Philippians 3:12-16

The best life is a humble and relentless pursuit of Christ.

If Paul were a social media influencer in our day, I think he would be a pretty good follow. Edgy, all about grace, a traveler (except when in prison!)

But if you followed Paul, he would likely send you a message, as most influencers do.

“Hey, appreciate the follow! Really glad you’re here. Quick question, are you here for the content, or are you a Christian man looking to become more disciplined and consistent as a leader?”

“Doing a little research on my audience. Are you just here for the content, or do you want to double down on your fitness?”

There is something different between consuming content and engaging intentionally for growth.

Paul’s message might be, “Are you just here for the content, or do you want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, becoming like him – that by any means necessary you may attain the resurrection from the dead?!”

And Paul is not selling anything…

These verses represent more than content consumption. This is coaching/discipleship into the life our souls long for.

The best life is a humble and relentless pursuit of Christ.

This follows the church's claim to be the covenantal people of God. Those putting no confidence in the flesh, worshiping by the Spirit of God, and glorying in Christ Jesus.

All of the accomplishments, anything boosting confidence in our fleshly ability to be made righteous before God, is rubbish compared to the gold of knowing Christ, being found in him with a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, from God.

Paul has fellowship with Christ in his suffering, becoming like him, motivated by attaining what is promised in Christ, more of him, and eternity with him.

Important spoiler – Paul isn’t recounting his life to make himself the hero; he will invite the church to live this way, to imitate him, follow this life for themselves. It’s not only for Philippi, but for us.

Before us is the way of sanctification. Transformation in Christ.

Breaking it into two pieces today, Humility of Knowing Christ, and the Higher Calling of Knowing Christ.

Humility of Knowing Christ

Christianity is not for those who have arrived.

Just previously, Paul mentioned that he desired to attain the resurrection of the dead by any means necessary.

His life is directional, towards a future with Jesus. A future that is guaranteed. But he is not there yet.

Philippians 3:12 “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. (ESV)

This was not the subjective confession of an oversensitive, overwrought soul who is blinded to his own progress. Rather, it was grounded in facts that are verifiable. He had not attained to the perfection of the resurrection of the dead.

Paul is on the journey, one that experiences transformation on the way but is not complete until the final goal is reached.

We have spent at least three weeks essentially commending Paul. For his achievements and willingness to count them as loss. For his approach to suffering, and leaning heavily on Christ for life.

But he won’t let us put him on a pedestal. There is only room for one up there, and it is occupied by Christ.

If you are on your way to being perfect or mature, you will realize you are not perfect or mature.

Dare we say Paul is a weak Christian, and it is supposed to be this way?

I’ve grown to prefer to avoid the phrase “strong Christian” when describing people. You know this about me. Smells of confidence in the flesh. But Paul would have us walk humbly with our God.

Humility and or weakness is the way.

We see it elsewhere from Paul, as he was pleading with the Lord to remove a “thorn in the flesh.”

2 Corinthians 12:8–10 “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. [9] But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. [10] For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (ESV)

This is freeing because you don’t have to fake it. Perfection will come at the return of Christ, in our resurrection. Before then, we are all pilgrims on the way.

Paul models a correct self-estimate, while the opposite misses our need for Christ. If I am stoked about my ability to be righteous or morally pure, self becomes my savior - no savior at all!

“Self-righteousness is the suicide of Christian faith and joy; rejoicing in Jesus is the shield against such self-righteousness.” Jason Meyer

Paul makes a confession and reveals his resolve. This is the appropriate posture toward life for the Christian.

Philippians 3:15 “Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.” (ESV)

Paul is saying we should just walk out his previous call to have the mind of Christ.

Philippians 2:5–7 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [6] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, [7] but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (ESV)

This week I was in a Bible study, and we were reflecting on some OT characters and how they rejected God’s commands. Even how the king described as a man after God’s own heart, was guilty of rape and murder.

Reminder that there is only one perfect person in all of Scripture and human history. Jesus!

This tells us not to be comfortable in our sin – since we are not as bad as some of those characters – but to humbly recognize we all bring our need to Christ, the only one who can satisfy, give grace to us.

Our past mistakes do not disqualify us from pursuing Christ. Instead, they remind us of our need for a Savior and fuel our determination to keep striving toward a deeper relationship with him. They are what make us eligible!

Paul, not perfect, but he will press on to make the resurrection his own “because Christ Jesus made me his own.”

The Bible will not allow us to nurture a sense of independence. We love because he first loved us. We work because he works in us. We can make the resurrection and knowing Christ our own because he has made us his own.

The more we know him the more likely we are to be humbled by his grace and the fact that Christ Jesus would make us his own. A realization that not only humbles but also motivates us.

Higher Calling of Knowing Christ

Philippians 3:13–14 “Brothers and sisters, 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, [14] I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (ESV)

Paul’s whole pursuit of Christ was Christ originated, Christ motivated, and Christ propelled.

