SERIES: Philippians: Cheerful Sounds from a Jail Cell
Winning the Race
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: The Olympic Games begin in Seoul, Korea in a few weeks. Once again, as is true every four years, one hundred million Americans in desperate need of exercise will spend countless hours in front of a television watching a few hundred athletes in desperate need of rest, who are nevertheless pressing on with every last ounce of effort they can coax out of their tired bodies.
The Apostle Paul loved the Olympic Games. Chances are he personally saw some of the great athletic competitions of ancient Greece, for he frequently likens the Christian life to a race. Last Sunday we began this great chapter by noting that the Apostle used the metaphor of an accountant to communicate that everything he once counted as a religious asset he now recognizes as a liability and a bad debt. And everything he lost when he met Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road, he now considers rubbish in view of the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord.
Today he switches metaphors to that of an athlete. He tells us that for an athlete to achieve victory he first must become eligible for the race, then he must get into condition, and finally he must exercise incredible determination. Only then can he expect to receive the prize.
Today’s text beginning in verse 9 breaks into the middle of a sentence, but I take you back to verse 7 for the complete thought:
“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ (now here today’s text begins) 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 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, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
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. 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, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:7-14)
Paul has just stated the critical issue for every person to consider: have you gained Christ? Are you part of His family? Are you even in the race to which all Christians are called? If you are not or are not sure you are, I invite you to listen extra carefully, for this may be the day for you to discover the key to eternal life.
Paul begins today’s text by stating clearly the eligibility requirement—it is gaining a right standing with God.
Eligibility: gaining a right standing with God (9)
“That I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” The word “righteousness” is found often in the NT, and it is important that we understand it. It basically refers to a “right standing with God.” The most basic problem of human existence is how to gain a right standing with God. If we don’t have that, we’re not even in the race.
Now Paul makes it clear that there are two kinds of righteousness: self-righteousness and divine righteousness. The first comes through law-keeping, the second is a gift that comes by faith.
Self-righteousness attained by law-keeping. Most people try to attain a right relationship with God through some kind of law-keeping. Paul himself tried it, for in verse 9 he speaks of a “righteousness of my own that comes from the law.” Early in his life he tried desperately to keep the Mosaic Law. And he did a pretty fair job of it, as compared to most!
Most people today have a different set of standards than the Mosaic Law, but in essence they are trying to achieve a right standing with God in the same way Paul did—through hard work and personal discipline! The problem is we know instinctively that God is a holy God with absolute standards, so we try to cover up our sins by calling them weaknesses or illnesses or mistakes. Or, if that doesn’t work, we try to compare ourselves with other people. If we are more “moral” than our friends and neighbors, we consider ourselves to have a pretty good chance at a right relationship with God.
But there are other kinds of self-righteousness that are just as futile. Some people have given up on trying to keep the moral standards God has written on their hearts, and they have decided instead to rely on religion to give them a right standing with God. So long as they belong to “the Church” and pay their dues, they feel reasonably secure. Organized religion is saturated with people who live like the Devil and are expecting rites, ritual and membership to get them over the top. One cult promises its members a special place in God’s kingdom if they do X number of hours of witnessing each week.
Still others lean on the exceptional merit of the saints. One church teaches that some of the great Christians of the past were so righteous that they stored up more merit than they needed. So, if you pray to those saints you can receive some of their excess merit.
At the bottom of it, all of these efforts are really human efforts to achieve a right standing with God. They are all a kind of self-righteousness. Now frankly, people who work at being righteous generally make better neighbors than those who don’t. They often make pretty good church members and volunteers for charitable organizations. But while such people may have enough morality to keep them out of jail, they don’t have enough righteousness to get him into heaven! You see, it was not bad things that kept Paul away from Jesus—it was good things! He had to lose his “religion,” as we saw last week, to find salvation.
