Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Philippians 3:13

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but [this] one thing [I do,] forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

13. Brethren ] A direct loving appeal, to restate and enforce what he has just said.

I count not myself ] “I” and “myself” are both emphatic in the Greek. Whatever others may think of themselves, this is his deliberate estimate of himself. He has in view the false teachers more clearly indicated below, Php 3:18-19.

but this one thing I do] “ One thing” is perhaps in antithesis to the implied opposite idea of the “ many things,” of experience or attainment, contemplated by the teacher of antinomian perfection.

forgetting ] Avoiding all complacent, as against grateful, reflection.

behind ] He does not say “around” or “present.” The unwearied runner is already beyond any given point just reached.

reaching forth ] The Greek (one compound verb) gives the double thought of the runner stretching out his head and body towards his goal. Lightfoot remarks that the imagery might apply to the racing charioteer, bending, lash in hand, over his horses (Virgil, Georg. iii. 106); but that the charioteer, unlike the runner, would need often to look back, and that this, with the habitual use by St Paul of the simile of the foot-race, assures us that the runner is meant here.

those before ] “more and more, unto the perfect day” (Pro 4:18). Each new occasion, small or great, for duty or suffering, would be a new “lap” (to translate technically St Chrysostom’s word here) of the course; would give opportunity for “growth in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ” (2Pe 3:18). “To increase more and more” (1Th 4:10) was his idea of the life of grace for others; but above all, for himself.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended – That is, to have obtained that for which I have been called into the service of the Redeemer. There is something which I strive after which I have not yet gained. This statement is a confirmation of the opinion that in the previous verse, where he says that he was not already perfect, he includes a moral perfection, and not merely the obtainment of the prize or reward; for no one could suppose that he meant to be understood as saying that he had obtained the crown of glory.

This one thing I do – Paul had one great aim and purpose of life. He did not attempt to mingle the world and religion, and to gain both. He did not seek to obtain wealth and salvation too; or honor here and the crown of glory hereafter, but he had one object, one aim, one great purpose of soul. To this singleness of purpose he owed his extraordinary attainments in piety, and his uncommon success as a minister. A man will accomplish little who allows his mind to be distracted by a multiplicity of objects. A Christian will accomplish nothing who has not a single great aim and purpose of soul. That purpose should be to secure the prize, and to renounce everything that would be in the way to its attainment. Let us then so live that we may be able to say, that there is one great object which we always have in view, and that we mean to avoid everything which would interfere with that.

Forgetting those things which are behind – There is an allusion here undoubtedly to the Grecian races. One running to secure the prize would not stop to look behind him to see how much ground he had run over, or who of his competitors had fallen or lingered in the way. He would keep his eye steadily on the prize, and strain every nerve that he might obtain it. If his attention was diverted for a moment from that, it would hinder his flight, and might be the means of his losing the crown. So the apostle says it was with him. He looked onward to the prize. He fixed the eye intently on that. It was the single object in his view, and he did not allow his mind to be diverted from that by anything – not even by the contemplation of the past. He did not stop to think of the difficulties which he had overcome, or the troubles which he had met, but he thought of what was yet to be accomplished.

This does not mean that he would not have regarded a proper contemplation of the past life as useful and profitable for a Christian (compare the notes at Eph 2:11), but that he would not allow any reference to the past to interfere with the one great effort to win the prize. It may be, and is, profitable for a Christian to look over the past mercies of God to his soul, in order to awaken emotions of gratitude in the heart, and to think of his shortcomings and errors, to produce penitence and humility. But none of these things should be allowed for one moment to divert the mind from the purpose to win the incorruptible crown. And it may be remarked in general, that a Christian will make more rapid advances in piety by looking forward than by looking backward. Forward we see everything to cheer and animate us – the crown of victory, the joys of heaven, the society of the blessed – the Saviour beckoning to us and encouraging us.

Backward, we see everything to dishearten and to humble. Our own unfaithfulness; our coldness, deadness, and dullness; the little zeal and ardor which we have, all are fitted to humble and discourage. He is the most cheerful Christian who looks onward, and who keeps heaven always in view; he who is accustomed much to dwell on the past, though he may be a true Christian, will be likely to be melancholy and dispirited, to be a recluse rather than a warm-hearted and active friend of the Saviour. Or if he looks backward to contemplate what he has done – the space that he has run over – the difficulties which he has surmounted – and his own rapidity in the race, he will be likely to become self-complacent and self-satisfied. He will trust his past endeavors, and feel that the prize is now secure, and will relax his future efforts. Let us then look onward. Let us not spend our time either in pondering the gloomy past, and our own unfaithfulness, or in thinking of what we have done, and thus becoming puffed up with self-complacency; but let us keep the eye steadily on the prize, and run the race as though we had just commenced it.

And reaching forth – As one does in a race.

Unto those things which are before – Before the racer there was a crown or garland to be bestowed by the judges of the games. Before the Christian there is a crown of glory, the eternal reward of heaven. There is the favor of God, victory over sin and death, the society of the redeemed and of angelic beings, and the assurance of perfect and eternal freedom from all evil. These are enough to animate the soul, and to urge it on with ever-increasing vigor in the christian race.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Php 3:13-14

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended

I.

Imperfection acknowledged. Those that have made greatest progress are usually most sensible of imperfections.

1. The reasons of this point.

(1) In respect of grace.

(a) As grace increases light increases, and so they are most sensible of defects. Novices who know little are most apt to be puffed up (1Ti 3:6). Plutarch tells us that when young men came to study at Athens they were wise men; after they had studied a little only lovers of wisdom, but afterwards found themselves fools.

(b) As grace increases love to God is increased, and so sin is more hated.

(c) They have more experience of the craft of Satan (2Co 2:11), and the rocks on which they may split.

(2) Because of the world, which they have proved to be vanity and vexation of spirit.

(3) Because of themselves. The longer they live the more they are acquainted with themselves, both by meditation and commerce with God, whose perfections should beget humility (Job 42:5-6).

(4) Their estate being changed they have now to look to progress in it; and good men cannot run fast enough in the heavenly race.

2. The uses.

(1) To teach us that growth in grace and humility usually go together. The laden boughs do most hang their heads.

(2) Let us be sensible of our imperfections.

(a) In point of knowledge (Pro 26:12).

(b) In point of daily practice (Mar 8:37).

(c) In point of perseverance (Eze 33:13).

II. Perfection desired.

1. The thing pursued after was the prize, etc. The prize of eternal glory is set before those whom God hath called in Christ.

(1) The calling is

(a) outward (Mat 22:14);

(b) inward by the operation of the Holy Ghost (1Co 1:9).

(2) In this calling God in Christ hath the greatest hand.

(3) The nature of this calling.

(a) The work of God is to give grace whereby the heart of man is changed and sanctified (2Co 4:6).

(b) The duty of man is to be obedient to the heavenly call (Joh 1:12; Jer 3:22; Psa 40:8; Psa 27:8; Act 9:6).

(c) The benefits flowing from both. There is a change in disposition, from sin to holiness; in condition, from misery to happiness.

2. The manner of the prosecution. Those that would be Christians indeed must make heavenly things their scope.

(1) The ways in which this is done.

(a) Habitually, when you have first fixed your end and renounced the devil, the world, etc., and chosen the better part (2Co 4:18; 2Co 5:9).

(b) Actually. It is not enough to choose this part, we must often actually think of it to renew lively affections (Pro 4:25).

(2) The intention of the end is either

(a) formal and explicit, by express thoughts of the world to come when the mind and heart are in heaven (Mat 6:21); or

(b) implicit and virtual, by the ready, unobserved act of a potent habit (Php 3:20). This is necessary that we may be sincere (2Co 1:12). To direct our way; when the eye is on the mark you may the better steer your course towards it. To quicken old endeavours (1Co 9:24). For joy and solace (Rom 5:2-3). To make us constant (Heb 10:39).

3. The earnestness of the pursuit.

(1) His diligence.

(2) His perseverance.

(a) Forgetting the past.

(b) Pressing onward. (T. Manton, D. D.)

Christian progress

I. The things behind which are to be forgotten.

1. Past sinful pleasures.

2. Past evil acquaintances.

3. Past good works.

II. The things before.

1. Increased holiness.

2. The prize of eternal glory. (W. P. Insley, M. A.)

Religion is a progressive principle, and that not merely by Divine appointment, but from its very nature. This is the only satisfactory evidence that religion exists at all. It is also the chief source of happiness here, and a large ingredient in it hereafter. It is not, however, always equally marked and measurable. The incoming tide has receding waves; so let no man judge his neighbour a hypocrite because he thinks he sees a retrograde movement. This progressive character may be argued–

I. From the nature of the subject in which the change is wrought. Man, an essentially active being. As previous to conversion the soul was in progress, going from one degree of evil to another, so it may be expected to make progress in the new direction given it.

II. From the nature of the power which effects the change. If the effect could be ascribed to chance, or to momentary impulse, it might be expected to be stationary, or even to cease or disappear, but when the power of God, almighty and unceasing, is the sole efficient cause of conversion, it is unreasonable to suppose that the life created can be at a standstill.

III. From the means employed to effect the change. Had these been of a natural or ordinary character, such as human wisdom might devise and human power set in motion, then we might infer that God intended us to rest contented with actual attainments. But could it be to keep piety alive without improvement or increase that God gave His Son, that that Son came to die, that the Spirit was given? From the prodigality and divinity of the agents and instrumentalities religion cannot he a stationary thing. The purpose must be adequate to the means.

IV. From the end for which the change is produced. That end is–

1. Not deliverance from present pain.

2. Not mere deliverance from future misery.

3. Nor, indeed, mans restoration by itself. If the end were in man he would usurp Gods place.

4. The end is for Gods glory. This cannot be adequately promoted by stationary religion.

V. From the nature of the change itself. As far as Scripture and experience reveal it, it is but an incipient change, and must be carried on forever. This change does not consist in anything corporeal, but in the mind, and not in the structure of the mind, in the creation of new faculties or the destruction of old ones, but in new desires, dispositions, and affections. These must have their objects, and their actings on those objects must increase their strength, enlarge their scope, and stimulate their energies.

VI. From the manner in which God has been pleased to enforce the obligation to progress.

1. The emptiness of past achievements.

2. The weight of future glory. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)

Christian progress by oblivion of the past

There are some views of the apostle which are discouraging. His almost superhuman career, and his calm superiority to temptation seem to place him far beyond the reach of imitation. But here we see him frail and struggling like the rest of us, a sight precious–

(1) To the man, because it tells him that what he feels Paul felt, imperfect, feeble, far from what he would wish to be, yet with sanguine hope expecting progress in the saintly life.

(2) To the minister, because it tells him that his very weakness may be his peoples strength.

I. The apostles aim–Perfection.

1. Less than this no Christian can aim at. There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we might be partakers of the Divine nature. Not merely to be equal to the standard of our day or even to surpass it: but to be pure as Christ is pure, perfect as our Father in heaven.

2. It is easily conceivable why this perfection is unattainable here. Faultlessness is conceivable, being merely the negation of evil; but perfection is positive, the attainment of all conceivable excellence. Like truth, you may labour on for years and never reach it, yet your labour is not in vain. Every figure you add makes the fraction nearer than the last to the million millionth.

3. To this object the apostle gave himself with singleness of aim–this one thing.

4. In pressing towards this mark St. Paul attained a prize. The mark was perfection of character–the prize was blessedness. But he did not aim at the prize, but at the mark. In becoming perfect he attained happiness, but that was not his primary aim. In student life there are those who seek knowledge for its own sake, and those who seek it for the prize. To the first knowledge is its own reward, the second are not genuine lovers of knowledge. That is a spurious goodness which is good for the sake of reward. The child who speaks truth for the sake of the praise of truth is not truthful. The man who is honest because honesty is the best policy, has not integrity in his heart. He who endeavours to be holy, etc., to win heaven has only a counterfeit religion. God for His own sake, Goodness because it is good, Truth because it is lovely–are the Christians aim. The prize is only an incentive, inseparable from success, but is not the aim itself. With this limitation, however, it is a Christian duty to dwell much more on the thought of future blessedness than most men do. If ever the apostles step began to flag, the radiant diadem before him gave new vigour to his heart. It is our privilege, if we are on our way to God, to keep steadily before us the thought of home. It was so with Moses and with our Lord.

II. The means which st. Paul found available for the attainment of Divine and perfect character.

1. What are the things behind which are to be forgotten?

(1) The days of innocence. We come into the world with tendencies to evil; but there was a time when there were only tendencies. We call that innocence. And when men come bitterly to feel that it is gone they look back upon it with regret. In this there is much that is feeble and sentimental. Our early innocence is nothing more than ignorance of evil. Christian life is not a retaining of that or a returning to it. We lose our negative sinlessness and put on a firm, manly holiness.

(2) The days of youth. Up to a certain period it is our tendency to look forwards; but as we arrive at middle age it is the tendency to look back with the remorseful feeling that the days of youth are gone by half enjoyed. This is a natural feeling, but not the high Christian tone of feeling. We have an inheritance incorruptible, etc. What have we to do with things past? And so manhood in the Christian life is a better thing than boyhood, because riper; and old age ought to be brighter, calmer, and more serene than manhood. There is a second youth for man better and holier than the first, if he will look on and not back.

(3) Past errors. There is that rueful, self-accusing temper, which is always looking back. Something of this we ought to have, but not that only. Faith is having the heart to try again. Forget the things that are behind. We shall do better next time. Under this head we include all those mistakes which belong to circumstances. Some of these are irreparable. A wrong profession, e.g., has been chosen. It is wise to forget all that. It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is done, but by making the best of what we are. Poor mediocrity may secure the fewest false steps, but he is the best who wins victory by the retrieval of mistakes.

(4) Past guilt. Bad as the results have been of making light of sin, those of brooding over it have been worse. Remorse has done more evil than even hardihood. We want everything that is hopeful for our task, for it is not an easy one. And therefore it is that the gospel comes to the guiltiest with the inspiring news of pardon. Do not stop too long to weep over spilt water. Conclusion:

1. Christian progress is only possible in Christ. It is a high calling, and therefore seems impossible; but it is in Christ Jesus, and therefore to be achieved.

2. Out of Christ it is madness to look on. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The law of progress

1. The apostle here corrects a misapprehension, which might have been occasioned by his previous language. The mighty moral act which changed the whole tenor of his life did not so contain in itself his spiritual history as to make all further aspirations and efforts superfluous. Unspiritual men have thought to compound with heaven by one supreme sacrifice, and so to escape from the wearing trials of the daily struggle. St. Paul maintains that at his conversion he was laid hold of so that he might attain that for which he was still striving, and now with the whole history of the Acts behind him, and having written his greatest Epistles and founded his noblest Churches, and having been caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable words, he yet forgets those things that are behind, etc.

2. In these words we catch the echo of the most familiar and potent watchword of modern times. The most opposite aspirations and determined antagonists; government, society, art, science, even religion, are ranged under the banner of progress.

(1) The source and motive of progress is a sense of want.

(2) This is kept alive by an ideal of possible perfection which haunts the soul, and is a relic of Eden. This is largely the distinction of man from the beast. It is the effort to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for the infinite.

(3) Allied to this is the mighty power of hope. It may fail, and be seduced and degraded, yet its very errors bear witness to its strength and the greatness of its origin.

(4) But is not this yearning joined to this hope of realization among the dispositions which welcome revelation to the soul? Was not revelation for ages a progress from Eden to Moriah, to Sinai, to Calvary? and although it is now complete (Jud 1:3), yet it has become the principle of progress. On the one hand, through the Church it leavens the world gradually; and, on the other, the apostle here is a sample of its progressive power within the soul, and that it has enriched and is still enriching human thought, ennobled character, and given an original impulse to entire sciences, and created virtues that are impossible without it, are simple matters of fact.

I. True progress must be the progress of man as distinct from anything which is properly outside him.

1. Contrast this with one of the most general conceptions of progress at the present day–that which ministers dignity and well being to mans outward life. Political reforms, great constructive efforts, rapid locomotion, sanitary improvements, vast accumulations of capital seconded by vast outlays, inventions which economize labour or relieve pain–these are progress. It is almost a marketable commodity; it can be measured, weighed, valued. Mental speculation that does not invent or cannot be utilized, morals which do not sanction economical theories or subserve epicureanism–these are the enemies of progress. We are bidden compare English life today with that of the time of our grandfathers. But forgetting the vast achievements of the past and present, we are bidden to look forward to the new triumphs which await us or our children. As contrasted with our grandfathers we are great and powerful; yet for our descendents there is reserved a land of promise, compared with which our modern civilization is but as the desert. To these enthusiasms the Church of God replies in no unfriendly spirit. She has not forgotten the blessing of Eden (Gen 1:28). Nay, material progress contributes real, if indirect service to the higher interests of man.

2. But at the same time society may be well organized, while man himself is barbarous and selfish. Mans conquests over matter are no adequate measure of the true progress of man. For he is a spiritual being, linked by his higher nature to an immaterial world. Man can rule matter because he is superior to it. Comprehend your matchless dignity in your Creators world. Each of you has, or rather is, that with which nothing material, atom or planet, can rightly challenge comparison. Each is in the depth of his personality a spiritual substance.

3. Let it be thankfully granted that as a means to a higher end, material improvement is a healthful condition of human life and a blessing from God. But its exaggeration at the expense of what it should subserve is fatal to the progress of man. When the sense of the eternal, and all the finer sensibilities have been crushed out by the worship of matter, man sinks in the creation of God, even though he should learn year by year to wield more and more power over the dead atoms around him. A high material civilization does but arm the human brute with new instruments of his lust or his ferocity, unless it go hand in hand with a power that can penetrate his heart and mould his will.

II. Must embrace the whole of human nature. It must not consist in the undue development of a single power or faculty.

1. To some progress is co-extensive with the growth of the mind. And it is our sacred duty to cultivate intellect long and well; not indeed that it may be a pledge of selfish temporal advancement, but as an instrument of religious work. And the religious development of intellect is unquestionably a prominent feature of true human progress. But it is only one feature.

2. When intellectual energy is substituted for moral and spiritual energy; when a mans mind is developed at the expense of his heart and will, he deserves compassion. Pure intellectualism is apt to fall short even of the lower measures of duty, and when unbalanced by a warm heart and a vigorous will, the mere cultivation of mind makes a man alternately selfish and weak.

III. Must include or at least recognize the attendant facts and outlying conditions of human life.

1. The Fall. How rarely do secular theories of human progress condescend to recognize this solemn fact, even when they do not in terms reject it. Yet there are witnesses to it beyond the precincts of theology. There is the pagan doctrine of the difficulty of virtue; there is the spontaneous tendency to evil profoundly imbedded in humankind, and admitted by unChristian writers; and there is mans undeniable aversion for his brother man when in a state of nature. So that when mans life is organized into human society, and society is furnishing itself into government, it can only secure itself against tyranny and corruption by a mechanical system of checks and counterchecks.

2. The wonderful phenomenon of grace. Grace is not that mere barren inoperative sentiment of good will or favour on the part of God. In God to will is to act, to favour is to bless, and thus grace is a positive boon conferred on man (Eph 3:20); the might of the everlasting Spirit renovating man by uniting him to Christ.

3. Immortality. Can any theory of progress dare to claim our attention which, while not venturing to reject this, in practice proceeds as if they were uncertain or improbable? What a poor, narrow conception of mans capacity for progress is that which sees no horizon beyond the tomb. This is worse than educating a child without training him for the duties or guarding him against the dangers of coming manhood. (Canon Liddon.)

The Christian race

Behold an excellent description of a Christian course, borrowed from the exercise of running a race, being a manlike and commendable exercise, fitting men and enabling them for war. The very heathen herein condemns us, whose ordinary chief exercises are but good company as we call them, continual lying at taverns, to the impoverishing of our estates and weakening our bodies? The kind I condemn not, but the excess is such as the heathen would be ashamed of; for which they shall even rise up in judgment against us, and condemn us. But from the simile, we may gather thus much, that Christianity is a race. The beginning of this race is at the beginning of our conversion. It should begin at our baptism. The first thing we should know ought to be God. The race is the performance of good duties, concerning our general calling, and concerning our particular. For the length of our races, some are longer, some shorter, but the end of every mans race is the end of his life. Some mens ways are plainer, some rougher. The prize is fulness of joy. The lookers on are heaven, earth, and hell. God is the institutor of this race, and the rewarder. The helpers are Christ, good angels, and the Church, which helps by prayer. The hinderers are the devil and his instruments, who hinder us by slanders, persecutions, and the like. For ground of this race in us, we are to know that man is created with understanding, directing him to do things to a good end and scope. Other creatures are carried to their end, as the shaft out of a bow, only man foreseeing his end, apprehends means thereto. His end is to receive reconciliation and union with God, to which he aims by doing some things, suffering others, and resisting others. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)

The laws and hindrances of the Christian race

I. For preparation.

1. The laws.

(1) As those who ran had to use such diet as did strengthen, not cloy, and such apparel as might cover, not clog them, so the Christian (Heb 12:1).

(2) We must consider the ways we are to run in, and what dangers we are like to meet with. The want of this is the ground of apostasy.

(3) We must enter the race betimes. The devils trick is to tell us we have plenty of time; but life is uncertain, and youth is the best time to get into training.

2. Hindrances.

(1) Hope of long life.

(2) A conceit that when we have given our names to Christ we must bid adieu to all delight.

(3) A despair of getting through.

II. For continuance.

1. Laws.

(1) You must resolve to hold on without failing in good duties.

(2) You must look to gain ground, and grow from grace to grace.

(3) You must do all things with all your might.

(4) You must run cheerfully and speedily.

2. Hindrances.

(1) Idle scruples which are as dust thrown in the eyes of runners, and temptations which are as stones to their feet.

(2) Sins against conscience.

(3) Ill and dull company.

