“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. 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 towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
“Not that I have already obtained, or am already perfected; but I-press-on, if also I-may-appropriate, seeing that (or, with-a-view to-which) also I-have-been-appropriated by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not-yet reckon myself to-have-appropriated; but one-(thing)— on-the-one-hand forgetting the-(thing) behind, on-the-other-hand straining-forward to-the-(things) before— down to-the-goal I-press unto the prize of-the calling on-high of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:12-14
In chapter 33 we saw that Paul suffered the loss of all things, and counted them but refuse or dung, in order that he might gain Christ: and in chapter 34 we saw seven other treasures that he might obtain with Christ. Now he says: “Not that I have already obtained” (vs. 12). He does not say what it is he has not yet obtained: he is running a race, and has neither time nor breath for a word he can do without. Notice the urgency all through this passage of Scripture: the sentences are short, and sometimes seem unfinished, as the Apostle strains to press on. His eye is not on us, his readers, but on Christ, at the end of the race. Oh, that we knew more of such urgency!
And so, were you to ask Paul, “What is it you have not yet obtained?” I think he would reply, “Have you so quickly forgotten my passionate longing to gain Christ, and with Him those other treasures I showed you? I have not got them yet: but I am pressing on for them.”
When I first went to a large boys’ school, it was Easter time, and in a few weeks they were going to hold the annual school races and other athletic sports. The various events were listed, and the boys invited to enter their names for the races in which they wished to take part. The prizes were also put on view: they fairly took away my breath: never had I seen such a collection of beautiful silver cups and trophies. I was only just twelve, and most of the boys were older, so I knew I had not much chance: but there was one little silver cup for the hundred yard dash, for boys of twelve and under: and, oh, how I longed for that cup! I had not already obtained it, but I could train and practice for that race, and then, so run that I might obtain! And I often went and looked at the little cup, and that stirred me to more earnest efforts.
I think that is something the way the dear Apostle felt, as he gazed on Christ, and all the treasures found in Him. But then Paul was still running the race, and the prize does not come until the race is finished: so I think that is what he means when he says: “Not that I have already obtained, or am already perfected; but I press on, or— I am pressing on!”
There is a difference between the race Paul was running, and the races we ran at school that day: in our races but one received the prize; but in Paul’s race (and he won the prize, not a silver cup, but a crown of righteousness), the prize was, “not to me only,” he says, “but unto all them that love His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8).
And what did he mean when he said, I am not “already perfected” (vs. 12)? He did not mean that he expected down here to be perfect, and without sin. Rather, I think, he meant that he had not yet that glorified body that he would have later on, (see verse 21), through “the power of His resurrection,” (vs. 10) the last of those treasures on which he had been gazing. We have seen that salvation in Philippians not only includes the salvation of our souls, but also being kept all the way through this wilderness journey, and right on till we reach that home in glory: not till then have we fully obtained, or are we perfected.
And so he says, “But I am pressing on.” Like the runner in the 12th of Hebrews, he would lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and he would run with endurance the race set before him. And it was not any hundred yard dash that Paul was running. The race he ran called for endurance: never to give up: he may have been like some of a previous day, “faint yet pursuing” (Judg. 8:4): so he cries, “But I press on!”
“Though faint, yet pursuing,
We go on our way.
The Lord is our Leader,
His Word is our stay;
Though suffering and sorrow
And trial be near,
The Lord is our Refuge,
And whom can we fear?
“Though clouds may surround us,
Our God is our Light,
Though storms rage around us,
Our God is our might;
So ‘Faint, yet pursuing,’
Still onward we come,
The Lord is our Leader,
And Heaven our Home.”
“But I press on, if also I may appropriate, seeing that also I have been appropriated by Christ Jesus.”
