Anytime a Christian struggles with to point out the apparent hypocrisy, how can someone claim to be committed to Jesus if they continue to stumble in some way? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains that even the apostle to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things, and if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you, only let us live up to what we have already attained. Father, we pray that with our Bibles open before us, that in the mystery of your purposes, beyond the voice of a mere man, we might hear your voice through your Word, the Bible, by your Holy Spirit's power. For Jesus' sake.
Amen. Listening to children talk is more often than not fascinating, and it is frequently rewarding, especially if they're talking not knowing that they are overheard. And there is probably nothing quite so fascinating as to listen to youngsters go into great flights of fancy and make unrealistic claims either about their parents—you know, my dad can do this, or my mom can do this—or about themselves. For example, the two boys are standing at a swimming pool. One says to the other, How far do you think it is from this side to that side? The other wee boy hasn't got a clue.
He combines numbers and words, and he says, I think it's about four hundred and ninety-eight yards. And the other kid goes, I can jump that. And you're listening, and you go, That's ridiculous. The other kid's going, Well, that's nothing.
I can stand at the plate, take a pitch, hit a baseball, drop the bat, run out into the outfield, and catch the ball before it hits the ground. His friend says, No, you can't. And then it just goes on and on from there. And somehow or another, in the development of life, we understand that that is actually quite endearing. It's playful. And it's tolerable.
But not if the people are nineteen and twenty, or twenty-five or thirty. I mean, there's a point at which you're not supposed to talk like that anymore. And there is perhaps nothing quite as painful as being told that one is immature. You're acting in a bizarre way for your years.
You should be different from what you are. Now, just in the same way as we understand that there are all kinds of indications in the physical and emotional and mental realm of what it means to be mature, so there are within the realm of spiritual living. And it is with this matter of spiritual maturity that Paul is concerned in the verses that we've just been reading. That's why in verse 15 he actually uses the word mature. And he says, It is all of us who are mature who should take such a view of things.
J. B. Phillips says, All of us who are spiritually adult should set ourselves this sort of ambition. So if I am a mature individual, there are certain characteristics and dimensions to my life in my walk with God. And that to which he refers is, of course, the little paragraph immediately above verse 15, which comprises verses 12, 13, and 14. Paul's Christian beginnings, in his experience, take us to the Damascus Road. We noted last time that when on that occasion the truth dawned on him, it was that he was unworthy of God, that he was unfit for heaven, and that he was unable to rectify his situation. What made it so amazing was the fact that despite he knew that true of himself, he recognized that Jesus had sought him, Jesus had humbled him, and Jesus had saved him. And that is the experience of the genuine Christian. I think it's Calvin who says, There are only two things that are necessary to be known for salvation. One is that I am a great sinner, unworthy of God, unfit for heaven, and unable to rectify my circumstances. The other is that Christ is a great Savior. He is the one who searches us out, he is the one who humbles us, and he is the one who saves us. And it is in this that we make the first baby steps along the journey of Christian living.
Now, by the time that Paul is writing to the church at Philippi, he has gone down that road some way. And as he affirms his commitment to Christ, he says in verses 10 and 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. It's a staggering statement. It is a quite amazing affirmation and aspiration.
I want to know Christ, he says, not only personally, but I want to know him progressively, and I want to know him with a passionate commitment. Now, if you think about that for a moment, imagine that you're in the company of this individual, making that kind of affirmation. There is a potential for discouragement that accrues from it.
Now, you might be held to figuring this by using an illustration. I've already mentioned baseball, so I'll stay in the realm of baseball. As you know, it's a subject about which I know a great deal. But actually, the fact that I know very little about it serves to my purpose, insofar as, let's suppose that you invite me, somebody, to play on your baseball team. And you give me all the necessary finery, and you put me in your rotation. And in order to encourage me, you send me up behind your best hitter, who stands up and just smites the ball right out of the arena, and he has a grand slam. And then it's me. And I'm not sure whether you hold the bat with the thick bit or the thin bit. I'm not sure whether you hold it up here or down here.
I'm just not sure at all. And the fact that the fellow who went in front of me was so good and so effective actually made me feel like sneaking out if I possibly could, because he was so good, and I knew that I was gonna be so bad that I would rather not be anything at all than be found out to be such a miserable person standing to try and hit a baseball. It's the spirit, incidentally, of Abrams captured in Chariots of Fire after the fictitious race with Eric Liddell, because Abrams never raced Liddell in his life. But Hollywood made a race just to dramatize it, and after he races Liddell—and they shot the scene in the rugby stadium down in Edinburgh—after he races Liddell and he loses, he sits, if you recall the film, up in the stands all by himself, sulking.
