Philippians 3:10–4:1 | Look Up and Walk

When my youngest was 3 or so a year or so ago, she comes bursting out of the kitchen — the way only a three year old can burst — absolutely lit up about something. A toy. A craft she made. I don't even remember what it was because what happened next erased everything else.

She starts telling me about it. Full volume. Maximum enthusiasm. Arms going. Eyes locked on mine.

And she starts running toward her room to go get whatever it was.

Moving forward. Looking backward. Talking a mile a minute over her shoulder.

And I can see exactly what's about to happen.

I start to say it — "hey, watch whe—"

Bam.

Corner of the hallway. Full speed.

Parents — you know this moment.

You're trying not to laugh. You're trying to comfort. You're trying to figure out if this requires a hug or an ice pack. It's a whole mix of emotions happening simultaneously and you're processing all of them in about one second.

And the thing is — she never saw it coming. She was so locked in on me, so excited about what she was telling me, the wall she ran into simply did not exist in her world.

She thought she was running down the hall to her room, but her body went exactly where her eyes went.

Now — we're adults and we know better than to walk into walls.

Right? Except.

We've done this too. Maybe not the hallway corner. But we've moved forward while looking backward and ended up somewhere we never intended to go.

It's not just a three year old problem. It's a human problem.

It's not a quirk of anatomy. It's a law. Runners know it. Cyclists know it. Tightrope walkers live and die by it.

You move in the direction of your gaze. Without exception or negotiation.

It’s not just physics. It's life.

Where you fix your eyes is where you go? So what are your eyes fixed on?

Paul writes to the church at Philippi from a prison cell. He's in chains. About to be executed. And he writes what is arguably the most joy-saturated letter in the entire New Testament. And right in the middle of it he stops and says — here's the secret. Here's what's keeping me moving. Here's what's keeping me sane.

He looks up. He walks.

The Big Idea this morning is simple. You will hear it more than once because it's worth hearing more than once.

Your life moves in the direction of your gaze. So fix your eyes relentlessly on Jesus.

Here's where Paul takes us. Four movements. Four postures of a person whose gaze is fixed on Jesus.

We're going to look at the Savior. We're going to let go of the past. We're going to lean into the stride. And we're going to live from our citizenship.

Four moves. One direction. Let's go.

MOVEMENT 1: Look at the Savior

Philippians 3:10–11

Before Paul tells us how to move, he tells us what to look at.

And I want you to feel the weight of this before we read it.

Paul is writing from prison. He has planted churches across the known world. He has been beaten, shipwrecked, stoned and left for dead. He has stood before kings. He has watched people come to faith from nothing and seen others walk away from everything.

If anyone has earned the right to coast — to look back on an impressive body of work and say I've done my part — it's Paul.

So what is his one consuming aim? What is the thing he is still reaching for after all of that?

Here's what he says.

Philippians 3:10 NIV

10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,

Did you catch what he's after?

Not "that I may serve him well." Not "that I may finish strong." Not "that I may build something that lasts."

That I may know him.

The Greek word there is ginōskō. It's not academic knowledge. It's not data about someone. It's relational, experiential, personal knowing. The kind of knowing you only get with someone you've sat with in the dark.

Paul wants the Person. Not the package. Not the benefits. or the résumé boost of being associated with Jesus.

Him.

And then — this is where it gets uncomfortable — Paul says he wants to share in his sufferings. To be conformed to his death.

We want the resurrection. Paul wants the whole journey. He wants to know Jesus the way you can only know someone when you've walked through something genuinely hard together.

Most of us relate to Jesus transactionally. We come to him with a list. We need forgiveness. We need help. We need things to work out. And Jesus genuinely invites all of that — bring him your list, he can handle it.

But Paul has moved past the transaction.

He's not saying Jesus gives me good things. He's saying Jesus is the good thing. The gift and the Giver have collapsed into one. Knowing Christ is the prize. Knowing Christ is the life.

And when Jesus himself is the treasure — when knowing him becomes your whole point — your gaze locks in. Everything else becomes peripheral. Not unimportant. Peripheral.