The word we have translated “appropriate” is sometimes translated “apprehend”, sometimes, “lay hold on” or “grasp”, sometimes “get possession of”. The meaning is very much the same with any of these words, and each carries much truth in it: but there is such a fullness in many Greek words that one English word cannot express it; so in using appropriate there is no suggestion that these other words are not right: but it is with the hope of bringing out another ray of divine light from this word that Paul uses. One of the best Greek Lexicons (Moulton and Milligan), that has compared many New Testament words with the recent finds of old Greek manuscripts, tells us that appropriate “is Paul’s regular use of the verb in active and passive”: so we have used it. It just means, to take for oneself and this is exactly what Paul had done: he had taken Christ for Himself, for his own gain: and for Him he had thrown away all other gains, seeing that Christ Jesus had appropriated him: taken him for Himself. “I am His, and He is mine.”
I suppose some of my readers will say that `appropriate’ must have an object to it: he must tell what it is he so longs to appropriate: but I do not think Paul troubles about small matters like that: he is so earnestly pressing on in his race, and his eyes and heart are so filled with Christ, and the treasures he has been showing us in Christ: treasures he longs to appropriate, that it never crosses his mind that our eyes and hearts may not be filled with the same Object, and so we might not realize that he wants to appropriate Christ and the treasures to be found with Him.
And why does he so passionately long to appropriate Christ? He gives his reason: “Seeing that also I have been appropriated by Christ Jesus.” I think that is perfectly beautiful. Long years before on the Damascus road the Lord Jesus Christ had `appropriated’ Paul: Paul had seen Him in His glory, and from that day and onward his one absorbing desire was to appropriate Him. But, you say, had not Paul long since appropriated Christ? Did he not, only a few verses back, say “Christ Jesus my Lord” (vs. 8)? Yes, truly. But yet he could cry, “To know Him!” although he knew Him better, perhaps, than any other: he still longed to know Him more and more. And as we cannot appropriate what we do not know, so as Paul learned to know his Lord better and better, he longed more and more to appropriate Him.
And I also can say, I have been appropriated by Christ Jesus. Like the Apostle, I am not my own, I have been bought with a price. Yes, I have been appropriated by Christ Jesus. Have you, dear reader, also been appropriated by Christ Jesus? Then you are not your own, but HIS.
“Thine, Jesus, Thine,
No more this heart of mine
Shall seek its joy apart from Thee,
The world is crucified to me,
And I am Thine.
“Thine— Thine alone,
My joy, my hope, my crown:
Now earthly things may fade and die,
They charm my soul no more, for I
Am Thine alone.”
A policeman may “apprehend” a criminal: and I was a criminal right enough: but it was not a “policeman” who “apprehended” me. No, it was my own beloved Lord and Savior, who bought me with His own most precious blood, and then He appropriated me: rightly enough: for when He bought me, then I belonged to Him, and Him alone. I was only a little child the day He appropriated me, or, “laid hold on” me; and He has never let go of me through all those 67 years since that day: and He will not let go of me, not until He has me safe Home in the Father’s House, to go no more out. (John 10:28-30).
“Brothers, I do not reckon myself to have appropriated,” so Paul continues. When this word “brothers” begins the sentence, it is always in preparation for a particularly earnest appeal. See verse 1 of our chapter, or Romans 10:1. or Galatians 3:15, etc. Perhaps there were ‘brothers’ in the assembly at Philippi who felt they had ‘appropriated’, who felt they were doing well in the Christian race, and the prize was theirs. So Paul points to himself, and says, “I do not reckon myself to have appropriated.” He makes the “I” and “myself” both emphatic. If there were such brothers in Philippi, what a sweet and gentle way to reprove them! Well Paul knew that not until he gets safe Home, and knows in full the power of His resurrection, not until the Lord Jesus Christ shall change his vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself (see our chapter, verse 21); not until the flesh with all its imperfections will be done away forever, this mortal will have put on immortality, and this corruptible, incorruption: not until then can Paul say: “I have obtained! I am perfected! I have appropriated!” Meanwhile, as the children sing: “All, all above is treasured, and found in Christ alone.”
