For the past two weeks, I have used this blog to make a few additional points from the passage of Scripture we considered during worship a few weeks ago. Paul wrote in Phil. 3:10-11, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Paul’s supreme goal was to know Christ in all His fullness and to experience Christ’s resurrection power working in his life, transforming his character and empowering him to do all God had called him to do.
Then Paul goes on to say in vs. 12: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” Even the Apostle Paul, many years after coming to Christ, had to acknowledge that he still had a long way to go in knowing Christ fully and maturing in Christ-like character. If this was true for the apostle Paul, how much more is it true of us. No matter our age or how long we have been a follower of Jesus, we all have room to grow.
Christ is so great and profound and wonderful that even a whole lifetime is too short to know Him fully. That should not discourage us and cause us to give up as we think, “What’s the use?” Rather it should inspire us to keep pursuing Christ with all our heart, for there will always be new insights to discover and greater joys to experience. As I wrote last week, when we are in the presence of beauty, or excellence, or grandeur, we want to stay there and continue to enjoy the wonder and greatness of it. That is just what we can experience as we, in the words of Paul, “press on to take of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”
Pressing onwards with you toward the goal,
Pastor Bob