Dr. Ron Sumners
August 22, 2010
A few years ago, at a race track in Florida, a funny thing happened. The dogs were all crouched in their cages, waiting for the start of the race. The starting gun sounded and the cage doors dropped open and the dogs took off after the rabbit. As the rabbit rounded the first turn, however, an electrical short caused it to explode and catch fire. In seconds, all that was left of the rabbit was some black stuff hanging by a wire. The dogs were so confused that they didn’t know what to do.
Most of the dogs stopped running. Some of them just lay down on the track. A couple of them ran around the track at top speed, but without the rabbit to chase they ran into a wall. Not one dog finished the race!
People are a lot like greyhounds. We are all chasing something. We need some reason for living. What would happen to you if your goal, your reason for running the race, suddenly disappeared? What if you are chasing an illusion – something that is attractive but eventually will prove to be of no lasting value? It is an important question for each of us to face.
In Philippians 3, Paul describes how what he was chasing as a rabbinical Jew – the status of moral perfection, the honor of having confidence in personal purity. He concluded that it was nothing but rubbish. It was nothing more than a burned out rabbit! That which he pursued, which he thought was so important in his life, was overshadowed by something else!
Throughout this passage Paul talks about knowing Christ (verse 8), gaining Christ (verse 8), and being found in Christ (verse 9). What does all this mean? It is easy to talk about knowing someone as an acquaintance; of gaining something as a possession. But for Paul, the pursuit is more than just a hobby; it is more than just a passing interest that occupies a portion of time. It is an all-consuming drive to so resemble the One who had given His life for Paul that his passion is to become like Christ!
The reason that Paul counts all his efforts as garbage in light of the surpassing greatness of Christ is because what Christ offers exceeds his own moral attainment. What Christ offers is nothing less than resurrection power. The same energy which took Jesus’ dead body and raised it up on the third day is the power that is available to those who make Christ the pursuit of their lives.
That resurrection power that Paul sought is available to you and me today! In Romans 6, Paul reminds us that in Jesus’ death on the cross we too have died to sin. What is more, just as Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, we too are now raised. That resurrection power is ours. We have died to an old way of life and have been resurrected as a new creature in Christ! In Colossians 3:1 the assumption is that the power is now given to us so that we can live in the way that God calls us to live.
What is the dead stuff in your life? I could talk of material possessions, status, position; social standing and many other things that have been our lifelong pursuit that we now realize are just dead stuff that needs resurrection power!
Look at the anger in your life. How is that going to be changed into forgiveness? Look at your insecurity. How is that going to be turned into confidence? Look at your self-centeredness. How can that be turned into generosity?
The answer for us is found where Paul found the answer: in pursuing Christ! When Christ is your hope, your ambition; the truth of the resurrection moves from being just a historical fact to becoming the all-persuasive control of your life. Rather than your agenda being a personal success, the real agenda of your life becomes looking to Christ for everything.
This is a costly pursuit, but one which Paul knows is far better than the pursuit of everything that he had chased for so many years. We have to agree with Paul, but if we are honest, this is one of those verses that we secretly wish were not in the Bible! We do not like the idea of wanting to follow Jesus; that might include suffering.
What is more, the order seems all wrong. Resurrection and then suffering seems to be inconsistent. Shouldn’t it be Resurrection and then glory? It is far too easy to fall into the trap of imagining that God empowers us to rise above suffering, to be transformed that no evil can affect us. The health and wealth folks tell us that if we have enough faith in Jesus we will never suffer and evil cannot affect us. But Paul and all the New Testament is quite clear that suffering is a part of our life if we follow Jesus.
The power of the Resurrection comes with a cost. When you go into the world resembling Jesus, you might find His sufferings enacted in your life. Jesus was mistreated; why would we be any different. It’s like the old Spiritual says, “The world treats you mean Lord; treats me mean too. But that’s how things are down here!” Suffering becomes the garbage dump where all that which we pursued for our own record finds itself as rubbish!
This is where many of us get tripped up in the Christian life. We love the image of power, but we are not so keen on suffering. So, when suffering comes, when we have considered the pursuit of personal effort to be rubbish and look to Christ, and then suffering comes, we imagine that Christ has tricked us. As much as we reject the “health and wealth” theology, as much as we consider it foolish to think that God guarantees us a perfect life if we just believe strong enough, we still fall into that trap. We suffer and respond, “How could God do this to me; when I have tried to serve Him?”
