:15-18.
His attitude towards this situation was to forget himself and exult in the
advance of the kingdom through any means.
Ambition:
Closely related to the issue of bitterness is our ambition. When we have an aim
in life that so consumes us we resent anything and anyone that gets in our way.
Paul could have seen his imprisonment and those taking advantage of his chains
as an obstacle to his plans. However, in a laid-back,
whatever-happens-kind-of-way, Paul rests in God’s plans and puts his own plans
on the shelf. Thus he can rein in his ambitions and focus on others. Read 2:3-4.
Pride: We will
be disappointed many times in 2016 if we let our pride overcome us. Pride in
who we are, what we have done, or what group we belong to, are not sin per se.
But when we think those things make us immune to trouble, we might say “I don’t
deserve this.” Paul had a pedigree that he could have been proud of and depended
on in his life. In regards to his relationship with God, he could have rested
in the illusion of his being a perfect Jew (read
3:4b-6). Paul could have said, “I don’t deserve this” in response to
his chains, to his suffering for Jesus. He didn’t though; he put his pride
behind him and counted it loss in comparison to knowing Jesus better through
the circumstances he was now in, even the hardship of prison.
Can we
relate? Bitterness, ambition, and pride — goals left unaccomplished,
disappointments, illness, personal wrongs, tragedy, or simple failures — will
cloud 2016 before it has begun. “Forgetting
what is behind…”
b) What do you
need to leave behind? You need to move on from the past. Leave the past in
the past. The picture in “forgetting what is behind” is of a runner who does
not look back over his shoulder. His eyes are fixed on the goal. If he made
mistakes earlier in the race, he doesn’t kick himself by replaying them or go
back to re-run that part. He leaves the past behind and keeps moving toward the
finish line.
Just to
be clear, it can be helpful to reflect on what happened in the past to
understand the present and where growth needs to take place. Biblically,
self-examination is taught, and evaluating the good and bad in our past can
help us to grow. But there needs to be balance.
Paul
means that we should not be controlled by our past. Consider the analogy of the
car’s rear-view mirror. You don’t drive by looking in the mirror. You drive by
looking ahead through the windshield. Now and then you take occasional quick
glances in your mirror to use the information to make decisions about how to
drive. But if you gaze too long in the mirror you will probably crash because
you are not paying attention to the present. In life, we can take glances
backwards, but the past must stay in the past, and we must accept God’s grace
for our sins and mistakes and move on with His strength.[i]
MPIC
tells drivers that if you stare at the telephone pole you will probably hit the
pole. Look where you want to go. Paul aimed at a specific goal and he went
there.
2. Straining toward what is ahead
a) With an honest
self-estimate – Some of Paul’s critics might have misunderstood his words
and thought that Paul was saying he had made it to Christian perfection. By the
time of the writing of this letter, Paul had been a believer for 25 years.
There is no doubt that he was one of the keenest disciples of Christ that ever
lived. His theological understanding of Christ’s death and resurrection
continues to impact us all. But even he confessed that he was still in the
process of knowing Christ better.
Paul admits
this in v. 12, “Not that I have already
obtained all this, or have already been made perfect…I do not consider myself
yet to have taken hold of it.” What he means to say is, “I have not yet
come to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His
sufferings and conformity to His death in a complete and total way.”
This is
an important lesson for us all. We must never be satisfied with where we are at
in our Christian walk. I am not talking about beating yourself up for not being
spiritual enough. I am pleading for an insatiable hunger for more of what Jesus
wants to show us. The Christian life is not a sprint, it’s a lifelong marathon.
If you think, “I don’t need to grow anymore” and stop running the race, you
will miss out on the prize waiting at the finish line.
You need
to be honest with yourself — I need to be honest with myself too — we have not
finished growing in Christ. For all the education I have received, one thing
becomes clearer all the time: I really don’t know anything. So we keep going.
b) With singular
focus – If we are to grow in Christ we must strain toward what is ahead.
Paul says it this way: “But one thing I
do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on
toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in
Christ Jesus” (13-14).
The
Greek says literally “One thing! Forgetting what is behind…” (the “I do” was
added). Paul’s “one thing” implies focused concentration and effort. Like a
runner in the races, he sets aside distractions and works at keeping his mind
on the goal of knowing Christ and becoming more like Him. An Olympic athlete is
not a person of many interests whose own sport is a side hobby. With diligence,
the Olympic athlete gets up early and sets his mind to winning the gold medal.
Everything else takes second place to this aim.
This
singular focus is fuelled by a powerful motivation. Paul says, “…I press on to take hold of that for which
Christ Jesus took hold of me” (12b). The word “take hold” is intense; it
means to apprehend or seize something after a pursuit. If a policeman chased a
thief and caught up to him, he would seize the thief tightly to keep him from
getting away. Paul says that the reason he runs the race is because Christ
chased him down, seized him, and put him in the race. Think of where Paul was
headed in life. He was a persecutor of Christians until Christ chased him down
on the road to Damascus and seized his heart.
As
Christ Jesus takes hold of you and meets the deepest need of your soul, it
makes you want to grab on to Him too. That’s what Paul did. That’s what we
ought to do. I want to lay hold of Jesus and not let go. I want to go where He
goes and do what He would do. I want to know Him and be like Him. Isn’t that
what you want?
And so
we press on to win the prize; we strain with all our strength to reach the arm
across the finish line. We press on because if we think we have arrived at a
comfortable place in our spiritual walk we are mistaken. We are not satisfied;
we want more of Christ. If we think we have arrived, it probably means that
we’ve got just enough of Jesus to satisfy some spiritual responsibility but not
so much of Him that it threatens the way we live.
No we
want the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus. The
prize: The Lord’s “well done”; the crown of righteousness; to see His face. Oh,
you know I can’t describe it. For “No eye
has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for
those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9).
What is your goal for 2016?
Mine is
the same every year: A closer relationship with Jesus Christ.
How will
we achieve such a goal?
Dr. Howard
Hendricks tells about an elderly Christian woman he knew who would come into a
social gathering, where everyone was chatting about nothing significant, and
say, “Tell me, Howie, what are the five best books you’ve read this past year?”
She was not satisfied with idle talk; she wanted to go deep. And through this
she grew. Even though she was up in years, she was actively growing in the
Lord. When she died in her nineties, her daughter discovered on her desk that
the night before she died in her sleep, she had written out her personal goals
for the next five years. Like Paul in prison facing his own death, she wanted
to be growing.
I think
there is a lesson in this story we can follow. Paul talks about it too in verse
16. We fix our eyes on Jesus, yes, but we can also find examples around us who
spur us on. We see models of Jesus, people who love the Lord that we can
imitate. Paul says, “Let us live up to
what we have already attained” and “Whatever
you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into
practice” (4:9). We can learn from each other what it means to know Christ.
He reveals Himself a little bit in each one of us who believe and follow Him.
We are His body, therefore we resemble Him. Find those qualities that you feel
you are lacking in someone else and learn from that person.
And of
course, do not forget the Word of God. Ultimately, all we know of Christ is
found in the gospels. If you read five minutes a day in the Word, read ten. If
you pray ten minutes a day, find room for twenty. Not as an arbitrary goal but
as a means of knowing Christ better.
Forget
what is behind – forget the failures and sins of the past; they are covered by
grace – and strain toward what is ahead. Press on towards the prize of knowing
Christ Jesus your Lord.
AMEN
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