(4) Wandering minds. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)

Onward

So far as acceptance with God is concerned a Christian is complete in Christ as soon as he believes. But while the work of Christ for us is complete, that of the Holy Spirit in us is not complete, but is continually carried on from day to day. The condition in which every believer should be found is that of progress. Nearly every figure by which Christians are described implies this. We are plants in the Lords field, but we are sown that we may grow. First the blade, etc. We are born into the family of God; but there are babes, little children, etc. Is the Christian a pilgrim? Then he must not sit down as if rooted to a place. Is he a warrior, wrestler, etc.? These figures are the very opposite of idleness. Admire our apostle as–

I. Forming a just estimate upon his present condition. I count, as if he had taken stock, made a careful estimate, and had come to a conclusion. The conclusion was dissatisfaction; nor was this to be regretted: it was a sign of true grace. And yet he was vastly superior to any of us. Shame then on us poor dwarfs if we are so vain as to account ourselves as having apprehended. Yet there are those who prate of having reached a higher life than this. But self-complacency is the mother of spiritual declension. We have observed–

1. That the best of men do not talk of their attainments. Their tone is self-depreciation, not self-content. Everybody could see their beauty of character but themselves. Shallow streams brawl and bubble, but deep waters flow on in silence.

2. That we, in our holiest moments, do not feel self-complacent. Job spoke up for his innocence till the Lord revealed Himself. We shall never see the beauty of Christ without perceiving our own deformity.

3. That whatever shape self-satisfaction may assume it is a shirking of the hardships of Christian soldierhood. Some shirk watchfulness and repentance by believing that the only sanctification they need is already theirs by imputation. Personal holiness, they say, is legal. Others believe they have perfection in the flesh, and others yet attain complacency by the notion that they have overcome all their sins by believing they have done so, as if believing a battle won could win it.

4. That complacency can be reached by many roads.

(1) Enthusiasts reach it by sheer intoxication of excitement.

(2) Antinomians by imagining that the law is abolished, and that sin is not sin in the saints.

(3) Cowards, who say we cannot conquer all sin, and, therefore, we need not aim at it.

5. That complacency has its root in forgetfulness of the awful holiness of Gods law, and the heinousness of sin.

II. Placing the past in its true light. Forgetting, etc.

1. He does not mean–

(1) That He forgot the mercy of God he had enjoyed.

(2) That he forgot the sins he had committed.

2. We must follow out his figure. If a racer were to pass most of his fellows, and then look round and rejoice over the distance covered he must lose the race. His only hope is to forget all behind.

(1) So must it be with past sins overcome. Perhaps at this moment you can honestly say, I have overcome a fierce temper, I have bestirred a naturally indolent spirit. Stop long enough to say, Thank God for that; but do not pause to congratulate yourselves, or it may be soon undone. The easiest way to give resurrection to old corruptions is to erect a trophy over their graves. Yonder friend is very humble, but if he were to boast of it there would be an end of it.

(2) So with all the work we have done. Some people have good memories as to their performances. They used to serve God wonderfully when they were young. In middle life they wrought marvels, but now they rest on their oars. As long as you are in the world forget what you have done, and go forward–individuals, churches, denominations.

III. Paul having put the past and present in their proper places goes on to the future, aspiring eagerly to make it glorious. We ought to be reaching forward, to be like Jesus. He who would be a great artist must not follow low models. Be ye perfect. Shall we ever reach it. Millions have who are before the throne, and we shall too by Gods good help.

IV. Putting forth all his exertions to reach that which he desires.

1. This one thing I do. He might have attempted other things, and did, but all with reference to this one purpose.

2. Why? Because he felt God had called him to it.

3. Moreover he saw the crown. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The great prize

I. The purpose of Paul: What is involved in it?

1. Supreme love to Christ and consecration to His service.

2. Deadness to all human ambitions and merely earthly good. So absorbed is the soul in this one idea that it becomes the master passion of life; and the world, the flesh, and all things else cease to have any attraction.

3. Not satisfied with any measure of past attainment, or service, or consecration, but continually reaching forth with ever-growing ardour. There, in full view, is the goal, and the racers eye is fixed on it.

II. Pauls meaning as to the prize was a personal resemblance to Christ, and a desire to be near him. His vision of Christ in the infinite attractiveness of His character, and in the glory and blessedness of His presence and reign in heaven, made him long to be like Him, and to have, not only a place in His kingdom, but a place hard by the throne of the Lamb. Multitudes of Christians are content just to be saved–to get inside the heavenly gate. But Paul rebukes this spirit. He had a higher and truer ambition.

III. How the great prize is to be won. In no other way than Paul won it.

1. The mind must contemplate it, the heart be fixed upon it, until the power of it shall overmaster all other objects and passions.

2. The purpose to gain it must be single as well as supreme. Divided affection, and allegiance, half-hearted strivings, will end in disappointment and disaster. The whole soul, purpose, and trend of life must be in the direct line of daily striving.

3. To insure success, all dead weights must be thrown off, all unnecessary hindrances avoided, all entangling alliances sacrificed, and the sins which do so easily beset or hinder us, put away. (G. F. Pentecost, D. D.)

Lifes contests and prizes

Such was the language of the most masterful man that ever trod the earth, and this utterance is the keynote of his marvellously successful life.

I. Singleness of eye, unity of purpose, concentration of power. This one thing I do, he cries, and he does it.

II. His was a sanctified, but boundless ambition, forever reaching forth in the direction of higher acquisitions of spiritual truth and nobler results of Christian work.

III. Paul pressed even toward a definite work. Pauls mark was the highest that ever loomed up before a human soul.

IV. This was also the prize he sought. Earth has its prizes, its crowns, its plaudits, its splendid fortunes. Heavens real prize is Christ Himself, and so Pauls aspiration was, That I may win Christ and be found in Him. (P. S. Henson, D. D.)

Pauls view of life

Was what it should be.

I. Forgetful or oblivious towards the past.

1. Of course the figure is not strictly applicable to the reality. Life cannot break itself from the past. The continuity of life cannot be divided at any point. Nor would it be well if it could. Up to whatever point we have run our race we have accumulated experience which has entered into lifes texture and given it direction and colour which it will more or less always keep. And Paul did not mean it in this sense. There are dark days and bright faces that will never die away.

2. What the apostle means is that we are to forget the things which are behind as no longer practically concerning us. Nothing can now be altered.

(1) Did we stand well in the past? Then let us not take credit for it. There is no time for self-elation or self-sufficiency. As soon as you begin to dwell with self-complacency on the past you lose your ideal of duty, and your right sense of the claims of the future and the present. This is the mark of a small and never of a great life.

(2) Have we done imperfectly or ill in the past? Let us not brood or despair. The past is done with us, let us have done with it, and in putting off the old let us put on the new. The future is before you; the present is still yours.

II. Eager and full of aspiration towards the future.

1. Life by itself has a tendency to stagnate, to grow commonplace, bounded in desire and aim. The young live mainly in the future; but by and by the vision fades away or becomes limited. A definite prospect of duty opens up within which the man must work, and find his happiness in working. Many lives are wrecked at this point, just because they wilt not settle and go to some definite work. The world neglected, neglects them. The very dream of hope to do something better has been their rum.

2. But this is no reason why a hopeful eagerness towards the future should die out of life. All right-minded men should have their gaze so far on the future that they may hope to become better and have more enthusiasm and patient continuance in well doing. This is to stretch forth unto the things before; to have not merely an ideal, but to work out our character, by Gods help, more and more into the forms of that ideal.

3. In whatever respect we feel that we are offenders against the law of Divine perfection revealed in Christ let us be more active. It is too often the case as life goes on to get contented with our characters such as they are.

III. Energetic in the present.

1. Paul did not perplex himself with questions as to the meaning of life, or use of it. He was not found asking, as clever writers now are, Is life worth living? Such is only the case when a kind of sickness has come over human speculation. Paul had too much common sense and manliness, and moreover had a real work to do.

2. His example may be beyond us, but the spirit that moved him to work may be ours. It is not necessary that we should have any great work to do, although we have all such work in the improvement of our own characters, and in making life sweet around us.

3. Unlike many in our day, who have cast the hope of the future away from them, we have something for which to work–the mark for the prize of the high calling. (Principal Tullock.)

Memory, hope, and work

The future for the young, we say, the present for the middle-aged, the past for the old. But these words of sublime hopefulness are from Paul the Aged.

I. Live in the future.

1. The two objects of hope and effort are distinct though connected. The mark is reached by the runners effort, the prize is the reward given for victory. The former stands for being made conformable unto Christs death, the latter for attaining the resurrection; or the mark is likeness to Christ, and the prize whatsoever glory and felicity God shall give besides.

2. Then there is to be a distinct recognition of moral perfection as our conscious aim, and our efforts are allowably stimulated by the hope of the fair reward it ensures. If you want to be blessed you must be good; if you want to get to heaven you must be like Christ.

3. Our highest condition is not the attainment of perfection, but the recognition of heights above us as yet unreached.

(1) Such recognition is the condition of all progress. The artist who is satisfied with his transcript of his ideal will never grow any more. Unless we saw an ideal far above us, the actual would never approximate toward it. The unrest born of the contrast between these two marks man off from the happy contentment of the brutes beneath him, and the happy peacefulness of the angels of God.

(2) That is eminently true of growth in grace. The type for us is the express image of God in Christ. To that supreme beauty our nature is capable of unlimited approach. No bounds can be set to it.

(3) There are two ideas in that notion of perfection.

(a) Extirpation of sin;

(b) Attainment of the Divine likeness.

Sin may be extirpated, and yet the second process may be in its infancy. And we shall not stop growing in heaven, but through the eternities we shall be growing wiser, nobler, stronger, greater, and more filled with God.

(4) This grand future should draw our thoughts all the more to itself, because it is not only grand, but certain. We know that we shall be like Him.

(5) And therefore that habit of living in the future should make us glad and confident. And that is the true temper for wider interests than our own. Live in the future for yourselves, and for the world. Believe in a millennium of some sort or other, because that faith is wrapped up in the confidence that God loves us all, and is shaping this earths history to His own perfect aim, and instead of lamenting the former days were better, let us believe that the time will come when our brethren with us will have reached the mark, and the purposes of God finished in a redeemed humanity and a perfected world.

II. Let that bright, certain, infinite future dwarf for us the narrow and stained past.

1. This advice goes dead against much experimental Christianity; but it is wise for all that. All sorts of backward looking are a positive weakness and impediment to a man in running a race. Time given to such occupation is withdrawn from the actual work of life. A man cannot run with his eyes over his shoulder; he is sure to knock against somebody, and so be delayed and hindered. And if you stand there looking backwards instead of making the best of your way out of evil, the evil will catch you up. Remembering always tends to become a substitute for doing. But take the injunction more specifically.

1. Forget past failures. They are apt to weaken you. You say, I shall never be any better. Experience teaches me my limits. So it does. There are certain things we shall never be able to do, but it says nothing about the limits in our line of things. There is no limit in that respect, and to take the past as proving it is to deny the power of Gods gospel, the expansibility of the soul, and the promise of the Divine Spirit.

2. Forget past attainments.

(1) They are apt to become food for complacency and every vain confidence. We are apt to say, At such and such a time I was converted and growing in Christian attainments. Then my heart was cleaving to the Lord, and filled with His fulness. Yes, and you ate your dinner twenty years ago; will that serve to strengthen you for today? The rain fell on the young spring wheat when you and I were boys; will that do anything towards this years harvest?

(2) These attainments, like failures, do very often become the measure of our notion as to what we shall be able to do in the future, and so cripple us.

2. Forget past circumstances, whether sorrows or joys. The one are not without remedy, the other not perfect. Both are past; why remember them? Why should you carry about parched corn when you dwell among fields white unto harvest? Why clasp a handful of poor withered flowers when the grass is sown with their bright eyes opening to the sunshine?

III. Let hopes for the future and lessons from the past lead to strenuous work for the present. This one thing I do.

1. Be the past and future what they may, I cannot reach the one nor forget the other except by setting myself with all my might to present duties and by reducing all duties to various forms of one life purpose.

2. How is that noble ideal reached? It is the spirit in which, not the work at which, we work that makes life one. A hundred processes may go to the manufacture of a pin. We may all be trying to be like Jesus Christ, whatever may be the material at which we toil. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Behind and before

1. This is the language of men who subdue the world, the motto of all heroes, the secret of all triumph.

2. We here observe one of those laws of compensation by which nature would atone for the inequality of her gifts. All men have not great talents: but all men may have great industry, and as talents are useless without diligence, one talent improved by honest labour will make a greater man than ten that rust unused.

3. Pauls entire life was an illustration of the text. As a lad he was bent on scholarship, and won honours at the feet of Gamaliel; as a member of the Jewish Church by his prodigal ability he soon placed himself beyond parallel. As a convert to Christianity he was the same man in singleness and intensity of purpose.

4. Another feature in Pauls character. He arrogates no particular saintship. His fellow disciples are not left to infer that his path is accessible to no traveller but himself, He preaches to sinners as the chief of sinners, to Christians as a fellow citizen; the race and fight were his no less than theirs.

I. What are those things which Paul left behind and forgot.

1. Whatever he had given up for Christ (verse 7). He forgot them in the sense of neglecting them. He not only never repented these sacrifices, he forgot them. The Israelites fondly recollected the fleshpots of Egypt, and there are Christians who dispute with themselves whether in the sensitive jealousy of their first love they did not make too many sacrifices for their Master. The man who calculates with even a tincture of discontent what he has suffered for Jesus, has never seen the Cross.

2. The errors and doubts that marked his first approach to Christ.

(1) He never said but once, Who art thou, Lord? What wilt Thou have me do? As soon as it pleased God to reveal His Son to Paul, he disentangled his mind forever from the elements or rudiments that typified and foreshadowed Christ, and never returned to those beggarly elements. Mark the confidence of his personal feelings when he finds occasion to impart them–I know whom I have believed. This is the language of a man who has laid aside forever the doubt of his acceptance with God, of Christs ability to save, of his Masters constant presence and guiding spirit. Doubts on other matters arising in the progress of his ministry he would discuss in their proper time, but those which had been once disposed of were forgotten forever.

(2) What a melancholy religion is theirs who are ever contending with old doubts. After the Lord has shown Himself to the eye of faith, they seem unable to let this matter rest. A conversation with an unbeliever, the perusal of a book, the pressure of a besetting sin, disturbs their assurance, and they go over the old ground.

(3) Having obtained faith in Jesus and adoption into Gods family, they ought to give all diligence to add to their faith courage to confess it. A bold utterance of our trust in Jesus is an excellent remedy for unbelieving fears. To this boldness of confession they should add knowledge, and follow on to know the Lord. This will multiply instances of His faithfulness. And then, lest knowledge should puff up, there should follow self-discipline, meek endurance, fervent piety towards God, and charity to men.

II. We have seen what Paul left behind: let us now come up to the front and look into the distance for the things towards which Paul is running, and reaching as he runs. These are all embraced in fellowship with Christ.

1. Few knew more of Christ than Paul, yet he considered his attainments but as the first steps in a path of ever-unfolding discovery. Jesus was a mine just opened; and he describes his prospects like a man almost bewildered by the sudden inheritance of wealth untold.

2. To win Christ was not to gain His favour simply, but to be conformed to His image. (E. E. Jenkins, LL. D.)

Spiritual barbarism

I. Two thoughts are here suggested.

1. The apostles principle is the very one which makes the civilized man distinct from the barbarian. The characteristic of the former is restless progressiveness; of the latter, supineness and stagnation..

(1) The civilizing man has his caravan track, but he will have one directer and easier. He has turnpikes and stage coaches, but he must level or tunnel the mountain, and lay a pavement of iron, and chain his ear to a horse of fire. The earth yields him enough to eat, but he will not live by bread alone; he must eat bread enough to bring with it a better provided life; so he contrives steam ploughs and threshers to make the arm of the farmer equal to the productive power of the sun and field. He finds the pen too slow, hence his types and cylinders scatter libraries. On the other hand, the barbarian is content to live in a hut, to scratch the ground with a stick, to trudge on foot with a trail for a road. He takes the world as he finds it, and leaves it as he found it.

(2) But the one sort do not all live where civilization prevails, nor do the others in lands where barbarism is dominant. Every civilized region has risen out of barbarism, and we see the barbarian spirit in stagnant conservatism resisting improvement.

(3) None the less does the old barbarian strain come to the surface. When a man thinks of his moral condition, he says, I am as good as the average of my neighbours. It is this from which man has to be saved.

2. A rule which God has made fundamental in the world, we must make so in individual life.

(1) Since the day when man first lighted a fire to boil his pot, and hollowed out his first canoe, up to the day when the latest development of these contrivances appears in the steamship which can sail three thousand miles a week, the world has never rested in its advance. What achievements has the world made and forgotten in achieving better. Again and again it would seem as if the men of Babylon, of Memphis, of Athens, and Rome must have said to themselves, No more beyond. Modern men have said this, and prophesied dire results from setting up of power instead of hand looms, sewing machines instead of needles, locomotives instead of coach horses. But the world moved on to forget the things behind, etc.

(2) Said the popes to those who saw a purer Church and truth attainable, No more beyond, except the fire for those who would disturb our established order. So said the English kings of the seventeenth century to the uprising spirit of liberty. So say the theologians today; but the world and the Church move on. There are branches to spring from the ever-growing trees that have not yet even budded.

(3) What God works in the great whole, we are to work in our part. He in the man, we as the molecules of the man are to be of one mind–forgetting, etc.

II. From these thoughts we may draw fresh convictions for the realizations of the spiritual capabilities of our nature.

1. While we derive inspirations of confidence from contemplating the grand law of the worlds increasing progress, must we not see a stern rebuke upon every life not in harmony with this law?

2. On what principle is our personal life and thought conducted? So far as relates to our worldly condition, our constant endeavour for betterment as the necessity of an undecaying life. How then about the far more important thing? All unimproveable life must sooner or later run out. When the law of development will not work, the law of decay and dissolution is the only one that will. Work, then, with the better law intelligently, consistently, perseveringly.

3. The great reproach of Christianity is its passive content with an average morality, and a life devoid of aspiration to higher levels–in a word, its spiritual barbarism, stagnant, supine, and poor in power. (J M. Whiton, Ph. D.)

Winter leaves

Trees have their winter as well as their summer foliage. Every one is familiar with the buds which tip the extremities of every branch in spring. On the outside they are covered with dry, glossy scales, which are true leaves of the lowest type. They are formed in spring, and grow during the whole summer, though very slowly, owing to the diversion of the sap from them to the foliage, behind which they are hid. As the season advances, the sap gradually ceases to flow to the summer leaves, which therefore ultimately fade and fall from the tree; and the last movements of it, at the end of autumn, are directed towards the buds, in order to prepare them for taking at the proper time the place of the generation of leaves that has just perished. But in spring, the buds, stimulated by the unwonted sunshine, begin to open at their sharp extremities. And as the young green leaves within expand in the genial atmosphere, the services of the bud scales, or covering leaves, are no longer needed, and by and by they roll away, and fall one by one from the tree, strewing the ground beneath till it looks like a threshing floor. Thus every tree has a double leaf fall every year. The winter leaves, which are designed for the protection of the bud during winter, are pushed off by the growth of the summer leaves from the bud in spring; and the summer leaves, which are designed for the nourishment and growth of the tree in summer, wither and fall off in autumn. Cold is fatal to the summer leaves; warmth is fatal to the winter leaves. Inactivity renders useless the summer leaves; and growth supersedes the winter leaves.

I. The apostles life affords many striking illustrations of this.

1. In his unconverted state, there were many things on which he prided himself–the scenes and associations of his youth, the eager sympathies of his opening intellect, and his ardent affection for the polity and religion of his fathers. But all these natural qualifications of the man belonged to the winter or unregenerate state of his soul; were winter leaves that hid and confined the germ of spiritual life.

2. But although worthless as grounds of justification, they had their own value in training and fitting him for his work. Like the bud scales, they afforded protection and nourishment. All that he had acquired, he laid on the altar.

3. And when the great crisis of his life came–the spring time of his conversion, a light exceeding the brightness of the noonday sun shone upon him; and in this warm genial atmosphere of grace, the germ of spiritual life unfolded itself within, and burst its wrappings. Old forms ceased to have any hold upon his affections and homage. He died to his former self and all its experiences, and lived a new life in Jesus. The winter leaves having served their purpose, now dropped off, and the summer leaves of grace–the blossoms of holiness, the fruits of righteousness–had full liberty to grow and develop themselves.

4. But we must not suppose that the dropping was without effort or pain. It sometimes needs a severe gust of wind to shake off the scales that still linger around the bud. And it was with a sore wrench that St. Paul tore himself away from all his former cherished associations.

5. But even in his converted state there were many things which Paul required to forget. The branch of a tree puts forth bud after bud in its gradual growth anal enlargement. These summer leaves, having added a cubit to the stature of the branch, pass away; and the added growth in its turn puts forth a new bud covered with its scales or winter leaves, which drop off the following spring, and allow the imprisoned summer leaves once more to unfold themselves in the sunny air. And so was it with St. Paul. His spiritual life from the beginning to the end was a series of fresh beginnings. Not once merely at conversion, but often in his converted state, had he to form and to drop the winter leaves in the process of spiritual growth. There were many things by which his spiritual life was nourished and guarded–which had to be blotted out if he would go on to perfection. And so he reached forth unto those things which were before.

II. Are not the lessons of such a life very broad and intelligible.

1. Forgetfulness of what is behind is an essential element in the progress of every believer. In our conversion we must separate ourselves from the associations of our unregenerate state, and count those things that were gain to us, loss, so that we may be found in Christ. These winter leaves must fall off, when the vernal season of grace has come, and we who were dead in trespasses and sins are made alive unto God.

2. But not at this initiatory stage merely is there to be a discarding of the things that are behind. At every subsequent stage of our growth there must be the same process. By a course of prosperity our souls are made to unfold in gratitude to God and beneficence to men. In a season of sorrow we are made more heavenly reminded. But these means are not to be cherished as if they were the end. We are to keep them in the background, and prize the character they have formed for the glory of God, and not for self-complacency. These winter leaves that cherished and nourished our growth in grace must drop off from time to time, with each new attainment that we may rise on stepping stones of our dead selves to nobler things.

3. But not the means of growth and formative processes of the Christian character only, must be left behind and forgotten; the very ends, the growths themselves, must also be superseded. In a certain sense each attainment must be the bud covering of a succeeding attainment, and fall away when it is matured. There must be a double leaf fall from the soul as well as from the tree. The summer leaves that are cherished must drop off as well as the winter leaves that cherished them. And so the beautiful blossoms of grace must be left behind. To rest satisfied with attainment is to check development. It is amazing how soon when we cease to forget the things that are behind, and remain stationary we degenerate. When means become ends, they encase us with a hard covering impervious to the tender influences of heaven.