In the meantime there is “but one thing.” The Apostle is too occupied with the race to stop to write, “One thing I do.” He takes for granted we will understand that a man running such a race cannot waste words. I told you about the hundred yard dash in which I ran soon after going to school. (I did not win that beautiful little silver cup). Well, the following October was the time when they ran ‘the steeplechase’. It was five miles across open country, through a river and streams, over fences and plowed fields, up hill and down hill, and then along a dusty country road to the goal. I was passing the gymnasium one day, when the trainer called me over, and asked if I was running in the steeplechase. “Oh, no,” I replied, “I never could run five miles!” But he insisted that I enter; and so I found myself lined up for the start: the pistol went, and we were away. I can assure you that for those five miles I did but one thing. I knew where the goal was, and the one thing I did was to press on towards it. Sometimes the going was hard, especially when a plowed field came after a stream, and your shoes were full of water. There was never a thought to stop and rest, nor look around to see how the other fellows were getting on; and at last, in the distance, I could see the goal, along the country road, down a little hill, and then perhaps a hundred yards on the straight. There were four or five boys a little ahead of me, but when I saw the goal, forgetting the things behind, and stretching forward with every bit of strength I had, down to the goal I pressed, passed the boys, and got in ahead. The trainer put his arm around me, and said, “Well done!” and I was as pleased as if I had won the race, though there may have been fifty boys ahead of me.
I think it must have been a race something like the steeplechase the Apostle ran: though they all tell me it was the marathon he had in mind, and maybe it is so. But most of us are running a race like the steeplechase: there are all sorts of difficulties in the way: streams to cross, plowed fields to get over, fences to climb, and perhaps we may even have to cross a river before we reach the goal. But never mind, it is well worthwhile. For some of us the goal is almost in sight: we can almost see ‘the Trainer’ waiting for us. Think you that our minds are on the difficulties of the way we have passed? Are we wondering how the other fellow is getting on? Oh, no! One thing I do, forgetting the things behind, and straining forward to the things ahead, down to the goal I press. And there is our Trainer, just waiting to receive us, and if so be He should take us in His arms, and say “Well Done!” will it not infinitely more than make up for all the difficulties and fatigue of the race?
Beloved reader, “Are you running that race? Have you entered for it yet? Can you say, ‘One thing I do’?” May God help us to be true followers of that runner whose record we have been pondering.
But perhaps some will question, “What are the things behind that the Apostle says he forgets?” He does not tell us: he does not say if they were the victories or the failures. But I think it is anything and everything that would take our eyes off Christ. I think it is like Psa. 45:10: “Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house; so shall the King greatly desire thy beauty.” When Rebecca was going through the desert she would have had nothing if she had forgotten Isaac. Isaac was the attraction, the object before her heart, and I doubt not her heart was filled with thoughts of him; and in a sense she forgot her own people and her father’s house: but I do not suppose the Lord meant that she should never think of them again: but Isaac was the supreme object of her heart. We find the Apostle, when occasion served, remembered both his victories and his failures: See 2 Cor. 11:22 to 12:7; Acts 22:20; 24:21; 1 Cor. 15:9; but his heart was not set on either. To remember our victories tends to make us proud: to remember our failures tends to cast us down and discourage us, so we are tempted to give up. If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. He knows the failure and the sin; and He knows if we have confessed it, and it is all forgiven: He does not cast it up against us. So let us take Him at His word, and forget it: not surely to make us careless: but to magnify His grace. The night after Paul failed when standing before the Council, (Acts 23:2-7), the Lord Himself came to him in the prison, (He did not send an angel, as in Acts 12:7), and He said to him, “Be of good cheer, Paul” (Acts 23:11). He used His own special word, “Tharsei,” (cheer up!) that He so often used when down here. But not a single word of the failure did He mention. Paul, I doubt not, had confessed it, and it was forgiven; and the Lord would not bring it up again. So it seems to me the Lord means us to forget everything that would distract us, whether good or whether bad, whether victories or whether defeats. If the latter, confess it, and believe the Lord’s promise to forgive, and then press on.
Now we are nearing the end of the race: the prize is in view: “Down to the goal I press unto (or, for) the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus.”
Before we look at the prize, we must consider the calling. We read much about our calling. The following quotations are from the New Translation, by Mr. Darby.
We are “called ones of Christ Jesus” (Rom. 1:6; see the note in New Translation).
