Well, turn with me, if you will, to Philippians. We're in chapter 3. We're looking at verses 12 to 16. Philippians chapter 3, verses 12 to 16. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained. Let's pray. Father, as we do every time we come to Your Word, we come to You now for the aid of Your Spirit. We ask that Your Spirit would show us new and wonderful things in Your Word. We ask for Your help to see what You would say to us, to hear what You would say to us. And then we ask for Your help to see how to apply what You would say to us this morning. How does this affect us? We pray that You would conform us more and more into the image of Christ, by the truth that we see in Your very Word. We pray for Your presence, and we pray for Your power. In all this we ask, in His precious Name, Amen. This is the next focus that Paul takes up in his letter that he's writing to the Philippians, but it's not disconnected from the previous verses that we looked at last week. You remember in verses 1-11, Paul, in essence, calls out the surpassing value or the surpassing worth of Christ, and how that surpassing value or surpassing worth of Christ and the message of the Gospel of Christ had totally and completely captivated him. as he considered everything in this world as loss as compared to Christ Jesus. And you'll remember he concluded that in verses 10 and 11 by saying that, I may know Him, the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. It's that statement, His desire to, by any means possible, attain the resurrection from the dead, that launches Paul into this next series of statements. And this passage, I'm sure you realize, contains a few well-known phrases, those coffee mug type phrases that we see paraphrased on office calendars and coffee mugs and so forth. Verse 13, One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. Verse 14, I press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ. And that is the main thrust of this entire paragraph, pressing on. pressing on, and it's really a contrast to what he just said in verses 1-11. And I want you to see that and notice that really quickly. He's just finished talking about the surpassing value of knowing Christ. And he's just finished talking about the reality that all of his confidence lies solely on the basis of Christ. not on his own work, not on his own attempts to merit justification and salvation. All of his confidence rests only in the blood of Christ. And yet still, immediately, he launches into this next series of verses about pressing on. pursuing something, running after something. He says it twice. He says it once in verse 12, I press on at the end to make it my own. And he says it again in verse 14, I press on toward the goal. I just finished up a paper last week on Hebrews 6, 1-8. You remember Hebrews chapter 6 in our study through Hebrews. That paper reminded me, even getting ready for this message, of the many warnings that you find in the book of Hebrews about fleeing spiritual dullness, and fleeing spiritual immaturity, and instead growing into true spiritual maturity. That's what Paul is driving at here. He's driving at the need to grow, the need to press on, the need to move forward, the need to pursue something. And that drives us into his first point. There are five points I want you to see about pressing on that Paul outlines for us. The first one is the need to press on. The need to press on. He says in verse 12, not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on. I press on to make it my own. He shows us that there is a need to press on. He wants to, according to verse 11, attain the resurrection from the dead. And then he says, not that I have already obtained it, or am already perfect. He understands this point, that he's not perfect. In verses 1 to 11, he outlines that he is secure in Christ. But then he says, at the same time I know that I am not. Perfect. He understands that, as I said, He can't do anything to bring forward before God in order to merit or to warrant His own salvation. All of His security in eternity rests solely in His position in Christ. He is eternally secure in Christ Jesus because of His union with Christ, because the righteousness of God through Christ has been made available to Him and He has been clothed in that righteousness. But He also knows there is still that other nature at war with His new nature. He is secure in Christ, but there is still this residual sinful nature that rises up in His flesh. He is not perfect. in a practical sense, although He has been made perfect in an eternal sense. You can read about Paul's own admission and his struggle in Romans 7. What I do want to do, I don't do. What I don't want to do, I do because I'm a wretched man. But thanks be to God for Christ Jesus. So even though his spiritual position is secure in Christ, his spiritual condition is still imperfect. He is still a sinner. And that's exactly what he says. Look, what I've been saying is I am secure on the basis of Christ, and I want to attain the resurrection for the dead, not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect. The word for perfect denotes completeness. What he's saying is, His spiritual condition is still imperfection. It's still incompleteness because He is a sinner. And so He presses on toward the resurrection from the dead in order to make it His own. That's what He means. Not have I obtained this. What's the this? It's the resurrection from the dead from up in verse 11. That's what He is pressing on toward. His own resurrection. It's the necessity, as I said, of pressing on. The need to press on, the need to continue to fight for holiness, to pursue holiness, to run after holiness. It's the need for perseverance, which we talked about in Hebrews and in James. and everywhere else in