III. St. Paul exhorted the Hebrew Christians to leave the principles of the doctrine of Christ, and to go on to perfection. And such an exhortation is still greatly needed.

1. Very many believers stop short at the very initial processes of grace, and imagine that these are the final ends–that nothing more can be desired or attained. It is as if the life of the tree always remained in the bud, instead of casting off its wrappings and expanding into summer foliage and fruit. Conversion is indeed all essential, for while the heart is unchanged there can be neither life nor growth; but it is merely the commencement of a course. Conversion, justification, and peace are the first principles of the doctrine of Christ. They are not, indeed, to be dropped as mere bud scales, as mere means to an end–for they are the basis upon which all the subsequent efforts of the spiritual life are to be made. But just as in the unfolding buds of the lilac and horse chestnut tree, the covering leaves of winter, pass through intermediate changes–in the one into the blades of the leaf, and in the other into the leaf stalks–so the principles of the doctrine of Christ are to be carried on in the growth, and their substance is to be used up and modified, as it were, in the expansion of the soul. In this sense the things that are behind are to be forgotten.

2. It is vain to tell the believer to forget the things that are behind, to discard the preparatory means by which he advances in piety by a mere temporary effort of will. He cannot do so. It is only by growing that he can get rid of the things no longer essential; and what he cannot remove, except by a violent destructive wrench, will fall off easily, and of its own accord, when superseded and rendered effete by growth.

3. To this development we should be further stimulated by the consideration that the bud whose growth is arrested becomes transformed into a thorn. If our winter leaves–the experiences that contribute to form our character, and which are appropriate to the various stages of our growth–be allowed to remain unchanged and unforgotten, and to choke up our spiritual life so as to arrest its advancement, they will be changed into thorns. The peace that we trust in will vanish in sorrow. The attainment with which we are satisfied becomes a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet us lest we be exalted above measure. It is no unusual thing to see a branch of a tree whose vital activity is so enfeebled that its growth is arrested. Its terminal bud loses the power of throwing off its winter leaves, because no summer leaves form in its interior. The bud then dies, and the branch withers and becomes fit for the burning. And so it is, alas! no unusual thing to see branches in Christ whose spiritual life is so weak that their growth is at a standstill. They lose the power of forgetting the things that are behind, because they are not reaching forth unto those things which are before. They are therefore in danger of perishing. There is a sense, indeed, in which we cannot forget the things that are behind, strive as we may. The winter leaves or bud scales of a tree leave behind them when they drop off a peculiar mark or scar on the bark, just as the summer leaves do when they fall. On every branch a series of these scars, in the shape of rings closely set together, may be seen, indicating the points where each growing shoot entered on the stage of rest. And so every experience through which we pass, every act we perform, goes into the very substance of our being, and we can never be after it what we were before it. But though these things cannot in this sense be forgotten, they should not be allowed to hang around us to impede our efforts at improvement, any more than the development of the tree is impeded by its scars. We must remember the failures and sins of the past in order to magnify the mercy that forgave.

Conclusion:

1. Taking a comprehensive view of the universe, we find that everything has a special object to perform, and when that object is accomplished, the agency perishes. The material system of nature will some day be dissolved. Life on earth is not an end, but a means–a state of discipline and preparation for something higher and nobler beyond, and is therefore transitory in its duration. So, too, the means of grace are the scaffolding by the aid of which the spiritual life is built up, and will be removed as a deformity when the building is completed. Everything that is purely subordinate and distinctive in religion–that is extraneous to the spiritual nature, however necessary to educate it–will vanish as the winter leaves of time from the expanding bud of everlasting life. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three.

2. It is through loss that all gain in this world is made. But in heaven a different law of development will prevail. In the trees of warm climates the buds have no winter leaves or protective scales, being simply formed of the ordinary leaves rolled up; consequently they expand in growth without losing anything. And so it will be in the eternal summer above. There will be a constant unfolding of the fulness of immortal life from glory to glory; but there will be no loss of the processes and experiences through which the unfolding will take place. The means and the end will be one and the same. There will be a constant reaching forth unto those things which are before, but there will be no forgetting the things that are behind. (H. Macmillan, LL. D.)

This one thing I do—

Concentration

The secret of all moral force, of all spiritual success, of all reality, is concentration. And what is concentration? The whole man gathering himself up to a point–oneness of being, body, soul, spirit–the will, judgment, energy in unity. And what is unity? The reflection of the one great God. What a beautiful thing is unity, where all the attributes of God meet together in love; beautiful is the world of harmonies in the home where there is no jarring element, in the knit Church, in the man who, having learned the pervading power of the love of Jesus, says henceforth, This one thing I do.

I. There are two ways in which we may make religion one thing.

1. The exclusive way. A man may determine to have nothing to do with anything not essentially religious.

2. The inclusive way, when a man makes a wide circle of engagements converge towards religion.

II. To make life, as it ought to be, one, the great requisite is to have one fixed aim. It is the want of this that makes the life of so many weak, uncertain, capricious. The far, high, gathering point, high enough to sustain life, is only one–the glory of God. Some of you did once live for another object–pleasure, self, sin. You served your master with good service. What you have to do now is to throw as much heart into the new purpose as you did once into the old.

III. The glory of God is the right end of man, because–

1. All the lines of life go up to it. You can eat and drink to it, and do whatever you do to it.

2. It is Gods end: the end for which God is, for which He gave Christ, for which He does everything.

IV. Under this end of ends and subservient to it it is the duty of every one to have some distinct Christian purpose always before him. It is marvellous how, when you have a work in hand for God, it will brace up your whole being. If you are troubled with wandering thoughts in prayer or in Church, it is because your outer life is not concentrated. If you would live a braced life everywhere you would find fixedness of thought in your devotions. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Concentration the secret of dispatch

The famous De Witt, one of the greatest statesmen of his age, being asked how he was able to dispatch the multitude of affairs in which he was engaged, replied that his whole art consisted in doing one thing at a time. (S. Budgett.)

Devotion to a single purpose essential to success

That was a grand action of old Jerome when he laid all his pressing engagements aside to achieve a purpose to which he felt a call from heaven. He had a large congregation–as large a one as any of us need want; but he said to his people, Now, it is of necessity that the New Testament should be translated; you must find another preacher. The translation must be made; I am bound for the wilderness, and shall not return till my task is finished. Away he went with his manuscripts, and prayed and laboured, and produced a work–the Latin Vulgate–which will last as long as the world stands; on the whole, a most wonderful translation of Holy Scripture. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

One point best

I asked Sir James Scarlett what was the secret of his preeminent success as an advocate. He replied that he took care to press home the one principal point of the case without paying much regard to the others. He also said that he know the secret of being short. I find, said he, that when I exceed half an hour I am always doing mischief to my client; if I drive into the heads of the jury unimportant matter, I drive out matter more important which I had previously lodged there. (Sir T. F. Buxton.)

Want of application

A Frenchman hit off in a single phrase the characteristic quality of the inhabitants of a particular district, in which a friend of his proposed to settle and buy land. Beware, said he, of working a purchase there; I know the men of that department; the students who come from it to our veterinary school in Paris do not strike hard upon this anvil; they want energy, and you will not get any satisfactory return on the capital you may invest there. (S. Smiles, LL. D.)

A lifes purpose

He has a purpose that miners son. That purpose is the acquisition of knowledge. He speedily exhausts the resources of Mansfeld, reads hard, devours lectures at Magdeburg, and at the age of eighteen has outstripped his fellows, has a university for his admirer, and professors predicting for him the most successful career of the age. He has a purpose that scholar of Erfurt. That purpose is the discovery of truth, for in an old library he has stumbled on a Bible. Follow him out into the new world which that volume has flashed upon his soul. With Pilates question on his lip and in his heart, he foregoes his brilliant prospects–parts without a sigh with academical distinctions–takes monastic vows in an Augustine convent; until at last Pilates question answered on Pilates stairs–then comes the thrice repeated gospel whisper, The just shall live by faith, and the glad evangel scatters the darkening and shreds off the paralysis, and he rises into moral freedom, a new man in the Lord! He has a purpose that Augustine monk. That purpose is the Reformation. Waiting with the modesty of the hero until he is forced into the strife, with the courage of the hero he steps into the breach to do battle for the living truth. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.)

An indomitable purpose

On one bright summer day the boy, then just seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. Then, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would recover the estate which belonged to his fathers. He would be Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intellect expanded and his fortunes rose. He pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical sun, he ruled 50,000,000 of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford, the possession of it being the summit of his ambition. At length the wish was accomplished; and the domain, alienated more than seventy years before, returned to the descendants of its old lords, and when his public life was closed forever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die. (Lord Macaulay.)

Forgetting the things that are behind—

Things past

I. Victories.

II. Errors.

III. Sins.

IV. Joys.

V. Griefs. (Professor Hollard.)

Things behind

The things behind and the memory of them may be helpful or hurtful. We often find the former, e.g., Gods mercies are to be remembered as a theme of gratitude; past sins to produce penitence; former history as ground of warning and hope (Deu 4:9; Deu 8:2; Deu 9:7; Psa 77:5; Psa 103:2; Eze 16:63). Paul speaks of the past as hurtful, a hindrance. He speaks as a runner; perfect as regards equipment, consecration, aim; but not perfected as having attained the goal; he looks not behind him but hurries on. The memory of things behind–

I. May cause declension. Israel remembered the fleshpots of Egypt and turned back and tempted God. Lots wife looked back and perished. Many in answer to Christs call say, Suffer me first to–. Rich young ruler.

1. Former character and prospects have to be forgotten.

2. Former sins.

3. Former companionships, or they may draw the soul back to perdition.

II. May foster self-satisfaction and pride.

1. Victories achieved; temptations resisted elated Samson to his hurt. Even when the glory is given to God there is apt to be a ring of self-satisfaction, I am not as other men. If we have taken a gun from the enemy, let us go and take another, and not sit idly down.

2. Sacrifices may become a cause of pride–Lord, we have left all and followed Thee. Yet what does the all amount to.

3. So of trials.

4. Of attainments. We may say of ourselves, Well done, good and faithful servant. But whatever they are, they are as nothing compared with what is before; and inasmuch as they are all of grace, we have nothing to glory of.

5. Past enjoyments.

6. The people we have left. If any man love father or mother more than Me, etc.

III. May lead to discouragement.

1. Falls and failures: no use trying any more.

2. Difficulties and dangers: David thought he would one day fall by the hand of Saul.

3. Guilt contracted; time lost; work undone; salvation neglected; resolutions broken; convictions stifled–all this and much more may be behind. But brooding is no more to be encouraged than boasting. Start afresh. (J. Smith, M. A.)

Forgetting the things that are behind

We are as children taught as in a play; instructed by toys and pictures. But the day does come when the form should be lost to us in the reality, the letter lost in the spirit. The bird must forget its nest, the seed its husk, the flower its bud. The tree may be full of bloom, and an orchard is a beauteous sight, but the blossom must wither away and be forgotten in the fruit. These things get behind, they pertain to the past, and are of it. The bud must burst, the flower blow, the nest foul. That in which the seeds of things were bound and nourished must become a dried and worthless skin; and the finest foliage must fade; and to such things it is unwise to hold. They should be forgotten, and, whether you forget them or not (and some men never do), they are sure to get behind; and if you do not forget them you are behind also, and can never reach the goal. (W. Hubbard.)

Look not at the past

We are like one sailing down rapid stream, intensely anxious as to the issue of our voyage, and fearful of the dangers which await us, and yet turning our backs on both, and trying to derive encouragement from gazing at that portion of our course already past, and every moment growing less and less visible. Of what avail, to such a mariner, is even distinct view of some distant point long since swept by, when his vessel is approaching some perilous pass, or passing through some vast and foaming estuary into the deep sea. Oh, surely it is then time to forget what is past, and to bend forward to reach forth to that which is before. (J. W. Alexander, D. D.)

Forget past sorrows

A writer tells how years, long years before, he cut the initials of his name in the bark of a tree, and after many years he came and trod through the tasselled grass to the grey old beech tree where he had whittled his boyish name. The blackbirds were singing among the alders, the green foliage of the branches spread above, the green carpet spread a sward below, and through the interlacing boughs were glimpses of the ancient blue of the firmament; but when he found the tree he could not discover the letters of his name, only a curious scar in the bark. So the scars of the heart heal over; and, indeed, however sorrowful and bitter a mans experiences, he must be a woeful and a miserable man who, in this world of great interests, can find nothing to talk of but his own griefs, the neglect he has received, the extortions and vexations by which he has suffered. What a petty world such a man must live in; under what a low sky he must walk; in what, a muggy atmosphere he must breathe. Oh, let us remember that hate is transitory, is temporal, like the sear on the bark of a tree; but love, goodwill, is eternal, like the grey old firmament, which, old as it is, was never younger than it is today. Forget the things which are behind. There is strength in forgetting; let the dead bury their dead. We can only be cheerful while we forget. (Paxton Hood.)

The memory of past sorrows not to obliterate the appreciation of present mercies

I once crossed the Warm Spring Mountain in the early morning. The sun was just rising. All the valley between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies was filled with a silvery mist, level at the surface as a sea line. But above the horizontal sea, three or four mountain peaks projected themselves like islands dotting the expanse. Thus it is with the memories of past sorrows. They emerge from the sea which has swallowed up so much else. We cannot forget our early griefs and bereavements. But we must not permit them to obliterate the appreciation of present mercies. We must hear the voice of the Master, saying, Thy brother, thy sister, thy child shall rise again. Remembered griefs are prophetic of coming joys. Forgetting the things which are behind we press forward to the time when we shall be ever with one another and with the Lord. (M. D. Hoge, D. D.)

The sense in which the past cannot be forgotten

Paul could not have meant that he literally forgot the past, for had he done so, both present and future would have been alike useless to him. The past is the sculptor, the ten thousand touches of whose chisel have given to our present lives the shapes they wear; it is the painter too that has coloured these forms with every tint and hue they bear. All the influences that have made our actual characters what they now are came out of the past, just as the seed sown in earlier seasons, with their sunshine and rain, make the subsequent harvest. Were we to forget past knowledge, ours would be the ignorance of infancy; if past experiences were obliterated, our imbecility would be that of idiocy. If history is philosophy teaching by example, the erasure of the remembrance of the events of our own history would strip both philosophy and religion of the power to teach at all. (M. D. Hoge, D. D.)

The hindering force of past habit

You find some certain type of Christian character, or exercise of Christian grace, that is easy and natural to you, and you come to know how to do it. It becomes your special habit, which is all right, but it also tends to become your limit, which is wrong. Habits are like fences, very good to guard the soul from sudden incursions of trespassers, but very bad when the trunk has grown up and presses against their stubborn rings. And many of us simply keep on doing the narrow round of things that we fancy we can do well, or have always been in the way of doing, like barrel organs, grinding our poor little set of tunes, without any notion of the great sea of music that stretches all round about us, and which is not pegged out upon our cylinders at all. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The danger of looking back

There may have been floating in the apostles mind, combined with the image of the racer, some remembrance of the old story in the Book of Genesis about Lots wife. She looked back, and as she stood there gazing behind her, precious time was irrevocably lost, the fugitives swept on in front, and the swift-flying death that struck her with terror, as she saw it pressing close behind, caught her up. She was whelmed in the fiery destruction that filled the air; and as the shower of ashes at Pompeii moulded themselves over the forms of the poor wretches that were smothered by them, and preserved till today the print of the very waves of their hair and the texture of their dress, salt was crusted round that living core, and she perished, because she wasted in trembling retrospect the flying moments which, rightly used, would have set her in safety. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Reaching forth to the things which are before–

All things are prospective

The impulse of a river is ever onward. So of all things physical and intellectual. The worlds building was prospective. Animal organism reads onward toward the image of God. Everything in earths geology, and everything on earths surface, point towards a future. The little child is telling what he intends when he is a man. Thoughts fly on wings toward the tomorrow. The affections, the adhesive powers of the soul, speak the same language. Now, why all this? What does it mean? It must mean something. It means that there is a future and a God. God has gone that way. He has passed through, and these are His footprints. If there is no God, no future, let the atheist tell us what the meaning is. (Homiletic Monthly.)

The things that are before

I. There are things before every Christian towards which he is proceeding. There is childhood, youth, manhood in Christian life. Here you see the difference between a self-deceiver and a Christian. There is no growth before a hypocrite any more than there is in an artificial flower. He may change, but there is no life in him, and therefore he cannot advance. There are things before him.

1. As one endowed with talents which must be ceaselessly used. God gives him opportunities. He must use them. Some do not see their opportunities because their eyes are shut: some see their opportunities but do not use them, because they are indolent or their talents rusty from long disuse.

2. As one exposed to fresh demands on principles and powers of all kinds. The exhibition of new phases of character is before him. He may not have known much trouble, but he has to undergo the discipline of suffering. Then in working there has not been much demand made on patience.

3. As one must continue to the end.

4. Death.

5. The everlasting kingdom.

II. There are certain things before every church. The body is not one member but many. Before the Church, therefore, is–1 The real, conscious, manifested unity of all its members. To join the Church is not sufficient, you must contribute to its life.

2. Continued and ever improving mutual service. Each is to help the others.

3. The increase of itself.

4. An extending and improving influence on society.

5. An increasing ministration to the whole body of Christ.

6. The preaching of the gospel to every creature.

III. While certain things are before every Christian and every Church, particular things are before particular Christians and Churches. Every mineral is not a diamond. Every star is not a sun. (S. Martin.)

Paul reached forth to the things before.

I. As regarded his own improvement. He sought–

1. Absolute pardon. Continued demerit calls for continued mercy.

2. Absolute assurance of forgiveness.

3. Absolute conformity to the Divine character and will as immediately and specifically exhibited in Christ.

4. The fellowship of the Spirit in all its perfection.

5. A perfect accordance in present action with the prospect of the great day.

II. As regarded a diffusive usefulness. The same perfection he aimed at for himself he aimed at for every man (Col 1:28). (D. King, LL. D.)

The racer as charioteer

St. Paul is like one of those eager charioteers of whom his guardsmen so often spoke to him when they had returned from the contests in the Circus Maximus, and joined their shouts to those of the myriads who cheered their favourite colours–leaning forward in his flying car, bending over the shaken rein and the goaded steed, forgetting everything–every peril, every competitor, every circling of the meta in the rear, as he pressed on for the goal by which sat the judges with the palm garlands that formed the prize. (Archdeacon Farrar.)

The racer as runner

The picture is that of a racer in his agony of struggle and hope. You see him!–every muscle strained and every vein starting–the quick and short heaving of his chest–the big drops gathered on his brow–his body bending forward, as if with frantic gesture he already clutched the goal–his eye, now glancing aside with a momentary sparkle at objects so rapidly disappearing behind him, and then fixing itself on the garland in eager anticipation. The apostle is not leaving, he is forgetting the things behind; he is not merely looking, he is reaching forth unto the things before; not only does he run, he presses toward the mark; nor was he occupied, weakened, or delayed by a variety of pursuits–This one thing I do. (Professor Eadie.)

Pressing forward

The idea is that of a man stretching himself out towards something as a runner does, with his body straining forward, the hand and the eye drawn onward towards the goal. He does not think of the furlongs that he has passed, he heeds not the nature of the ground over which he runs. The sharp stones in the path do not stay him, nor the flowerets in the grass catch his glance. The white faces of the crowd around the course are seen as in a flash as he rushes past them to the winning post, and the parsley garland that hangs there is all that he is conscious of. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. Let us, with eye and hand flung forward, stretch out towards the things that are before, and imitate that example–not in the fierce whirl of excitement, indeed, but in fixed regard to, and concentrated desire of, the mark and the prize. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Christian perfection

is like those problems in mathematics where we can never find the true answer. We may go on working the sum for years, and though each succeeding figure brings us nearer to it, we can never actually reach it. (H. Melvil, B. D.)

The varied means of obtaining perfection

Perfection is being, not doing–it is not to effect an act but to achieve a character. If the aim of life were to do something, then, as in an earthly business, except in doing this one thing the business would he at a standstill. The student is riot doing the one thing of student life when he has ceased to think or read. The labourer leaves his work undone when the spade is not in his hand, and he sits beneath the hedge to rest. But in Christian life, every moment and every act is an opportunity for doing the one thing of becoming Christ-like. Every day is full of a most impressive experience. Every temptation to evil temper which can assail us today will be an opportunity to decide the question whether we shall gain the calmness and the rest of Christ, or whether we shall be tossed by the restlessness and agitation of the world. Nay, the very vicissitudes of the seasons, day and night, heat and cold, affecting us variably, and producing exhilaration or depression, are so contrived as to conduce towards the being which we become, and decide whether we shall be masters of ourselves, or whether we shall be swept at the mercy of accident and circumstance, miserably susceptible of merely outward influences. Infinite as are the varieties of life, so manifold are the paths to saintly character; and he who has not found out how directly or indirectly to make everything converge towards his souls sanctification, has as yet missed the meaning of this life. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

Practice necessary to perfection

A neighbour near my study persists in practising upon the flute. He bores my ears as with an augur, and renders it almost an impossibility to think. Up and down the scale he remorselessly runs, until even the calamity of temporary deafness would almost be welcome to me. Yet he teaches me that I must practise if I would be perfect; must exercise myself unto godliness if I would be skilful; must, in fact, make myself familiar with the Word of God, with holy living, and saintly dying. Such practice, moreover, will be as charming as my neighbours flute is intolerable. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Singleness of aim

Confucius son once said to him, I apply myself with diligence to every kind of study, and neglect nothing that could render me clever and ingenious; but still I do not advance. Omit some of your pursuits, replied Confucius, and you will get on better. Among those who travel constantly on foot, have you ever observed any who run? It is essential to do everything in order, and only grasp that which is within the reach of your arm; for otherwise you give yourself useless trouble. Those who, like yourself, desire to do everything in one day, do nothing to the end of their lives, while others who steadily adhere to one pursuit find that they have accomplished their purpose.

Singleness of aim

Mr. A. often laughs at me, said Professor Henry once, in Princeton College Laboratory, because I have but one idea. He talks about everything, aims to excel in many things; but I have learned that if I ever make a breach, I must play my guns continually on one point.

