The Great Pursuit

Introduction

Every story worth telling is a story about desires, and this is true because life itself is about desires. Imagine living your life without want or desire. Not only would it be incredibly boring, but you would soon starve to death because your desire for food and for life itself would be gone. Without desire, you would sit alone and do nothing. We get up, brush our teeth, eat breakfast, go to church, get married, have children, save money, go on vacation, and do whatever else we do because we are beings that are controlled and live with desires. One unfortunate misunderstanding about Christian piety and holiness is the idea that it means to deny all of our desires and live lives that are not influenced by what we want. Not only is this an unsatisfying way to live, but it is practically impossible. Everything you do, you do because you want something, that is just part of being a conscious living human being. Part of having a soul is having desires that we act on to fulfil. The Bible doesn’t tell us to get rid of our desires, rather it tells us to prioritize them and be willing to sacrifice lesser desires for things that are more important. Many times in our lives we may feel stuck because we are not sure which desire we want to prioritize. Is it more important to get the promotion I want or to spend more time with the kids? Is it more important to go on a cruise this winter or a camping trip this summer? When we read the Bible, those characters who are portrayed as holy and righteous are not men and women that have overcome all desire, but rather have over come lesser desires in order to focus on a greater desire. I firmly believe that people are generally happier when we invest in the best things that we could possibly want and sacrifice lesser desires for it. This means that to live a holy life is not about riding yourself of all desire, instead it is about leading yourself to pursue those desires that are the most rewarding and the most important.

What Paul attempts to show us, both in his lifestyle and in the content of this text, is that the best and only important desire to pursue is the desire for Christ. Last week we looked at how Paul was willing to deny himself the pride of self-righteousness as well as anything else he could obtain in this life for the goal of being found in Christ. He had a joy in Christ that was based on the worth of our Lord and the value of being called his. Joy is the happiness in knowing that your desires are or will soon be met. It is the feeling when you are hungry and smell the food about to be served, or as a child on Christmas when you see one of the wrapped gifts is the exact size and shape of the item you’ve been wishing for all year. To boil it down, joy is when our desires are fulfilled and they satisfy us. That last part is important, because many of us have gotten what we wanted only to find that we didn’t really want the actual outcome and we are left disappointed. Joy is when a desire is fulfilled and you are satisfied with the result. So we all live our lives seeking the things we want with the hope that obtaining those things will produce this satisfactory joy. Whether you realize it or not, you woke up this morning on a mission to find joy in the things you desire. Paul’s argument so far has been that this joy is only found in Christ and therefore all other desires are worth abandoning in order to pursue this one great end. However, there is a sense in which we have not yet fully experienced this joy. The table is set and we smell delicious food but dinner is still being made, the presents are still wrapped. Joy for us comes in the form of hope, hope that we will indeed obtain our hearts desire. This morning we will look at the pursuit of this hope and see how we can embrace a way of thinking that puts our desire for Christ above all else.

The Pursuit of the Pursued

Our text begins with the words “not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect.” Looking back at last weeks text, the “this” refers to the full power of the resurrection. Paul wants to make it clear that no one, including himself, has experienced the fulness of the resurrection from the dead. There is still a part of God’s promise that has yet to be fulfilled. Paul admits that he has not obtained the end for which he is striving yet. His faith is a future-centred faith, one focused on the things God has promised. This is no new concept as the saints in the OT also lived in a future-orientated faith. So the question that might be posed to Paul is, why should we listen to you and all of the hopes you have about what you will receive in Christ if you have not yet received them? How do we know that you aren’t just fooling yourself by giving up everything for this great promise? What makes you so sure that the work of Christ will actually pay off for you in the end?

Paul’s answer is both interesting and powerful. First, Paul expresses that it is worth pursuing even though he hasn’t experienced it yet. The word used is a very strong one, emphasizing a race being run hard without holding anything back. He has not recieved this resurrection as of yet but he has resolved to make it to that resurrection by any means necessary. This is a powerful answer because any doubt is almost irrelevant. You don’t quit a race if you are questioning whether you are going to win, you run harder and the only way this race can be won, as Paul has demonstrated, is by running after Christ.