Scripture. The need for perseverance of faith and the pressing on into holiness and the pursuit of holiness, running after it with all that we are. The need for pressing on arises from the fact that He is not there yet. He is still a sinner. If He was perfect, He wouldn't need to press on, He would just live. No, he needs to press on in the faith, press on in his pursuit of holiness. And so, until he gets there, to his resurrection from the dead, he will not stop, he will not quit, he will press on. This is exactly what James says about true faith, which is living faith, versus false faith, which is dead faith. In chapter 2, verse 17, James says, Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is what? Dead. Someone will say, you have faith and I have works. James says, show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well, even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works. And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone, which is the argument that James is making. True faith manifests itself in works of faith. True faith manifests itself in works of faith. And Paul's point here is exactly James' point there. I have faith and therefore I will press on toward the resurrection from the dead." The New Covenant promise is that the regenerated person, the born again person, receives a new heart. and a new mind, has made a new creature, a new creation, as Paul calls it. The heart of stone, according to the New Covenant promise, is ripped out. The person is given a heart of flesh, a heart with new desires, a heart with new longings and new yearnings, spiritual longings and spiritual yearnings to flee their sin and to flee toward God and toward Christ and toward holiness and toward righteousness. It's why Christians struggle with their sin. Non-Christians don't struggle with their sin. They love their sin. They never think about things like repentance and forgiveness and the fact that they are headed for hell. Non-believers never think about those things. They just revel in their own depravity. Believers struggle with our sin. We hate our sin. We flee our sin. And when we see our sin, we fall on our face and repent and flee from it and turn to God and to the mercy of Christ. That is the promise of the New Covenant. It is not possible for someone who is truly redeemed who is truly regenerated, who has truly been awakened to spiritual life, who has been given the gift of the Spirit to guide them, who is truly being conformed into the image of Christ, it is not possible for someone like that to turn the gospel into licentiousness. Because that's not true faith. Someone who can turn the message of the cross and the promise of absolution from sin into license to sin does not have a new heart, because that is not a proper attitude about a sin. True believers won't bask in the glory of the Gospel with the thought that everything's okay now. I came into Christ and I accepted Jesus into my heart and therefore I'm okay and I can live however I want to. Me and God, we've taken care of the salvation thing. That is not the thought processes of a truly regenerated believer. It's not true faith. True faith realizes our own sinful condition, repents of it, and strives and pursues this goal of holiness, and ultimately, as Paul makes the point here, the goal of our glorification, our resurrection from the dead, where we will be made perfect in the likeness of Christ. A white, spotless bride prepared for the bridegroom. That's what Paul wants. And he knows that he needs to pursue it, to press on, because he is a sinner. That's his first point. He needs to pursue this. I press on. Secondly, gives the foundation to press on. The need to press on, now the foundation to press on. I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own. There is a parallelism there that you need to see. If you didn't see it on the first reading, I press on to make it my own. Christ has made me His own. What's the it again? It's the resurrection from the dead in verse 11. He's still referencing that. He's still building on that. I press on to make that resurrection my own because Christ has made me His own. The ESV translates it that way. I make it my own because Christ has made me His own. There's a little bit of a nuance there in the Greek. Here's the NASB. It kind of gets it a little better. This is the New American Standard version. not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, that was the last point, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ. It's a little weird phrasing in English. That I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ. What Paul is saying, he's intricately connecting his own sanctification, that is his own pursuit of holiness, that finally, of course, culminates in his glorification. He's connecting that pursuit in the fertile soil of his justification. Justification, sanctification, That's the three stages of the Christian life. And he is rooting his sanctification in the fertile soil of God's mercy, in his justification. Justification begets sanctification. That's what he's saying. Put another way, he is rooting his pursuit of holiness in the reality of his standing before God on the basis of the work of Christ. I make it my own because Christ has made me His own. I lay hold of it because it is that which Christ has laid hold of me. Christ didn't save me for nothing. He saved me to glorify me. And therefore, I press on to lay hold of the glorification that He's promised to give to me because I belong to Him. How sure is this glorification for believers? How assured are we of this glorification? Romans chapter 8 verse 29, Those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He called. And those whom He called, He justified. And those whom He justified, He glorified. It is