The power of a single aim

Pauls experience teaches us that one unmutilated and entire idea is as much as a man can entertain in his soul, or actualize in his lifetime. Nor herein was Pauls experience anomalous. Such has been the experience as well of all truly efficient men. None of them ever entertained more than one great aim or purpose of being. Noah was a man of one idea. His idea was an ark! And though he did other things, yet the one great thought, moving as a glorious dream through all his chambers of imagery, was something that would float upon stormy and shoreless seas! And this one thing he did–he built. Abraham was of this class. His one idea was a city. He, too, did other things; he trained his servants, commanded his household after him, etc. But amidst his fairest dreams by the ancestral waters, a great voice out of heaven spake to him of a city which hath foundations, whose builder was God. And evermore afterwards he journeyed towards that city. Nor of regenerated men only is the thought true–of all men who retain amid their moral ruins some lines of the mutilated Divine image–is this a characteristic. A singleness of aim and effort ever hath been–ever will be–the secret of all noble human accomplishment. Napoleon was the most efficient man of his own time, not because gifted above his fellows, either physically or intellectually, but because universal empire was his single aim–he lived only to conquer! Demosthenes was the prince of all earths orators, not because God gave him a splendid voice, and exquisite grace of motion, but because eloquence was his one idea. He lived only to sweep, as with a roused tempest, over all the AEolian sympathies of the human heart. Newton was the king of astronomers, not because his eye was keener as it scanned the heavens, nor because God gave him mighty wings to sweep through the empyrean, but because, with the power of an omnipresent dream, the constellations of heaven were flashing on his soul! The stars were in his heart. His life was in the stars. So is it ever: singleness of aim, oneness of effort–the gathering of thought, feeling, heart, soul, life into one intense absorbing passion–is the secret of all greatness. And no wonder that Paul was the very chief of the apostles, so that the earth shook at his tread, as when a giant goes on pilgrimage; not because he had read Grecian lore in Cilician schools, and mastered the Hebrew law at Gamaliels feet, but because, with his heart all afire within him, and his eye, as the eagles on the sun, fixed on one sublime purpose–in that one thing he gloried–to that one thing he tended. (C. Wadsworth.)

The nobility of a single aim

What a noble thing any life becomes that has driven through it the strength of a uniting single purpose, like a strong shaft of iron bolting together the two tottering walls, of some old building! (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The importance of a high aim

The life of man is a vagrant, changeful, desultoriness; like that of children sporting on an enameled meadow, chasing now a painted butterfly, which loses its charm by being caught–now a wreath of mist, which falls damp upon the hand with disappointment–now a feather of thistledown, which is crushed in the grasp. In the midst of all this fickleness, St. Paul had found a purpose to which he gave the undivided energy of his soul. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

Progress

Look at the machine stamped with the date of half-a-dozen different patents in consecutive years, and see there the image of the diligent inventor bent on alternate excellence, to whom each improvement makes a stepping stone to another improvement, and each difficulty mastered gives greater skill to master the remaining difficulty, until the original creative idea is rounded out in a consummate instrument. Such is the true life of the spirit conformed to the Divine law of progress–not a drift, but a race; not a dream, but a study; not self-contentment, but self-criticism and self-improvement, with the eye on the Divine model, and constantly saying to itself, This one thing I do. (J. M. Whiton, Ph. D.)

Progress more than motion

Progress is the great law of life, but by those even who say so, its principle is not always seen. Progress–what do you mean by that?–is it in the increase of the quantity of material productions? is it in the growth of a nation in the numbers of its population, or in its territory? is it in the advance of agriculture or manufactures? is it in the increase of the superior quality of material appliances? is it in the increase of knowledge, of science, of art? is it in the evolution of the man from the child? the philosopher from the savage? Oh, there is something more and higher than all this and these. Men forget it is with us as it is with our planet. There is a circular movement in which all motions turn on themselves, and return to the point from whence they first set out, and then there is an onward movement, as when the whole system is borne upward into infinite space. It is so with man; he is the subject of a succession of events, that which hath been is now and shall be. How wonderfully the preacher in Ecclesiastes describes this circular movement (chap. 1:5). (Paxton Hood.)

The onward movement of the soul

Man is the creature of the same senses; he beholds the same sun, the same streams, and flying clouds; youth succeeds to infancy, and the festival of nature is followed by decay. We live on food, the blood circulates through the frame; and all these motions return on themselves; but there is another motion in man, there is an onward movement–he is a being of religious instincts; and to foster and fan their flames is the end of all religious services and exercises. Oh, is it not sad when the onward movement of the soul is forgotten! The world is good for an inn; but an inn is not a home; and it is unwise to lay any plan of life in which provision is not made for the infinite future of the soul. Do you not see how every good thing takes hold of and leans upon a higher thing? how civilization leans on morality? As a child leans on a parent, and a wife on a husband, and a husband on a wife, and so at last all things lean on God; and well it is that it is so, for he can at any time take off the wheels of the most rapid chariot, He can break the wings of the proudest ambition, and He is, in fact, constantly saying, Arise, this is not your rest. (Paxton Hood.)

Christian progress as it nears its end

Rivers do not grow shallower as they roll away from their sources, and so it has been well said, the hearts river ought not to be an exception. It should flow on widening and deepening till it meets the ocean and mingles with it. (M. D. Hoge, D. D.)

Christian progress impelled by a single purpose

You have stood upon our shores, and seen a ship under full press of sail making for her destination. How she throws aside the seaweed and the waves–how straight amidst the currents she holds her bow–how she strains upon her way, and goes resolutely to her point! The winds are strong, hut the helm overrules the winds, and turns them to account. Life is going on onboard that vessel in many forms, but they are all moving on together to the port–there is a master principle which everything obeys, and they all delight to have it so. And as that ship pursues her bent and often homeward course, it is an emblem to you every day you look at it, of the condition of the life of that man who has had the grace given him to say, This one thing I do. For so, by just such singleness of purpose, such independence of external things, such a straight, unbending way, the great purpose of life is to be gained, heaven is to be won, and God glorified. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

The enemy will advance if the Christian does not

The Confederate General Longstreet, during the battle of Gettysburg, had one of his generals come up to him and report that he was unable to bring up his men again so as to charge the enemy. Very well, said the general, just let them remain where they are; the enemys going to advance, and will spare you the trouble. (W. Baxendale.)

Progress inevitable to the Christian

If the spark which grace has kindled had been left to itself, or to the feeble breath of mortals to preserve it, we might well suppose that nothing more than its continued existence was intended; but when we find an unbroken current of life-giving air from the breath of the Almighty brought to play upon that spark, we may conclude with safety that it was meant to glow and kindle to a flame, and that the flame was meant to rise and spread, and to become a conflagration; so that what at first was but a seed of fire, smothered in ashes, drenched in rain, or blown at random by the viewless winds, shall yet light up the whole horizon, and dye the very heavens with its crimson. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)

Progress unlimited for the Christian

No bounds can be set to that progress of growth. There is no point on that happy voyage, beyond which icy cliffs and a frozen ocean forbid a passage; but before us, to the verge of our horizon of today, stretch the open waters; and when that furthest point of vision lies as far astern as it now gleams ahead, the same boundless sapphire sea will draw our yearning desires, and bear onwards our advancing powers. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Progress in heaven

I believe that we shall live through all the eternities that are before us, growing wiser, nobler, stronger, greater; plunging deeper into God, and being more and more filled with more and more of Him. So we shall move forever as in ascending spirals that rise ever higher, and draw ever closer to the throne we compass and to Him that dwells alone; ever perfect, yet ever growing, for we have an inexhaustible Saviour to absorb into our hearts, and we have hearts that never reach the ultimate term and bound of their indefinite possibility of receiving. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Dissatisfaction the motive of progress

Dissatisfaction is always the first step in improvement. Dissatisfied with the pen, man invented the printing press. Dissatisfied with the chariot, man careers on the locomotive. Dissatisfied with the velocity even of steam, man links his thoughts to Gods thunderbolts! This, in regard of all things, is the true inspiration. A being fully contented with present attainments, with no aspirations unto things above and beyond him, should be either a god or an idiot! Heavens pity on the poor soul on this earth all restful and satisfied! Genius–the most Godlike of intellectual gifts, is only this restless creative agony–an impulse driving the spirit to beat its wings like an imprisoned eagle, till there be blood on the plumes and the wires of the prison house; forcing the yearning heart abroad like an unblessed spirit, away from the actual in search of the possible; to dig in every desert for a living spring; to climb every mountain top for a farther look into heaven. Caesar was the very demi-god of his generation, because a possessed world could not satisfy him. Paul was the very chief of the apostles, because, sick of all present attainments, he counted himself not to have apprehended. (C. Wadsworth.)

A noble despair

During the nine years that I was his wife, says the widow of the great artist Opie, I never saw him satisfied with one of his productions, and often, very often, have I seen him enter my sitting room, and throwing himself in an agony of despondence on the sofa, exclaim, I never, never shall be a painter as long as I live! It was a noble despair, such as is never felt by the self-complacent daubers of sign boards, and it bore the panting aspirant up to one of the highest niches in the artistic annals of his country. The selfsame dissatisfaction with present attainments is a potent force to bear the Christian onward to the most eminent degree of spirituality and holiness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The passion for progress

It has been said that no other word turns up so often in the speeches of Albert the Good as that of progress, no other idea was so constantly in his mind; and that no sacrifice of time, thought, money, or responsibility seemed to him too great when he could make it the cause of national or individual progress. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

Forward the true direction

Livingstone having broken fresh ground among the Bakhatlas, wrote to the London Missionary Society explaining what he had done, and expressing the hope of their approval. At the same time he said he was at their disposal to go anywhere–provided it be forward. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

The unreasonableness of non-progressiveness

To stay complacently where we are in the religious life is as if a tree should congratulate itself on being higher than the shrubs, on its green leaves, on its glowing blossoms, whilst all the time it has not known the supreme coronation of the summer fruits; or it is as if a caterpillar should stay exultant with its spots and stripes, its fine silks, its succulent cabbage leaf, whilst all the glorious life of the butterfly on the burning roses is untasted. The best we have known is low, poor, dim, narrow, insipid, compared with the larger experiences which await us in Christ. Say not you will rest on your laurels. Your moral laurels today are only bits of straw and flowers of grass. Keep putting those laurels from you; look up, toil on, press forward, until your brow wear the amaranth of full and immortal perfection. (W. L. Watkinson.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 13. I count not myself to have apprehended] Whatever gifts, graces, or honours I may have received from Jesus Christ, I consider every thing as incomplete till I have finished my course, got this crown, and have my body raised and fashioned after his glorious body.

This one thing I do] This is the concern, as it is the sole business, of my life.

Forgetting those things which are behind] My conduct is not regulated nor influenced by that of others; I consider my calling, my Master, my work, and my end. If others think they have time to loiter or trifle, I have none: time is flying; eternity is at hand; and my all is at stake.

Reaching forth] The Greek word points out the strong exertions made in the race; every muscle and nerve is exerted, and he puts forth every particle of his strength in running. He was running for life, and running for his life.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended; he repeats, in somewhat a different manner of expression, what he had written in the former verse, with a friendly compellation, gently and kindly to insinuate a caution against the false teachers suggestion about perfection in this state, from the instance of himself, so eminently called to be an apostle of Christ, {1Co 10:12} who, after all his labours and sufferings for his sake, did reckon he had not yet arrived to the height of what he was called to.

But this one thing I do; but he would have them to understand that he was so intent upon this one thing, for which he was brought by the Spirit into communion with Christ, as if there were not any thing else worthy of his thoughts: as Psa 27:4; Luk 10:42.

Forgetting those things which are behind; like a true spiritual racer, not minding what he had received by grace from him who had took hold of him, or how much he had run of his Christian race, reckoning it was much short of the whole, or the main intended by Christ in taking hold of him.

And reaching forth unto those things which are before; but straining forward, as it were, with all his force and skill, casting himself like a dart towards the mark, so running that he might obtain {1Co 9:24} all and the whole, that was his particular portion for ever, to be received from God, as the purchase of Christ, even the total that God had in and by Jesus Christ designed him, and in Christ bestowed upon him, out of his rich grace, as his special allotment.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

13. Iwhatever others count asto themselves. He who counts himself perfect, must deceive himself bycalling sin infirmity (1Jo 1:8);at the same time, each must aim at perfection, to be aChristian at all (Mt 5:48).

forgetting those things . . .behindLooking back is sure to end in going back(Lu 9:62): So Lot’s wife (Lu17:32). If in stemming a current we cease pulling the oar againstit, we are carried back. God’s word to us is as it was to Israel,”Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward”(Ex 14:15). The Bible is ourlandmark to show us whether we are progressing or retrograding.

reaching forthwithhand and foot, like a runner in a race, and the body bent forward.The Christian is always humbled by the contrast between what he isand what he desires to be. The eye reaches before and draws on thehand, the hand reaches before and draws on the foot [BENGEL].

untotowards (Heb6:1).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended,…. That for which he was apprehended of Christ: he had not attained to perfect knowledge, was not come to the mark, had not received the prize, or laid hold on eternal life; though he had received so much grace, and such gifts, as had qualified him for an apostle; and he had been so many years in that office, and had so great a knowledge in the mystery of the Gospel, and had laboured in it more abundantly than others, and with great success; and even though he had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard unspeakable words, not lawful to be uttered, 2Co 12:2, yet he had no such opinion of himself, as if he was perfect: by which way of speaking, he tacitly strikes at the arrogance and vain confidence of false teachers, that pretended to perfection; and in this way led the brethren to conclude, that they could never have arrived to it, since so great an apostle had not; some copies read not “yet”, and so the Ethiopic version:

but this one thing [I do]; which he was intent upon, constantly attended to, and earnestly pursued; it was the main and principal thing he was set upon, and which he employed himself in; and which engrossed all his thoughts, desires, affections, time, and labour; see Ps 27:4. The Syriac version reads, “this one thing I know”; signifying that whatever he was ignorant of, and however imperfect his knowledge was in other things, this he was full well apprized of, and acquainted with. The Arabic version renders the whole thus, “I do not think that I have now obtained and received anything, but the one thing”; namely, what follows;

forgetting those things which are behind, meaning not the sins of his past life, which were indeed forgotten by God, and the guilt of which was removed from him, by the application of the blood of Christ, so that he had no more conscience of them; yet they were remembered and made mention of by him, partly for his own humiliation, and partly to magnify the grace of God: nor earthly and worldly things, which believers are too apt to have respect to, to look back upon, and hanker after, as the Israelites did after the fleshpots in Egypt, Ex 16:3; though these were forgotten by the apostle, so as not anxiously to care for them, and seek after them, to set his affections on them, or trust in them: nor his fleshly privileges, and legal righteousness, which he pursued, valued, and trusted in before conversion, but now dropped, renounced, disregarded, and counted as loss and dung, Php 3:7; but rather his labours and works of righteousness since conversion, which though he times took notice of for the magnifying of the grace of God, for the defence of the Gospel, and to put a stop to the vain boasting of false teachers, yet he forgot them in point of dependence on them, and trust to them; and having put his hand to the plough, he did not look back, nor desist, but went on in his laborious way, not thinking of what he had done and gone through, nor discouraged at what was before him; as also he intends all his growth in grace, and proficiency in divine knowledge, which was very, great; and though he was thankful for these things, and would observe them to the glory of the grace of God, yet he trusted not in them: nor did he sit down easy and satisfied with what he had attained unto, and therefore was

reaching forth unto those things which are before; to perfection of knowledge, holiness, and happiness, which were before him, and he as yet had not attained unto; but was desirous of, and pursued after with great vehemence and eagerness; the metaphor is taken from runners in a race, who did not stop to look behind them, and see what way they have run, and how far they are before others, but look and move forwards, and stretch themselves out to the uttermost, and run with all their might and main to the mark before them; and so the apostle did in a spiritual sense.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Not yet (). But some MSS. read (not).

To have apprehended (). Perfect active infinitive of same verb (perfective use of , to grasp completely). Surely denial enough.

But one thing ( ). No verb in the Greek. We can supply (I do) or (I keep on in the chase), but no verb is really needed. “When all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself” (Goethe), concentration.

Forgetting the things which are behind ( ). Common verb, usually with the genitive, but the accusative in the Koine is greatly revived with verbs. Paul can mean either his old pre-Christian life, his previous progress as a Christian, or both (all of it).

Stretching forward (). Present direct middle participle of the old double compound (stretching myself out towards). Metaphor of a runner leaning forward as he runs.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Myself. As others count themselves.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended” (adelphoi) “I reckon not yet myself to have laid hold, brethren” (ego hemauton oupo logizomai kateilephenai). This is a personal concession of a lowly position of perfection to which Paul had come, lest some brethren at Philippi should presume themselves to have already achieved, to their hurt of influence and testimony, Jas 4:10; 1Pe 5:6.

2) “But this one thing I do” (en de) “the things on the other hand;” It is bet say, “This one thing I do” than a “dozen things I dabble at” Those who succeed in life usually major at, are wholly given to, at least one primary thing in life’s efforts; David was so committed, Psa 27:4; Mar 10:21. Mary chose the one thing most important in life, Luk 10:41-42.

3) “Forgetting those things which are behind” (ta men opiso epilanthanomenos) “The things on the one hand behind, past, forgetting, putting aside” things that to remember would obstruct, hinder, or hold one back in the Lord, no longer trusting in them, positions of popularity, pride, and worldly advantage–not looking back on the racetrack where one has already run.

4) “And reaching forth unto those things which a before” (tois de emposthen epekteinomenos) “yet the things before, on the other hand, stretching to or toward” like a runner in the final goal stretch of a race, stretching forth with head, neck, and body wholly pressing to the goal”, Heb 12:2.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

13 I reckon not myself to have as yet apprehended He does not here call in question the certainty of his salvation, as though he were still in suspense, but repeats what he had said before — that he still aimed at making farther progress, because he had not yet attained the end of his calling. He shews this immediately after, by saying that he was intent on this one thing, leaving off everything else. Now, he compares our life to a race-course, the limits of which God has marked out to us for running in. For as it would profit the runner nothing to have left the starting-point, unless he went forward to the goal, so we must also pursue the course of our calling until death, and must not cease until we have obtained what we seek. Farther, as the way is marked out to the runner, that he may not fatigue himself to no purpose by wandering in this direction or in that, so there is also a goal set before us, towards which we ought to direct our course undeviatingly; and God does not permit us to wander about heedlessly. Thirdly, as the runner requires to be free from entanglement, and not stop his course on account of any impediment, but must continue his course, surmounting every obstacle, so we must take heed that we do not apply our mind or heart to anything that may divert the attention, but must, on the contrary, make it our endeavor, that, free from every distraction, we may apply the whole bent of our mind exclusively to God’s calling. These three things Paul comprehends in one similitude. When he says that he does this one thing, and forgets all things that are behind, he intimates his assiduity, and excludes everything fitted to distract. When he says that he presses toward the mark, he intimates that he is not wandering from the way.

Forgetting those things that are behind He alludes to runners, who do not turn their eyes aside in any direction, lest they should slacken the speed of their course, and, more especially, do not look behind to see how much ground they have gone over, but hasten forward unremittingly towards the goal, Thus Paul teaches us, that he does not think of what he has been, or of what he has done, but simply presses forward towards the appointed goal, and that, too, with such ardor, that he runs forward to it, as it were, with outstretched arms. For a metaphor of this nature is implied in the participle which he employs. (191)

Should any one remark, by way of objection, that the remembrance of our past life is of use for stirring us up, both because the favors that have been already conferred upon us give us encouragement to entertain hope, and because we are admonished by our sins to amend our course of life, I answer, that thoughts of this nature do not turn away our view from what is before us to what is behind, but rather help our vision, so that we discern more distinctly the goal. Paul, however, condemns here such looking back, as either destroys or impairs alacrity. Thus, for example, should any one persuade himself that he has made sufficiently great progress, reckoning that he has done enough, he will become indolent, and feel inclined to deliver up the lamp (192) to others; or, if any one looks back with a feeling of regret for the situation that he has abandoned, he cannot apply the whole bent of his mind to what he is engaged in. Such was the nature of the thoughts from which Paul’s mind required to be turned away, if he would in good earnest follow out Christ’s calling. As, however, there has been mention made here of endeavor, aim, course, perseverance, lest any one should imagine that salvation consists in these things, or should even ascribe to human industry what comes from another quarter, with the view of pointing out the cause of all these things, he adds — in Christ Jesus

(191) The participle referred to is ἐπεκτεινόμενος, which, as is remarked by Dr. Bloomfield, “is highly appropriate to the racer, whether on foot, or on horseback, or in the chariot; since the racer stretches his head and hands forward in anxiety to reach the goal.” — Ed.

(192) A proverbial expression, founded on the circumstance that in certain games at Athens the runners had to carry a lamp, or burning torch, in such a way that it should not go out, and, on any one of the competitors giving up the contest, he delivered up the lamp, or torch, to his successor, See Auct. ad Herenn. 1. 4, c. 46; Lucret. I. 2, 5:77 — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF CHARACTER

Php 3:13-14

IF there is any one thing upon which the ancients and the moderns agree, it is the admirableness of high character. If there is any one word in which the best thought of heathenism and the highest opinion of Christianity is focused to a point, it is this wordcharacter.

Bartol said, Character is the diamond that scratches every other stone. Emerson remarks, Character is more than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. Goodness outshines genius as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow.

Confucius wrote, What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the small man seeks is in others.

James Russell Lowell said, When all have done their utmost surely he hath given the best who gives a character-erect and constant; while J. G. Holland affirms, Character must stand behind and back up everythingthe sermon, the poem, the picture, the play. None of them is worth a straw without it.

The high-minded Christian of the present hour agrees perfectly with each of these opinions; while Paul, the peerless Apostle of Christianity, expresses, in our text, his firm conviction that character in Christ Jesus was the goal of all endeavor; the one end worthy the utmost employment of all of ones energies.

In my judgment, there is no question that such is the proper interpretation of the Apostles speech,

I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended of Christ Jesus.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this owe thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus?

CHARACTER DEFINED

To undertake the definition of character is indeed a difficult task. The elements that enter into it are so varied and so many that volumes have been contributed to their discussion. Years since, Dr. Armitage, in an address delivered in one of our anniversary meetings asked, What is character? and answered, In the productions of art, it is the genius which gives them birth; in nature, it is the force of action; the fertility of the earth is its character; in mind, the strength of intellect, the firmness of will, the radiancy of benevolence are its character.

