Philippians 3:1-11 A Hebrew of Hebrews

~ Vincent

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Verse-by-Verse Commentary
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From the Pulpit

Commentary

3 Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. 

  1. “…rejoice in the Lord!”
    1. Paul has given so many reasons to rejoice: his evangelism, the coming of Timothy, the recovery of Epaphroditus, etc.  But the chief reason to rejoice is the Lord.

    2. Most causes for joy in this world are dependent on our circumstances.
      1. Our God is immutable.  He never changes.

      2. Our God is good.  He never does evil.

      3. Our God is loving.  He loves us and wishes for us to turn to Him.

    3. Because of who He is, no matter our circumstances, he is worthy of rejoicing about.

    4. We should delight in the Lord as Augustine does in prayer in the introduction of his Confessions: “Most high, utterly good, utterly powerful, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just, deeply hidden yet most intimately present, perfection of both beauty and strength, stable and incomprehensible, immutable and yet changing all things.”

  2. “To write the same things to you again…”
    1. Paul is about to address something that he has addressed repeatedly throughout his travels: the Judaizers.  Not only has he dealt with this before with the Philippians, but this can be found throughout his New Testament letters.

    2. Galatians, Romans, Titus, Philippians, and 2 Corinthians all have very direct references to this conflict, although the thread connects pretty consistently even more broadly than that.

    3. HIs central frustration is that these “Judaizers” want Gentiles to accept Jesus as their savior… as long as they become Jewish first.
      1. They need circumcision

      2. They need to keep the law

      3. They need to know Jewish festivals and culture.

      4. And THEN Jesus, the Jewish messiah, will save them.

    4. Jesus saves through grace, not works.  Anything that you have to do BEFORE you go to Jesus is wrongheaded and ignorant.  He IS the salvation.  He IS life.

    5. Today, we don’t see a lot of people demanding circumcision, but there are other ways people gatekeep salvation…
      1. You must be confirmed.

      2. You must wear certain clothes.

      3. You must learn our songs.

      4. You must participate in our church’s programs.

    6. Paul has immense respect for the Old Testament, but it’s all fulfilled in Jesus.

    7. The ONLY thing that people need is Jesus.  Expressions of faith after that are evidence of genuine faith, but faith is the singular need for salvation.

2 Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—

  1. “…dogs…”
    1. In Matthew 15:21-28 Mark 7:24-30, Jesus uses the word “dogs” specifically to refer to Gentiles that are not seated at the table of the household of God as he tests the faith of those who come to him for miracles.

    2. Continuing Christ’s metaphor forward, these are people that might see others as below the household of God, but Paul uses the same term here to name them as the ones that aren’t a true part of the family.  Their pride in their works has prevented them from joining the table.

    3. Calvin, as do many other theologians, favor a more literal reading of “dogs.”
      1. “In the first place, however, he calls them dogs; the metaphor being grounded upon this — that, for the sake of filling their belly, they assailed true doctrine with their impure barking.” -John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary, Philippians 3.

  2. “…evildoers…”

    1. The Judaisers claim to be good Jesus-loving people, but Paul does not mince words: they do evil.

    2. “As the public crier on being asked by Gracchus in mockery, on the ground of his sitting idle, what he was doing? had his answer ready, “Nay, but what are you doing?” for he was the ringleader of a ruinous sedition.” -John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary, Philippians 3

    3. John Wesley has three rules for the early Methodists: do no harm, do good, and attend upon the ordinances of God.  Notice that he included both “do no harm” and “do good.”  It is not enough to just start doing what God loves.  We also need to stop doing that which is unworthy of a child of God.

  3. “…mutilators of the flesh.”

    1. Paul isn’t using this terminology to disrespect the historic ritual of circumcision.  It’s not that what was past was bad; it’s that all things are now fulfilled with the coming of Christ (Coloss. 2:16–17, Heb. 8:5, Heb. 10:1, 1 Cor. 5:7, etc.).  