This is the relentless pursuit of Christ that is worth our lives. Involves effort! Sanctification does not permit spiritual abdication. It is promised in Christ, and you run after it.

Paul transitions to athletic language, he is giving the image of racing here. One thing he does from a posture of humility, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

He won’t settle for old moments, for the status quo, and he is not letting past failures or achievements define the present or future. So neither should we.

Dwelling on the past can hinder our spiritual race.

This week I read a story of a mile runner who, in the thick of a race, and the noise of the crowd, couldn’t hear the footsteps of his opponent, so he turned his head to look back, and in doing so, he lost pace and lost the race.

He Be the Victor’s Name - hymn

“What though the vile accuser roar

Of sins that I have done;

I know them well, and thousands more;

My God, He knoweth none

My sin is cast into the sea

Of God’s forgotten memory

No more to haunt accusingly

For Christ has lived and died for me”

Paul’s “forgetting what lies behind” (v. 13) is a special kind of forgetfulness, the kind that does not turn and glance back from the goal to indulge in the complacency of past achievements.

Paul’s is a single-minded zeal, a future focus that gives him the momentum to move forward.

“Paul’s old mind-set was a single-minded pursuit of persecuting the church. The new birth brought a new mind-set: a single-minded pursuit to know Christ and attain the resurrection.” Jason Meyer

Paul is not straining or pressing on to receive salvation, but fueled by it he is headed toward the goal.

Which, for him, is Jesus. Christ is the ultimate goal and prize.

“Sometimes a thing is all the more impressive for being left undescribed. Paul tells us neither what the goal is nor what the prize will be. Yet suddenly the earthly scene with all its strivings, sufferings and sacrifices is suffused with heavenly glory. One scriptural picture after another fills and elevates the mind: the Lord’s own ‘Well done!’; ‘the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day’;6 ‘the unfading crown of glory’, gift of the chief Shepherd; the privilege (above all) that his servants should worship him, see his face and have his name written on their foreheads;8 the blood-cleansed robes and the unending presence of the Lord.10 All this and, in addition, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’. That is the goal and the prize!” J. A. Motyer

Upward call = the full and complete gaining of Christ for whose sake everything else has been counted as loss.

The prize is not earthly accolades but the eternal reward found in Jesus.

By the grace of God.

1 Corinthians 15:9–10 “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. [10] But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” (ESV)

“The reality is, the more we come to know Christ, the more we will come to sense our need to grow. And when we imagine that we have arrived, stagnation sets in. We must understand that Paul’s prayer—“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death”—is a prayer of humble dissatisfaction that opens us to the blessing of God—and to a sublime cycle of dissatisfaction and satisfaction and dissatisfaction and satisfaction . . . it brings on a life that knows more and more of Christ and then desperately wants to know more and indeed does know more and more and more and more. Spiritual dissatisfaction is a blessed state.” Hughes

Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (ESV)

Our race will look the same. With the same prize.

Hebrews 12:1–3 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, [2] looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. [3] Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (ESV)

Set aside every weight, forgetting what lies behind.

It is to Jesus we look, him we long to know.

Living anchored in what we already have in him.

Philippians 3:16 “Only let us hold true to what we have attained. (ESV)

For every converted person there is an identical goal: to be satisfied with Jesus and to grow into his likeness. Christians are to grow by honouring and responding to the truth as they at present grasp it (16).

Hold true to the gospel of forgiveness, freedom, and a future with Jesus. It is so much more than just a ticket to heaven.

“Some people treat Jesus like a ticket to heaven. However, you throw a ticket away once you get to where you were going. You wanted entrance to the place, not the piece of paper. Everyone wants to go to heaven, but not for the same reasons. Bad theology is often shown in false views of heaven. Is heaven a place that gives greater access to idols? There will be splendors and wonders of the new heavens and new earth for our resurrection bodies, but we will enjoy them as part of the overflow of enjoying Christ. Eternal life is knowing him (John 17:3).” Jason Meyer

Like any relationship we cherish, we engage with each other setting aside distractions to be present, this is a life of pursuit of Jesus, with gusto, going all in.

The best life is a humble and relentless pursuit of Christ.

This may be God revealing to you the invitation to humility and pursuit.

Answer the invitation by humbly recognizing your need and receiving what Christ has done for you on the cross.

Hold True to What You Have Attained: Christ Jesus made you his own, what grace! Nothing can change this; you are his, secure, free forever.

Press on Toward the Goal: Hunger and thirst for Christ, who is our righteousness. I dare you to pray for a greater desire for Christ! As you run, look to him. Stick with the run club!

I confess, too often I have been following for the content, but now, more than ever, I am in for the transformation. For what lies ahead.

“It is the vision of the end of the race that ever directs and speeds his hastening feet” (J. H. Michael).

May it be so with us. Let’s go!