This is all a part of what it means to know Christ and be in Him. We trust His death as sufficient for our sins, as His life is credited to our account. And all of this looks forward to, at some point in time, the resurrection of the dead.
Paul is not “wishy-washy” about this in verse 11. He does not know how or when but he knows that he will attain the goal of resurrection. The word “attain” means to arrive at the end of a journey, and represents the figure of a pilgrimage.
Your career will never satisfy. Your love will never satisfy. Your diet will never satisfy. You are wired to seek after glory for yourself, never realizing that it is unattainable apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ.
We are like little children playing in the mud making mud pies. Our parents come and tell us that we are going to the beach. We say, “No!” We are having too much fun in the mud! God calls us to something so much greater and wonderful than what we possess and have given our lives to, but we prefer the mud puddle!
The Judiasers that Paul warned the Philippians about may have fed a lie to the folks: telling them that they had to obey the Mosaic Law in order to be a Christian. But Paul is clear; he has not reached the goal and cannot by means of the Law. Although he is a new creation, although he is in Christ, he has a long way to go. The Christian life is a process. Glorification does not come for us until death.
We have to understand that while we are “in Christ” and have His righteousness, we all still need to grow; we need to press on. Are you able to see that you have not yet obtained and still need to press on toward the goal, the mark, of the high calling of God? Are you dissatisfied with where you are? Don’t give up; continue to look in faith to Christ for Him to make you what He commands you to be!
In verse 12 we see that great relationship to which we are called: We must press on. It sounds like an effort that we have to conjure up ourselves. But notice the rest: “Take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.” Paul knows he has not arrived, but he is pursuing a goal.
During the 1984 Olympics, Greg Foster was the favorite to win the 110 meter hurdles. ABC almost assured the world that he would win. He burst out into the lead. Toward the finish line he turned his head ever so slightly to get a glimpse of his competition. It was a big mistake. The move cost him a few hundredths of a second and he lost the race.
Paul knows that our lives are a race, a race in which we must keep our focus on what is important. Too often, we, like Greg Foster, glance back to see where we have been or maybe to long for the past. In that moment we lose our step in the race. For that reason, he makes it clear what governs his life. “Forgetting what is behind and looking forward I press toward the goal of the high calling of God!”
For most of us the past holds many good memories. We remember special events and special people. Memories are wonderful when they bring back the good times in our life. But there is a dark side. The past can be a prison. It is possible for the past to put us in bondage. There are memories of times of failure. These can cause us to consider ourselves failures. We wear the chains of failures and sins that we have never forgiven ourselves for, even though God may have forgiven us!
How often in your life, when things did not turn out right, do you replay the tape of those events and say, “I failed. I am a failure!” Children get do-overs in their games. Golfers get “mulligans.” Even “Word Perfect” has an “Undo” button. But you and I cannot go back to high school or years ago and undo that act of foolishness; that harsh word; that lie; that insult that set our life in a wrong direction. We don’t get do-overs; but we can get forgiveness!
But even good memories can blind us, as memories of past successes and attainments may detain us from more wonderful accomplishments and the highest Prize. You all know the 40 year old who still lives the glory of his high school football days. It seems that his life ended the day he walked off the field his senior year. Trusting Christ in the past never gives you the license to forget Him today.
William Sloan Cauthen said once, “The church is full of people who are seeking that which they have already found and want to become what they already are!”
Instead of looking to the past, we are to be stretching toward the future; the finish line.
The effort in the Christian life is not your righteousness, but Christ’s! We must not miss this; the race of the Christian life, the pursuit to which God calls us, and the effort where we must put forth everything that is within us is this: renounce your own self-effort and look to Christ.
If you think it is far too simplistic or too easy; that means you probably haven’t tried it.
Like those dogs going around the track in a meaningless race, you and I often chase mechanical rabbits, thinking they are real. But when they blow up in our faces, we are unable to finish the race.
What are you chasing this week; to earn a few more dollars to increase your security? Maybe you are trying to be noticed by the right people or person. If what you are pursuing is not of eternal value, if it is not the prize of the high calling of God, it might just blow up in your face!
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