That I may know him

This chapter, rich in athletic metaphors, presents Christ as Paul’s pursuit and goal. Accordingly, we are exhorted to ‘rejoice in the Lord’, a healthy discipline for the believer. There are those whom Paul warns about who could thwart progress in the Christian race, vv. 2, 3. In the first instance there are Judaizers, legalists who relentlessly sought to bring Paul’s converts into bondage. Their modern counterparts abound.

In fact Paul was once a prime example of just such a person. We have first of all what Paul once was in Judaism, vv. 4-7, then what he aspires to be as a Christian, vv. 8-11. As a Jew he had unrivalled credentials racially, religiously, and in zeal as a defender of his ancestral faith. But the Damascus Road experience changed all that, and forced a radical reassessment of his priorities. In his ‘profit and loss account’, vv. 7, 8, he confesses that every glittering prize once held dear came to nothing in the light of Christ and His cross. Christ is now his unqualified gain, his righteousness, and pursuit. He has an insatiable desire to ‘know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death’. Paul longs to know Christ in a progressive and constantly enriched experience - the power of the risen Lord realized in his daily life and service. Not that death can have the final word: the path of perseverance in suffering with Christ has resurrection as its ultimate goal and eternal reward, cp. 2 Tim. 2. 11, 12.

Paul presents himself here as an ardent spiritual athlete untroubled by ‘those things which are behind’. ‘Reaching forth’ means stretching out his head and body towards the goal. His total focus is the prize, the crown, glory everlasting, by contrast with the fading earthly victor’s wreaths. The upward calling of God in Christ ‘is a heavenly calling in origin, operation, and final issue’, H. C. G. MOULE. May we each run with endurance the race for which we are entered, Heb. 12. 1.

The final appeal is to our status and destiny as colony people whose ‘citizenship is in heaven’, Phil. 3. 20. Thence we await the coming Saviour who will then complete His work in us - conforming our bodies of humiliation to His body of glory.