We are “called saints,” or, “saints by calling” (Rom. 1:7; see the note).
It is a “holy calling” (2 Tim. 1:9).
It is a “heavenly calling” (Heb. 3:1).
Paul prays we should “know what is the hope of His calling” (Eph. 1:18).
It is a “calling of God.... not subject to repentance” (Rom. 11:29).
We are exhorted “to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye have been called” (Eph. 4:1).
What, then, does it mean— “the calling on high of God on Christ Jesus”? When, as a child, I ran in that hundred yard dash, I might have said: “Down to the goal I press for the prize of the hundred yard dash.” “The hundred yard dash” described the race I was running. So “the calling on high” (vs. 14) I think describes the race Paul was running. It is the calling “which bears the character of the world above.... the calling whose origin, nature, and goal are heavenly.” (Cremer’s Lexicon).
But I think it may include the call to that race: just as the trainer called me to run in the steeplechase. In the marathon race the herald proclaimed:
“Foot by foot
To the foot-line put.”
When the marathon race was finished, and the prize won, it is said the winner was called up before the Emperor, or other high personage, who had his seat above the rest: and this high official handed him the prize. “The calling” may include this: but it seems usually to refer to the pathway of the saint down here.
And what is the prize that Paul so valued? I think the poet is not far wrong when he sings:
“Run the straight race, through God’s good grace,
Lift up thine eyes, and seek His face.
Life with its way, before us lies,
CHRIST is the path, and CHRIST the prize.”
The prize for the winner of the marathon race was a crown of leaves— a fading crown: but our prize is an unfading one. We read of some of these crowns that the Lord promises to His saints: “A crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8).
“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him” (James 1:12).
“Feed the flock of God.... and when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.” (1 Peter 5:2, 4).
“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. 2:10).
The word translated ‘crown’ in each of these passages is stephanos, from which we get our name `Stephen’, and is really the ‘victor’s wreath’. His enemies gave our Lord a crown of thorns, and it is the same word: for I think His Father saw in it the victor’s wreath: but soon he was crowned with another `victor’s wreath’, even the first martyr, for His Name’s sake.
“On His head were many crowns” (Rev. 19:12): here the word is the kingly crown: the ‘diadem’. And HE wears both the victor’s wreath, and “many diadems”: and He is worthy of all.
To Israel, the Lord says: “In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of His people” (Isa. 28:5). And so I think we are not wrong in supposing that each of the crowns He promises His people today, tell us of Christ our Lord. And I think in Rev. 4:10 we learn what His saints will do with those crowns that He so graciously gives them: “The four and twenty elders fall down before Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that liveth forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.” What a joy it will be in that day, if we have a crown to cast before Him! May you and I dear reader, taste of that joy!
But there is a note of warning that we do well to heed: “Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev. 3:11). The crown tells of reward, and that is an entirely different thing to eternal life, which is the free gift of God; and none who have it will ever lose it, or perish. But we may lose our crown, and be ashamed before Him at His coming. And notice this warning is given to those in Philadelphia. Well is it indeed, if those who pride themselves on representing this church (and I grieve to say there are such) take serious heed to this warning: but let us each remember the warning is meant for ourselves. Do not let us reckon that we have already obtained the prize, or that we are sure to obtain it. These verses are intended, I believe, to stir us up to press on for it.
And soon, very soon, the prize day will be here. “Yet a very little while He that comes, will come and will not delay” (Heb. 10:37 New Translation). And then we will hear that shout— ‘that great commanding shout’ —that calls us up on high—
“Arise, My Love, My Fair One, and Come Away!” (Song of Sol. 2:13).
“SURELY I COME QUICKLY
AMEN. EVEN SO, COME, LORD JESUS!” (Rev. 22:20).
ONE THING
“Not one thing hath failed Josh. 23:14
One thing have I desired of the Lord. Psa. 27:4
One thing thou lackest Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22
One thing is needful Luke 10:42
One thing I know John 9:25
One thing I do Phil. 3:13
Be not ignorant of this one thing” 2 Peter 3:8