Philippians 3 New
American Standard Bible (NASB)
7 But whatever things were gain to me,
those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss [c]in view of the surpassing
value of [d]knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, [e]for whom I have suffered the
loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived
from the Law, but that which is through faith
in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and [f]the fellowship of His
sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 [g]in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the
dead.
12 Not that I
have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on [h]so that I may lay hold of that [i]for which also I was laid hold of byChrist Jesus. 13 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 whatlies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the
prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let us therefore, as many as are [j]perfect, have this attitude;
and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; 16 however, let us keep [k]living by that same standard to which we have attained.
I heard via Facebook, from some friends in Canada, that a retired Pastor and former
Missionary, who God used to bring a
significant prophetic word to me when I was a boy, went to be with the Lord today, in the last few days I’ve been waiting on the
Lord for his direction for my life from 2016 onwards,
"The first thing that impresses us about the call of God is that it
comes to the whole man, not to one part of him. The majority of us are godly in
streaks, spiritual in sections; it takes a long time to locate us altogether to
the call of God. We have special days and religious moods, but when we get into
contact with God we are brought in touch with Reality and made all of a piece.
Our Lord's life was all one reality; you could never cut it into two--shallow
here and profound there. My conception of God must embrace the whole of my
life." –
Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your
common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back?
If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every
time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And
the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what
Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing,
until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender. Yet we
tend to say, “Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about . . .
?” Or we say, “Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn’t go against my
common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark.”
Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those
who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person
is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk
everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ
demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common
sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately
find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.
By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but
when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit
with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in
God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to
you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis— only one out of an
entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.
Oswald Chambers.
A
number of years ago, while back in my
home town of Neath, my pastor at the time, Pastor Ernest Williams quoted this
Scripture, when he was due to retire
from the Pastorate, I had the great
privilege of having this man of God, has my pastor from my late teens to my
early twenties and sitting under his ministry at my old Bible School in
Penygroes, Carmenthenshire in the early 1990's.
For
some time, The Lord has been speaking to
me about a commitment I made to Him, when I was a 16 year old teenager in a
Youth Camp in 1986, I been a Christian for just over 5 years, and my greatest
desire was to be a soldier in the British Army,
but God had different and better plans for my life, during the last few months the Lord has been
reminded me of some things He has spoken into my life for the just over the
last thirty years. I was in work today,
and I was having a frustrating day, and the Lord spoke to me when I was on my
afternoon break.
I
was 11 years old when I became a
Christian, and a few weeks after I was
saved, one of my close boyhood friends
and I were exploring the church were the children's meeting had been held where
we both had given our lives to the Lord,
while we were exploring, one of the Pastors of the Pentecostal
Denomination we were part of, was walking down the stairs we were running up,
this Pastor bought me a significant prophetic word, that the Lord has reminded me again of some
30 years later.
Habakkuk
2:2-4
New
American Standard Bible (NASB)
2
Then the Lord answered me and said,
“Record
the vision
And
inscribe it on tablets,
That
[a]the one who [b]reads it may run.
3
“For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
It
[c]hastens toward the goal and it will not [d]fail.
Though
it tarries, wait for it;
For
it will certainly come, it will not delay.
Some
20 years, a really good friend of mine shared this scripture with me, Hebrews 10:35-36
35
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. 36 For
you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may
receive [j]what was promised.
Early,
this week the Lord spoke to me, about
picking up things that I put to aside and let dormant and running with these
things once more, I'm not sure what the coming days will bring, but I know whom I believed and know that He
is able to keep that what I've committed
to Him until that day
Philippians
3:7-16 New American Standard Bible
7
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for
the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss [c]in view
of the surpassing value of [d]knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, [e]for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain
Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived
from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the
power of His resurrection and [f]the fellowship of His sufferings, being
conformed to His death; 11 [g]in order that I may attain to the resurrection
from the dead.
12
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press
on [h]so that I may lay hold of that [i]for which also I was laid hold of by
Christ Jesus. 13 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, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call
of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let us therefore, as many as are [j]perfect, have
this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will
reveal that also to you; 16 however, let us keep [k]living by that same
standard to which we have attained.
