“I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
– Philippians 3:12-14
Oh, how often it is that we forget our call to strain forward in our Christian lives! Here in Philippians Paul lays out for those to whom he writes the way which he lives his life, and it is a lesson that is essential for us to learn if we are to run the race that we are called to run. In the simple phrase, “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” there hides a wealth of understanding that we so easily miss. My hope in these next few paragraphs is to open to you what I have understood this to mean.
It is the curse of humanity to be constantly stumbling in this race that Paul describes himself as being in the midst of. We run hard and strong for an hour or two, perhaps even a day, only to realize that somewhere along the way we lost our bearing and turned from the path. In other cases we trip over something that we know we should have seen blocking our path. And what is our response to these stumbling and misguidedness? More often than not it is to do exactly what we should not do; we focus on our mistake and, at least for a moment, forget to “press on toward the goal”. The man who has struggled with pornography for years fails in his struggle, stumbling and falling once again, and spends the hours or perhaps even days following his sin mourning what he has done. The girl who knows and hates the fact that she cuts herself returns to the release of self harm after a particularly dark week, and can barely lift her head in church over the weekend as she feels the weight of condemnation crush upon her heart. Or a less spectacular example; what of the wife who knows well that her husband desires to have dinner ready at a certain time, and she, for the fourth night in a row, fails to fulfill that desire and despairs of her skill as both a wife and mother?
In all of these examples, and infinitely more, our natural human tendency is to cling to, mourn over, and feel regret for those sins and shortcomings. Yet to do so is exactly the same thing; a sin. Ephesians 2:10 declares, “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” and every minute or hour or day that we spend mourning over our past sins are minutes and days in which we fail to do those good works.
The classic book, The Practice of the Presence of God, describes how Brother Lawrence, a catholic monk, understood this principle;
“When he failed in his duty he only confessed his fault, saying to God, I shall never do otherwise if you leave me to myself – it is you who must prevent my falling and repair what is defective in me. After that he gave himself no uneasiness about it.”
Paul to make it clear that this is how we are to strive forward in our lives when he says that he would forget what was behind him and, after doing so, strive forward. A line in a song by the band Jesus Culture also puts this into words, “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets / when I think about / the way He loves me”.
And that is our call, brothers and sisters. To let the love of God and His work through Christ Jesus overshadow all of our sins. Though it be a sin we return to ten thousand times, Christ has covered it. It is not that we are to take our sin lightly or view it flippantly. May it never be! Instead, we are to behold the weightiness of our sin in comparison to the infinitely greater weight and power of Christ’s work on the cross. To sit and spend even ten minutes in improper, self condemning regret over our sin is an insult to Christ and His work on the cross.
It was there, on Calvary, that Christ “died to sin once for all” and God “condemned sin in sinful man” (Romans 6:10, 8:3). Sin is no longer ours to cling to, God has condemned it finally and utterly, once, for all who are in Christ Jesus. To hold on to the debt that sin claims we owe to it is to hold on to demand to pay a debt that has already been paid in full. Not only is it foolish but it is an insult to the one who paid.
So I charge you, friends, do as the apostle Paul so wisely did. Confess your sins, yes, but do not let them weigh you down. Instead, forget what is behind you and strive with all the strength which God works so mightily in you to race heavenward in complete dependence on Christ. He has paid our debt and He also will be our victor in the race that will carry us into glory. Do not let any small stain of this earth weigh upon you. Christ has cleansed those whom God has given Him, utterly and finally. Only wait and strive until the day on which that promise is realized in full.
Until and beyond that day, I am your brother in Christ,
Sincerely,
Benjamin Pontius
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