Press On Toward The Goal

“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:10-14)

It was clear that for Paul, God was all he needed.

If you know anything about his past, you know that Paul was not just an ordinary Jew, he was a Jew among Jews. In the verses just before this he lays out his qualifications. “I was circumcised when I was eight days old: I am of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin I am a Hebrew, born of Hebrew parents. As far as the Law goes, I was a Pharisee: as for zeal, I was a persecutor of the Churches: as for the righteousness which is in the Law, I was beyond blame.” Each of these phrases has a specific meaning to Jews of that day.

But there is no doubt that Paul was a Jew with the highest qualifications. Yet he “counted it all as rubbish” and dedicated his life to following Christ. We look back with the lens of history and view Paul as one of the greats in Christian history but when Paul was writing this letter he wasn’t thinking about all the sermons that would one day be given based on his letters written in prison – he was trying to minister to a specific church to let them know that whatever they had going for them, the only thing that counts is what they had in Christ – nothing else mattered.

This morning I read about a guy who at one time was referred to by the airline industry as the “Pudding Guy.” Why? Because he found a loophole in an airline promotion several years ago for frequent flyer miles. He spent $3,000 to buy 12,150 cups of pudding and, in the process, earned 1.25 million miles.

For a time, it seemed as if his whole life revolved around getting frequent-flyer miles. What do our lives revolve around, or just as important when people look at how we live what do they see as being the most important thing in life to us? If you had been alive in Paul’s time and known him, there would have been no doubt what his life revolved around. In the passage above he even listed his life’s mission statement: “One thing I do, . . . I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

Even if “frequent-sailor miles” had existed in Paul’s day, I doubt that he would have given them much thought on his missionary journeys to Asia. Christ alone was at the top of his priority list. Everything else was secondary, “that in all things He may have the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18).

Our goal should be to make our life show that we have a single goal: following Christ. I’ve realized that in order to do that, it starts in the mind. Our actions flow from our thoughts, so that is where the battle is won or lost.

“Words and actions are transient things, and being once past, are nothing; but the effect of them on an immortal soul may be endless.” (Richard Baxter, Dying Thoughts)