NIV
Application Commentary
[Paul]
also speaks positively in verses 12–14 of what he is doing in light of the incompleteness
of his spiritual journey. His language comes from the world of war and
athletics and emphasizes the strenuous nature of his efforts to fulfill his
vocation. In verse 12 he says that he presses on to take hold of the goals
listed in verses 8–11, choosing a pair of words that could, in military
contexts, refer to the pursuit of one army by another. Together the two terms
connote a single-minded attempt to reach a particular goal.
According
to the niv, Paul’s goal is to reach “that for which Christ Jesus took hold of
me.” But the Greek phrase behind “that for which” (eph’ ho) usually expresses
cause in Paul’s letters, and it probably carries a causal force here. So the
goal Paul pursues probably remains all that he has described in verses 8–11, and
the second part of verse 12 should be rendered, “because Christ Jesus took hold
of me.” That is to say, Paul vigorously pursues the knowledge of Christ, his
sufferings, his resurrection power, and union with him at the final day because
on the road to Damascus, Christ took hold of him (Acts 9:1–19; 22:3–16;
26:9–18). Had that event not taken place, Paul might still be busy “persecuting
(dioko) the church” (Phil. 3:6) instead of pressing on (dioko) toward these
goals (vv. 12, 14).
Even
more expressive of the difficulty of Paul’s exertion to reach these goals is
the athletic imagery in verses 12–14. Like a runner who knows that a backward
glance at ground already covered will only slow his progress toward the finish,
Paul says that he forgets what is behind and stretches out toward what is
ahead, so that he might complete the race and win the prize. Some interpreters
have taken Paul’s claim that he forgets what is behind as a reference to his
pre-Christian past (cf. vv. 5–6), but two considerations point away from this
interpretation. (1) The point under discussion here is Paul’s progress as a
believer, not his progress beyond his days of persecuting the church. (2) When
Paul uses athletic imagery elsewhere, the subject is his apostolic labors (cf.
2:16; 1 Cor. 9:24–26). These labors are his focus here too. Paul’s point, then,
is that he refuses to rest on his past successes but presses on toward that day
when he will present the Philippians and his other congregations blameless to
Christ (1:10; 2:14–18; 1 Cor. 1:8; 1 Thess. 3:13; 5:23).
What
is this prize? The term “call” in Paul’s letters, both as a noun and as a verb,
possesses a rich theological significance. Just as God called Israel to be his
people in the Old Testament (Isa. 48:12; 51:2), so, in Paul’s letters, God
calls people from many ethnic and social backgrounds (1 Cor. 1:26; Eph. 3:1;
4:1) into fellowship with Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:9) and into his kingdom (1
Thess. 2:12), and he does this by his grace (Gal. 1:6). This call is not,
moreover, to something that will be fully realized in the present but to the
future for which the believer now hopes (Eph. 1:18; 4:4). Thus, the heavenly
call toward which Paul stretches with all his might is God’s call to be part of
the people, made up of both Jews and Gentiles, who will stand justified before
him on the final day because of their identification with Christ (vv. 8–11).
From
NIVAC: Philippians by Frank Thielman. Published by Zondervan Academic.
The
IVP New Testament Commentary Series
Pursuing
the Prize: Knowing Christ at the End (3:12-14)
Despite
the unfortunate section break (with title!) in the NIV, Paul does not now begin
something new. Rather, with a striking change of metaphors his story takes a
final turn, which simultaneously looks back to verses 4-8 (forgetting the
past), embraces the present (he is not yet fully conformed to Christ's death,
nor has he arrived at the goal, vv. 10-11) and emphasizes his present pursuit
of the final goal. Knowing Christ now and attaining the resurrection combine to
give purpose to Paul's life—his "running," to use his current
metaphor. He has seen the future, and it is ours—full of the single reality
that marks the present: Christ Jesus my Lord. And everything in Paul's present
life is drawn to a future in which Christ is finally and fully known.
So
strongly does Paul feel about this divine pull that makes him run full tilt
toward it, that he says it twice (vv. 12 and 13-14). Both sentences are
structured alike: the main subject and verb, I press on, is preceded by a disclaimer
about "not having arrived," followed by a word about what he presses
toward, which is further qualified by the divine initiative (Christ has already
"taken hold" of him; God has called him heavenward). The only
additional item in the second sentence is the notation about disregarding (NIV
forgetting) what is behind. It is the nature of such rhetoric that the second
sentence reinforces or elaborates the first—and sometimes, as in this case,
clarifies it as well.
