Because of snow conditions, Sunday’s service was cancelled. Instead, Vicky Griffiths shared this week’s message with newsletter subscribers by email on Sunday morning. Vicky reflects on Paul’s words in his letter to the Philippians, where he describes the Christian life as a race. She reminds us that following Jesus isn’t about being perfect but about pressing forward with humility, discipline, and focus, leaving the past behind and fixing our eyes on Christ.
Run the Race
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. Philippians 3:12-16 (ESV)
If you have ever taken up running or any other athletic activity, you’ll know the joys and challenges of training for something. Sometimes it feels great; the motivation is there, you hit your stride, you know you’re performing well, pushing yourself to your upper limits and making great progress. Other times, your enthusiasm wanes, or you don’t feel in your best health; you might have to push yourself even to try, and everything you do, even perhaps things you’ve done before with ease, just feel a little or even a lot harder. In fact a lot of things in life, even life itself, can be just like this!
In Philippians 3:12-16, Paul paints a picture of living life as a Christ-follower as like being in a race, where the ultimate goal is to become like Jesus (see Phil 3:8-11) and where the prize that we win at the end is to achieve this goal and be with Him forever. This was clearly an idea that Paul really resonated with because he uses the race metaphor in three other places in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Acts 20:22-24 and 2 Timothy 4:7-8. He continually describes his goal as being to run the race of his life with Jesus really well, so that he might stay the course and reach the prize.
Paul knew his utter dependence on Jesus to be saved. As we heard last week, there was no credential he could hold or activity he could do to save himself, it could only be done through faith (Phil 3:4-9). Yet, rather than seeing Christ’s saving work in his life as being the end of the race, he sees it as just the beginning. It becomes the very reason, the very motivation why Paul must now run the race with all his might; “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
Paul knows he has been saved from his sins, but he also knows that he is not yet like Jesus- he is not yet living in all the fulness of what God has saved him for, and he fully intends to take hold of it and claim it as his own: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect…Brothers, I do not consider I have made it my own.”
What a gift these words are to the church at Philippi and to us! Paul is not perfect and neither are we expected to be simply because we are saved. Instead of fixating on or languishing in our imperfections and the ways we fall short as Christians, instead of despairing of ever being better, we instead are invited to run the race like Paul.
“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.”
This is the one thing that Paul is now intent on. And look how Paul describes the way in which he is running the race. It’s not half hearted; it’s with energy and focus. He presses on- he says that twice- I press on or in some translations ‘I pursue’ this to make it my own (v.12), I press on toward the goal (v14). He describes straining forward (v13). The theologian, Adam Clarke said this, “The Greek word points out the strong exertions made in the race; every muscle and nerve is extended, and he puts forth every particle of his strength in running.”
Paul is saying, there is really only one option if you haven’t arrived yet, and that is to press on. Give it all you got. No turning back. This is not a leisurely saunter in the park, it’s a marathon!
By all accounts, this sounds like a demanding task. This is the kind of race that requires endurance. If I’m honest, it sounds not just a little daunting, especially knowing what I do about what it’s like to run a race with all its ups and downs. In the remainder of his letter, Paul is going to advise us on what we will need to do in order to run the race- you’re going to want to stay tuned! But to avoid any spoilers, today we’ll lean into this race metaphor and consider four different ways we are to live our lives as followers of Christ on the race towards our goal.
Know Your Limits
Generally, people who have never run a race do not wake up one morning and just decide to enter the Boston Marathon that day; training for anything begins with a healthy appraisal of where we are already and at least some awareness of the work we need to put in to get us where we are going.
Paul was an apostle to the churches, who chose to spend his time in prison writing to instruct and encourage other believers. He was willing to count everything else as garbage for the sake of the gospel (Phil 3:8). Surely if anyone might consider themselves a perfect follower of Jesus, it would be Paul. Surely if anyone was a mature, wise Christian who had conquered all spiritual difficulties and arrived at how to perfectly live life for God it was Paul. But Paul tells us he is not perfect.
Paul teaches us one of the first, most important things about what it looks like to follow Jesus- and that is to be humble. Just as he taught us that Christ himself was humble earlier in this letter, in chapter 2, Jesus who “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” so Paul follows Jesus’ example and humbles himself, knowing there is still work for God to do for him to become like Jesus.
Paul’s example teaches us that life as a follower of Jesus means that there is always room for us to grow, always more for us to learn, always more for God to do in our lives. Paul sees the work of God as ongoing in his life- to be a follower of Jesus means that God will bring His work in us to completion (Phil 1:6) but it is not complete yet.