assured, your glorification. It is assured. His pursuit of holiness is the reason for which Christ saved him. It's not Paul's own reason that now he feels he needs to do this because Christ has saved him. He's saying that one of the reasons that Christ saved him is that he would pursue holiness and pursue the resurrection. of the dead, Ephesians 2.10, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. God saved you to sanctify you. He saved you in order to sanctify you. This is why we talk so much about Christ. in this church, and why we talk so much about what He has done for us. It's about why we talk about the Gospel all the time. It's why we say things like, you can never outgrow your need for the Gospel. It doesn't matter if you've been a Christian for 30 minutes or 30 years. You cannot outgrow your need for the Gospel. Because the basis for our justification, which is the work of Christ on our behalf, becomes also the basis for our sanctification, which is what Christ has done on our behalf. And you need to remember that daily, because if you don't, you will turn your sanctification into a never-ending struggle to please God, on the basis of what you do for Him. And you will despair, and you will lose assurance. Our assurance rests solely in Christ. And on the basis of that, we glorify Him in our good works. The need to press on, the foundation to press on, the fact that we belong to Christ. Next, the focus to press on. He says, brothers, I don't consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, that I do there is implied in the Greek. It's not actually there. He really says just, but one thing, one singular focus, one singular thing that's in my mirror or my window as I move forward in the Christian life, one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on. singular focus on what he's doing. This is one of those passages, by the way, that we need to be careful with. You know, a lot of well-known passages and a lot of well-known Bible verses that are memorized by children and are memorized by adults, and like I said, they're plastered on coffee mugs, and we forget the surrounding context. And so we begin to make inappropriate applications. What does He mean when He says that He forgets what lies behind Him? Some have taken this verse out of context and take it to mean that you never have to worry about your past, just keep pressing on into the future. And if that's your superficial sort of understanding, then you could use that to help justify a lot of unhelpful applications of this verse. Well, we just saw that He doesn't forget everything behind Him, right? He doesn't forget Christ. He doesn't forget the cross. He doesn't forget His redemption. He doesn't forget salvation. He doesn't forget who He is in Christ. He doesn't forget everything. So what does He forget? What is it that He lays behind Him as He presses on with His singular focus? Well, what did he say he forgot about up in verses 1-11? He forgot about everything that he once thought he had confidence in the flesh for. If anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But, what does he say? Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things. What all things? The all things He just outlined. And count them as rubbish in order that I might gain Christ. That's what He forgets. The things that lay behind him that he forgets are the things that he once considered to be gain in this world, that now he considers as loss. That's his singular focus to press on, looking forward and leaving the things of the past behind. The Christian life is not a life to attempt to get to some sort of super spiritual standing and then coast to eternity. It's not also a constant yearning for and stepping back into old sinful habits either. We press on. When people began to ask Jesus what was the cost to follow Him, you remember what He said? Someone came up to Him, I will follow You, Lord. Let me first say farewell to those at my home. And Jesus said in Luke chapter 9 verse 62, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God. You don't get on this path and then start turning your eye back to what you left. You don't deny yourself pick up your cross and follow me and then a mile down the road throw it off and run back to the beginning again because you missed something that you left behind. You press on. Positively, so negatively, he forgets what lies behind. Positively, what does Paul do? He strains forward to what lies ahead. Strains forward. Stretching forward. It's only used here in the New Testament, by the way, but in the Philippian mind in the first century, it would have called forth the image and the mental picture of a runner who is straining and stretching every fiber of every muscle to get to the finish line and win the race. It's an exertion of immense force. And it's that kind of straining that Paul is talking about here. And it is a sober reminder that the Christian life is not a life of ease and leisure. It is a hard life. It is hard work. Work in the power of the Spirit, to be sure. And work, as we've already said, on the basis of the fact that we don't work out where we don't work for our salvation. But the pursuit of holiness is hard work because our flesh is very powerful and strong indeed. But greater is what He who is in me than he who is in the world. The Christian life is hard, and it's long, and it's trudging. We were talking about this in Sunday school this morning. There's this culture of instant gratification that I don't think any of us realize how much our psyche has so been seared for instant gratification in our culture. We don't even think about it anymore. If we want it, we can have it. Like we said, if we don't have it and it's not immediately available, you can go on the internet now, log in, order it, and in a couple