There
are some difficulties in interpretation, to be sure, mostly related to two
phenomena: the first verb (elabon, "taken"; NIV obtained) has no
object (the NIV supplies an interpretive all this); and Paul uses striking
wordplays (first with katalabo [NIV take hold of], a compound of elabon which
he milks for all it's worth; and second with cognates of teleios [ "reach
one's goal"], which the NIV puts as perfect in verse 12 and mature in v.
15). This leads him to say some things in unusual ways, which are very
difficult to transfer into English (it's like trying to tell a joke in a second
language).
But
kept in context, it all makes perfectly good sense. So far he has modeled for
the Philippians that their own future does not lie in Paul's (now rejected)
past (vv. 4-6) and that the "already/not yet" of the future lies
singularly in knowing Christ, through whom we have been given present
righteousness (vv. 7-11). Now he picks up the final ("not yet")
thread from verse 11 and insists that the future is still future. He has not "already"
gotten there, but he strains every muscle finally to do so. In context the
"there," of course, is not heaven or reward as such but the final
prize of knowing Christ even as Paul himself is known (1 Cor 13:12).
1.
Pursuing him who took hold of Paul (3:12). The not that which begins this
sentence is an idiom that qualifies something previously said so that readers
will not draw the wrong inference. Along with the repeated adverb "[not]
already" Paul thus offers a twin disclaimer—what not to infer about the
already present future. The disclaimers emphasize that despite present
realization of the power of his resurrection and sharing in his sufferings,
Paul has not yet reached the final goal. He has not already obtained
("taken/received") it, nor has he already arrived at the goal (NIV
been made perfect). He will proceed to play on both of these verbs, the first
immediately, the second in verse 15.
In
light of what he says in verse 13 about "disregarding what is past,"
the implied object of obtained might be "all things"; more likely it
refers to what has more immediately preceded. It must be remembered that Paul
is not writing a new "paragraph"; that is our invention. This
sentence follows hard on the heels of the preceding clause (v. 11). What he has
obviously not obtained is that which he is pressing on to take hold of, which
verse 14 makes clear is the final goal. Thus he adds, or have already
"arrived at my goal." There is a sense, of course, in which
perfection does happen at the end; but the root (telos) of this verb (teleioo)
has the primary sense of "goal" or "aim," before it takes
on secondary senses of "perfect, complete, fulfill, mature." Nothing
in context implies that perfection is an issue. Since that English word
conjures up all kinds of wrong connotations here, and since everything in these
final sentences indicates that the eschatological prize is what Paul is
pursuing with such vigor, the verb here almost certainly carries its primary
sense of "reach the goal."
Since
Paul has not yet "arrived," he does what he wants the Philippians to
do, press on to take hold of ("seize") that for which Christ Jesus
took hold of me. With this wonderful wordplay he moves from not already
"taking" to yet "taking hold of" the very thing/one who
"took hold of" him. He will go on in the next sentence to elaborate
what his own "taking hold of" means. In context the next phrase, that
for which Christ Jesus took hold of me, points back at least to verses 8-9
(being found in Christ and thus having a righteousness that comes from God);
but in terms of his own story, and especially the use of this strong verb, he
probably intends them to hear echoes of the Damascus Road as well. A good dose
of memory about one's beginnings in Christ can serve as the proper shot of
adrenaline for the continuing race.
2.
Pursuing the final prize—knowing Christ fully (3:13-14). What could otherwise
be ambiguous about verse 12—because of Paul's wordplays—is clarified by this
sentence, now turning the verb "pursue" (press on) into a
full-fledged metaphor from the games. The vocative "brothers [and
sisters]" does not signal the beginning of something new but emphasizes
what he is about to repeat. The disclaimer in this case picks up the
immediately preceding language (not . . . to have taken hold of it); but before
picking up the verb press on, he recalls his singular passion to know Christ
from verse 8 (cf. 1:21) in terms of but one thing. There is no I do in Paul's
narrative; the language is terse and stark: his whole Christian life has been
one thing—the pursuit of Christ.