If you are struggling with something right now, if you are dealing with something in your life, perhaps a sin that is just proving so hard to kick, maybe even something you thought you had dealt with that’s resurfaced, don’t lose heart. There is more. There was more for God to do in Paul and there is more for Him to do in you too. In this race we will need to be honest with God about where we fall short and where we need His help.
Be Disciplined
Marathon runners have to be disciplined. They train in order to build strength and endurance, which may mean starting with shorter goals and working up to greater challenges. It might mean moving themselves outside of their comfort zones and pushing their muscles to work a bit harder each time. They prioritize training over doing other things they love, sacrificing things to make time to train, or to get enough sleep or rest so they are ready to run.
They also tend to any injuries, and anything that might hold them back. They have a plan; they might gather information about their route or use a pace calculator to work out when they need to slow down or speed up.
They make sure they are well-equipped; they are going to need the right clothing and perhaps something to carry water. They fuel their body by eating the right foods so they can sustain their energy throughout the race and eliminate any junk foods that don’t help them achieve their goal. They often have a support team, the person who hands them a bottle of water or cheers them on, or runs a part of the race with them.
So too do we need to do all we can to position ourselves well for the race of our Christian lives, the most important race we’ll ever run.
This might look like:
Being willing to step outside of our comfort zones in order to grow and not get stuck where we are.
Sacrificing other things in our lives that don’t serve us in this race.
Asking God to reveal injuries, past hurts in our lives so that we can be healed or sin so that we can repent of it and not be held back by it.
Getting in tune with the Holy Spirit, the planner and our guide to help us know when we’re on the right path or need to put in more effort versus when we might need to slow down to rest in Him so we can sustain the race.
Fueling ourselves with His Word which is life giving.
Finding our support team to cheer us on, to pray for us and encourage us, which might be a close Christian friend or a small group. Those people may even change as we go through life so that if we move to a new place we might need to put the work in to build a new support team.
The race takes discipline and practice. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul says he runs with intentionality; this is a purposeful race, run it like you mean to win it, not aimlessly and half-heartedly.
Keep Your Focus
It is considerably hard to run a race without looking ahead- to be looking backwards or all around, to be trying to work out where some noise is coming from or to be intently looking at some other person on the course and what they might be doing can be hugely distracting.
So too, there are all kinds of things that can distract us from our race as believers. Often we know in our hearts some of the things that are really inclined to pull us off track. Sometimes it’s not even a specific thing, it’s just apathy or complacency; we get lazy, we hit a good straight run and we start to think it’s easy. We take our eyes off Jesus.
But Paul turns our attention to one specific thing that can distract us- he describes “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”
Paul knows that our past, both the positive things and the negative things, can really derail us from pressing on toward the goal. Paul had experience with both.
Paul had done some pretty bad stuff in his life; as a persecutor of the church he had sought to hinder the work of the gospel by arresting and putting to death a lot of people who believed in Jesus. If Paul had stopped to look back on the things he’d done, all the ways he’d sinned against God and hurt other people, he could have become paralysed with thoughts like: “How could I possibly be worthy to run this race?” “How could God possibly use me to do His work?” “How could I possibly become anything like Jesus?” He could have forgotten that Jesus had saved him from his sins, or started to wrongly think Jesus’ sacrifice wasn’t enough to justify all the things Paul had done. He needed to forget what lay behind and strain after the future that Jesus had called him into.
But Paul also had a lot of good things in his life in the past; he came from a good line of people, the tribe of Benjamin, he kept the law, he was important in the Jewish world and probably had commanded some respect. He hadn’t always been stuck in a prison or despised by people. He could have looked back on those days and seen them as the good old days; the days where life was easy and comfortable, and he could have wanted to turn back. He might have been tempted to quit the race.
Even looking back on his achievements from the time since he followed Christ could have hindered him; imagine if he had become smug and comfortable about all the churches he had helped, all the people he had seen saved. It could have caused him to become proud and boastful and to have forgotten that his boast was in Christ.
I do not think that Paul was telling us to forget everything from the past; after all, Scripture is filled with commands to remember what God has done for his people. Paul himself in Ephesians 2 tells the church to remember that they were once separated from God but now have been brought near. But here is a warning to be careful that our looking back doesn’t lure us out of the path of obedience, and hinder our faith. Instead we are to keep our focus; to keep our eyes fixed on the one glorious prize ahead and to count all else as loss. When we are tempted to succumb to past failures or even give in to the nostalgia of longing for a time that no longer is, the “good old days”, we are to fix our eyes on the One who calls us heavenward.