And his lady friend appears into the stadium and works her way along the chairs and sits down beside him. He says nothing. Eventually he breaks the silence and declares, "'If I can't win, I won't run.'" To which she replies, "'If you don't run, you can't win.'" And in the race of the Christian life, it is possible for some of us who feel ourselves to be just on the starting blocks, just getting going, to be surrounded by the kind of individual who likes to make these dramatic statements about who they are and what they're going to do and so on—not that Paul is doing that, but the aspiring element in it is such that for the pilgrim, the early pilgrim, they might be tempted to say, "'Well, if that's what it's really about, and if that's how you really live for Christ, and if that's what you're supposed to know, I'm not even sure that I'm a Christian at all, because I haven't got any of those aspirations.
At least I can't make those dramatic statements.'" Now, that, you see, is why Paul follows verses 10 and 11 with verse 12. That's why Paul says, Now listen, and whether he wrote it or whether he dictated it, he probably paused at the end of what he'd written in 10 and 11 and said, You know, I'd better just add something here, just in case any of these readers get the wrong idea, lest they think that what I'm saying is that I'm perfect. He says to his secretary, let's imagine, he says, Listen, let me give you another couple of verses here just before we go any further.
Write this down. Tell them, Not that I have already obtained all this, or am already made perfect. In other words, as a wise pastor, Paul quickly adds this. He says, I want you to know, dear ones in Philippi, that I'm a pilgrim.
I want you to know that I'm still in process, still on the journey, that I still have plenty of ground to cover. Now, that's a responsibility of Christian leadership. Because the danger in Christian leadership, the danger in being a pastor or a teacher, is that we can so set before people idealistic standards as to make them believe that we actually are living them and then to make the disparity apparently so great between our listeners and ourselves—when in point of fact, we may be deluding ourselves as well as deluding them. This comes across actually very clearly in C. S. Lewis's little book The Four Loves. As he writes in these four areas of love, affection and friendship and eros and charity, he finally draws it all to a close. And in a wonderful statement of helpful honesty, he says this, And with this where a better book would begin, mine must end.
I dare not proceed. God knows, not I, whether I have ever tasted this love. He's been describing this experience.
He says, I'm not sure that I have actually tasted what I'm writing to you about. And then listen to this. Those like myself, whose imagination far exceeds their obedience, are subject to a just penalty. We easily imagine conditions far higher than any we have really reached. If we describe what we have imagined, we may make others and make ourselves believe that we have really been there. So you think that because you taught it, you did it? You think that because you understand it, you're living it?
You think that because you can write it on your wall or stick it in your wallet or quote it in your car or announce it to the people around you that that is actually your experience, when in point of fact it may be nothing other than your imagination? Do you dream about golf if you play golf? Can I ask you, do you ever dream shooting a hundred and twelve? I tell you, you don't. You dream par and subpar rounds, I know. It's your imagination. You're like the wee boy at the swimming pool, four hundred and ninety-eight yards. I can jump that.
No, you can't. Why are you saying that? Do you think that makes you a better Christian? Do you think that helps the people around you?
No! It makes you crazy and discourages them. That's why the issue is a call to resolute, obvious commitment to the basics. Now, what an encouragement it must have been for verse 12 to bounce out in the first reading of this letter. Imagine a couple Aaron and Sarah Levi—247 Bridge Street, Philippi—very zealous for God, very interested in being passionate about things, and very open to anybody who can tell them how they can really go for it. Mr. Levi leaves Sarah his wife behind to go and attend a meeting which has been advertised as taking place in such-and-such a street in certain persons' house who is known to be a very perfect person.
He is, in the terms of Philippians, a Judaizer. And he is offering to people—indeed, he is demanding of people—the notion that if they truly love Christ, then they will experience a dimension of living which actually introduces them in the present to that which the apostle is saying is a prospect along the journey and reaches its fulfillment in heaven. But these individuals in their meeting gather the crowd and tell them that if they will add to Christ, if they will add to what they know, all these other things, then they may actually be made perfect. So Mr. Levi goes, and he attends, and he comes back, and he tells his wife. And as he tells his wife, they both sit and look at one another across the kitchen table, and they say, You know, it seems to me absolutely hopeless.
I understand the zeal, I understand what the fellow's on about, but I can't possibly see that it can be done, and they are discouraged and dispirited. And so, within a matter of days, they're in the congregation of Philippi, and the letter comes from Paul. And it begins—this is from Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ—to all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi. And Mr. Levi and Mrs. Levi are sitting out there on the benches, and they are listening to it read. And as it proceeds—and it would have been read in one listening—as they get to verses 10 and 11 of Philippians 3, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the passion and the suffering and everything else, Mr. Levi nudges Mrs. Levi, his wife Sarah, and he says, Here we go.
And he pins both his ears back as verse 12 comes, and as verse 12 comes, he slowly slides off his seat and lands on his bottom in the middle of the room. Because he hears that what Paul has written down is not only his aspiration to know Christ in this way, passionately, and progressively, but he has immediately added, Not that I have already obtained all this or am already made perfect. I'm not perfect, he says. Oh, says Mr. Levi, fantastic! Because if Paul's not perfect, then I don't know what these jokers are on about down at that guy's house.