    2. The past all pointed to Jesus, but now he’s here.

  4. “For it is we who are the circumcision…”

    1. A relationship with God is not governed by a ritual; it’s governed by a person.  Once we find ourselves in Christ, there is no need for anything else.  We have everything in him, and nothing without him.

    2. Romans 2:28-29 further clarifies that a true person of God, or a “true Jew,” is not a person who has external qualities, but someone whose heart is filled with the Spirit.

      1. Galatians 3:7, Luke 19:40, and Romans 11:17-20 are other verses that help establish that the fulfillment of the Old Testament and its promises exist through Christ, not through ethnic bloodlines or branches of Judaism that rejected Christ.

    3. “As many, therefore, as are led by their own spirit, trusting in their own virtue, with the addition merely of the law’s assistance, without the help of grace, are not the sons of God… He said this of the Jews, who in their self-assumption rejected grace, and therefore did not believe in Christ.” -Augustine, On Grace and Free Will, Ch. 24.

4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

  1. “I have reason for such confidence.

    1. Paul’s list of feats shows that if strict adherence to the law by earthly standards was the goal, nobody could have surpassed his efforts.

      1. Genesis 17:11-12 establishes circumcision on the eighth day as the ritual that allows a child to be born into the promises of Israel.

      2. “For two races descended from Abraham: one through Isaac, and the other through Ishmael. From Isaac also two races descended: one through Esau and one through Jacob. But the one from Esau and the one from Ishmael were not included in the inheritance, but only Jacob who is also called Israel,” -Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Philippians, Ch. 3, Lt.1, 110.

      3. “The tribe of Benjamin adhered to Judah, not departing from the temple when the division occurred under Solomon’s servant [Jeroboam].” -Glossa Ordinaria, Philippians 3.

      4. The word Pharisee comes from the Aramaic word Pərīšā (פְּרִישָׁא) which means “one who is set apart.”  They prided themselves on keeping the law better than any others.

      5. He was so zealous to prove his righteousness by the standards of his culture, he hated the message of grace that the church had and sought to destroy it that his own righteousness would be established even further.

7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

  1. “Whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”

    1. It’s almost as if Paul was living out his days like a balance sheet.  The good things he did were gains, and the sins were losses.  In his case, almost all was gain, and very little was loss.  He thought he was in the clear!  It was only when he knew Christ that he realized that all the good things he did that he thought made him good actually belonged in the “loss” column because they kept him from Jesus’s grace.

    2. Many people assume that going to Heaven is about doing more good than bad.  They also imagine that they’re a good person because they deem their deeds more good than bad.

    3. A missionary once said that the biggest challenge in Western countries in evangelism is explaining sin, because nobody thinks they’ve done anything bad enough to need redeeming.

    4. “The gifts of God far exceed those worthless good deeds, which are due to our own diligence.” -Chrysostom, Homily 11 on Philippians

    5. [Through the law],your evil desire is not taken away by love, but suppressed by fear…. The wolf comes to the sheepfold; by the barking of dogs and the shout of shepherds, the wolf is driven away from the sheepfold; yet he is always a wolf. Let him be turned into a sheep. For indeed, the Lord makes this happen; but that is His justice, not yours. For as long as you have your own, you can fear punishment, not love righteousness. The delight of justice is a gift of God. -Augustine, Sermon 169.

  2. “I consider them garbage…”

    1. This is the most famously intense iteration of this idea.  The word here, σκύβαλα or skubala, has been popularly translated as dung, garbage, trash, and excrement.

    2. Some have claimed that the Greek word used here, was equivalent to modern profanity.  This isn’t rooted in history.  The term may not have been used often by eloquent speakers, but it was used in both agriculture and to describe bits of food thrown out to dogs.  A modern equivalent that captures both the meaning and social connotations might be something like “crap.”

    3. “Paul shudders at his own righteousness, so that he might have righteousness from God.”  -Augustine, Sermon 169.

10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

  1. “I want to know Christ…”

    1. Notice that Paul is already converted.  He has planted churches.  He is an apostle.  He writes Scripture!  And what does he want?  Just to know Jesus better.