Check Your Mindset
Long-distance runners will tell you that this is a significantly mental endeavour- in fact some go as far as to describe it as 90% mental and 10% physical, because, while fitness gets you to the start line, your mindset, pain management, and ability to push through discomfort are what carry you to the finish. If you google it you will find hundreds of articles and advice on how runners can improve their mindset- it’s that important.
What a particularly useful reminder for us! And perhaps hardly surprising that Paul concludes this section, “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.”
This race isn’t just about doing, but also very much about the way we think. Paul says if we’re mature we’ll ‘think this way’ or we’ll ‘view it like this’. The Greek word here for think or view, “pronéō”, pops up 10 times in Philippians and it refers to our attitude; the way you think, your motivation, your mindset.
This race is sometimes hard. Even with the best preparation, focus and training some things will catch us by surprise. Sometimes things will happen and it will be hard to see God’s plans and purposes. Sometimes the battle over certain sins will feel long and hard until we see a breakthrough. In some things we relentlessly pray for we may not see answers this side of eternity. How we think, what we have our minds set upon, will have much bearing on how we endure the setbacks and the surprises.
Paul’s life was also hard. How easy it is to forget that he wrote this letter from prison though, because his mindset is always on things above, the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. This is what it looks like to be a mature Christian follower of Jesus. Not to be perfect, not to have figured it all out, but to have this mindset, this awareness of the race we are in, and knowing that where we are lacking understanding we can trust that God will reveal this to us also in His timing. To hold on to, and to live by what we already know to be true, that Jesus has died for us. When we have this mindset we can continue to put one foot in front of the other, running the race even among life’s storms.
I recently came across this quote from Eugene Peterson, ‘Faith is a long obedience in the same direction.’ In moments when the race feels hard, I’ve been clinging to this. How can I fix my eyes on Jesus today? What is the one act of obedience I can take today as I head in the direction of making Him my supreme prize and treasure?
Lord God, thank you that you are making us perfect but do not expect us to be just yet. Thank you that you are in the business of transforming us as we run this race, running alongside us, our biggest supporter and the One who cheers us on. Keep us humble and willing to learn from you and from one another. Holy Spirit, would you put a straining, pursuing, pressing impulse into our hearts today, this week, and in the year ahead. Would we end this year as individuals and as a church that are a little closer to you than when we began. Help us when we waiver to not give up but to keep running the race set before us that we might gain you as our supreme prize. Amen.
Questions to Consider
In your journey with Jesus, how have you become more like Him? What helped you get there?
Where do you need to become more like Him now? What steps could you take to grow?
What kind of things tend to slow you down in the race? Are you looking where you’re going?
Spend some time worshipping and focusing your mind on Jesus, your supreme prize.
Ways to share this with kids
Talk to kids about how Paul wrote letters to the churches even from prison, seeking to serve them by encouraging and teaching them to follow Jesus, and how we now get to read these letters in the New Testament. Show them how to find Philippians in the New Testament in the Bible.
Share how Paul saw the Christian life as a race and ask them to pay attention to where it sounds like Paul is running a race as you read the passage. Read Philippians 3:12-16 together, noticing some of the words Paul uses to describe how he is running the race. Is he running it hard or more gently? What does that tell us about how important it is to run this race of following Jesus?
Ask kids what they think or have heard that athletes need to do to run a race. How does this compare to what we need to do to follow Jesus? See examples above such as making sure we have fuel by reading the Bible.
Talk about how Paul was running the race without looking back. Paul had done a lot of things in his past that could have discouraged him if he had thought about them, but Jesus died to save him and to call him to follow and serve him.
A runner in a long race must endure to cross the finish line. For fun and to illustrate, have kids practice running in different ways (if you don’t have much space you can have them run on the spot).
Sometimes the race is fun. People are cheering you on and encouraging you to keep running. (Cheer and shout encouragements at them.)
Sometimes the race is very difficult and people will try to get you to quit. You may even face very difficult challenges along the race that will try to knock you off track (boo at them, throw paper balls at them etc.)
Sometimes you might be tempted to look back (Have them try running while trying to look backwards over their shoulder, notice how you can’t run as fast)
Talk about how we need to focus on Jesus, not on the people around us, or get stuck thinking about all the things we’ve done wrong.
Have them suggest some ideas of how we can keep thinking about Jesus when we’re tempted to quit.