And yet Paul does have hope, hope that gives him an assurance of this resurrection he is so eager to obtain. Paul says “I strive to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” In other words, he ties his struggle to the struggle of Christ for his own soul. This is comforting for two different reasons. First, if Christ was willing to sacrifice himself, his own divine blood, so that you may inherit a resurrection from the dead and eternal life than you can hardly go wrong going after that same goal. If you see this as a gamble, trying to decide whether it is worth giving up the things of this temporary world for the promise and hope of an eternal one, consider that Christ struggled and fought so that you may obtain such a resurrection. If he did, why wouldn’t you?

The second reason this is comforting is because we already know that Christ was victorious over death, and thus gained that resurrection. In chapter 2 Paul showed how the resurrection proves Christ’s struggle was a success. He did rise from the dead as a first fruit of the church, he did ascend and he was seated at the right hand of God in glory. Paul has the confidence that he will get what he is aiming for, the resurrection, because Christ already obtained it. He struggled and overcame death to give you this resurrection, so you should also struggle to inherit what is sure to be yours. In the beginning of verse 13 Paul says he does not consider that he himself achieved this or that he is able of achieving it. Think about it, how hard is it to raise yourself from the dead? If you went around and told your friends that you are going to leave everything in your life, your career, family, education, hobbies, to pursue the ability to raise yourself from the dead they wouldn’t likely be your friends for long. No one has ever found away to keep themselves from dying and it is the nature of sinful human beings to experience death, case closed. Instead, knowing that Christ has achieved it means that we have a reason to hope that we will indeed receive this most precious of gifts. Resurrection from the dead means eternal life, and now that we have a Saviour who has himself been raised from the dead and that he did it for our sakes, we have reason to leave everything behind in pursuit of it. The goal is within reach.

Forget the past, embrace the future

This reveals two important truths about the Christian life. One, that it is based on the pursuit of eternal life in Christ, and two that it is future-facing. Both of these truths compliment one another and go together well in a consistent theology. Everything in the Christian life is about a life in Christ. Christ’s death on the cross was not for your physical wellbeing, your financial state, or anything else that is temporary and fades eventually. What Christ accomplished on the cross was 100% of eternal value and looked forward to an eternal life. To complement this truth, Christianity is forward facing because this eternal life has not yet been revealed to us in its fulness. There is a foretaste of this deliverance in the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and a seal of assurance in the resurrection of Christ, but it is in the future that we place our hope. This is why the author of Hebrews describes faith as the evidence of what we cannot see. It is not a blind faith because there is good assurance in what we believe, but we do not see it yet and we will not until the final day has come. This means all of our energy is pointed to the glories of life in a future day.

So Paul says that although he has not made it his own as of yet, he has good reason to live completely for this future cause. He therefore sets aside all that he had in the past to embrace the future. This statement is rather broad and can be seen as touching many areas, although Paul is here refering specifically to his past life as a pharisee. He forgets all that he left behind, the glory of man-made righteousness as well as the shame of persecuting God’s people, both the beneficial and the worthless are not considered going forward. God thinks no more of you if your pre-Christian life was one of near-sainthood, and he things no less of you if your pre-Christian life was like the devil incarnate. The life of false righteousness as well as the life of sin must be repented of, left behind, and forgotten. This theme also peaks to those Judaizers we talked about before. These teaches wanted to keep the Old Covenant while embracing Christ at the same time. Paul stands firm on the conviction that such a position is impossible, just as impossible as it is to look in front of you and behind you at the same time. You cannot walk in two different directions, you must either live in the old or the new, the past or the future, what was or what is to come. Paul’s argument is that what is to come is much better than anything in the past, however beneficial or harmful it would have been. When people talk about leaving the past behind, they usually mean leaving the things we are ashamed of or wish hadn’t happened. Paul takes it the whole way; whatever is behind you, even the things you in your old self would consider good, is useless now. You are a new person, a completely new creation, and all that you once valued as well as that which you were once most ashamed of is now all in the past.