Paul makes this explicit just two verses earlier.

Philippians 3:8 NIV

8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ

That word — skubalon. Garbage is the polite translation. The honest translation is dung. Crap.

Paul says, my résumé. My credentials. My ministry record. My pedigree as a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, blameless under the law.

Trash. Not because those things are evil. Because compared to knowing Christ, they don't even register on the scale.

I want to ask you an honest question. Sit with it rather than answer it too quickly.

When you come to Jesus — in prayer, in worship, in this room on a Sunday morning — what are you actually looking for? What do you want from him?

Because the answer to that question tells you a great deal about the direction of your gaze.

Paul's answer, after everything, the good and the bad, is simply this:

I want to know him.

That's the object. That's the focal point. That's the thing worth fixing your eyes on.

Look at the Savior.

MOVEMENT 2: Let Go of the Past

Philippians 3:12–13a

That’s vs. 10 and 11 and then Paul does something unexpected.

He just told us that knowing Christ is everything. That compared to Jesus, his entire résumé is garbage. That's a breathtaking statement of confidence and clarity.

And then he immediately pulls the rug out from under himself.

Listen to verse 12.

Philippians 3:12 NIV

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Did you catch that?

The most spiritually mature man in the room just said — I'm not there yet.

Not "I've arrived." Not "I've figured it out." Not "after thirty years of following Jesus I finally have this nailed down."

I'm not there yet.

Paul is not writing from the mountaintop. He's writing from the middle of the race. From prison. From uncertainty. From the very real possibility that he won't make it out alive.

And he's pressing on.

But here's the pivot the whole movement turns on.

Paul doesn't say I press on because I'm disciplined. He doesn't say I press on because I've worked hard. He says I press on because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Paul didn't find Jesus. Jesus found Paul.

On a road to Damascus, Jesus stepped directly into his path and that was it. Paul was done. Caught. The most anti-Christian man in the world got stopped cold by the risen Christ and walked away a completely different person.

That wasn't Paul's initiative. That was Jesus showing up uninvited and refusing to leave.

And that changes everything about what pressing on means. It means Paul's forward motion isn't self-generated. He's not running on discipline and willpower. He's running because someone got hold of him first — and once you've been found like that, really found, you run differently.

Now look at verse 13.

Philippians 3:13 NIV

13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,

One thing. Not ten things. Not a spiritual growth plan with measurable quarterly goals.

One thing.

Forget what's behind. Strain toward what's ahead.

And here is where I want to slow down. Because this is the verse most of us think we understand — and most of us only understand halfway.

When you hear "forgetting what lies behind" — what do you picture?

Most people picture their worst moments. Their biggest failures. The thing they did that they can't stop replaying. The relationship they wrecked. The addiction they can't shake. The version of themselves they're most ashamed of.

And yes — Paul means that. Forget it. The cross has covered it. You don't have to keep returning to the crime scene. The case is closed.

But look at the context. What was Paul just talking about before this?

His credentials. His trophies. His spotless religious record. The things he counted as gain.

The things he's forgetting aren't just his failures. They're his wins.

This is the thing that will set some of you free this morning and unsettle the rest of us.

The backward gaze that keeps you stuck isn't always shame. Sometimes it's pride. Sometimes it's nostalgia.

The former athlete who peaked at 22 and has been living there ever since.

The person whose faith was most alive fifteen years ago and they keep trying to get back to that feeling instead of pressing forward into what Jesus has for them now.

Looking backward at your trophies will anchor you just as surely as looking backward at your failures. Both keep your eyes off Jesus. Both keep you from moving forward.

So how do you actually do this? How do you forget what is behind?

You don't forget the past by staring at it and trying to unsee it. You forget the past by fixing your gaze on something so magnificent that everything else blurs out.

The forgetting is the exhale after the finding.

Paul isn't gritting his teeth and muscling away from his résumé and his regrets. He's been found by someone so glorious that the trophies lost their shine and the shame lost its grip — at the same moment.

