Two Men Worth Reading

A text – Philippians 3:4-14

⁴ even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

⁷ Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸ More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

A reflection:

If you are a little rusty on your knowledge of Paul (originally called Saul of Tarsus), in this passage he is bringing you up to speed. He was a good Jewish boy of the tribe of Benjamin who rose to the tip-top of the religious leader ranks to become a Pharisee, a group that believed in strict adherence to Jewish law because God punishes evildoers and rewards the faithful. This life of pious obedience led him to persecute the followers of Jesus with zeal. He claims here to have made no mistakes in his religious life. None.

And then he encountered the risen Christ, who called him by name, knocked him off his horse, blinded him for three days, and placed him in the company of the very followers he had come to town to persecute. He considered his own extraordinary conversion and missionary life as a mere work in progress; he didn’t have all the answers, and he was now and forever dedicated to the One who had forgiven and redeemed him. The past was past, and if the Lord could let it be in the past, Paul could, too. Instead of dwelling in that past, Paul was “straining forward to what lies ahead” (verse 14) toward the heavenly call of God as told to him by Christ Jesus.

If you are EVER tempted to give up on yourself because of all the bad and stupid things you have done (and haven’t we all done bad and stupid things?), think of this part of the incredible letter to the new Christians in the city of Philippi. Reread it. Tell yourself that you are turning now out of your despair and shame and toward God who has something important for you to do. Start right then to think the way the Catholic abbot St. Climacus did, a 6^th century lawyer turned monk in his retirement years. He said “To repent is not to look downwards at my own shortcomings but upwards at God’s love. It is not to look backwards with self-reproach but forwards with trustfulness. It is to see not what I have failed to be but what, by the grace of Christ, I might yet become.”

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for turning of us who fail to be good from getting stuck in hopelessness toward you and your real mission for us.  Amen.