The
metaphor itself begins with a "not/but" contrast. Pictured first is
the runner whose eyes are set on the goal in such a way that he "pays no
attention to" (the runner had better not forget) what is behind. This
imagery always brings to my mind the famous "miracle mile" (the first
time two milers ran under four minutes in the same race) run in 1954 in my
present hometown (Vancouver, B.C.) by Roger Bannister and John Landy. Landy had
led all the way, but coming off the final turn toward the finish line he looked
over his shoulder to find out where Bannister was, only to be passed on the
other side and beaten to the wire. The picture of that event has always been
for me commentary enough on Paul's metaphor. In context what is behind probably
refers to verses 4-6, but it would also include all other matters that might
impede his singular pursuit of Christ.
The
flip side of the image is the runner's straining toward what is ahead. The
picture is of coming down the home stretch, leaning forward, extending oneself
to break the tape. It is generally hazardous to press metaphors, and this one
can be pressed in all kinds of wrong directions. Paul's purpose—both his use of
this metaphor and its intent—is singular; not "perfection" is in
view, but perseverance. As Paul "runs" toward the Christ who has
already taken hold of him, he does so in the same focused, full-tilt way a
runner does who is intent on winning. To be sure, his using such a metaphor
results is one of those small inconsistencies that are created by active minds
as they move quickly from one point to another. He has just recalled Christ's
having "taken hold of" him, so it is clear that he does not totally
disregard the past. This is imagery, pure and simple, whose meaning will be
given in what follows.
The
"what" that Paul presses on toward continues the athletic imagery; it
is to reach the goal and thus win the prize. But no mere "celery
wreath" for Paul (the ordinary prize in the games). The goal is God's
eschatological conclusion of things; the prize is Christ, which in context
means the final realization of knowing him. This is what Paul would gladly die
to gain (1:23); this is what his whole life is about; no other reward could
have any meaning for him.
What
draws him on is a combination of the past and the future: that God has called
me heavenward in Christ Jesus. This has been said by a series of Greek
genitives ("of" phrases), which intend the following relationships.
First, God has called us to himself, which will culminate in glory; second,
that call, which began at conversion, is heavenward in terms of its final goal;
third, God's call found its historical and experiential location in Christ
Jesus; and fourth, at the end of the race we will gain the prize, Christ
himself, the tangible evidence that the goal of God's call has been reached.
Paul
tends to see all of Christian life in terms of God's calling. It begins as a
call into fellowship with his Son (1 Cor 1:9), thus a call to "be
saints" (1 Cor 1:2) and thereby joined to his people who are destined for
glory. The present usage is unusual in looking at our calling from the
perspective of its completion rather than its beginnings. This has been the aim
of God's call right along, to lift us heavenward to share in his eternal
Presence.Here, then, is the first note of what will be emphasized at the end of
the appeal in verses 19-21: some, who are no longer walking in the way set
forth by Paul, have their "minds set on earthly things," whereas Paul
and the Philippians are among those whose "citizenship is [already] in
heaven," from whence they await the coming of the Savior. Thus he turns
immediately (vv. 15-17) to press on them the need to follow his example—with a
"mature" mindset like that just described.
This
singular and passionate focus on the future consummation, which Paul clearly
intends as paradigmatic, often gets lost in the contemporary Western church—in
an affluent age, who needs it? But Paul's voice needs to be heard anew. Part of
being human is that by nature we are oriented to the future; in a day when most
people have no real future to look forward to, here is a strikingly powerful
Christian moment. The tragedy that attends this rather thoroughgoing loss of
genuine hope is that our culture is now trying to make the present eternal.
North Americans are probably the most death-denying culture in the history of
the race. How else can one explain cosmetic surgery's having become a
multimillion-dollar industry?
In
the midst of such banal hopelessness, the believer in Christ, who recognizes
Christ as the beginning and end of all things meaningful, needs to be reminded
again—and to think in terms of sharing it with the world—that God's purposes
for his creation are not finished until he has brought our salvation to its
consummation. Indeed, to deny the consummation is to deny what is essential to
any meaningful Christian faith. Paul finds life meaningful precisely because he
sees the future with great clarity, and the future has to do with
beginnings—the (now redeemed) realization of God's creative purposes through
Christ the Lord. There is no other prize; hence nothing else counts for much
except knowing Christ, both now and with clear and certain hope for the future.
IVP
New Testament Commentaries are made available by the generosity of InterVarsity
Press.