This is where value and desire come in. Your desires tend to follow the direction in which you look. You see, you desire, and you pursue. Those three steps become the foundation of everything that we do. Remember how a few weeks ago we saw that the real reason that people embrace lies and false teaching is that they never found joy in the truth. When you are full of joy in the righteousness of Christ, you have no need for your own righteousness. The pride and self-assurance that it would bring are garbage compared the the precious gift of the righteousness of Christ. Here, Paul is showing us that if we are to persevere in the Christian faith, avoiding sin, false teachers, and despair during persecution, we need to desire something that is beyond this current plane of time. Something that is future and not present, but is still assured and not wishful thinking. That thing is resurrection and eternal life in Christ. You must go through life resisting all the temptations that the world throws at you, distractions, griefs, confusions, lies, and all manner of other traps and diversions from the truth. You will only do that if you are led by desire. Nothing else will keep you close to Christ in the hardest times except the fact that you want Christ more than anything else. This is why leaving the past behind is such a crucial step for the Christian; it means leaving old lifestyles, habits, pleasures, pride, communities, and values in exchange for Christ. No other desire must get in the way of what Paul calls in verse 14, “the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Now, this doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy things in this world, but even the enjoyment of those things should be an extension of enjoying and desiring Christ. If you don’t desire Christ, if you don’t want him to the extent that your eyes are turned away from things you once wanted so that you can have him and his resurrection, you will not survive the Christian life.

The thinking of the mature and steadfast

This leads us to the final point that Paul makes in this text. Verses 15-16 read, “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.” As a conclusion to what Paul has been describing, he pushes this perspective on the church. Those who are mature in the faith should think about the Christian life the way Paul thinks about it, and if they don’t, well eventually God will reveal it to them. The way of thinking he is referring to is the mindset to leave all earthly gain behind in our minds and pursue the heavenly gain of Christ and the life in his resurrection. There two ways that Paul means this at the same time. First, everyone who is mature in the faith, that is, anyone who is a leader or mentor or someone who is looked up to in the church must embrace this way of thinking so as to be an example to all others who watch them. The other way he means this is based on what he says in verse 16, “God will reveal that also to you.” In some respect, Paul is saying that if you are a mature believer, you will think this way. It is a mark of maturity and proves that you understand the Christian life both theologically and practically. It shows that you have battled temptations, persecutions, and distractions from your faith and you have found that the only thing that can possibly keep you on the straight and narrow is this way of thinking. Essentially, Paul is saying that if you don’t see the Christian life like this, you have a lot of growing up to do.

But Paul is also very humble about this. For him, it’s not about being theologically correct and more mature than other Christians. His concern is basic spiritual maturity and the ability to endure everything that this world throws at us. He ends our text, “only let us hold true to what we have attained” which shows us the reason he wants mature believers to adopt his point of view. Paul is very patient and gracious, he isn’t trying to shove this way of thinking down their throats while at the same time being very open about why it is important that all mature believers think this way. It should be the goal of all believers to be mature believers, the Bible calls us to grow. Paul is confident that if Christians hold fast to what they have attained in the Gospel and the resurrection of Christ they will end up thinking like this.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

It is unfortunate how easy it is to lose this way of thinking, or to never find it in the first place. And yet, if we are not thinking of the great pursuit of Christ’s glory and making that our one desire we lose the greatest tool we have to fight against everything that turns us aside. But most Christians don’t believe that their life is dangerous. They don’t think about how they could be led astray. Misplaced pride often gives us a lax and passive attitude towards the world. In Spiritual warfare, you are fighting for your desires, for what you want. The fact that our desires are so flippant should make us very alert and aware. The truth is that the Christian life is a dangerous life and if we don’t adopt the mature way of a Christian then we set ourselves up for exposure to temptations that we are not prepared to face. We can easily take it for granted that God will help us face all temptation and don’t consider that God doesn’t just give you an easy way out in the moment, he gives you the grace to prepare for the moments of hardship and temptation when your faith is being put to the test. Are you actively preparing for your temptations? Are you preparing for the days when you don’t feel like praying? Are you creating a plan for the hour when doubt creeps into your mind or division against a brother or sister could cause a rift? We live in a world full of danger because we walk around with hearts that desire things and that go after what they desire.

These hearts are still being sanctified, they are still being trained to stop loving the old and start loving the new. And if you aren’t careful in directing the desires that come out of these hearts they will start desiring the old again. That is what is at the heart of the false teaching of the Judaizers and it is at the heart of many who have fallen away, betrayed the Lord, or fallen into sin that has permanently crippled their Christian witness. To combat all these old desires you need to replace them with the new, the desire to serve Christ, be raised with him in the last day, and to inherit the prize of eternal life.

Conclusion