The same grace that covers your worst chapter also puts your best chapter in its place.

That's not behavior modification. That's the Gospel.

Letting go of the past. Not because it didn't happen. But because someone far greater than your past has already come and found you.

MOVEMENT 3: Lean into the Stride

Philippians 3:13b–14, 17–19

And once you've been found like that —

Once the trophies have lost their shine and the shame has lost its grip —

Something happens. You start moving differently.

Paul describes it like a runner who has finally stopped looking over his shoulder. Chest forward. Eyes up. Everything pointed in one direction.

Listen to verse Phil. 3:13-14.

Philippians 3:13–14 NIV

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

That word straining — picture a runner leaning into the finish line. Every muscle extended. One thing in his field of vision. Giving everything to close the distance.

This is not a casual jog. This is not a spiritual stroll. This is what a person looks like when they've been found by Jesus and they know it.

But then Paul widens the lens. He looks up from the track and sees two kinds of people.

Philippians 3:17 NIV

17 Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.

One kind of walker. Eyes up. Moving in the right direction. Fixed on Christ, pressing forward, letting go of what's behind. And then...

Philippians 3:18 NIV

18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.

He's weeping as he writes this. These aren't strangers. These are people he knows. People in and around the church. People he has loved and warned before. The emotion in that phrase — even with tears — tells you this isn't cold theological analysis.

This is a broken heart.

And then he describes them. Verse 19.

Philippians 3:19 NIV

19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.

I want you to sit with that phrase. Their god is their belly.

We live in a world that has built an entire civilization around the worship of Self.

Your appetite is your guide. Your desires define you. Your preferences are your identity. Your feelings are your truth. Your sexual desires — whatever they are — are not just something you experience, they are who you are, and anyone who questions them is attacking the core of your being.

Your career is your worth. Your income is your value. Your body is your brand. Your comfort is your right.

And the whole machine — the advertising, the algorithms, the entertainment, the therapy culture at its worst — the whole thing is designed to keep your eyes fixed on one object.

Yourself.

This is the God of Self. And he is the most popular deity in America right now.

Nobody calls it religion. But it has temples — they're called gyms and offices and Instagram feeds. It has a creed — you do you, live your truth, follow your heart.

And it has worshippers. Millions of them. Some of them sitting in churches on Sunday mornings.

Now here's what I want you to notice. Paul doesn't describe these people as monsters. He describes them as misdirected.

It's a gaze problem. Not primarily a behavior problem. A gaze problem.

Your feet are still moving. But your eyes are on the ground. On yourself.

And Paul — with tears — calls that walking as an enemy of the cross.

Not because those people are beyond reach. He's weeping, not writing them off.

But because the cross points up. The cross points to a Savior who is above every appetite, above every identity, above every earthly thing. And a life organized around Self is a life with its back to that cross.

Here's the uncomfortable question. Not — are you a good person. Not — do you show up and try.

What is actually at the center your life?

When you make decisions — about your time, your money, your relationships, your future — what is the gravitational pull you're orbiting around? What are you actually serving?

Your life moves in the direction of your gaze.

The God of Self will take you exactly where eyes-down always goes.

Further down. Further from God. Further from the life you were actually made for. Until one day you look up and realize you've spent everything serving a god who had nothing to give you.

That's not dramatic language. That's just where the road goes.

But there's another road. It’s narrow and few will find it.

Look up. Press on. One thing.

That's not religion. That's not self-improvement. That's not try harder and do better.

It’s a person who has been found by Jesus — and knows it — running in the only direction that leads somewhere worth going.

Look up and live.

MOVEMENT 4: Live from Your Citizenship

Philippians 3:20–4:1

Paul has told us who to look at. He's told us what to let go of. He's shown us two kinds of walkers and where each road goes.

And now he tells us why any of this is sustainable.

Because here's the honest question underneath everything we've talked about this morning.

What keeps us from drifting back?

So you’re able to fix your gaze today. You let go of the past today. You lean into the stride today. But tomorrow the shame comes back. The nostalgia creeps in. The appetite reasserts itself. The gravity of earthly things pulls your eyes back down.

