Hear devo: https://bit.ly/4rIdvWv
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. (Philippians 3:4b-14 NRS)
Once I was ordained into the United Methodist Church I was tenured. Unless I messed up, I always was guaranteed an appointment. Through my ministerial career I did apply for certain assignments for which I had to learn to put together a résumé. Kids,, a résumé is a one or two page recollection of things you've learned and done. And it should be truthful. One doesn't list a degree one did not obtain, unless one is running for political office; then the sky's the limit. Helpfui hint: You shouldn't list Pope as one of your past jobs as that's a pretty visible position and God, after He stops laughing at you for having shared that, might smite you. I'm not sure of the true meaning of smite. But if you're smart, you will avoid being smitten by God. By God's love yes, but from God's anger, that's a no-no. In my ministerial life I also had to read résumés from candidates interested in positions within the ministries I led, and that made for some interesting reading. One candidate shared they had been a Temple Guard. Another listed Prophet as a career accomplishment. (My daughter highly recommended we interview that candidate). The temple guard listed their having herded people into the temple when bombs started dropping on them. Sigh. Today we study a man's résumé as he shares it with his readers in an effort to convince his readers that following and serving Jesus is one's highest potential goal. Let's examine that in today's passage.
If anyone had reason to be confident in their own religious credentials, Paul says, it was him. And then he produces the résumé, which is genuinely impressive by any first-century Jewish standard: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, so zealous that he persecuted the church, and as for righteousness under the law — blameless. This is not false modesty in reverse. This is a man who had legitimately done the work, kept the rules, climbed the ladder, and arrived at the top of the religious achievement structure of his world. If spiritual credentials were a competitive sport, Paul would have had the trophy case to prove it.
And then he says the thing that should stop every one of us cold: whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. Not a minor recalibration. Not a modest reordering of priorities. Loss. The whole résumé, the entire achievement structure, everything he had spent his life building and maintaining and defending — when he actually encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, the comparison was so stark that the only honest word for everything before it was loss. He uses an even stronger word a few lines later — the original Greek is a word for garbage, or dung, or something considerably less polite that your translation may or may not reflect depending on how adventurous your Bible committee was feeling.
What Paul found in Christ was so far beyond what the résumé had produced that the résumé simply couldn't compete. Not the righteousness that comes from the law, he says — his own righteousness, earned by performance — but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. The difference is the difference between a paycheck and a gift. You can earn a paycheck, but you own it in a different way than you own a gift. A paycheck says something about your performance. A gift says something about the giver. And the righteousness Paul found in Christ said everything about the giver and nothing at all about Paul's Pharisaical track record.
But here is where the passage opens into something that should fill every one of us with genuine, unqualified hope: Paul, writing this from prison, with the résumé long discarded and the Damascus road experience well behind him — says he has not yet obtained it. Has not yet been made perfect. Is not yet there. He who persecuted the church, who received the revelation of Christ, who planted churches across the known world, who wrote half the New Testament — not yet. And what is his response to the not-yetness? He presses on. Forgetting what is behind, straining toward what is ahead, he presses on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called him heavenward in Christ Jesus.
The forgetting what is behind is doing enormous work in that sentence. For some of us, what is behind is the old résumé — the achievements and credentials and religious performances we keep quietly polishing and returning to as our actual source of confidence. Let those go, Paul is saying. They were never the point. But for others of us, what is behind is something different — the failures, the seasons of walking away, the things we're still dragging around as evidence that we're probably not the kind of people God uses for much. Let those go too, Paul is saying. They were never supposed to be carried this far. The prize is ahead. The upward call is forward. The one who is already holding you is already there.
The pressing on is not a joyless grind. Paul frames it as a prize, as an upward call, as something worth straining toward the way a runner strains at the finish line — not because the finish line threatens them but because they are so close and the winning is so real and the one who is waiting at the end is so worth arriving at. This is the spirit of Pentecost in the life of the individual believer — the Spirit who was given not to make us comfortable in our current condition but to keep moving us forward, deeper into the knowledge of Christ, further into the power of His resurrection, pressing always toward the person we are being made into by a God who started a good work and has absolutely no intention of leaving it unfinished.
Put down the résumé. Forget the failures. Strain toward what's ahead. The prize is real and the one calling you upward is the one who already ran this race and won it for you.
PRAYER: Lord, free us from both the pride of our achievements and the weight of our failures, and fill us with the Spirited pressing-on that keeps our eyes fixed on Christ and our feet moving toward the upward call. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one thing from behind — either an old achievement you're leaning on or an old failure you're dragging — and consciously lay it down today, choosing instead to strain toward the one thing ahead that actually matters.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Let's press on towards the goal set for us by our Lord!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