But all human attempts at definitions are so inadequate and unsatisfactory that I find relief only in turning to the Divine definitions.

Christ defined it as child-likeness. In Mat 18:1-5 we read,

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?

And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them,

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

John Watson, treating this beautiful parable, says, As a type of character, the Kingdom was like unto a little child, and the greatest in the Kingdom would be the most child-like. According to Jesus, a well-conditioned child illustrates better than anything else on the earth the distinctive features of Christian characterbecause he does not assert or aggrandise himself; because he has no memory for injuries, and no room in his heart for a grudge; because he has no previous opinions, and is not ashamed to confess his ignorance; because he can imagine, and has the key of another world, entering in through the ivory gate, and living amid the things unseen and eternal. The new society of Jesus was a magnificent imagination, and he who entered it must lay aside the world standards and ideals of character, and become as a little child. Paul conceived character as manliness. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, touching our ascended Lord he said,

And He gave some, Apostles; and some, Prophets; and some, Evangelists; and some, Pastors and Teachers;

For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ:

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

That We henceforth he no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to decieve;

But speaking the Truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ (Eph 4:11-15).

There is no question that the whole point and purpose of the ministry of Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, Teacher, is character. When Paul speaks of a perfect man as the end of all ministry, he makes that evident. When he contrasts such manhood with the weakness that is tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, he seems to condemn childlikeness; but he is only pleading for that progress which shall lift us above the dangers of inexperience, and the weakness of immaturity, and the sin of instability, to that knowledge and rightness, and steadfastness which made possible a Savonarola, a Huss, a Luther, a Wesley, a Washington, a Lincolnmen who have left their littleness and gone to largeness; men who were characterized by strength and not weakness; men who are not babes to be christened by the sprinkling of water, but adults who have passed through the baptism of fire, to be refined and finished thereby.

But the Apostle and his Master are of one mind. The true character, like the shields of the ancient times, has its two sidesthe simplicity, the humility, the credulity, the active imagination, the fervent love, the unprejudiced mind of the child; and also the strength, the assertion, the honesty, the investigation, the intelligent affection, the fixed opinion of the man.

Paul says, When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. But he does not mean he put away the things just mentioned; only his baby prattle, his misunderstanding, his feeble powers of thought. The best elements of childhood are carried up into manhood and combine with it, and the result of the combination is character.

To illustrate, years ago, you will remember, Arthur Cumnock entered Harvard College. He found the atmosphere of that institution like that which now characterizes most of our universities. The fast set were reckoned the first-folk. The chief end of man was to drink and gamble politely, and wire-pull for fraternities and neglect his studies. With all these odds against him, young Cumnock started to live soberly, studiously, righteously. His conduct so contrasted that of his fellow-students as to render him unpopular at first, and many an hour lie must have spent in the sad consciousness of living under the disapproval of his fellow-students. But never once did he resign his ideal. With the simplicity and sweetness of a child on the one side, the uncompromising attitude of a martyr on the other, he lived his life and did his best to remake that of the institution in which he was but a single student among many. Four years passed by, and the class-day of his Senior year was on; and, as the custom was, the class must choose its favorite and do him honor. And when the choice was made, it fell on Arthur Cumnock. In the opinion of those same students he was without competitor. They laid the laurel wreath upon his brow, and publicly proclaimed him the manliest man of them all.

I do not know whether it has ever occurred to you, but it has often been in my mind, that Jesus Christ, the only perfect character this world ever knew, was also a combination of child-likeness and man-likeness. On the one side as innocent, as humble, as sweet, as affectionate, as any baby-saint enfolded in the bosom of God; and, on the other side, His fixedness of purpose, His fidelity to the right, His unwavering heroism pales the character of a Napoleon, the daring of a Luther, the stability of a Huss, even as the rising sun, by its very brilliance, obscures the most luminous stars that decked the brow of night.

CHARACTER DEVELOPED

The Apostle Paul, in our text, has done more than set up character as the goal of all conduct. He is interested in its development. He realizes that his own attainments are meager, but that lifes possibilities are great.

Forgetting those things which are behind, he reaches forth unto those things which are before.

The text, with its context sets before us very clearly, and I think somewhat fully, the essential elements that enter into the development of character.

Paul regards high aspirations as an essential impetus. He longs to be perfect and to that end puts forth his endeavor. Disraeli once said, The youth who does not look up will look down, and the spirit that does not soar is destined to grovel. The words of George Herbert are apropos,

Pitch thy behavior low, thy project high So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be.Sink not in spirit, who aimeth at the sky Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.

It is said of Henry W. Longfellow that when he was about 17 he wrote to his father, Whether nature has given me any capacity for knowledge, or not, she has at any rate given me a very strong predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident in believing that, if I can ever rise in the world, it must be by the exercise of my talent in the field of literature. Whatever I do study ought to be engaged in with all my soul, for I will be eminent in something.

It is said, that when Henry Clay was a boy, hoeing corn and following the plow in the Kentucky fields, he was dreaming of the day when he should stand in the halls of Congress. Already he was formulating the orations which he should deliver when elected to that eminence; the arguments, with which he would cut down an opponent as he now laid low the weeds by his hoe, he was fashioning.

And who doubts that the dream of the boy Henry Longfellow, and the aspiration of the boy Henry Clay entered as prominent factors into the development to the point of poet for the first and matchless orator for the second!

William Watson, in his poem, The Fugitive Ideal, writes,

As some most pure and noble face,Seen in the thronged and hurrying street Sheds oer the world a sudden grace,A flying odor sweet,Then passing leaves the cheated sense Balked with a phantom excellence.

So in our soul, the visions riseOf that fair life we never led;They flash a splendor past our eyes,We start, and they are fled;They pass and leave us with blank gaze,Resigned to our ignoble days.

But, I do not agree with Watson! With the Apostle Paul they did not pass and leave him with blank gaze resigned to his ignoble days. With Milton, The vision did not pass and leave with blank gaze that noble soul resigned to ignoble days. The vision that came to him when he was a boy, sleeping in a bleak garretthe vision of a poem that the world would not willingly let die remained, until he had wrought it into verse, and it had lifted him to immortal honors; and, when the blind poet lay dying, as he entered the valley and shadow, he whispered to those who were about him, Still guides the Heavenly vision.

Paul also regarded positive hardships as a necessary pressure in the development of character. Speaking of those trying experiences through which he had passed, and by which he had forfeited all honors and all comforts, and come into the bitterest persecutions and the most dreadful imprisonments, he said, I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.

Long before Paul another great Apostle of the faithDavidhad come into the understanding of this same truth and wrote, Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy Word.

The history of progress is set in the mold of suffering. Drudgery, endurance, misrepresentations, misunderstandings, oppositionsthese have made the worlds great men. Dr. Hillis says, Man learns to swim by being cast into lifes maelstrom and left to make his way ashore. No youth can learn to sail his life-craft in a lake sequestered and sheltered from all storms.

How Abraham Lincoln illustrates the thought that hardship is a necessary pressure to develop character! Born in poverty, bred in the midst of ignorant people, thrown in early life upon his own resources, so homely that the girls shunned him, and so ungainly that the boys made of him a laughing stock; when through force of character, and rectitude of thought he rose to the office of President, it was only to feel the more venomous fangs of Washingtons fastidious set. The head of the nation was ridiculed as the ape, called a stupid block-head, and caricatured as Satyr. Orison Sweet Marden says, On reading these terrible criticisms, Abraham once said, Well, Abraham, are you a man or are you a dog? And after the repulse at Fredericksburg he remarked, If there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do, I pity him.

Little did the people know what they were doing when they were laying upon him the pressure of such opposition. But history tells us, they were developing his character, and making of him a man beside whom our greatest statesman would seem as small as David looked when he came into the presence of his father-in-lawthe king. And they were wringing from him tears that would prove not alone a nectar to the blacks of thesouth, but the waters of salvation to the craft of the state.

How beautifully Father Ryan, the poet of the South, has expressed the Apostles thought:

The summer rose the sun has flushed With crimson glory, may be sweetTis sweeter when its leaves are crushed Beneath the winds and tempests feet.

The rose, that waves upon its tree,In life, sheds perfume all aroundMore sweet the perfume floats to me Of roses trampled on the ground.

The waving rose, with every breath Scents, carelessly the summer airThe wounded rose bleeds forth in death A sweetness far more rich and rare.

It is a truth beyond our kenAnd yet a truth that all may readIt is with roses as with men,The sweetest hearts are those that bleed.

The flower which Bethlehem saw bloom Out of a heart all full of grace,Gave never forth its full perfume Until the Cross became its vase.

A perfect model is a regnant power in the development of character. Paul tells us that he is pressing on toward the goal unto the prize of the high-calling of God in Christ Jesus. To the Corinthians he wrote, Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ (1Co 11:1).

The advantage of Bible study exists in the fact that Christ, the perfect model of character, comes more and more fully before the honest student of the Word. We must see Him before we can be like Him. Beloved, * * it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall Appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.

Carlos Martin wrote of Wendell Phillips, He needed not the sting of guilt to make him virtuous. His character shone conspicuous. He was above pretensea sincere, conscientious, devoted friend. He had a deep love for all that was true and honorable; he always detested a mean action. His Bible was always open on the center-table. I can but believe that that open Book counted for his character, for in that he found his modelChrist Jesus.

Dr. Armitage says, The greatest of minds seek after a sublimity like that of Milton; a richness like that of Taylor; a dignity like that of Howe; an earnestness like that of Baxter; a reasoning like that of Paley; a sweetness like that of Cowper; and an eloquence like that of Hall.

But young artists copy the masters. Why should we be content to copy character at second hand? Christ is the only Master in this realm. Milton, Taylor, Howe, Baxter, Paley, Cowper and Hall but poorly reflect Him. The Apostle Paul sets us the better example, and pushing past all these, stays not until he is face to face with the Christ, and calling back to all, invites us to come into this same presence, where we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.

But character does not come from merely studying the Christ. It is the direct consequence of receiving from the Christ. We are asked to work out (our) own salvation with fear and trembling, but we are encouraged by the statement that God worketh in us.

One of the danger points of the present-day theology is here. Men are more and more disposed to feel that Christ is only our perfect model and that having Him as our pattern, we can, by our own efforts, perfect ourselves. But not so. According to the Scripture, of ourselves we can do nothing. According to the same Word of God, we can do all things through Christ which strengthened us. And the man who surrenders his life into the hands of the One and only Master-builder in the realm of character, is the one who will be fashioned by those hands into the perfect man.

Henry Van Dyke says, Do you remember the story of the portrait of Dante which is painted upon the walls of the Bargello, at Florence? For many years it was supposed that the picture had utterly perished. Men had heard of it, but no one living had ever seen it. But presently came an artist who was determined to find it again. He went into the place where tradition said that it had been painted. The room was used as a storehouse for lumber and straw. The walls were covered with a dirty white-wash. He had the heaps of rubbish carried away. Patiently and carefully he removed the white-wash from the wall. Lines and colors long hidden began to appear. And at last the grave, lofty, noble face of the great poet looked out again upon the world of light.

That was wonderful, you say, that was beautiful! Not half so wonderful as the work which Christ came to do in the heart of man,to restore the likeness of God and bring the Divine image to the light. He comes to us with the knowledge that Gods image is there, though concealed; He touches us with the faith that there is no human being in whom that treasure is not hidden, and from whose stained and dusty soul Christ cannot bring out that reflection of Gods face.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

13. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, 14. I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Translation and Paraphrase

13. Brothers, I do not count myself (yet) to have laid hold on (my goal). But one thing I (am doing): forgetting (disregarding) the things (that are) behind (in my past) and stretching forward (like a racer) to the things ahead,
14. I pursue (onward) toward the mark, unto the (great prize and) award of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus, (that prize which God, the great umpire, awards to all of those who press ever onward and upwardto all those who obey the calling of God, which comes to us in Christ, and leads us ever upward toward God.)

Notes

1.

Paul repeats in Php. 3:13 the thought first stated in Php. 3:12, that he did not yet count himself to have laid hold (perf. infin. of katalambano, the word used also in Php. 3:12, meaning to lay hold on so as to make ones own). The goals Paul desired to lay hold on were stated in Php. 3:10-11.

2.

Paul was dedicated to one thing. Neither past failures and persecutions, nor fears about the future kept him from seeking this. The one thing which Paul did was to keep reaching and stretching out further toward things ahead, toward his goal.

3.

Forgetting is a present tense, indicating continuous linear action. Forgetting here expresses the idea of disregarding, or refusing to be influenced by something.

4.

I press toward the mark, the goal. A goal is an object upon which the eye is kept fixed, so that it can be attained through constant attention and effort.

5.

Unto the prize. The prize referred to here is an award such as is given to a victor in athletic competition. Paul here compares his attainment of the fullest fellowship with Christ and his reward in heaven to a trophy such as an athlete might win.

Do you really desire this heavenly prize, or do you prefer the decaying award of this world?

6.

The prize is described as the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The term high calling may also be rendered as the upward calling. Everything about the services of Christ leads us upwardupward in service to others, upward in kindness, upward in joy, upward in helpfulness, etc.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(13) I count not myself . . .The I is emphatic, evidently in contrast with some of those who thought themselves perfect. (See Php. 3:15.) Not only does St. Paul refuse to count that he has ever yet attained; he will not allow that he is yet in a position even to grasp at the prize. (Comp. 1Co. 9:27.)

Forgetting those things which are behind . . .The precept is absolutely general, applying to past blessings, past achievements, even past sins. The ineradicable instinct of hope, which the wisdom of the world (not unreasonably if this life be all) holds to be a delusion, or at best a condescension to weakness, is sanctioned in the gospel as an anticipation of immortality. Accordingly hope is made a rational principle, and is always declared to be, not only a privilege, but a high Christian duty, co-ordinate with faith and love (as in 1Co. 13:13; Eph. 4:4). St. Paul does not scruple to say that, if we have it not, for the next life as well as this, we Christians are of all men most miserable (1Co. 15:19). Hence past blessing is but an earnest of the future; past achievements of good are stepping-stones to greater things; past sins are viewed in that true repentance which differs from remorsethe sorrow of this world which worketh death (2Co. 7:10)in having a sure and certain hope of the final conquest of all sin. The eternal life in Christ is a present gift, but one test of its reality in the present is its possession of the promise of the future.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

13. Count not myself Whatever estimate the Philippians may have put upon the apostle, or whatever may be ours of him, his estimate of himself was a very humble one. Perhaps to avoid misapprehension on the part of those whom he has (Php 2:3) rebuked for their self-conceit, he reiterates with greater plainness what he has already said, both as to what he has gained, and his striving for something higher.

One thing All else is secondary. Then arises before Paul’s mind the image of one running a race.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Brothers, I count not myself yet to have laid hold, but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’

In contrast with the false teachers Paul does not see himself as having laid hold of the totality of salvation. But what he does see himself as having done, and as continuing to do, having put out of his mind what is in the past, ‘the things that are behind’, is to stretch forward to the things which are before. He is putting in every effort to achieve his goal. He is pressing on toward the goal, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The language is that of the athlete in the marathon. The hard and arduous miles that have been achieved with all their pain are now put out of his mind, for he does not look back but is concentrating his effort on what lies ahead. He sees the stadium ahead in the distance. And he is putting every effort into those last few miles. For his eye is on the prize that lies before him, and that prize is the one that the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (His effectual calling) has called him to, as described in Php 3:21, when total salvation will have been accomplished and he will know Christ in all His fullness (we will see Him as He is – 1Jn 3:2) and is presented before God, holy, unblameable and unreproveable in His sight (Col 1:22). But it is a future prize and not one that he has already accomplished. For the race is not yet over.

‘Forgetting the things which are behind.’ The thought is not one of total forgetfulness of what is behind. Foolish is the runner who ignores or forgets the rivals who are just behind him (many a runner has failed to qualify because he slowed down as he approached the tape). But they are to spur him on towards the finish, not act as an obstacle to the successful completion of his race. He must not be taken up by what is behind in such a way that it hinders his total commitment to winning. He must not allow the past to be a burden. He must not allow past sufferings to hinder him. He must not allow past failures to weigh on his mind (once of course they have been forgiven). On the other hand foolish is the person who does not learn from the past (including the runner), for that very memory might well enable him to stretch forward towards the finish with even greater concentration. What are to be forgotten are any of the things that might hinder his forward impetus.

Some see ‘the high calling of God’, not as looking back to the ‘high call’ to attain to higher things, but as signifying the receiving of the prize by mounting the steps to where the judges will bestow his prize. In this interpretation it signifies the receiving of the eternal glory. Both are, of course true representations of the situation, although only one can be correct as an interpretation here. On the other hand the original call of God is certainly what finally leads to the call to receive the prize, so that either view has a lesson to teach us.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Php 3:13-14. Brethren, I count not myself, &c. No, my brethren, I do not imagine that I am yet arrived at the goal; but this one thing I do: regardless of what is behind, and intent only to reach what is before, I press forward to the mark, for the prize to which God has called me from above by Christ Jesus. Heylin. Mr. Peirce thinks the most exact grammatical construction of the words is this, “I press after that one thing for which I have been apprehended by Jesus Christ, that I may apprehend or attain it; neglecting the things behind, and stretching forward to those before. After this one thing (I say) I press, according to the aim I have fixed to myself, that I may obtain the prize of the high calling,” &c. But the construction may be clear enough, by supplying (as in our translation) the words I do, or I can say. The Apostle continues his allusion to the Olympic games, and especially the foot races, which made the most celebrated part of them; where the prize was placed in a very conspicuous situation, so that the competitors might be animated by having it still in their view. Some interpreters think that the Apostle compares our Lord in this verse to those who stood on an elevated place at the end of the course, calling the racers by their names, and encouraging them, by holding out the crown, to exert themselves with vigour. But it seems more consistent to interpret the high calling, as alluding to the proclamation by which men were called before the opening of the course to contend for such and such a prize; which answers to the general declaration of the heavenly prize made in the gospel.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Phi 3:13-14 . Once more, and with loving earnestness ( ), Paul says what he had already said in Phi 3:12 with ; and in doing so, he brings more into relief in the first portion the element of self -estimation, which in his own case he denies; and, in the second part, he sets forth more in detail the idea: . .

] ego me ipsum , an emphatic mode of indicating one’s own estimation, in which one is both subject and object of the judgment. Comp. Joh 5:30 f., Joh 7:17 , Joh 8:54 ; Act 26:9 , et al . A reference to the judgment of others about him (Bengel, Weiss, and others; comp. also Hofmann) is here out of place.

] I judge , I am of opinion, [168] Rom 3:28 ; Rom 8:18 ; Rom 14:14 ; 2Co 11:5 , et al .; Xen. Anab . ii. 2. 13; Dem. lxiii. 12.

] Comp. Anthol. Pal. vii. 455: , also the frequent ; see Stallbaum, ad. Plat. Symp . p. 184 C, Rep . p. 548 C. It is here usually supplemented by (Chrysostom appears to have understood ). So also Winer, Buttmann, de Wette, Wiesinger, Ellicott. But how arbitrarily, seeing that the context by what immediately precedes suggests simply the supplying of (not . , Oecumenius, Weiss), and this is in perfect harmony with the sense! Hence we take it thus: “but one thing I think, unum censeo .” This one thing which Paul thinks regarding the matter in question, in contrast to the previous negative ( , as in Phi 3:12 ), is then directly expressed by all that follows from to . . Nearest to this contextual supplement comes the Syriac, which has added , and Luther, who has added . The supplying of is confirmed by the cognate , Phi 3:15 . Without supplying anything, has either been connected with (thus Augustine, Serm. de divers. i. 6, Pierce, Storr, van Hengel, and others), or has been taken absolutely: “unum contra!” see Hoelemann, comp. Rheinwald. But the former is to be rejected, because the subsequent carries its own complete definiteness; and the latter would render the discourse abrupt without reason, since it is not written under emotional excitement, and would, withal, require a supplement, such as Beza gives by . Hofmann also comes at length in substance to this latter supplement, mixing up an imaginary contrast to that which the adversaries imputed to the apostle: over-against this, his conduct subsequently described was the only thing which was quite right ( ? ).

] what is behind , cannot be referred to what has been mentioned in Phi 3:5-6 and the category of those pre-Christian advantages generally (so in substance, Pelagius; in Theodoret, Vatablus, Zeger, Wolf, and others, also Ewald and Hofmann); this would be at variance with the context, for . corresponds to the negation of the having already attained or being perfect in Phi 3:12 , and must therefore apply to the previous achievements of the Christian life , to the degrees of Christian moral perfection already reached, which are conceived as the spaces already left behind in the stadium of the runner still pressing forward; and not to what had belonged to his pre-Christian conduct (Hofmann). Comp. Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Theophylact.

. ] forgetting , like the runner who dismisses from his mind the space already traversed, and fixes his thoughts only on what still lies before him. This is surely no break in the internal connection (as Hofmann objects); on the contrary, like the runner pressing forward, Paul in his continuous restless striving overlooks the degree of moral perfection already attained, which he would not do, if he reckoned it already as itself perfection. is joined with the genitive and accusative; the simple verb, on the contrary, only with the genitive. See Khner, II. 1, p. 313. On the use of the word in the sense of intentional forgetting, comp. Herod, iii. 75, iv. 43; 1Ma 1:49 . It thus amounts to the sense of nullam rationem habere (Sturz, Lex. Xen . II. p. 294).