    2. He sounds much like the psalmist that wrote, “AS the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” (Ps 42:1)

  2. “Are you astonished that a saved man should have such a desire as this? A moment’s reflection will remove your astonishment. Imagine for a moment that you are living in the age of the Roman emperors. You have been captured by Roman soldiers and dragged from your native country; you have been sold for a slave, stripped, whipped, branded, imprisoned, and treated with shameful cruelty. At last yon are appointed to die in the amphitheatre, to make holiday for a tyrant. The populace assemble with delight. There they are, tens of thousands of them, gazing down from the living sides of the capacious Colosseum. You stand alone, and naked, armed only with a single dagger a poor defense against gigantic beasts… But what is this? O wonder of mercy! a deliverer appears. A great unknown leaps from among the gazing multitude, and confronts the savage monster. …The hero lifts you up, smiles into your bloodless face, whispers comfort in your ear, and bids you be of good courage, for you are free. Do you not think that there would arise at once in your heart a desire to know your deliverer?’” -Charles Spurgeon, Sermon 552.

  3. “[P]ersecutions, and afflictions, and difficulties, ought not to disturb you, but ought even to make you glad, because through them we are conformed to His death….We are molded to His likeness,”-Chrysostom, Homily 11 on Philippians.

Full Transcript

Here is the cleaned-up transcript, removing verbal clutter, false starts, filler words, repetitive stutters, and transcription markers while preserving the original wording, structure, and intent as closely as possible:

So we’re about halfway through the book now. Previously, we just wrapped up chapter two. By the way, halfway through—how crazy is that? It’s a short book, but man, is it powerful. So last week we talked through the end of chapter two, and there were so many reasons that Paul gave for the people at Philippi to be joyful. They could rejoice at all these different things. Paul says, “Hey, I’m in prison, but I’m doing okay, and I’m sharing the gospel.” Paul told them, “I’m going to send Timothy to you, and Timothy—he is someone that will take care of you. He is someone that loves Jesus. He will help your community, and that’s a reason to rejoice.” And he tells them that Epaphroditus, a member of their congregation, that they sent to him to help him while he was in prison and to give him the financial offering that they had gathered so that they could help him cover his debts while he was in prison.

He got sick while he was over there in Rome, incredibly sick. He almost died, but he miraculously recovered and now is headed back to join them in Philippi. There are a lot of good things happening here. But Paul begins here with the greatest thing of all. He says, “Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.”

There is nothing you can rejoice in that is greater than God, and I hope that’s what you’re doing this morning. I don’t know whether you had a good week or a bad week. This life, you know, as time goes by, things change. Even the most precious of moments slips away. So if we’re rejoicing in our circumstances, it’s not going to be something you can consistently get excited about. But God is the one thing that doesn’t change. He is not subject to the ravages of time. To the contrary, before the first day ever passed, God was. He is immutable. He doesn’t change. That’s why His promises are so important to us. Because when God says something, you can trust it forever. God is good.

If you had a miserable week this past week, if you got bad news, you’ve been trying to kick a bad habit and it crept back into your life, if you just felt lonely, or if you had a great week, if everything was going your way, either way, take this opportunity this morning to rejoice in the Lord, because the God above all things knows you and loves you. That’s never going to change. Rejoice in the Lord, and he continues saying, “It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.” So Paul’s about to remind them of something he has told them about before, and this is something we find throughout the epistles. Paul consistently talks about this. You can find it especially in the book of Galatians.

But it’s also in Romans. It’s also right here in Philippians. It’s in Second Corinthians. It’s in Titus, and you can find references to it in other places. This is the Judaizers. The Judaizers were a group of people that said, “We love Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah. All that good stuff.” But when Gentiles wanted to join the church, they said, “That’s great. Here’s the thing, though. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The Jews are God’s people. If you want Jesus to be your Messiah, you’re going to have to become Jewish first. So let’s begin: we’re going to get you circumcised, and through this ritual, all of the promises of the Old Testament will finally be yours. And then you can learn the Jewish festivals, and you can learn the Jewish law, and you’re going to do all that stuff, and then Jesus will be your Messiah too.”