of days, it's right at your front door. You don't even have to get out of the house. Christian life is not like that. It's hard. And it's long. And in 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 years down the road, it will still be hard. You just have 30 years worth of wear and tear on the tires in the process. About his own ministry, Paul told the Colossians in chapter 1, verse 28, "...Him we proclaim, warning everyone, teaching everyone in all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ for this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works in me." It is labor. It is hard. It is toil. It is struggle. And that kind of work requires this singular focus of an athlete. You know, these athletes don't just go to the Olympics and after not doing anything for four years, get up there and run marathons, or run sprints, or swim laps. It takes hard work to win a gold medal, and it takes years of hard work to win a gold medal. You don't just jump in the pool and then stand on the winner's platform without hard work. So you forget what lies behind, strains forward to what lies ahead. That's His focus to press on. But what is it that lies ahead? That's the goal. The goal to press on. I press on what? Toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. If He's going to invoke the word picture of a runner, running to win a race, then the implication is that the runner runs in order to win a prize. You don't run for the heck of it if that's your profession. You run for the gold. You run for the end. You run for the trophy. You run for first place. You don't run for the participation ribbons. You run to win. In 1 Corinthians, Paul once again talking about his own ministry and how he's become all things to all men. And this is the conclusion of that section, 1 Corinthians 9, verse 23, I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them and its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So, run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we do it for an imperishable prize. So I don't run aimlessly, I don't box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. I discipline myself. I work hard to run the race to win the prize." And he says the exact same thing here, except he applies it to the Philippians rather than to his own ministry. Run, press on toward the prize, toward the goal. What's the prize? It's the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. It's a beautiful expression of what will happen when we hear His voice and those who are in Christ are raised to eternal life in Him. The upward call of God in Christ Jesus. As he's already pointed out, He's not presently perfect. He's not presently complete. And so what He strives for is for that great and final day when He will be made complete before Jesus Christ, because He will be like Him. That's Romans 8 again, isn't it? Being conformed in the image of His Son. Those whom He called, He justified. Those whom He justified, He glorified. Our final glorification is the final stage in that great chain of redemption, and it's that glorification that Christ has in mind here. The same glorification that causes them to say earlier in Romans 8, I consider the suffering of this present time not worth comparing to what? The glory that will be revealed to us. And that's what He wants our focus to be on as well. He told the Colossians, if you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is. Seated at the right hand of God, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory. Put to death, therefore, all that is earthly in you. 2 Corinthians 3.18, we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. And what's the great promise of 1 John 3.2? What we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. We are changed now by beholding the glory of Christ and the Word of Christ. And we will be finally glorified then as we see Him fully for who He truly is. That's the goal. That's what we press on toward. That's the eternal perspective that we need to have and that we need to maintain. This world, as I said a minute ago, of instant gratification, you can have anything in the world that you want is at your fingertips. Now, for whatever you think would satisfy your desires, and would satisfy your longings, and would satisfy your yearnings, it is at your fingertips. But we don't set our minds on earthly things, we set our minds on heavenly things. the eternal glory of Christ, and the eternal blessing and glory of Heaven. That's our goal. And it's hard. As I said, it's hard work. And it is hard work to continually focus our minds on eternal things, rather than temporal things. Because what's happening to me now is my problem. You know, I'm hungry now. I'm hurting now. I need this now. I think there's a connection there maybe between keeping our minds in the long term on eternal things and that Jesus, as we just talked about again in Sunday School this morning, Jesus teaching us to pray daily for our daily bread. Pray for our daily bread. He said, don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will have its own anxieties. But keep your mind focused on eternal things and eternal glory. And that's what we press on toward. The need, the foundation, the focus, and the glory, or the goal to press on. Finally, there's one more. The maturity to press on. Let those of us who are mature think this way." This is a mark of Christian maturity in the mind of Paul. To think this way about pressing on in faith. To think this way about pursuing holiness and pursuing the resurrection of the dead. Conversely, it's a mark of immaturity to not think this way. We are, by the way, we hear these words like mature and immature and we kind of sometimes get our metaphors mixed up. We are to have childlike faith. This is true. But don't