.] but stretching myself out towards that which is before . The dative is governed by the verb compounded with (Krger, 48. 11. 5; Ngelsbach, zur Ilias, p. 30, Exo 3 ), the intimating the direction . In the case of such an one running “prono et quasi praecipiti corpore” (Beza), “oculus manum, manus pedem praevertit et trahit,” Bengel. On the verb, comp. Strabo, xvii. p. 800; Aristot. Poet . 21; Plut. Mor . p. 1147 A. . represent the higher stages of Christian perfection not yet attained. [169]

] I hasten towards the goal , therefore in a straight course towards the prize of victory. The opposite: , Hom. Od . xi. 344, xxii. 6; Plat. Theaet . p. 179 C, Tim . p. 25 E; Xen. Conv . ii. 10; Lucian, Icarom . 2; and , Pind. Ol . xiii. 144. On without an accusative of the object (in opposition to van Hengel), comp. Xen. Anab . vii. 2. 20, vi. 5. 25 ( ); Aesch. Sept . 89; Buttmann, Lexil . p. 219; Jacobs, ad Anthol . IX. p. 213. Comp. on Phi 3:12 . The prize of victory ( , see on 1Co 9:24 ; Clem. Cor. I. 5; Schol. min. ad Soph. El . 680; Oppian, Cyneg . iv. 196; Lycophr. 1154) represents the salvation of the Messiah’s kingdom (see on Phi 3:12 ), to which God has called man. Hence: , a genitive which is to be taken not as appositional (de Wette, Schenkel), but as the genitive of the subject : the , to which the calling relates . Comp. Luther: “which the heavenly calling holds out.” This is therefore the object of the (Eph 1:18 ; Eph 4:4 ; comp. the Platonic , Phaed . p. 114 C).

is the calling which issued from God above in heaven (on , comp. Col 3:2 , Gal 4:26 ; and on the subject-matter, Heb 3:1 ), by which He has called us to the of His kingdom. The general form of expression, not even limited by a pronoun (such as ), does not allow us to think only of the miraculous calling of the apostle himself; this is rather included under the general category of the , which in the individual cases may have taken historically very different forms. The , which in itself is not necessary, is added, because Paul is thoroughly filled with the consciousness of the divine nature of the in its exaltedness above everything that is earthly. Lastly, the itself is, as always (even in 2Th 1:11 ), the act of calling; not that whereto one is called (de Wette), or “le bonheur cleste mme” (Rilliet); and the general currency of the idea and expression forbids us also, since no indication of the kind is given, to conceive of God as or , as the judge of the contest (Pollux, iii. 145; Blomf. Gloss, ad Aesch. Pers . 307), who through the herald summons the runners to the race (Grotius, Wolf, Rosenmller, am Ende, Hoelemann, van Hengel, Wiesinger); . . . serves to define more accurately that which is figuratively denoted by , but does not itself form a part of the allegory.

. .] is rightly (so also Weiss) joined by Chrysostom to : , . . Comp. Theodoret and Oecumenius. This thought, that the just described is done by him in Christ , as the great upholding and impelling element of life in which amidst this activity he moves, is emphatically placed at the end as that which regulates all his efforts. The usual connection of these words with . . , in which the calling is understood as brought about through Christ (rather: having its causal ground in Christ ), yields a superfluous and self-obvious definition of the already so accurately defined; although the connecting article would not be necessary, since, according to the construction . (1Co 7:22 ; 1Pe 5:10 ), . . might be joined with so as to form one idea; comp. Clem. Cor. I. 46. A contrast to the calling issued to Israel to be God’s people on earth , is groundlessly suggested by Hofmann.

[168] belongs to . The erroneous reference to produced the reading (A D min. vss. and Fathers), which Tischendorf 8. has adopted.

[169] is thus conceived by the apostle as that which still lies further in prospect after every advance in the ethical course; not as that which lay before him in consequence of his conversion (contrasting with his pre-Christian efforts), as Hofmann thinks. It is the ever new, greater, and loftier task which he sees before him, step after step.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2155
HOLY AMBITION ENCOURAGED

Php 3:13-15. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.

TRUE religion affords such perfect satisfaction to the mind, that from the time we become possessed of it, we lose our relish for other things, and feel ourselves at rest, as having attained the summit of our ambition [Note: Joh 6:35.]. But though we cease to hunger or thirst after the vanities of time and sense, our appetite for spiritual blessings is quickened: nor can the richest acquisitions content us, as long as there remains any thing further to be enjoyed. This was St. Pauls experience. He had been apprehended and arrested, as it were, by the Lord Jesus, in order that he might be made to possess all the treasures of grace and glory: and, from that hour, he could never be satisfied with any thing short of the full enjoyment of them [Note: ver. 12.]. And, while he cherished this holy ambition in his own bosom, he recommended it earnestly to all others.

There are, in the words before us, two things which he recommends from his own example:

I.

An humble sense of our present attainments

St. Paul, though so eminent, entertained but low thoughts of himself
[Never was there a man more distinguished than he, whether we consider in general his love to God [Note: 2Co 5:14. Act 20:24; Act 21:13.] and man [Note: Rom 9:1-3. Php 2:17.], or examine the particular graces that adorned his soul [Note: Sympathy, 2Co 11:29; Contentment, Php 4:11-12; Deadness to the world, Gal 6:14; Industry, Rom 15:19; Self-denial, 1Co 9:15.]. He not only was not inferior to any other Apostle [Note: 2Co 11:5; 2Co 12:11.], but he laboured more abundantly than they all [Note: 1Co 15:10.]. Yet, from an impartial view of himself, as compared with the requirements of Gods law, and the example of his Divine Master, he was constrained to confess that he had not yet attained that measure either of knowledge or of holiness, which it was his duty, and his privilege, to possess. This, I say, he found from an exact computation [Note: .], and has recorded it for the instruction of the Church in all ages.]

In this respect he proposes himself to us as an example
[The word perfect, in the close of the text, is not to be understood in the strictest sense, (for then it would contradict what he had before said [Note: ver. 12.],) but as signifying that degree of maturity at which the generality of Christians arrive [Note: 1Co 2:6; 1Co 14:20 and Eph 4:13.]. To persons of this description he says, Be thus minded: and surely it is impossible not to feel the propriety of the exhortation. Let any one of us, even the best amongst us, compare himself with the perfect law of God, or with the spotless example of our Lord, and will he not find in himself deficiencies without number? Let him even compare himself with Paul, a man of like passions with ourselves, and will he not appear a dwarf, a very child in comparison of him? Let him examine himself with respect to every Christian grace, and see whether he do not fall very far short of that bright pattern? Well then may all of us confess, that we have not yet apprehended that for which we have been apprehended of Christ Jesus.]

This however is not to discourage us, but to stimulate us to,

II.

A diligent pursuit of higher attainments

Glorious was the ardour with which the Apostle was animated in his high calling
[He considered himself as called by a reconciled God to enter the lists in the Christian race, and as now actually contending for the prize. Much of his ground had he already passed over; but like the racers in the Olympic games, he forgot what was behind, and was mindful only of that which yet remained for him to do. He saw the prize in full view, and strained every nerve [Note: .] in order to obtain it: and the nearer he approached the goal, the more earnestly did he press forward, desiring nothing but to finish his course with joy. This was the one thing which he did. Nothing else occupied his mind, nothing else was deemed worthy of one moments attention. Nothing could, in his apprehension, be lost, if that prize were gained; nor any thing gained, if that prize were lost.]

In this way he exhorts us also to prosecute the great concerns of our souls
[The same prize which was set before him is held up to us also: and we are called by God to run for it. It may be that we have both clone and suffered much for God already: but we must not think of any thing that is passed (except for the purpose of humbling ourselves, or of glorifying God) we must be intent only on present duty, and engage in it with all our might. To get forward must be our constant uniform endeavour. It is the one thing needful. As persons running in a race find no time for loitering or diversion, but distinguish themselves from mere spectators by the exertions they make; so must we manifest to all around us that we have but one pursuit, with which we are determined that nothing shall interfere, and which we will never relax, till we have reached the goal.]

This subject is of peculiar use,
1.

For reproof

[How are they condemned who have never yet begun the Christian race! Do they expect to win the prize without running for it? This cannot be: the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent must take it by force. Still more are they condemned who would discourage others that are engaged in the contest. Are they like-minded with the Apostle, who are constantly endeavouring to damp the ardour which they will not emulate? Nor are they less worthy of reproof who have relaxed their diligence in the ways of God. To such Paul says, Ye did run well; who hath hindered you [Note: Gal 5:7.]? Yes; inquire diligently who or what hath hindered you: for you had better be stripped of all that you possess, than be impeded by it in your Christian course. Shake off then the thick clay from your feet [Note: Hab 2:6.]: put aside the garment that obstructs your progress [Note: Heb 12:1. ; See Bezas note on those words.]: mortify the flesh that pleads for indulgence [Note: 1Co 9:24-27.]: and run with patience the race that is set before you.]

2.

For encouragement

[Some perhaps are faint, and ready almost to give up the contest. But behold the prize: will not that repay? And is not the attainment of it certain, if you hold on your way [Note: Mat 24:13.]? Yea more, shall not your strength be renewed, if only you wait upon your God [Note: Isa 40:29-31.]? In a few more steps you will reach the goal: and will you stop when the prize is already, as it were, in your hands? O press forward: follow the Apostle: endure to the end; and receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do , forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

Ver. 13. I count not myself ] Si dixisti satis est, periisti. Satiety is a dangerous disease, and the next step to a declension. The eagle’s emblem is sublimius; a loftier position, the sun’s celerius, swifter, Psa 19:3 ; the wheat’s perfectius, more ripened, Mar 4:28 ; Ezekiel’s profundius, more depth, Eze 47:4 ; Christ’s superius, more exaltation,Luk 14:10Luk 14:10 ; and Paul’s ulterius more humiliation.

Reaching forth ] , straining and stretching out head and hands and whole body to lay hold on the mark or prize proposed. A manifest metaphor from runners in a race, qui caput, totumque corpus, et vires exerunt, ae praecipites ad scopum ruunt, who throw themselves forward like a dart, and stretch out their arms to take hold of the mark. Prone et quasi praecipiti corpore ferri ad scopum. (Beza a Lapide.)

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

13 .] Emphatic and affectionate re-statement of the same, but not merely so; he evidently alludes to some whom he wishes to warn by his example. Brethren, I (emphatic: cf. Joh 5:30 ; Joh 7:17 ; Joh 8:33 ; Act 26:9 ) do not reckon myself (emphatic) to have laid hold: but one thing (I do: not , nor , nor , none of which correspond to the epexegesis following: nor can we say that nothing requires to be supplied (Grot., al.), for even in this would not be so the sense must have a logical supplement: nor will it do to join to (Aug., al.), or to supply (Beza)): forgetting the things behind (me, as a runner in the course; by which image, now fully before him, the expressions in this verse must be explained: , , ; Chr. Thdrt. explains it : but this seems insufficient), but ever reaching out towards (as the runner whose body is bent forwards in his course; the giving the continual addition of exertion in this direction (Mey.) or perhaps merely the direction itself. , , , , . , . . Chr.) the things before (i.e. the perfection not yet reached), I pursue (on absolute, see note, Php 3:12 ) towards the goal (the contrary of , beside the mark, Plato, Tim. p. 25 al.) for (to reach, with a view to; or perhaps simply in the direction of: see reff. for both) the prize (see 1Co 9:24 ; 2Ti 4:8 ; Rev 2:10 ) of my heavenly (reff. and Heb 3:1 , . Heb 12:22 . Not, ‘ from above ,’ = : but the allusion is to his appointment having been made directly in heaven, not by delegation on earth) calling (not as we familiarly use the word, ‘calling in life,’ &c. but to be kept to the act of his being called as an Apostle: q. d. ‘the prize consequent on the faithful carrying out of that oummons which I received from God in heaven’) of God (who was the caller: but we must not think of Him, as Grot., al., as the arbiter sitting above and summoning to the course, for in these last words the figure is dropt, and represents real matter of fact) in Christ Jesus (to what are these last words to be referred? Chrys., al., join them with : . . , . , . But I own the arrangement of the sentence thus seems to me very unnatural and the constant practice of St. Paul to join and things said of with weighs strongly for the other connexion, viz. that with . . The objection that then or would be required before , is not valid; the unity of the idea of the , 1Co 7:22 , would dispense with it).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Phi 3:13 . . This direct appeal to them shows that he is approaching a matter which is of serious concern both to him and them. . Why such strong personal emphasis? Is it not a clear hint that there were people at Philippi who prided themselves on having grasped the prize of the Christian calling already? Paul has been tacitly leading up to this. He will yield to none in clear knowledge of the difference between the old and the new life. He knows more surely than any how completely he has broken with the past. Yet, whatever others may say, he must assume the lowly position of one who is still a learner. It makes little difference whether or be read. The authorities are pretty evenly balanced. . The word (often used by Paul) has the force of looking back on the process of a discussion and calmly drawing a conclusion. Cf. Rom 8:18 (with note of Sanday and Headlam ( Romans ). The Apostle expresses his deliberately formed opinion. . There is no need to supply a verb. His Christian conduct is summed up in what follows. Never has there been a more unified life than that of Paul as Apostle and Christian. “When all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself” (Goethe). . . There are a few exx. in classical Greek of . with the accusative, e.g. , Aristoph., Nub. , 631. But in the later language there was an extraordinary extension of the use of the accusative. (See Hatz., Einl . , p. 220 ff.) Does . mean the old life, or the past stages of Christian experience? If the metaphor were strictly pressed, no doubt the latter alternative would claim attention. But pressing metaphors is always hazardous. And parallel passages seem rather to justify the first meaning, e.g. , Jer 7:24 , (of disobeying God’s commands); Luk 9:62 , ; Joh 6:66 , . . . and . are found in Herodot. and Xenoph. Wetstein quotes most aptly from Luc., de Cal. , 12, , , . In using this comparison, Paul, of course, adapts himself, as among Greeks and Romans, to a custom of their national life. On this kind of adaptation see an excellent discussion in Weizscker, Apost. Zeitalter , pp. 100 104.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Philippians

THE RACE AND THE GOAL

Php 3:13-14 .

This buoyant energy and onward looking are marvellous in ‘Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.’ Forgetfulness of the past and eager anticipation for the future are, we sometimes think, the child’s prerogatives. They may be ignoble and puerile, or they may be worthy and great. All depends on the future to which we look. If it be the creation of our fancies, we are babies for trusting it. If it be, as Paul’s was, the revelation of God’s purposes, we cannot do a wiser thing than look.

The Apostle here is letting us see the secret of his own life, and telling us what made him the sort of Christian that he was. He counsels wise obliviousness, wise anticipation, strenuous concentration, and these are the things that contribute to success in any field of life. Christianity is the perfection of common sense. Men become mature Christians by no other means than those by which they become good artisans, ripe scholars, or the like. But the misery is that, though people know well enough that they cannot be good carpenters, or doctors, or fiddlers without certain habits and practices, they seem to fancy that they can be good Christians without them.

So the words of my text may suggest appropriate thoughts on this first Sunday of a new year. Let us listen, then, to Paul telling us how he came to be the sort of Christian man he was.

I. First, then, I would say, make God’s aim your aim.

Paul distinguishes here between the ‘mark’ and the ‘prize.’ He aims at the one for the sake of the other. The one is the object of effort; the other is the sure result of successful effort. If I may so say, the crown hangs on the winning post; and he who touches the goal clutches the garland.

Then, mark that he regards the aim towards which he strains as being the aim which Christ had in view in his conversion. For he says in the preceding context, ‘I labour if that I may lay hold of that for which also I have been laid hold of by Jesus Christ.’ In the words that follow the text he speaks of the prize as being the result and purpose of the high calling of God ‘in Christ Jesus.’ So then he took God’s purpose in calling, and Christ’s purpose in redeeming him, as being his great object in life. God’s aims and Paul’s were identical.

What, then, is the aim of God in all that He has done for us? The production in us of God-like and God-pleasing character. For this suns rise and set; for this seasons and times come and go; for this sorrows and joys are experienced; for this hopes and fears and loves are kindled. For this all the discipline of life is set in motion. For this we were created; for this we have been redeemed. For this Jesus Christ lived and suffered and died. For this God’s Spirit is poured out upon the world. All else is scaffolding; this is the building which it contemplates, and when the building is reared the scaffolding may be cleared away. God means to make us like Himself, and so pleasing to Himself, and has no other end in all the varieties of His gifts and bestowments but only this, the production of character.

Such is the aim that we should set before us. The acceptance of that aim as ours will give nobleness and blessedness to our lives as nothing else will. How different all our estimates of the meaning and true nature of events would be, if we kept clearly before us that their intention was not merely to make us blessed and glad, or to make us sorrowful, but that, through the blessedness, through the sorrow, through the gift, through the withdrawal, through all the variety of dealings, the intention was one and the same, to mould us to the likeness of our Lord and Saviour! There would be fewer mysteries in our lives, we should seldomer have to stand in astonishment, in vain regret, in miserable and weakening looking back upon vanished gifts, and saying to ourselves, ‘Why has this darkness stooped upon my path?’ if we looked beyond the darkness and the light to that for which both were sent. Some plants require frost to bring out their savour, and men need sorrow to test and to produce their highest qualities. There would be fewer knots in the thread of our lives, and fewer mysteries in our experience, if we made God’s aim ours, and strove through all variations of condition to realise it.

How different all our estimate of nearer objects and aims would be, if once we clearly recognised what we are here for! The prostitution of powers to obviously unworthy aims and ends is the saddest thing in humanity. It is like elephants being set to pick up pins; it is like the lightning being harnessed to carry all the gossip and filth of one capital of the world to the prurient readers in another. Men take these great powers which God has given them, and use them to make money, to cultivate their intellects, to secure the gratification of earthly desires, to make a home for themselves here amidst the illusions of time; and all the while the great aim which ought to stand out clear and supreme is forgotten by them.

There is nothing that needs more careful examination by us than our accepted schemes of life for ourselves; the roots of our errors mostly lie in these things that we take to be axioms, and that we never examine into. Let us begin this new year by an honest dealing with ourselves, asking ourselves this question, ‘What am I living for?’ And if the answer, first of all, be, as, of course, it will be, the accomplishment of the nearer and necessary aims, such as the conduct of our business, the cultivating of our understandings, the love and peace of our homes, then let us press the investigation a little further, and say, What then? Suppose I make a fortune, what then? Suppose I get the position I am striving for, what then? Suppose I cultivate my understanding and win the knowledge that I am nobly striving after, what then? Let us not cease to ask the question until we can say, ‘Thy aim, O Lord, is my aim, and I press toward the mark,’ the only mark which will make life noble, elastic, stable, and blessed, that I ‘may be found in Christ, not having mine own righteousness, but that which is of God by faith.’ For this we have all been made, guided, redeemed. If we carry this treasure out of life we shall carry all that is worth carrying. If we fail in this we fail altogether, whatever be our so-called success. There is one mark, one only, and every arrow that does not hit that target is wasted and spent in vain.

II. Secondly, let me say, concentrate all effort on this one aim.

‘This one thing I do,’ says the Apostle, ‘I press toward the mark.’ That aim is the one which God has in view in all circumstances and arrangements. Therefore, obviously, it is one which may be pursued in all of these, and may be sought whatsoever we are doing. All occupations of life except only sin are consistent with this highest aim. It needs not that we should seek any remote or cloistered form of life, nor sheer off any legitimate and common interests and occupations, but in them all we may be seeking for the one thing, the moulding of our characters into the shapes that are pleasing to Him. ‘One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life’; wheresoever the outward days of my life may be passed. Whatsoever we are doing in business, in shop, at a study table, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the road, in the house, we may still have the supreme aim in view, that from all occupations there may come growth in character and in likeness to Jesus Christ.

Only, to keep this supreme aim clear there will require far more frequent and resolute effort of what the old mystics used to call ‘recollection’ than we are accustomed to put forth. It is hard, amidst the din of business, and whilst yielding to other lower, legitimate impulses and motives, to set this supreme one high above them all. But it is possible if only we will do two things: keep ourselves close to God, and be prepared to surrender much, laying our own wills, our own fancies, purposes, eager hopes and plans in His hands, and asking Him to help us, that we may never lose sight of the harbour light because of any tossing waves that rise between us and it, nor may ever be so swallowed up in ends, which are only means after all, as to lose sight of the only end which is an end in itself. But for the attainment of this aim in any measure, the concentration of all our powers upon it is absolutely needful. If you want to bore a hole you take a sharp point; you can do nothing with a blunt one. Every flight of wild ducks in the sky will tell you the form that is most likely to secure the maximum of motion with the minimum of effort. The wedge is that which pierces through all the loosely-compacted textures against which it is pressed. The Roman strategy forced the way of the legion through the loose-ordered ranks of barbarian foes by arraying it in that wedge-like form. So we, if we are to advance, must gather ourselves together and put a point upon our lives by compaction and concentration of effort and energy on the one purpose. The conquering word is, ‘This one thing I do.’ The difference between the amateur and the artist is that the one pursues an art at intervals by spurts, as a parergon –a thing that is done in the intervals of other occupations–and that the other makes it his life’s business. There are a great many amateur Christians amongst us, who pursue the Christian life by spurts and starts. If you want to be a Christian after God’s pattern–and unless you are you are scarcely a Christian at all–you have to make it your business, to give the same attention, the same concentration, the same unwavering energy to it which you do to your trade. The man of one book, the man of one idea, the man of one aim is the formidable and the successful man. People will call you a fanatic; never mind. Better be a fanatic and get what you aim at, which is the highest thing, than be so broad that, like a stream spreading itself out over miles of mud, there is no scour in it anywhere, no current, and therefore stagnation and death. Gather yourselves together, and amidst all the side issues and nearer aims keep this in view as the aim to which all are to be subservient–that, ‘whether I eat or drink, or whatsoever I do, I may do all to the glory of God.’ Let sorrow and joy, and trade and profession, and study and business, and house and wife and children, and all home joys, be the means by which you may become like the Master who has died for this end, that we may become partakers of His holiness.

III. Pursue this end with a wise forgetfulness.

‘Forgetting the things that are behind.’ The art of forgetting has much to do with the blessedness and power of every life. Of course, when the Apostle says ‘Forgetting the things that are behind,’ he is thinking of the runner, who has no time to cast his eye over his shoulder to mark the steps already trod. He does not mean, of course, either, to tell us that we are so to cultivate obliviousness as to let God’s mercies to us ‘lie forgotten in unthankfulness, or without praises die.’ Nor does he mean to tell us that we are to deny ourselves the solace of remembering the mercies which may, perhaps, have gone from us. Memory may be like the calm radiance that fills the western sky from a sun that has set, sad and yet sweet, melancholy and lovely. But he means that we should so forget as, by the oblivion, to strengthen our concentration.