What holds you?

Before Paul answers that — I need you to feel the world these people lived in.

Philippi was a Roman colony. And back then Roman citizenship was everything. It determined your rights, your status, your access, your identity. Roman citizens walked differently. Talked differently. They knew exactly who they were and where they belonged. In a world without a stable middle class, without social safety nets, without the protections we take for granted — your citizenship was your security. It was the ground beneath your feet.

And Paul looks at this church — many of whom were Roman citizens — and says something that would have stopped them cold.

Verse 20. Phil. 3:20-21

Philippians 3:20–21 NIV

20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Your real passport isn't stamped in Rome. Your real home isn't here.

You belong to a kingdom that cannot be shaken, led by a King who cannot be defeated — and that King is coming back.

Not as a baby in a manger this time. As a conquering King with the power to transform everything. Every broken body. Every unresolved story. Every painful thing that never got made right in this life.

He is going to subject all things to himself. Every. Thing.

This is not escapism. This is the most stabilizing truth in the universe.

You are a citizen of an unshakeable kingdom. And your King is coming.

So you can stand firm right now in the middle of whatever is happening around you.

That's verse 4:1. The therefore that holds the whole passage together.

Philippians 4:1 NIV

1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends!

Stand firm.

Not — grit your teeth and white-knuckle it. Not — try harder, do better, get your act together.

Stand firm — because you know who you are. You know who's coming. And you know who found you first.

Four moves. One direction.

Look at the Savior. Let go of the past. Lean into the stride. Live from your citizenship.

Your life moves in the direction of your gaze. So fix your eyes relentlessly on Jesus.

Closing — Communion

In a few minutes we're going to come to the Table together of communion. (Begin Passing… )

And I want you to understand what we're actually doing when we do that.

The night before Jesus went to the cross he sat with his disciples. He took bread and he broke it. He took the cup and he poured it. And he said —

Do this in remembrance of me.

Remember me!

Jesus knew something about us. He knew we drift. He knew we need regular, physical, embodied moments of re-orientation. So he gave us a practice. A place to come back to. A Table.

This Table is not a ritual. It's not religious routine you go through to feel like you did your part.

This is Jesus — the same Jesus Paul couldn't stop running toward — saying to you right now:

Here. Look at me. I'm right here.

The bread is his body, broken so your worst chapter could be covered and your best chapter put in its place.

The cup is his blood, poured out so the backward gaze could finally be released.

You might come this morning carrying shame. Something you can't stop replaying. Something you've never told anyone. Something that whispers you are too far gone.

Come anyway. This Table was set for you.

You might come carrying pride. Old trophies. Former glory. A version of yourself you keep trying to get back to.

Come anyway. This Table has a way of putting everything exactly where it belongs.

You might come this morning just tired. Drifting. Eyes down. Not sure how long it's been since you really looked up.

That's exactly why Jesus gave us this. Come and fix your gaze.

Your life moves in the direction of your eyes.

Every time. Without exception. Without negotiation.

Look up.

And live. 1. Call to Remembrance

At Crossroads we take communion not out of tradition, but as an act of worship — a chance to stop, look up, and refix our gaze on Jesus.

Read

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 NIV

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

This bread represents a body broken so your worst chapter could be covered and your best chapter put in its place.

Take this together, as one body.

2. The Lord's Prayer

With the confidence of citizens of heaven, let us join our hearts as one community:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

3. The New Covenant

Read

1 Corinthians 11:25 NIV

25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

This cup is his blood, poured out so the backward gaze could finally be released. The shame file is closed. The trophy case is emptied. He is enough.

Drink this together as a pledge of the new life we have in him.

4. Commission and Closing

1 Corinthians 11:26 NIV

26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Our King is coming. Until he does — we remember him like this.Gracious God, thank you for this table — a place to come back to when our gaze has wandered. Send us out now as people who have looked up. Not perfect people. Not people who have it all together. But people who have been found by Jesus and are running in the direction of that grace. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.