Philippians 3: Moving Forward?

Key Questions in this passage.

Who is Paul talking about in verse 2?

To what extent can we forget the past?  Is he referring to a specific aspect of the past? 

Who are examples of Christian living to whom you defer, look up to, or feel inspired by?

How do we achieve spiritual maturity?

I think the biggest struggle we have today is the tension between this world and the next, between our citizenship (or residency) in our culture or country and our citizenship in heaven.  Can we really be full citizens of both?  Is it possible?  Can we be excellent as employees, family members, neighbors, and excellent as God’s children? 

As for the answers, I am reluctant to address them all.  I am a work in progress, so my answers would be a work in progress.  The first is easy enough:  persons who would add man-made or traditional requirements to the gospel, to grace, to full dependence on the cross for our relationship with God.  They don’t have to be Jews, although that is the focus here, since circumcision is mentioned (as it frequently is in Paul’s writing, but it’s a reference we moderns have trouble with.)  Religious people love to add “stuff” to the gospel.  Food; style of worship and music (no instruments/certain instruments); clothing requirements beyond modesty; listening to a particular teacher (or not); I think I’ve heard them all.  One good benefit from living in a dysfunctional, legalistic universe is that I can smell legalism a mile away.  People can get legalistic about all kinds of things—because we can’t accept grace.  Why not?  Because we can’t accept our own complete inability to achieve grace.

As for the second question, yes and no.  There is no pill or medical process for forgetting the past intentionally, as in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  We can simply put in better memories or better points of focus, and we can accept forgiveness.  Paul emphasizes here that he had, humanly-speaking, lots to be proud of.  But he also says later that he had more to be ashamed of, which is another aspect of legalism—if you can point to the impressive stuff, maybe you can detract from, or diminish in importance, the really sinful stuff, such as killing and imprisoning Christians. 

Too many of us live in the past in the wrong way.  The past can be a dungeon or a blessing, depending on how we process it.   Not that we are in denial of it.  The sin is forgiven, that’s the reality, too.

As for the third question, I could name lots of people, some of them in my church. But none of them would be the ultimate, which is the point.  Human examples of Christian living and maturity are valuable, but they should not be the end all.  Study Christ above all, from beginning to end in the Scriptures.

As for the fourth questions, better minds than mine have addressed this for 2,000 years.  The word I would use today, in my journey, is “community.”  Although Paul uses the word “I” or “me” or “mine” or “myself” 22 times here in this passage, and in a sense that is a lot, he uses “we” or “our” or “us” eight times.  We give lip service to community; living in community is a discipline like prayer, fasting, or study.  It is very hard, because it requires honesty, trust, humility, transparency, sharing (instead of always owning!) the ability to confront lovingly (not criticize) when it might not be taken well or rightly, face-to-face time (as opposed to online time!) and daily-ness.  I am lousy at community, so I would not consider myself really spiritually mature at this point in my life.  My comfort zone is my house, my office, my classroom, my kitchen, my books, my bank account, my, my, my……..

Community goes totally against our cultural mindset. 

I am of course not talking about a “commune.”  We are not monks, and while retreating for a particular purpose of service is a valuable practice, I see nothing in Scripture about the monastic life, no matter how romantic it looks.  Which is the point:  how do we live community while still living in a vastly non-communal culture?

And which also brings me to the final question.  We live in constant tension between eternity and time; between our citizenship in heaven (which exists now, not then) and our citizenship (or better residency) on earth.  I don’t think the earth is a bad place, as do some Christians.  It’s an awesome place.  But it’s not the end.  There is no easy answer here, which I think is what Paul means when he says in 3:15:  Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind (of pressing toward the prize of the upward call); and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.  How you reconcile the tension has to be worked out by you, as God works in you, as God reveals it to you.  But you have to be trying to work out the reconciliation, you have to be conscious of the tensions pulling on you.  Some of us give into the residency on earth, and it consumes us; others push toward the relationship with God that we will have for all eternity.

I heard this week a good quote:  If you can’t stand worshipping God for one hour, how will you like doing it for eternity?  Related idea:  Preachers in my past asked, “Are you closer to God than you were a year ago (or some other time period)?”  Instead of measuring it as if relationship were a yardstick, I would just ask, “Do you love God more than you did in the past, and is that love the focus of your life more?” 

So, does the discipline create the heart, or does the heart create the discipline?  It’s a circular.  Discipline without the heart is duty; heart without the discipline is, well, kind of phony in my book.