And hopefully, you can see why that frustrates Paul so much, because in this model, Jesus is not actually your salvation. There’s a million other things that you have to do first. Jesus is just the end of that process. And it’s not that Paul has any disrespect for the Old Testament. To the contrary, He respects it to the highest degree, but he recognizes that all of the good in the Old Testament is fulfilled in Jesus. All of that was pointing to Him the whole time. So, the Jewish festivals—you don’t need to celebrate them because they pointed to Jesus and His coming and the goodness that He brought. You don’t need to get circumcised because in Jesus the promises that God has made to everyone are yes. You don’t need to keep the law because Jesus already did it. All of this stuff points to Him. So getting caught up and trying to do it before you’re good enough for Him, no, it just causes trouble.

And I know that we today don’t see a lot of people going around saying, “Okay, you want to be Christian? Let’s get you circumcised and let’s go.” That’s not quite the same anymore, but there are definitely people that have this idea of the things you have to do before you’re really Christian. Well, let’s get you confirmed, and then you’ll really be a Christian. Let’s get you in a membership class. Let’s make sure you dress the right way and know the right songs, and then you’ll finally be a Christian. There is nothing you have to do to be a Christian except for go right to Jesus.

He is every bit the salvation we need. There is nothing we can do that makes us good enough for Him. He is so good that He condescends to us and takes care of us, even though we are so unworthy of it, and nothing we could do would be enough. So Paul has some very choice warnings about these people. He says, “Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh.” That first one: “Watch out for those dogs.” “Dogs” was a term that was used by first-century Jews to refer to people that were not Jewish. The Gentiles were dogs, and for the most part, the average dog in the Middle East was not a cute little house pet.

They were mangy scavengers that lived out on the streets, and so calling them a dog—this is not something that belongs in the household of God. This is something outside. This is a scavenger. That’s what the Gentiles were. You can even see that terminology used by Jesus when the Syrophoenician woman goes to him and says, “Jesus, I need your help.” And to test her, he says, “Why would I give the food meant for the household of Israel to the dogs?” She continued to ask him for help: “Look, can’t the dogs just have the scraps left over?” And Jesus said, “Of course, I’m going to help you.” This test was to show that it doesn’t matter what your background is, what your ethnicity is. If you want to go to Jesus, all you have to do is humble yourself, not come from a certain background.

So this term, very likely, is the same kind of terminology that these Judaizers are using. They still think they’re the ones that are special enough for God’s household, and everybody else is on the outs. And what Paul is saying is they’re the ones on the outs. Just by thinking the way they’re thinking, they’re entirely wrong. And he continues on his second one: they’re evildoers. Well, now these are people that love Jesus. These are people that show up for worship. But Paul does not mince words. They’re evildoers. You can do a lot worse things than nothing, right? You can do things that are actively wrong, and we’d do well to avoid that.

I love—there’s a theologian named John Calvin. He’s one of the architects of the Reformation. In reading this passage, he was reminded of a story from ancient Rome. There was a senator named Gracchus, and this was in the last days of the Roman Republic. Things have not been going well in the Republic for a while, so Gracchus says he’s going to fix the Roman Republic. And how’s he going to do that? Well, it turns out mostly by breaking the rules of the Roman Republic. So when people disagree with him, they get removed, and when people don’t pass his laws, he just goes around them and does it anyway, because it’s okay: he’s saving the republic. He needs to break a few rules here and there, but it’s to save the republic. And then once things are better, he’s going to pass it off, right?

Well, this guy’s causing all kinds of grief and turmoil within the Roman Republic. And as Gracchus is walking through Rome one day, there is a town crier that sees him. Gracchus sees this guy just kind of sitting around. A town crier would give you news before, you know, newspapers, the internet, all that kind of stuff. He just shouts what you need to know. He sees him laying around. He says, “What are you doing?” The town crier responded, “Oh, I’m not doing anything. Nobody needs to worry about me. But you, on the other hand, what are you doing? You can do a lot worse than nothing.”