get your metaphor categories mixed up. Because some people want to take this command for childlike faith and called to have a childlike faith as licensed to be immature in the faith. That is not what we are commanded to be. We are commanded to possess a childlike faith, but to grow into maturity. I can remember even in my own life making decisions that were extremely immature. And of course, when you do that, what do you do? You're shrouded in pious sounding platitudes. Well, I'm just trusting the Lord. No, you're making a stupid decision. Don't expect Him to always be there to bail you out for it. Maturity in faith. We need to be careful with that kind of thinking. You know, it took some hard decisions and hard lessons even for me to learn. And I use hard very lightly in comparison to what many go through. But we trust God for what? We trust God for what He has promised us in His Word. We trust Him for what He has actually promised to do for us in His Word through the blessings and the promises of the New Covenant. But we don't trust Him simply because we think He'll come through for us in some silly situation that we found ourselves in. You know, you don't go buy a million dollar house and then say, I'm just trusting God to make the mortgage payments. For example, that's not the way faith works, and that's not the way mature faith works. works. Yesterday we were over at my dad's and we have all the kids and all the nieces and everything and they range from the smallest is four months old to we have this year a senior in high school, one of the nieces. So there's just this massive range of children. And likewise, there is this massive range of maturity. You've got the ones that can't say a word but want to scream everything they try to say. And then you've got the ones that all they want to do is text their little friends at school on Saturday. So there's just this wide range of maturities. But if one of the teenagers acts like a child, we say there's something wrong there. When an adult acts like a child, we say there's definitely something wrong there. Maybe there's a mental deficiency, maybe there's something wrong there. But when adults act like children, there's something wrong. And it's the same way in the Christian faith. When someone who should be an adult, quote-unquote, as a Christian, acts like a child in the faith, there's something wrong. That's the warning of Hebrews. You should be teachers and yet you need me to explain to you the elementary things. You need milk when you should be at this point eating solid food. So Paul calls this understanding maturity, the need to press on. The need to pursue holiness is an example of maturity in the faith. He says, let those of us who are mature think this way. Literally, it calls back to mind what He had said before about having the same mind and the same love and full accord of one mind. That's what He says here. Let you have this same-mindedness of pursuit of holiness in the church. in this pursuit to attain the resurrection from the dead. And just to... because Paul's no fool. He knows there's going to be people who argue and question. He says, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that to you also. Just in case there's some of you who aren't fully on board with what I'm trying to tell you here, God will reveal it to you. You'll come around." Perhaps he's got the same people in mind whom he answers in Romans chapter 6. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Which is apparently a question that Paul was getting because of his message of the Gospel. Oh, freedom from sin and complete pardon and forgiveness and absolution from all sin? Great! Then the more sin there is, the more that the grace of God is made manifest in my life. Right? That's the question. Shall we continue in sin that His grace may abound? And Paul's answer is the emphatic, by no means. How can we who die to sin still live in it? There may be some who disagree, but God is always growing His people. And He will keep growing you as well. Philippians 1.6, I'm sure of this, "...who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ." And then He closes with, "...only let us hold true to what we have attained." You've got it. You've got it in Christ. So hold true to it. Press on toward it. Don't let your path falter. Press on, on the straight and narrow. This is Paul's call to us. And it is his own call and expectation of himself. You know, as I was sort of thinking about concluding this this sermon and thinking about this message, how wonderful is it, really when you think about it, how wonderful is it to gather around at the funeral service of a brother or a sister in Christ who finished the race well. Who although we mourn their loss in this world, we can celebrate and rejoice in their life as well. Because they finished the race well. Just like Paul did, by the way. How did he do with this? He's telling us all this stuff. But how did he do? How did he end his own fight, his own race? I conclude with his words to 2 Timothy chapter 4. I'm already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing." Let's pray. Father, we do pray that You would make us like this. Help us. We pray. We know that we can't do this on our own. We pray for Your Spirit to help us be pressing on, people, pressing on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ. Pressing on into maturity, pressing on into conformity to Christ. Help us not to get to the end of a day or to get to the end of a week or maybe a hard year. and think maybe now it's time to coast, maybe now it's time to rest, maybe now it's time to relax. But help us to be people who continue to press on toward the end. Help us to be faithful to the Gospel and to the preaching of the Gospel. We ask in the precious name of Christ, Amen.