So I would say, let us remember, and yet forget, our past failures and faults. Let us remember them in order that the remembrance may cultivate in us a wise chastening of our self-confidence. Let us remember where we were foiled, in order that we may be the more careful of that place hereafter. If we know that upon any road we fell into ambushes, ‘not once nor twice,’ like the old king of Israel, we should guard ourselves against passing by that road again. He who has not learned, by the memory of his past failures, humility and wise government of his life, and wise avoidance of places where he is weak, is an incurable fool.

But let us forget our failures in so far as these might paralyse our hopes, or make us fancy that future success is impossible where past failures frown. Ebenezer was a field of defeat before it rang with the hymns of victory. And there is no place in your past life where you have been shamefully baffled and beaten, but there, and in that, you may yet be victorious. Never let the past limit your hopes of the possibilities and your confidence in the certainties and victories of the future. And if ever you are tempted to say to yourselves, ‘I have tried it so often, and so often failed, that it is no use trying it any more. I am beaten and I throw up the sponge,’ remember Paul’s wise exhortation, and ‘forgetting the things that are behind . . . press toward the mark.’

In like manner I would say, remember and yet forget past successes and achievements. Remember them for thankfulness, remember them for hope, remember them for counsel and instruction, but forget them when they tend, as all that we accomplish does tend, to make us fancy that little more remains to be done; and forget them when they tend, as all that we accomplish ever does tend, to make us think that such and such things are our line, and of other virtues and graces and achievements of culture and of character, that these are not our line, and not to be won by us.

‘Our line!’ Astronomers take a thin thread from a spider’s web and stretch it across their object glasses to measure stellar magnitudes. Just as is the spider’s line in comparison with the whole shining surface of the sun across which it is stretched, so is what we have already attained to the boundless might and glory of that to which we may come. Nothing short of the full measure of the likeness of Jesus Christ is the measure of our possibilities.

There is a mannerism in Christian life, as there is in everything else, which is to be avoided if we would grow into perfection. There was a great artist in the last century who never could paint a picture without sticking a brown tree in the foreground. We have all got our ‘brown trees,’ which we think we can do well, and these limit our ambition to secure other gifts which God is ready to bestow upon us. So ‘forget the things that are behind.’ Cultivate a wise obliviousness of past sorrows, past joys, past failures, past gifts, past achievements, in so far as these might limit the audacity of our hopes and the energy of our efforts.

IV. So, lastly, pursue the aim with a wise, eager reaching forward.

The Apostle employs a very graphic word here, which is only very partially expressed by that ‘reaching forth.’ It contains a condensed picture which it is scarcely possible to put into any one expression. ‘Reaching out over’ is the full though clumsy rendering of the word, and it gives us the picture of the runner with his whole body thrown forward, his hand extended, and his eye reaching even further than his hand, in eager anticipation of the mark and the prize. So we are to live, with continual reaching out of confidence, clear recognition, and eager desire to make our own the unattained.

What is that which gives an element of nobleness to the lives of great idealists, whether they be poets, artists, students, thinkers, or what not? Only this, that they see the unattained burning ever so clearly before them that all the attained seems as nothing in their eyes. And so life is saved from commonplace, is happily stung into fresh effort, is redeemed from flagging, monotony, and weariness.

The measure of our attainments may be fairly estimated by the extent to which the unattained is clear in our sight. A man down in the valley sees the nearer shoulder of the hill, and he thinks it the top. The man up on the shoulder sees all the heights that lie beyond rising above him. Endeavour is better than success. It is more to see the Alpine heights unscaled than it is to have risen so far as we have done. They who thus have a boundless future before them have an endless source of inspiration, of energy, of buoyancy granted to them.

No man has such an absolutely boundless vision of the future which may be his as we have, if we are Christian people, as we ought to be. We only can thus look forward. For all others a blank wall stretches at the end of life, against which hopes, when they strike, fall back stunned and dead. But for us the wall may be overleaped, and, living by the energy of a boundless hope, we, and only we, can lay ourselves down to die, and say then, ‘Reaching forth unto the things that are before.’

So, dear friends, make God’s aim your aim; concentrate your life’s efforts upon it; pursue it with a wise forgetfulness; pursue it with an eager confidence of anticipation that shall not be put to shame. Remember that God reaches His aim for you by giving to you Jesus Christ, and that you can only reach it by accepting the Christ who is given and being found in Him. Then the years will take away nothing from us which it is not gain to lose. They will neither weaken our energy nor flatten our hopes, nor dim our confidence, and, at the last we shall reach the mark, and, as we touch it, we shall find dropping on our surprised and humble heads the crown of life which they receive who have so run, not as uncertainly, but doing this one thing, pressing towards the mark for the prize.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

not. Many texts read “not yet”.

reaching forth. Greek. epekteinomai. Only here.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

13.] Emphatic and affectionate re-statement of the same, but not merely so;-he evidently alludes to some whom he wishes to warn by his example. Brethren, I (emphatic: cf. Joh 5:30; Joh 7:17; Joh 8:33; Act 26:9) do not reckon myself (emphatic) to have laid hold: but one thing (I do: not , nor , nor , none of which correspond to the epexegesis following: nor can we say that nothing requires to be supplied (Grot., al.), for even in this would not be so-the sense must have a logical supplement: nor will it do to join to (Aug., al.), or to supply (Beza)): forgetting the things behind (me, as a runner in the course; by which image, now fully before him, the expressions in this verse must be explained: , , ; Chr. Thdrt. explains it : but this seems insufficient), but ever reaching out towards (as the runner whose body is bent forwards in his course; the giving the continual addition of exertion in this direction (Mey.) or perhaps merely the direction itself. , , , , . , . . Chr.) the things before (i.e. the perfection not yet reached), I pursue (on absolute, see note, Php 3:12) towards the goal (the contrary of , beside the mark, Plato, Tim. p. 25 al.) for (to reach, with a view to; or perhaps simply in the direction of: see reff. for both) the prize (see 1Co 9:24; 2Ti 4:8; Rev 2:10) of my heavenly (reff. and Heb 3:1, . Heb 12:22. Not, from above, = : but the allusion is to his appointment having been made directly in heaven, not by delegation on earth) calling (not as we familiarly use the word,-calling in life, &c.-but to be kept to the act of his being called as an Apostle: q. d. the prize consequent on the faithful carrying out of that oummons which I received from God in heaven) of God (who was the caller: but we must not think of Him, as Grot., al.,-as the arbiter sitting above and summoning to the course,-for in these last words the figure is dropt, and represents real matter of fact) in Christ Jesus (to what are these last words to be referred? Chrys., al., join them with :- . . , . , . But I own the arrangement of the sentence thus seems to me very unnatural-and the constant practice of St. Paul to join and things said of with weighs strongly for the other connexion, viz. that with . . The objection that then or would be required before , is not valid; the unity of the idea of the , 1Co 7:22, would dispense with it).

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Php 3:13. , brethren) He makes his confession in a familiar manner.-, I) Others might easily think this of Paul.- , I count not) It is proper for the saints, and conducive to their activity, to consider themselves inferior to what they really are.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Php 3:13

Php 3:13

Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold:-He here repeats that he had not attained that for which he sought, but in order to attain it, he made it the one supreme end of his life. [Absolute perfection he expressly denies. He has not yet reached his goal. There is a relative perfection which was true of Paul and of all who grow in grace and are no longer babes in Christ. (1Co 3:15). Dissatisfaction with his spiritual attainments and his longing for a closer union with Christ we often see in his epistles. (Php 3:17-19; Php 4:13-16; Col 1:28).]

but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,-Forgetting all earthly aspirations, honors, and desires, [he had no desire to look backward. He reached forward to grasp the goal with the forward pressing of the body.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Pressing on unto the Prize

Php 3:13-21

The nearer the saint comes to the perfect life, the farther he feels from it. It is only when we have climbed the foothills that we realize how lofty the mountain summits are. But there is no need for discouragement. We have eternity before us, the expanding landscape of truth is our inspiration, and the loving Spirit of God bears us upward on eagles wings. Our Savior had a distinct purpose in view when He apprehended us. Its full scope was only known to Him; let us strive that we may not fail to realize His ideal. We can do this best by forgetting past failures, past sins, and past successes, and pressing on toward the goal. Will not the prize be the Lord Himself? Let us always remember that Gods call is upward. This will help us when there seems collision between two duties.

Instead of judging another, let us walk together along the path of obedience. Those who leave the narrow track and still profess godliness are greater enemies to the Cross than avowed antagonists. We are citizens of the skies, who come forth to spend a few hours each day on earth. This is our inn, yonder is our true home. Thence Jesus will come to complete the work of salvation by giving us a body like His own.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Pressing On

Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.Php 3:13-14.

1. The Apostle here speaks of his past and his present life under the well-known figure of a race. Before his conversion he was like a man running a race, a race of his own, with his eyes set on a lower goal. And then Christ apprehended him, caught hold of him, turned him round, and set him running towards another goal; and he is pursuing that goal yet, and it is still a long way off. Not as though I had already attained. In the days when he was a young, proud Pharisee, the rising hope of his party, petted, praised, and flattered for his zeal and cleverness, he had regarded himself as well-nigh faultless. The ideal of Pharisaism was not very exalted or sublime, and if you are content to aim low you soon get abundantly satisfied with yourself. But Christ had come and given him a model which was not so easy to follow. Christ had shown him an ideal which soared mountain-high above him. He had been pursuing that for years, and it was still out of his reach.

Ever since the day when Christ called to him from on highstopped him at the gate of Damascus, struck from his hand the weapon of persecution, and shrivelled up in his bosom, as by a lightning flash, the commission of the High Priestever since that day, which had turned his former gains into losses, and made him count his own righteousness as mere refuse for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord, he has been running the race set before him, not as uncertainly, but with a definite adherence to its rules and a resolute determination for success; not counting himself to have apprehended, not relaxing his efforts as he nears the goal, but straining every sinew and nerve to the uttermost, if so be he may at last reach the winning-post and attain the imperishable wreath which hangs thereon. This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behindthat part of the course which has already been traversedand reaching forth unto, straining every power to the uttermost after, those things which are beforethat remainder of space which lies still between me and the goalI press toward the markI press on according to (by the rule and direction of) the mark or goalfor the prize of the high callingwhat is elsewhere spoken of as the heavenly callingof God in Christ Jesus.

In olden times games were held in Greece in honour of its gods. They were held around the tombs of heroes and of brave men, as part of a religious festival. Every fifth year such games were held at Elis, in Olympia (the periods between were called Olympiads, and the years were counted from them), and every third year similar games were held at Corinth, and called Isthmian games, from the isthmus that there joins the peninsula to the mainland. Men came from every part of Greece to contend in these games, or to witness them; but no one who was not a true-born Greek was allowed to share in them. The spectators sat on benches, raised one above the other, round an open space strewed with sand, called the stadium. It was about six hundred feet long; and in this open space the games took place. They consisted of chariot races, horse races, and foot races; there were wrestling matches and boxing matches, contests in throwing the heaviest weights to the longest distance, contests also between singers, painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians. Ten judges were set apart as umpires of the games; they were chosen ten months beforehand, and received purple dresses in which they sat on raised chairs, to watch that the rules of the games were observed, and to award the prizes. The champions were the picked men of Greece: they prepared themselves with the utmost care for some months beforehand, knowing that they should have to meet others perfect in their own line. They had to observe the greatest temperance that they might be in full health, choosing such food and drink as would make their muscles firm and tough, not heavy and fleshy. They had to practise their exercises constantly, bathing frequently, and rubbing their bodies with oil to keep their joints supple. In short, there was no chance of winning a prize unless the candidate was willing to make his preparation the business of his life.1 [Note: R. Twigg, Sermons, 284.]

2. There are some people who define Christian perfection in this life as a rounded and complete thing, as the reaching of the goalthe very thing Paul declared he had not attained. They define it as though the life had reached its final form once for all, as though we are perfectly carved into our final beauty and already dwell in perfect holiness. Such a conception must of necessity lead to self-complacency, and close the vision of a higher goal in the present life. But that is not the meaning of this passage. According to Paul, as many as be perfect have the vision of a far-away goal. Christian perfection, according to this criterion, is that stage of life which realizes most intensely its imperfection. When a man thinks he is perfect and complete, he is a great distance from perfection. When a man comes to the conclusion that there is nothing more to do for his life, you may depend upon it that there is a great deal to do. The perfect man as here defined is the man that is least satisfied with himself, the man that sees vast stretches before him to be traversed, the man that knows there are shining heights yet to climb, that there are glories unspeakable ahead.

Sir Joshua Reynolds could not look at any picture remaining in his studio without wishing to retouch it here and there. The forms on the canvas were not as fair as the visions in the painters mind. Such dissatisfaction always gives ground for the hope that the best is yet to be. The same principle holds good in the spiritual life. The outlook is ominous where there is not a profound self-dissatisfaction.1 [Note: T. H. Champion.]

I

St. Paul with his Back to the Past

1. St. Paul was a man who had to bear about with him throughout his life the bitter memory of a misdirected past. He had become an Apostle, the chief agent in the propagation of the Christian religion; but he could not escape the memory of days when he had done everything to thwart the religion which he now confessed. He had persecuted the Church and stood by while its first martyr was stoned to death. As he thought of these things, they paralysed his apostleship. Who was he that he should be a leader? I am not worthy to be called an apostle. He was, however, sane enough to see that, though this past could not be effaced, it could be atoned for. A habit of mind, he concluded, must be cultivated which lets the dead past bury its dead, drops ones paralysing mistakes just where they are, and leaves one free to press forward to the high calling which lies before.

But the chief thing that St. Paul had in his mind when he spoke about forgetting the things that are behind was not his past sins but rather his past attainments. He had already made some progress in the life of faith. Most of us would say he had made a great deal, and would feel almost envious of him, thinking, Would God we were only half as far on as he was! What patience, what courage, what zeal, what self-denying love, what a readiness to bear the cross, what untiring faith he had manifested in weariness and watching, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness! Now, that was just what St. Paul especially wished to forget. Past attainments in grace were not, in his view, things to dwell on; they were only stages to be left behind.

In that old foot-race on the isthmus of Corinth the men who competed for the prize did not stop every now and then to look back with complacency upon that portion of the course which they had already traversed. Nor, when they had run a certain distance, did they sit down and say, It is enough. The coveted crown would never have been theirs, had they done so. Moreover they would have been disgraced in the estimation of all the onlookers. They forgot the things which were behind, and reached forth unto those which were before. Even so in his life-course did St. Paul.1 [Note: A. C. Price, Fifty Sermons, iv. 62.]

2. Strictly speaking, the continuity of life cannot be divided at any point, and what is behind put away as forgotten, rolled up, folded as a garment and laid aside as if no more a part of us. We cannot deal with the past in this way, nor would it be well with us if we could. Up to whatever point we have run our race, we have not merely, like the swift runner, passed over ground to be forgotten, we have also accumulated experience, and added to the sum of our life moments which can never be forgotten, which have entered into its texture, and given it direction and colour which it will more or less always keep. We cannot forget the past in this sense, and of course St. Paul did not mean that we should. No man knew human life, or all the depths of the spiritual life, better than the Apostle. He knew very well, as we all know, that there must be so far a conscious continuity in life, a thread of loving association and memory binding it all up, making it what it is of happiness and misery to any human being. There are dark days which still leave their lengthening shadows upon us, it may be from a distant past, which we cannot escape. And again, there are dear and ever-bright faces that shine out upon us from the shadows, and there is the echo of loving voices, long silent, sounding in our hearts, never to die away. All this gives the past an irrevocable hold upon us.

The past is myself cries Robert Louis Stevenson. In the past is my present fate; and in the past also is my real life. Truly it was no shallow thinker who said, Poor is the man who has no yesterday.1 [Note: H. Dudden, Christ and Christs Religion, 249.]

The winter leaves or bud-scales of a tree leave behind them, when they drop off, a peculiar mark or scar on the bark, just as the summer leaves do when they fall. On every branch a series of these scars, in the shape of rings closely set together, may be seen, indicating the points where each growing shoot entered on the stage of rest. And so every experience through which we pass, every act we perform, goes into the very substance of our being, and we can never be after it what we were before it. We cannot undo our deeds, or altogether escape the consequences that have followed them. The past is indelible, and the memory of it remains like a scar upon the soul.2 [Note: H. Macmillan, The Ministry of Nature, 232.]

3. True forgetting really means finer memory; it is displacing one memory by another, by a stronger one, an antidotal one. It means concentrating on the second phase so that the first is weakened and neutralized, and fades out like a well-treated ink-stain. It is removing a weed from the garden of thought and then planting a live, sturdy flower in its stead. It is cultivating new interests, new relations, new activities. Time helps wonderfully, but especially when we go into partnership with her.

One great truth for us all, says Goethe, is not that the past is sullied, but that the future is unsullied. It is in this sense that we should forget the things that are behind and reach on to the things that are before. I may be reminded that to talk about forgetting what we cannot help remembering is a contradiction in terms. So it is; but, thank God, it is not a contradiction in experience. Others besides the Apostle Paul have come to realize that literal remembrance and moral forgetfulness can exist side by side in the same memory and heart. I have done things in the past, sometimes from want of thought, sometimes from want of heartthings I remember with sorrow and contrition. But I have repented of them, and prayed for grace to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. And God has enabled me to realize His forgiveness so effectually that to-day the sins, while remembered, are morally forgotten.1 [Note: A. Shepherd, Bible Studies in Living Subjects, 9.]

A great editor once said: The true secret of editing is to know what to put into the waste-basket. Forgetting is the souls place for losing discarded thoughts, depressing memories, mean ambitions, false standards, and low ideals.2 [Note: W. J. Jordan, The Crown of Individuality, 123.]

4. Fine forgetfulness is the condition of moral progress. We must be perpetually cutting ourselves free from the past, if we are to push on to a larger and better future. The artist forgets his early failures, the author his first grotesque experiments in literature, and the saint his first stumbling steps, for the same reasona reason which is imperativethat no progress is possible to a mind clogged by the weight of past errors. And herein lies the final justification of Christs doctrine: we are allowed to forget only on condition that we aspire. St. Paul forgets the past only because, and as long as, he is pressing to the mark of his high calling in Christ Jesus. The sinful woman is not condemned because she sins no more. The one anodyne of past sin is the constant exertion of the soul intent upon the struggle of virtue. Relax that struggle, and all the past will rush back upon you like a desolating blackness. Consecrate yourself to that struggle, and God will permit you to forget the past; indeed, in the very act of struggling you will forget it.

On the eve of Waterloo it was necessary for Napoleon to warn his soldiers that they had forced marches in front of themthey knew what he meant, for they had experienced these before, and they must be on the lookout for them again; but that was only one side of the picture, and knowing that he had come up to a turning-point and a crisis, when a decisive victory must, if possible, be won, he selected two appropriate facts out of their past and brought them forward for his purpose, deliberately omitting and forgetting other and uglier passages that were behind. Soldiers! he exclaimed, this day is the anniversary of Marengo and of Friedland, which twice decided the destiny of Europe. This was the way to make their blood tingle and to fire their courage; this was a picture of their power at its best, and it was this picture that must go with them into the morrow. Waterloo was to be another Friedland or Marengo.1 [Note: Spencer Jones, Now and Then, 18.]

George MacDonald makes one of his characters say to another, Let bygones be bygones. Deed no, is the reply; whats the use of bygones but to learn from them how to meet the bycomes? Yes, the only right use of the bygones is to teach us how to meet the bycomes. If we remember our mistakes at all, let it only be to retrieve them, and organize fresh victory out of them.2 [Note: S. L. Wilson, Helpful Words for Daily Life, 258.]

Where shall I hide the memories of my pain?

They lie like pictures on my spirits walls.

I draw the curtains gainst the wind and rain,

But over that past world no curtain falls

To shroud the things behind.

I go to sleep, but sleep itself reveals

The phantoms of a day that long is fled,

And through the land of shadows softly steals

The figured presence of the loved and dead

To wake the things behind.

Would I not lose some glory by forgetting?

Have I not treasures drawn from days of old?

There is a sadness in the daylights setting;

But who would miss the splendour of the gold

To part with things behind?

Keep then the gold, my soul, and hide the setting;

Thy Father shows to thee a path of peace;

Thou canst forget thy pain without forgetting

The forms and voices that can never cease

To bless the things behind.

Turn memory into hope, and thou shalt see

The past illumined by the futures glow;

Put forth thy hand to touch the life to be,

And thou shalt find the joys of long ago

No more the things behind.

There is a death of memory that is brought

Not by oblivion, but by coming light,

It fades as childhood fades in manhoods thought;

It dies as starlight dies at mornings sight,

Not needing things behind.

May this forgetfulness, my heart, be thine;

Not the great deadness of an outgrown sorrow,

But the deep trust that ceases to repine,

Since yesterday shall come again to-morrow

Bearing the things behind.

Fields of the past to thee shall be no more

The burial-ground of friendships once in bloom,

But seed-plots of a harvest on before,

And prophecies of life with larger room

For things that are behind.

Live thou in God, and thy dead past shall be

Alive for ever with eternal day;

And planted on His bosom thou shalt see

The flowers revived that withered on the way

Amid the things behind.1 [Note: George Matheson, Sacred Songs, 125.]

II

St. Paul with his Eye on the Goal

1. Here is a man who starts right away with an object in lifesomething to strive for, something to achieve, something worth achieving. He has a goal to which his whole existence tends. And that goal is Jesus Christ. His ruling passion is to get nearer to Jesus Christ, to be more like Jesus Christ, to grow up into Jesus Christ, to do the work of Jesus Christ. That is his dominant purpose. He aims. He gives his life a centre. He strives to bring everythingall his faculties and powers, all his experiences and activitiesinto relation with that centre.

Toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The goal and the prize are not the same thing. The goalthat was to be like Christ; the prizethat was to be for ever happy with Christ. We all desire the prize; we all hope when this world fades from us, to enter into eternal joy; we all hope to be in heaven at last, with crowns on our heads, and palms in our hands, and the song of the Redeemed on our lips. And we are all pressing forward, each one on his own way, one on the way of Pride, another on the way of Ambition, another on the way of Pleasure, another on the way of Covetousness, all on the way of Selfishness. But there is only one road by which we can attain to it, the road of likeness to Christ. Like Christ? What word will sum up that likeness? The answer is unselfishness. Jesus Christ was the one absolutely unselfish Being; and if we would be like Him, we must learn to put off self, to crucify self, to annihilate self, to lose self in Him.