The fact of the matter is, the Bible teaches that there is only one kind of righteousness that is acceptable to God—not self-righteousness, not church-righteousness, not saint-righteousness, but divine righteousness, i.e., the righteousness that comes from God Himself, the righteousness of Christ. And how does one get this kind of righteousness? It is a gift that is received by faith.
Divine righteousness received by faith. He goes on in verse 9, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” God is the source of this righteousness while faith is the means by which it is appropriated.
Someone has said that this verse is a commentary on the whole book of Romans, and there’s some truth to that. You see, Romans teaches us that God’s standards for righteousness are so high and absolute that no man can reach them—not the pagan, not the moral man, not even the religious Jew. In fact, the human condition would be hopeless except for the fact that God has offered to give us what we cannot earn. Can’t beat that, can you? The only problem is that He won’t give it to us unless we give up trying to earn it. We can’t take His gift as an insurance policy in case our own efforts fail. It’s all or nothing.
Such a step takes faith. Faith, by the way is simply believing in someone or something and acting upon it. You decide whether God is truthful and reliable, and then you cast yourself on Him and believe that He will indeed credit to your account the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
So much for Eligibility. Let’s turn our attention to the second factor:
Conditioning: getting to know Jesus Christ (10-11)
The greatest athlete is not always the strongest, for athletic conditioning also involves a lot of knowledge. The runner cannot approach a race merely as a physical event—he must also run intelligently. Jim Ryan, the great miler from Wichita, Kansas, lost the Olympic 1500-meter race in Mexico City because he was outsmarted by the Kenyans. And there are a lot of Christians losing the spiritual race because they are out of condition in this area of knowledge, i.e., knowing Jesus Christ.
One of the simplest but most profound statements in all of the Bible is the five words that open verse 10: “I want to know Christ.” Before even beginning to expound this verse or talk about its implications, I had to stop and ask myself, “Is that really true of me? Can I really say in all honesty, ‘I want to know Christ?’” I want it to be true; I act like it’s true. I have no business being a pastor if it isn’t true. But is it a fact that I really want to know Christ? It’s not easy to answer because there is a lot involved in it, as Paul immediately proceeds to show us.
To “know Him” is to know Him personally and experientially. The verb that Paul uses for “knowing” is a term that almost always indicates personal, experiential knowledge. It is not simply intellectual knowledge. Nor is it merely the knowledge of certain facts or theories or doctrines. In the Greek translation of the OT this is the word used in Genesis 4:1, “Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain.” It indicates the closest and most intimate knowledge of another person. So Paul’s aim is not to know about Christ; it is to know Christ.
To “know Him” is to know His power. “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection.” For Paul the resurrection is not just a past event in history, however amazing. It is not simply something which happened to Jesus. It is a living, dynamic power which operates in the life of the individual Christian to the extent that we appropriate it.
I believe there are several aspects to this resurrection power. There is a future aspect. Because He lives, we shall live also, and the same power that raised up Jesus will someday raise us up as well. But there is also a present aspect. The power that raised Jesus is available to us in our present experience. There is power for witness, power for healing, power to withstand temptation, power to endure suffering, power to live victoriously.
Earlier we sang these words,
He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean,
His blood availed for me.
To know Him is to know His resurrection power.
To “know Him” is to share His sufferings. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” I can understand why Paul wanted to know the power of the resurrection, but it’s a bit more difficult to understand why he wanted to share in Christ’s sufferings. It’s because Paul had a very different perspective on suffering than most of us have. To suffer for the faith was not a penalty to him, but a privilege.
Paul saw value in suffering because it enabled him to minister more compassionately to others. Listen to his words in 2 Cor. 1: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”
Furthermore, suffering enabled Paul to minister with greater power. Listen to 2 Cor. 4:7ff: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power if from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”
Paul wanted to share in Christ’s sufferings.