It’s one of the reasons why John Wesley gave the first Methodists three rules. Do you guys know the three rules? Three rules: do no harm, do good, attend upon the ordinances of God. And that third one is kind of, you know, go to church, read your Bible, that kind of stuff. And when I first heard them, I thought, “Man, those first two are pretty redundant, right? Do no harm, do good.” But you can do a lot worse than nothing. You can do things that are actively bad. And doing all the good things in the world and just adding those on on the side is not enough. As Christians, we have to be introspective. We have to take the time to look at our lives and ask, “What are things I’m doing that are wrong? What are things I’m doing that don’t reflect the heart of Jesus?” These people have not done that work.

They are doing things in the church that are actively evil. And the last one: “those mutilators of the flesh.” So they’re asking for circumcision, and Paul doesn’t even acknowledge it as legitimate. He doesn’t see it as something that accomplishes anything that they want it to. It’s just the mutilation of flesh.

Not only that, I think he’d go a step further. I don’t think I’m out of line here to say that it’s not only mutilating people’s flesh; it’s mutilating their souls. Because when you think, when someone tells you you could go to Jesus, but first you have to do these other things, that is a wrong mindset right from the beginning. There is nothing we can do to be worthy of Jesus. Any ritual that presupposes that it’s going to somehow make us good enough is wrong-headed from the start.

Verse three: “It is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by His Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.” I think here’s a reading from the book of Romans. This is Romans chapter two, verses twenty-eight through twenty-nine. I think this really helps illuminate that: “He is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is the circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, not by the written code.” Being one of God’s people is not about an outward ritual. It is about going to God sincerely, asking for forgiveness, and receiving the Holy Spirit—that is the real circumcision, so to speak. Not anything outward, but something inward, something deeper than that.

Although Paul does point out, if anybody could get in by being good enough, he thinks he’s got a pretty good case. He’s going to give us his resume right here, and sure enough, it is impressive: “If someone—though I myself have reasons for such confidence—if someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.” He says, “Look, if it were about all this other stuff, look, I was born to the right people. I did the right rituals. I was a Pharisee. I was literally a member of a sect within Judaism that prided itself on its ability to keep the law to the best of our understanding.” And he says, “That’s what I did. I kept the law as far as we understood the law.” Not only that, but these ideas from the church, I hated them.

I didn’t want to hear about Jesus and grace because I firmly believed you could do it if you worked hard enough. And if anybody had worked hard enough, it was me. And yet, all of that was worth nothing. Verse seven: “But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.” It’s like he imagined his whole life like a balance sheet, and on this side you’ve got the gains, this side the losses. He was looking at his life and seeing all these things coming up as gains and saying, “Man, I’m doing really good.” It wasn’t until he knew the grace of God that he understood all those things that seemed so impressive before—they were actually things that belonged in the loss column because they stopped him from seeing God’s grace and God’s goodness. They were things that got in the way of seeing God’s love for him. You can’t understand the fullness of God’s grace until you understand how far we are away from it. Once you see how sinful we are, how much we ruined ourselves, then you can appreciate all the more God’s love and how He reached out to us.

Nonetheless, that mindset—that mindset that you can be good enough—it’s a pretty common mindset. I’ve talked to some missionaries who work on college campuses that say one of the biggest challenges in telling people about Jesus is talking about sin, because the average person doesn’t think they’re very sinful. They think they’re pretty darn good.

And as someone that taught confirmation classes more than a few times, one of my favorite questions was always, “In the eyes of God, how good do you think you are?” I’d give them a scale of one to ten, and I never got an answer below a seven. Most kids going through that thought they were pretty darn good. Now, mind you, the kids that went to church more were the ones that would rate themselves like a seven or so. It was the ones that had never been in a church that would be totally comfortable rating themselves a 10, like, “Yeah, I’m a great person. Let’s do it.” I think that tells us something about the culture around us. This is common, this idea that you can be good enough if the good stuff you do balances out the bad stuff that you’ve done. On the whole, it’s going to work out for you. But we’re a little biased in deciding how much good and how much evil we’ve done, aren’t we? That presupposes that any amount of evil is an acceptable amount. You can’t do enough to balance out the wrongs. You can’t.

