Philippians 3:7-14; April 6, 2025; Fifth Sunday in Lent
——
You ever have that experience where you reach the same conclusion as someone else, but you sort of disagree on how you got there?
I mean, I can easily agree with Paul that Jesus Christ is the goal. The solution. The conclusion. And that knowing him is not only a “gain,” but a satisfaction of great, great value.
Living like him. Walking closer with him. These are indeed the goals of our souls. Amen?
And more, that one of the greatest prizes that he offers us, if not his best, is his forgiveness. His wiping our slate clean. His turning our crimson sins into the whitest of snow.
So, Paul, man… count me in! I’m on board. We’re all, I think, today in full agreement with you.
Except this forgetting what lies behind bit… regarding it all as loss, as rubbish, or as it says in the Greek, as “σκύβαλα” — which literally means dung/animal shit — yeah, I just don’t know about that one, Paul.
I’ll be honest, at first, I really struggled with this text because of that verse. It just wasn’t sitting well with me, you know?
I mean, for all of my life I have been taught, and have believed, that it’s profitable to confront your past. To acknowledge it, even to wrestle with it, rather than simply forgetting it, let alone burying it. I mean, that’s Psychology 101.
For it’s usually what lies behind us that then shapes what comes next. Who we become. The directions we should be avoiding because of experience, and the bearings we should be heading because of wisdom.
I mean, what’s that quote – those who don’t read history or understand it, are doomed to repeat it? Yeah, something like that.
So, no, I just don’t think we can forget all that’s come before, otherwise we’ll just keep on doing it. Making things worse.
And I don’t know about you all, but to me, there seems to be a lot of making things worse going on right now. And that what lies behind us was actually pretty good, and more for our gain than for our loss, despite what others would have you believe.
I mean, how’s everyone’s 401k’s doing?
Yeah.
Remember when we were like, civil? As both a people and a society? Remember that? Remember when you could share a drink with someone who thought differently than you and then leave shaking their hand?
And, remember when the news just like reported the news, without filters, without bias, without A.I., spin, and gaslighting? Remember that?
And, remember when history was simply history, and not whatever was being taught by those who would wish to erase it? Remember that?
I’m a big baseball fan as many of you know. And I’m perhaps an even bigger baseball historian. And my favorite day of the baseball calendar is April 15th, when every team wears the number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson who not only broke the color barrier, but who was downright awesome; a great player, and a military veteran who served our country in WWII.
Well, I can now see a world, unfortunately, where April 15 is soon rendered as just another day at the ballpark because of, you know, something beginning with D and ending in I.
Honestly, truthfully, I mostly liked what came before, what now seemingly lies behind us. And no doubt that’s due in part to my immense privilege, but even so, it felt like we were on a journey towards progress. Towards gain. Rather than what now feels like loss, like regression.
So, yeah, at first man I struggled with this text, as it seemed disproportionate to what we’re all presently living through.
But then my eyes were opened, kind of like Paul on the road to Damascus, and I noticed a word here in his letter that I had completely glossed over before.
You want to know what that word was?
“Straining.” Or, better yet, in the Greek…
ἐπεκτεινόμενος
ἐπεκτεινόμενος means a reaching out towards something. Almost like a real physical effort to touch what’s ahead of you, grasping, such that you feel that stretch in your ribs, deep in your guts.
So, when Paul writes that he is “straining forward” to what lies ahead of him, he truly means it.
And so, when I saw this word, my eyes were not only opened, but it also completely changed my understanding of what Paul was saying here, as he wrote this letter while in prison, because he “dared to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear (Philippians 1:15).
That what he was doing took effort, deep in his guts, a true straining.
And, that even he couldn’t just snap his fingers and immediately forget everything that lies behind, because as he reached towards the prize of Christ… his wounds, his stitches, his insides – his guilt — would be there as a reminder.
And why would Paul have guilt, you might ask?
Well, he tells us in the verse right before ours, in verse 6:
“In my zeal for God, I persecuted the church. And according to the righteousness stipulated in the law I thought I was blameless.”
That’s right, my friends. Paul himself was once a persecutor of the church. An enemy. An adversary of Jesus Christ.
And he thought he was entirely blameless, because of the Law, or because he felt like he was above it.
And so, Paul had to deal with that. He had to reckon with his past. And wrestle with his sin. Straining forward trying to escape it all… stretching out towards a prize that would liberate him from what came before, what he now knew as loss.
And you know what that prize was, my friends?
You do…
That’s right…
Jesus Christ.
The ultimate prize is knowing Jesus and the glory that comes in his freedom. That comes in his grace. That comes in his forgiveness.
Lewis B. Smedes writes: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
And Paul knew he had to be freed, and Jesus was the perfect person to do it.
And so, as we likewise strain towards him, know, my friends, that Christ is yet reaching towards us. With arms out wide. So that our slate might be wiped clean. So that we might start again.
Such that even if we believe that what came before was pretty great, those gains – those real gains – won’t even compare with what’s coming, with what’s waiting for us all with him in Heaven.
Amen