To “know Him” is to become like Him. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Now this is not an easy concept to understand. It seems that Paul is saying that to know Christ is to become one with Him so that we share His every experience. When we committed our lives to Christ, we were crucified with Him, died with Him, were buried with Him, made alive with Him, raised with Him, made joint-heirs with Him, glorified with Him, enthroned with Him, and reign with Him.
Some are bothered by the lack of certainty which seems to be expressed when Paul says, “somehow”in verse 11, or “if only I may,” as though he were striving for the resurrection but isn’t sure he’ll make it. I don’t think Paul is expressing any distrust in the power of God or any real doubt as to his own salvation. Rather I think he is writing in the spirit of deep humility and commendable distrust in self. But what is clear is that the redemption he looks forward to will not be complete until the resurrection.
The word translated “resurrection” here is not the normal word for resurrection; it is found only here in the NT. It means literally, “out-resurrection from among the corpses.” Apparently there were some in the church who believed that the only resurrection hope of the believer was the experience of the new birth; but Paul says there is yet a future resurrection where the believer’s body will actually come out of the grave. That will mark the culmination of his knowledge of Christ.
There is a third factor in the race besides eligibility and conditioning, and that is …
Determination: Pressing on toward the goal (12-13)
I think there are three words that describe the Apostle’s commitment to pressing on toward the goal in the race: dissatisfaction, devotion, and direction.
Dissatisfaction (12a, 13a). Paul was satisfied with Jesus Christ, but he was dissatisfied with himself. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect.” Again, in verse 13 he adds, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.”
Many Christians are self-satisfied because they compare their “running” with that of other Christians, usually those who are not making much progress. I am reminded of the rabbit in the fable, “The Hare and the Tortoise.” While the tortoise was plodding steadily on, the hare showed disdain for his opponent and took a nap, and on awakening discovered, too late, that the tortoise had already reached the goal!
Had Paul compared himself with his contemporaries, he would have been tempted to be proud, because there were few, if any, in his day who worked as hard or endured as much in ministry. But Paul did not compare himself with others; he compared himself with Jesus Christ! And when he did, he completely rejected the notion that the race was as good as won. Oh, he was a firm believer in the doctrine of election “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4, 1 Peter 1:20), and accordingly he believed in assurance of salvation. But he did not hold to election apart from human responsibility, in salvation apart from faith, or in assurance without constant recourse to the promises.
Even though he had already sacrificed everything in his service for the Lord, he is certain of one thing, namely that he has not yet reached perfection!
Direction (13b) Paul is single-minded about the race before him. He says in verse 13, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” The phrase “one thing” is an important one in the Christian life. Warren Wiersbe cites the following examples from the Scriptures: “One thing is needful,” Jesus explained to busy Martha when she criticized her sister for sitting at His feet in Luke 10:42. “One thing I know!” exclaimed the man who had received his sight by the power of Christ in John 9:25. “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after!”, testified the Psalmist in 27:4.[i]
Too many of us are going so many different directions that we have lost the power that comes from concentrating our spiritual energies. Jesus warned us about allowing worldly cares, the false glamor of wealth, and all kinds of evil desires to choke the truth of the Gospel. Other things that can bring the same results are over-emphasis on clothes, sports, physical charm, financial security, etc.
The great athlete succeeds through persistent concentration, keeping his eyes on the goal, and allowing nothing to distract him. He is like Nehemiah the wall-building governor; he replies to distracting invitations, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down!” (Neh. 6:3)
I see Paul saying here that he is a runner going hard for the tape, with eyes for nothing but the goal. He “forgets what is behind.” Imagine what would happen on the racecourse if the runners started looking behind them! They would lose momentum and probably cause collisions. It’s important to note that in Biblical terminology “to forget” does not mean “to fail to remember.” Apart from senility, hypnosis, or a brain malfunction, no mature person can really forget what has happened in the past. We may wish that we could erase certain bad memories, but we cannot.