And Paul continues; he makes the case even more aggressively. Verse eight: “What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” Paul says, “I look back at all that I did, and now I realize it was just garbage.” And depending on the translation you use, you could have rubbish, you could have garbage, you could have dung.

The word here in Greek is skubola, and some have even suggested that that is such a vile word, it’s practically like Paul is swearing. This is not the case. He was not swearing for Jesus. The word is, however, not a fancy word, and it’s a word that falls somewhere between the meanings of any of those, really: junk, garbage, dung—somewhere around that. So really, what Paul is trying to say here is: everything I built my life on, when I look at it, it’s just a bunch of crap. It’s garbage. It’s nothing. I have wasted my life on all this stuff. What did I do?

And if you’ve never had a moment like that where you realize everything you built your life on is just junk, I hope you have one. I’ve certainly had a few. Sometimes they’re bigger, sometimes they’re smaller. But sometimes you look at what you did—all the things you have built your identity on, all the things you thought were so important—and you realize they didn’t really matter. They weren’t really important. To the contrary, they were taking you away from the things that did matter, from a life built on knowing Jesus and sharing His love.

Verse ten: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” Now, Paul’s already converted. Paul has seen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul is literally writing scripture right here through the power of the Holy Spirit, and yet, what does he say? “I want to know Jesus.” Kind of like in the Psalms, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you.”

I really like the way one preacher, very famous, known as Charles Spurgeon—or his nickname people gave him, the Prince of Preaching, because he was a good preacher… When he preached, even if you didn’t believe in Jesus, you might just show up just to hear what he had to say. He was really, really good. I love the way he thought about this. He said, “Imagine that you are just a random peasant somewhere in history, and one day you are captured, you are enslaved, you are beaten, and you are thrown in a cell. And while you are in that cell, you realize that you are going to be thrown in the arena. You will have to fight for your life. You’re given rags to wear and a small, rusty dagger. And as you stand on the sands of the arena, you see a door, and you can hear behind it roaring. It trembles, and you know you do not stand a chance. You are about to die.

Finally, the door opens, and these ferocious lions tear through the arena, eager to gouge your flesh with their claws. And suddenly, someone steps between you and the lions. With one motion of their hand, the lions are gone. Before you can really even talk to them, you are ushered away to a mansion where you are given fine clothing. You are bathed, your wounds are tended to, and your hungry stomach is met with a feast every day. And you ask some of the servants, ‘Who was that that saved me?’ That’s the master of the house. You’ll meet him. Every morning you wake up, you find new gifts left for you.

And you find out that this person, before you even knew who they were, was at work trying to do things for you, trying to help you, trying, at great cost to themselves, to make your life better. How curious would you be to meet this person? How much would you want to know this friend that was a better friend than any you’ve ever had, someone who loved you better than you loved yourself? How much more should we love Jesus? This is someone who has saved us, who has redeemed us, who has nurtured us, who has helped us grow. This is someone who has given us everything we could possibly ask for. How much should we long, just like Paul, to see Him and to know Him—this friend better than any friend we’ve ever had, this person who loves us better than we love ourselves?”

We’ll continue on just a little bit: “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 Jesus Christ took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Paul does not allow himself to get distracted, to focus on other things that don’t really matter. He keeps his eyes on the prize. He knows that he has been called by God for important work. He knows that he has been called by God to an eternal destination, and so no matter what is going on, he is going to focus on Jesus and keep going, no matter what, in full hope and trust that he is headed toward the One that he wants to see more than anything else.

And for all of us today, if you want to see Jesus, don’t get caught up on all this other stuff. Don’t think about what you should have done or what you need to do before you can start to properly focus on Jesus. Focus on Him now, knowing that He has called you to important work. He has an eternal destination ready for you. Don’t get distracted. Focus on Him and run forward, eager to see the One that loves you more than you love yourself. Amen.