But I'm not going down there again. Because if there was anybody who was going to be perfect, after all, it would be somebody who was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, it was somebody who had a background such as Paul's, it was somebody who was from the tribe of Benjamin, of the people of Israel, an eight-day, as far as circumcision goes, a Pharisee in relationship to zeal, persecuting the church, and faultless in relationship to legalistic righteousness. And the same guy who had that mark his life says, I have not already obtained all this or am already perfect. Oh, wonderful, he must have said.
Oh, this is great! Why? So that he could adopt a spirit of complacency? No. So that he could say, Well, that's fine. I don't have to do anything or worry about anything.
No, not at all. But so that the truth of God's Word could dawn upon his soul in such a way as to make sense of the Christian message, the man or woman of spiritual maturity is aware of what they are not. Is aware of what they are not. Most of our society is constantly urging us to be aware of what we are and what we have achieved and what we have done and so on. But maturity in Christian living is actually, as it's beginning, an awareness of what I'm not. Christian maturity is not exemplified by high- sounding talk but in a life of humble, steady consistency. It is a sign of immaturity to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. Maturity rejects exaggerated claims.
Maturity is marked instead by a sane estimate of our spiritual progress. In the old fable of the tortoise and the hare, you'll remember, the hare goes fly in a huff. The tortoise is just, well, you know what they're like, those things.
The funny-looking little head sticking out the front like that and those things. And the hares are goner. In fact, the hare is so convinced that he's got this race won that he decides he'll sit down and rest and relax and fall asleep.
And as the fellow with the dramatic start falls asleep, the wee guy comes, same pace, slowly, slowly, slowly, until eventually the tortoise is the winner, and the hare is nowhere to be found. Speaking as a tortoise, do you know what a pain in the neck it is to be surrounded by spiritual hares? Always leaping and bounding about, always making great aspirations, always saying where they're going, what they're doing, what they're achieving, how well they're doing, quoting all the various verses they learned, letting everybody know how well it's all going and how they're on their journey and how dispiriting it is as you just try and keep along the Christian life. You find yourself saying, I don't even know if I'm in this Christian life. I don't even know if I want to wear this uniform.
I don't know if I want to stand up to the plate. But the wonderful wisdom of the apostle Paul, he says, Now listen, guys, let me just tell you here. Let me tell you the things that are fundamental to me.
And I want to summarize it for you in this way. Called, kept, and pressing on. Where does the call come from? Well, it comes from God.
Look at what he says. I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me. Paul is referring to the summons of God which produces its desired effect. Unlike some of our calls, which is, Would you get up? And nothing happens.
Would you come for your meal? And nothing happens. But this call of God is an authoritative call. It is a life-engendering call. It is the call of Christ outside the tomb of Lazarus. Lazarus, come out!
And out he comes. He speaks, and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive. It's Romans 8.28.
We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose. To Timothy 1.9. Timothy, let us bless God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has saved us and called us to a holy life. And the call of God came to Saul. Certainly the voice was clear on the Damascus road.
Paul reiterates this truth many times as he gives his testimony. He says, And I heard a voice. And I heard a voice from heaven's saying. You see, you never begin the Christian journey until you hear God's voice.
Do you understand that? You say, You mean audibly, you're asking me? No, not audibly. Well then, how is God's voice heard if it is no longer heard audibly? It is heard when the Word of God is brought home to our hearts by the Spirit of God. Have you heard God's call in that way? Has God called out to you?
Oh, yes he has. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Called heavenward in Christ Jesus. Called upward.
Called on. Upward and onward toward Christian maturity. That's the call today from Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. Now as believers in Christ, all of us would affirm that our desire is to live our lives according to God's will. And of course, one of the greatest steps toward that goal, as Alistair just said, is for us to pay attention to what God teaches us in his Word.
But it can also be immensely helpful to have real life examples we can follow as well. And it's with that in mind that we want to recommend to you a book, a biography, titled Running the Race. It's available today from Truth for Life. This book chronicles the story of a famous athlete and missionary, Eric Little. It provides a stunning picture of an ordinary man who humbly served God in extraordinary ways.
First, when he refused to run in his strongest event in the 1924 Olympics, all the way to his eventual death on the mission field in China. This biography is thorough and it's engaging. It includes historic photographs.
It's a great choice for summertime reading. We would love to send you a copy as our way of saying thanks for your donation today. Truth for Life is funded entirely by listeners like you, so your support is actually a gift to your fellow listeners.
It's quick and easy for you to give online. Go to truthforlife.org slash donate or call 888-588-7884. Remember to request your copy of Eric Little's biography called Running the Race when you get in touch with us. I'm Bob Lapine. Tomorrow, Alistair continues his message about Christian maturity. Be sure to join us again. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