“To forget” in the Bible means “no longer to be influenced by or affected by.” When God promises, “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more,” (Heb. 10:17), He is not suggesting that He will conveniently have a memory lapse! I assume that’s impossible with an omniscient God. What God is saying seems to be this: “I will no longer hold their sins against them. Their sins can no longer affect their standing with Me or influence My attitude toward them.”
“Forgetting what is behind” means that we break the power of the past by living for the future. We cannot change the past, but we can change the meaning of the past. Think for a moment about Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers and ended up being unjustly thrown into an Egyptian prison. When decades later he was premier of the country and his starving brothers came to get grain, he held no grudge. He was not a slave to the past. Too many Christians are shackled by regrets about the past. They are trying to run the race by looking backward! No wonder they stumble and fall and get in the way of other Christians!
But forgetting the past is only half of the task. He also “strains toward what is ahead.” Runners don’t check their pockets, test the wind, check out the scenery, or wave to the crowd. Instead, their arms are almost clawing the air as they strain for the finish line.
Devotion. (12b) Twice Paul uses the words, “I press on.” In verse 12 he says, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” And in verse 14 he says, “I press on toward the goal.” This phrase carries with it the idea of intense endeavor. A man does not become a great athlete by listening to lectures, watching movies, reading books, or cheering at games. If that would do it, I would have been a big-league star for the St. Louis Cardinals, for all through my childhood I knew the batting averages and ERA’s of every Cardinal player, went to every game I could, and read all the books on baseball at the Webster Groves Public Library. But that doesn’t cut it. A person becomes a winning athlete by pressing on: practice, practice, practice. Devotion is the word.
So far we have examined Eligibility, Conditioning, and Determination. Finally, I want us to look at …
Victory: winning the prize (12, 14)
In two ways Paul expresses what victory consists of: “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me,” (verse 12), and “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus,” (verse 14). I wish he had been a little more specific about this prize of which he speaks, but the fact that he does not may be the clue we need to ascertain exactly what he means.
The reason he doesn’t specify what it was for which Christ laid hold of him, and the reason he doesn’t detail the prize for which God called him heavenward, may be that it is different for every Christian. Each believer is on the track; each has a special lane in which to run; and each has a special goal to achieve. If we reach the goal the way God has planned for us, then we receive a reward. If we fail, we lose that reward. All of us should want to be “winning Christians” and fulfill the specific purposes for which we have been saved.
Let me be clear. Paul is not suggesting that we attain heaven by our own efforts. He is simply saying that just as the athlete is rewarded for his performance, so the believer will be crowned for his faithfulness when Jesus returns. In 1 Cor. 3:11ff, he uses an agricultural metaphor to teach the same truth:
“No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones; wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.”
I guess the message I see here is this: let’s not be satisfied with the level of Christian life we are presently experiencing. We are in a race and we need to press on, not to earn salvation but to win the prize that is awarded to those who are faithful to the particular call of God on their lives.
Conclusion: Viewing the Christian life as an Olympic race, how many of us are competing, and how many are just spectators? Could it be that some of us are only occasionally tuning in on TV to catch the highlights and watch the awards ceremonies?
Years ago the son of a wealthy American family graduated from Yale University and decided to go out to China as a missionary. His name was William Borden. Many of his friends thought him foolish to give up so much of this world’s goods and his future here to go. But Borden of Yale loved Jesus Christ and wished to serve Him. While on the way to China, and before he even reached his destination, Borden contracted a fatal disease and died. But at his bedside his friends found a note that he had written as he lay dying. It said simply, “No reserve, no retreat, and no regrets.” Borden of Yale had given up everything to follow Jesus, and he would have it no other way.[ii]
It is to that kind of person that the words of Jesus are addressed: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things, enter into the joy of your Lord.”
DATE: August 14, 1988
Tags:
Athlete
Self-righteousness
Knowing Christ
Sufferings
Devotion
[i][i] Warren Wiersbe, Be Joyful, 98.
[ii] Illustration shared without citation by James Montgomery Boice, Philippians, 225.