Now Paul had seen the Lord; and henceforth for him to live was Christ, and to die gain. Christ was to him both the end and the waythat is to say, his hearts desire was that he might have Christs mind, Christs affections, Christs joy, for his own. If even the sight of a good man, in any field of work to which we are invited, can humble us to lift us up, how much more a true sight of Jesus Christ, in whom was no sin, in whom was all goodness. If our standard of what we should attempt, and what we would become, can be altered by our view of our neighbours character and course, how greatly can our standard be altered and raised by our view of One who is above all, to be blessed for ever by all? To Paul, Jesus Christ presented both that glorious moral Image to which he would be likened, and that potent moral Help by which he could attain to it. The Apostle had seen in Him the beauty and the power of God.

Have you missed in your aim? Well, the mark is still shining;

Did you faint in the race? Well, take breath for the next;

Did the clouds drive you back? But see yonder their lining;

Were you tempted and fell? Let it serve for a text.

As each year hurries by, let it join that procession

Of skeleton shapes that march down to the past,

While you take your place in the line of progression,

With your eyes on the heavens, your face to the blast.

I tell you the future can hold no terrors

For any sad soul while the stars revolve,

If he will but stand firm on the grave of his errors,

And instead of regretting, resolve, resolve!

It is never too late to begin rebuilding,

Though all into ruins your life seems hurled.

For look! how the light of a new day is gilding

The worn, wan face of the bruised old world.1 [Note: Ella W. Wilcox.]

2. The Apostles gaze was not only onward but also upward. What attracted him was the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. He saw the crown, the crown of life that fadeth not away, hanging bright before his eyes. What, said he, shall tempt me from that path of which yon crown is the end? Let the golden apples be thrown in my way; I cannot even look at them or stay to spurn them with my feet. Let the sirens sing on either side, and seek to charm me with their evil beauty, to leave the holy road; but I must not, and I will not. The end is glorious; what if the running be laborious? When there is such a prize to be had, who will grudge a struggle?

Whymper, in his Scrambles Amongst the Alps, says that when you are on the summit of Mont Blanc you look down upon the rest of Europe. There is nothing to look up to; all is below; there is no one point for the eye to rest upon. The man who is there is somewhat in the position of one who has attained all that he desireshe has nothing to aspire to; his position must needs be unsatisfactory. But upon the summit of the Verte there is not this objection. You see valleys, villages, fields; you see mountains interminable rolling away, lakes resting in their hollows; you hear the tinkling of the sheep-bells as it rises through the clear morning air, and the roar of the avalanches as they descend to the valleys; but, above all, there is the great white dome, with its shining crest high above, with its sparkling glaciers, that descend between buttresses which support them; with its brilliant snows, purer and yet purer the farther they are removed from this sinful world.

3. The climax and fulfilment of Christian hope are in Jesus Christ. What the Apostle coveted was the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The calling exists before the race begins. It is the invitation, the sanction, the authority by which the race is begun, the goal fixed, and the prize awarded. The high calling is called in the Epistle to the Hebrews the heavenly calling. The phrase implies that this calling comes from, and leads to, the highest sphere to which man can attain. It is mans highest ideal, and he cannot attain to anything beyond it. And this highest possibility for man is treasured up in Jesus Christ; for it is the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The prize is granted when the goal is reached; and all our powers are given us that we may reach the goal. Force of character is ours for the sake of what it may enable us to accomplish; to rest content with being Christians is to sacrifice the end of the Christian calling in delight with the sufficiency of the means. Out of all our satisfactions there comes a lofty discontent. The power of saintliness opens the heart to saintly longings; the impulse of Christian self-sacrifice is an impulse to a definite end. A satisfying religious faith, a sufficient religious purposethese are the noblest gifts of God to man on earth; but there is more beyond. The purpose is to be accomplished, the trust is to be fulfilled; and it is given to each of us to aid in the consummation.

Theodore Cuyler tells how with some friends he once ascended Mount Washington by the old trail over the slippery rocks. A weary, disappointed company they were when they reached the cabin on the summit, and found it shut in by the clouds. But towards evening a mighty wind swept away the banks of mist, the body of the blue heavens stood out in its clearness, and before them was revealed the magnificent landscape, stretching away to the Atlantic Ocean. So faiths stairways are often over steep and slippery rocks, often through blinding storms; but if Christ dwell in the heart, God never loses His hold of us, and in due time He brings us out into the clear shining after rain. To such a career the growing years only bring nearer the triumph, the supreme victory of our lives.

III

St. Paul with his Might in the Race

1. Christian perfection can be reached only by definite and strenuous endeavour. Faith and purpose are furnished us to animate our efforts; they will never be accepted as substitutes for performance. An ignoble contentment with imperfection often clothes itself in the garb of piety; the mystery of spiritual growth is pleaded as an excuse for inactivity; quietism is regarded as a more reverent response than effort to the provisions of the gospel. The same indolent trust in change which makes the inexperienced youth fancy that new companionships and new circumstances are all that is needed for his reformation makes many a man think that death is the spiritual perfecter. But how has all past Christian progress been attained? Not by a barren confidence in the unknown resources of God, but by working out our own salvation with fear and trembling. It is impossible to make a man good who will not endeavour to be good. Equally impossible is it to give him blessedness. You cannot make him permanently happy who will not secure his own happiness by efforts to be good. The more you do for him, the more exacting and the more feeble he becomes. Rousing himself for worthy ends, his feebleness and exactingness are gone; the freshness of new interests breathes joy around him.

Stretching forward to the things that are before. The word here used is an exceedingly strong word. It means not merely reaching forth, but stretching forth, implying intense and sustained effort. The word used is a very strong compound word, so compounded as to give it a maximum of force. It is a picture of the runner as he stretches forward, with the intensity of his effort, every fibre stretched towards the goal.1 [Note: J. Thomas, Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii. 202.]

I count this thing to be grandly true,

That a noble deed is a step toward God,

Lifting the soul from the common clod

To a purer air and a broader view.

We rise by the things that are under our feet,

By what we have mastered of good or gain,

By the pride deposed and the passion slain,

And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.

2. There must be a concentration of all the faculties on the great end of life. Much that is desirable in itself has to be subordinated to the supreme purpose. Paul said: This one thing I do.

Take him for all in all, Spencer was intellectually one of the grandest and morally one of the noblest men that have ever lived. His life was devoted to a single purposethe establishing of truth and righteousness as he understood them. The value of a life of self-sacrifice for a lofty ideal is inestimable at all times, and is especially so in the present day of advertisement, push, and getting on in the world. This will endure whatever may be the fate of his philosophical opinions. In the whole story of the searchers for truth, said the Times, just after his death, there is no instance of devotion to noble aims surpassing hiscourage, baffling ill-health and proof against years of discouragement, unwearied patience, wise economy of powers, and confidence in the future recognition of the value of his work.1 [Note: D. Duncan, The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer, 511.]

In a letter written by Whitefield to a friend on the day of his ordination, occurs the following sublime and comprehensive yet simple expression: I hope the good of souls will be my only principle of action. I call heaven and earth to witness, that when the bishop laid his hand upon me, I gave myself up like a martyr for Him who hung upon the cross for me.

3. Endeavour and concentration will ensure steady progress. I press on, says Paul. There is an almost breathless ardour in the words. We could imagine a sculptor fashioning a figure suggested by this expression. It would be a form with head outstretched; with eyes wide open, straining the sight to catch a glimpse of the distant goal; with hands clenched; with one foot stretched forward, while the other but lightly touched the ground; with the muscles standing out from the flesh like ropessuch a statue is suggested by the phrase, I press on.2 [Note: H. Windross, The Life Victorious, 250.]

Having decided what was to be done, observes Emerson of Napoleon, he did that with might and main. He put out all his strength. He risked everything and spared nothingneither ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor generals, nor himself.

One look behind; but not for idle dreaming;

Hope beckons on to heights that greet the sky;

While voices speak of Times brief hours redeeming,

To nerve the heart for toil and victory.

One look behind; it may be one of sorrow,

Oer broken vows, and duties left undone;

But wait, my soul, on God; then, with each morrow,

His strengthning grace receive thy race to run.

One look behind; but not for vain regretting

Oer golden hours that soothed lifes fret and care;

Forward! be still thy cry, the past forgetting,

Save that which bears thee up on wings of prayer.

One look behind; sweet mercys path reviewing;

One goal ahead, one faith, one hope above;

Up then, with pilgrim staff heavens way pursuing,

To reach the radiant home of endless love!1 [Note: J. P. Wood.]

Pressing On

Literature

Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 55.

Dawson (W. J.), The Evangelistic Note, 115.

Henson (H. H.), Ad Rem, 54.

Liddon (H. P.), University Sermons, 25.

Liddon (H. P.), Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, 246.

Little (J.), Glorying in the Lord, 199, 242.

Mackennal (A.), The Life of Christian Consecration, 154.

Macmillan (H.), The Ministry of Nature, 211.

Macnutt (F. B.), The Riches of Christ, 20.

Magee (W. C.), Growth in Grace, 259.

Morgan (G. H.), Modern Knights-Errant, 144.

Morrison (G. H.), Flood-Tide, 177.

Percival (J.), Some Helps for School Life, 92.

Smith (W. C.), Sermons, 265.

Thomas (J.), Myrtle Street Pulpit, iii. 193.

Trench (R. C.), Sermons, 310.

Tulloch (J.), Sundays at Balmoral, 112.

Vaughan (C. J.), The Wholesome Words of Jesus Christ, 77.

Wilkinson (G. H.), The Invisible Glory, 119.

Wilson (J. M.), Sermons, 1.

Woolsey (T. D.), The Religion of the Present and the Future, 197.

Christian World Pulpit, xxii. 237 (Hood); lx. 52 (Morgan); lxxv. 86 (Champion); lxxviii. 118 (Howell).

The Literary Churchman, 1877, p. 301.

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

I count: Phi 3:8, Phi 3:12, Phi 1:18-21, Phi 4:11-13

one: Psa 27:4, Luk 10:42, 2Pe 3:8

forgetting: Psa 45:10, Luk 9:62, 2Co 5:16, Heb 6:1

and reaching: Phi 2:12, Rom 15:23-29, 1Co 9:24-27, Heb 12:1, Heb 12:2

Reciprocal: Gen 19:17 – look Jos 18:3 – How long are Psa 19:5 – rejoiceth Psa 119:40 – I have Isa 51:1 – ye that follow Isa 64:5 – rejoiceth Eze 46:9 – he that entereth in Hos 6:3 – if Zep 2:3 – seek righteousness Luk 8:15 – bring Luk 18:22 – one Act 20:24 – I might 1Th 4:10 – that ye 2Ti 4:7 – I have finished Rev 2:4 – because

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

CONCENTRATION

One thing I do.

Php 3:13

The words I do are not found in the original, they are scarcely needed. The Apostle wishes to lay stress not so much on doing as being. One thing absorbed him, possessed his life, controlled all his energies.

I. The ideal the Apostle set before him.He had an ideal. I press, he said, toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. His ideal may be summed up in one sentenceThat I may win Christ.

II. How he pursued it.It is only too possible to have high ideals and yet to fail practically in pursuing them. The Apostle was no idealist in the sense of dreaming away his life. Let us notice the spirit in which he pursued his object.

(a) Its first feature is simplicity.

(b) Its second, sincerity. No man was ever subjected to severer tests of sincerity than St. Paul. In the earlier part of the chapter we have a striking account of the difficulties through which he passed. Between him and his goal were barriers: (1) ceremonial; (2) ecclesiastical; (3) social.

(c) Its third, humility.

Rev. E. W. Moore.

Illustration

There is a story told of a visitor who, going to the studio of a well-known artist and sculptor, found him in tears, and on inquiring the cause, he pointed to the bust which he had just completed, and said, There, that represents my ideal; I can do nothing better than that, and I weep, for I know my career as an artist is ended. He felt he could make no further progress, for he had realised his ideal. To have realised our ideal is to come to a standstill. Satisfaction is the grave of progress.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

Here was the secret of St. Pauls success: the possession of a fixed, definite object in life, which he followed up with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. Here, too, lies the secret of every true mans success.

I. What is the one thing with each of you?What is the object to which you give most thought, most care, most labour? Is it to do the will of God? Ah! is it not true that the world is too much with us, and that our work, or our money, or our pleasure occupy the first place, whilst God, on Whom all depends, is put second? Let our constant prayer be, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?

II. When we have discovered what the will of God is, let our one endeavour be to do it with all our heart and soul. We have all a work to do for God, and a given time in which to do it. Never mind the great things, strive to do the small things well, if God has given you small things to do. God has a place for the cedar, and also one for the daisy; for the elephant, and the ant; He has a place and a work, you may be quite sure, for you.

III. In all you do try to look up to God and heaven.I have read of a man who as he walked with his eyes cast down to the ground found a piece of gold. Ever afterwards he walked with downcast eyes, hoping to discover more treasure. But he found none, and because he thus looked down he lost sight altogether of the blue heaven above. Let us remember where our true treasure is, and look up.

Illustration

What made Chrysostom a preacher able to sway mens hearts so mightily that they called him the golden-mouth? It was because he knew the power which was in him, and because he set one object before him, and worked for it. What made Michael Angelo a master among artists, able to rise from obscurity, and make the walls of the Sistine Chapel glow with living pictures till men gazed awe-struck, whilst his teacher confessed that he must become the pupil? It was because he felt the power within him, and worked with chisel and brush for success. It was not chance which made Napoleon a conqueror, or Shakespeare the first of poets. What made Newton the great astronomer he was? Because the stars, as he said, were always in his heart, he was always thinking of them.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

(Php 3:13.) , -Brethren, I do not reckon myself to have attained, or to have laid hold. The apostle writes in his affectionate confidence, as if he had felt that in the experiences of the Christian life official rank did not raise him above them. He clasps them to him, as he unfolds the earnest struggles and ambition of his soul, and repeats the previous sentiment. The phrase is emphatic in its form and position. Winer, 44, 3; Joh 5:30; Joh 7:17. It is the apostle’s deliberate opinion of himself-the result of a formal judgment about himself. One is almost tempted to adopt the idea of Zanchius-audio inter vos nonnullos esse qui fastidientes doctrinam evangelii jactant sese jam satis novisse Christum-I, for my part, make no such boast. The form for appears to be an exegetical alteration. Self-complacency was no feature of the apostle’s character. He was not injured by undue elation, either from his labours or his honours-his sufferings or his successes-his history or his prospects-the grace he enjoyed or the spiritual gifts he had conveyed. The reason is, he looked not to the past, but to the future; not at what had been, but what was still to be. He viewed not so much the progress made as the progress still to be made- surveyed rather the distance yet before him-between him and the goal, than the space that now lay behind him-between him and the starting-point. Truly a correct and salutary mode of measurement-nil actum reputans, dum quid superesset agendum. Satisfaction is fatal to progress. But the apostle, in looking forward to the mark, and conscious, too, that he was yet at some distance from it, did not dream away his energies, or content himself with wondering either why he was not nearer the prize, or when he should reach it. But he adds the following sentiment with a noble ardour, kindled by the image he employed, and throwing its glow over the words he writes. The picture is that of a racer in his agony of struggle and hope! You see him!-every muscle strained, and every vein starting-the quick and short heaving of his chest- the big drops gathered on his brow-his body bending forward, as if with frantic gesture he already clutched the goal-his eye, now glancing aside with a momentary sparkle at objects so rapidly disappearing behind him, and then fixing itself on the garland in eager anticipation. The apostle is not leaving the things behind, but he is forgetting them: he is not merely looking to the things which are before, but he is reaching forth unto them; not only does he run, but he presses toward the mark; nor was he occupied, weakened, or delayed, by a variety of pursuits-this one thing I do. Quicquid voluit, valde voluit.

Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians

Php 3:13. The first sentence of this verse is a repetition in thought of the preceding verse. The apostle makes no claim to a victory he has not won, but he can and does affirm what are his determinations. Forgetting means to cease cherishing a memory of the things he once loved, not that his memory would become a blank on the subject. The apostle now adopts the ancient foot race for an illustration of the Christian life. Reaching forth is from EPEKTEINO which Thayer defines, “to stretch out to or towards.” A runner in a race will lean toward the goal for which he is contesting.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Php 3:13. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended. So anxious is the apostle to avoid any seeming of confidence, that he repeats in substance the statement of the previous verse. The need for labour in the spiritual race is not ended for him, nor must it be for others. And in the word count he expresses this very strongly. It is not the word which has been so rendered in Php 3:8. Here the word signifies the making of an accurate reckoning. This St. Paul had done calmly in his own case, and knows the result. The prize is not yet reached.

but one thing I do. That I may ever be getting nearer to that result for which Christ laid hold on me, and plucked me back from my old life. And that ne speaks of one thing only, shows how he felt the singleness of eye with which the great work of salvation was to be pursued.

forgetting the things which are behind. Those advantages on which as a Jew he had set such store, and which, if he had continued to value them, or even to think of them, would have proved a stumbling-block to spiritual progress. And there were behind the apostle also those years of labour for the cause of Christ on which some men would have been tempted to dwell with thankfulness and hope; but these too he will forget. He will even forget, as he runs his race, those days of his overmuch zeal for the Jews religion, in which he persecuted the church of Christ. For of these acts he has sincerely repented.

and stretching forward to the things which are before. The figurative language of the race-course is still maintained, and in this verb we have pictured the outstretched neck and the body leaning forward which are needful for the diligent runner. By the things which are before we must not merely understand St. Paul to mean the prize, as the final result of the contest. He means rather, in addition to that, yet preceding it, all those parts of the race which are yet to be run, the struggles through which he may have to pass, and how he may finish the remainder of his course most to Gods glory and the churchs profit.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Forgetting the Past

Prior to the time he faced death, Paul always had a single-minded purpose. To achieve his purpose, Paul put the past out of his mind. Wiersbe says to forget in the Bible means “no longer to be influenced by or affected by.” Christians need to forget past sins, accomplishments and wrongs suffered at the hands of others.

The first thing anyone needs to forget from their past is the sins they have committed. On Pentecost following Christ’s resurrection from the dead, Peter told the assembled multitude God had verified Jesus’ Sonship through the miracles he worked. Yet, they, with lawless hands, took him and killed him. Peter proclaimed, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Realizing their sinfulness, they asked, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Those who have repented of their sins and been baptized in the name of Jesus can forget whatever sins they commited in the past because God has blotted out their sins ( Act 2:22-23 ; Act 2:36-38 ; Act 3:19 ).

Sometimes one will be held back by good things in his past. He may dwell on past achievements and fail to continue doing good. The church at Ephesus got off to a good start, but they could not rely on those good deeds they had done to keep them pleasing in the Lord’s sight. The Lord had to warn them, by saying, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place–unless you repent” ( Rev 2:4-5 ).

Clearly, past accomplishments must be forgotten and good works continued. Many are held back from doing good because of some wrong they have suffered at someone else’s hands. Their whole life is wrapped up in getting even. Joseph is one of the best examples of one who was able to forget wrongs others had committed against him. He told his brothers God had used their mistreatment of him to achieve a good end ( Gen 50:20 ). God can still take the good and the bad in our lives and make it work together for our good ( Php 3:13 ; Rom 8:28 ).

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Php 3:13-14. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended To have already attained those high degrees of holiness, internal and external, of usefulness and conformity to my blessed Master, which I have in view. But this one thing I do I make this my chief business. Or rather, (which the phraseology of the original seems to require,) this one thing I can say, though I cannot say that I have attained what I am aiming at; forgetting those things which are behind Even that part of the race of Christian experience, duty, and suffering, which is already run; and reaching forth, &c. Greek, , stretching forward toward those things which are before Toward still higher attainments in grace, and the further labours and sufferings which remain to be accomplished, pursuing these with the whole vigour of my soul; I press toward the mark Which God hath placed before me, even a full conformity to the image of his Son in my heart and life, Rom 8:29; for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus The felicity, honour, and glory, which I am called of God in Christ to contend for: a noble prize indeed! The reader will easily observe, that there is all along in this passage a beautiful allusion to the foot-races in the Grecian games; and in this last clause, to that particular circumstance respecting the prize, that it was placed in a very conspicuous situation, in order that the competitors might be animated by having it still in their view. Add to this, that the judges sat on a high seat, and from thence, by a herald, summoned the contenders into the stadium, or place where they were to contend. In allusion to which elevated situation of the judges, Macknight thinks the apostle here terms Gods calling him by Christ to run the Christian race, , a high calling, or a calling from above. The phrase, however, seems rather to mean a calling or invitation to very high things, even to dignity and happiness, great beyond all that we can now conceive. For to every faithful servant shall it be granted, partly at death, and more especially at the day of final judgment, to enter into the joy of his Lord, Mat 25:23; to sit down with him on his throne, as he overcame and is set down with his Father on his throne; and to inherit all things, even all that God has and is, Rev 3:21; Rev 21:7. From the description which the apostle gives in this passage of his stretching all the members of his body while running the Christian race, and from his telling us that he followed on with unremitting strength and agility, till he arrived at the prize which was placed at the end of the course, we may learn what earnestness, diligence, and constancy, in the exercises of faith and holiness, are necessary to our faiths being counted to us for righteousness at the last day.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Verse 13

I count not; I consider not.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

Again Paul disclaimed having attained conformity to Christ. He viewed his experience as similar to a runner’s. He did not look back. The apostle did not mean that he refused to remember things that had happened to him in the past. He had just reviewed some of those things. He meant that he did not rest in his heritage (Php 3:5-7) or in his past attainments (Php 3:9-12). He had abandoned the unworthy goal that he had pursued in the past. Now he had a new goal toward which he was looking and running.

"Forget those wrongs done, e.g. the persecution of the church (Php 3:6), and so on, whose memory could paralyze one with guilt and despair. Forget, too, those attainments so far achieved as a Christian, the recollection of which might cause one to put life into neutral and to say, ’I have arrived.’ Forget in such a way that the past, good or bad, will have no negative bearing on one’s present spiritual growth or conduct." [Note: Hawthorne, p. 153.]

Fee believed that Paul was referring to looking at the other runners in the race when he spoke of not looking back. [Note: Fee, Paul’s Letter . . ., p. 347.] I think this is less likely what he had in mind.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)