Primary Text: Philippians 3:8-11 Supporting Text: Rom.6:4; Col. 2:12; Ps. 27:4;
These verses show the heart of the apostle and the essence of Christianity. Paul’s greatest longing in life was to know Christ and experience His personal fellowship and nearness in a more intimate way. His pursuits involved the following:
1. To know Christ personally as well as to know His ways, nature, and character as revealed in God’s Word.
2. To be found in Christ, i.e., to have a union and fellowship with Christ that produces righteousness
3. To know the power of His resurrection i.e., to experience renewal of life, deliverance from sin, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
4. To share in Christ’s sufferings by self-denial, crucifixion of the flesh and suffering for the sake of Christ This is an important part of what follows.
Paul has taken time to examine his life. He has reviewed his accomplishments, his honors and his crimes against the church. Now he sums up all his passions, his dreams and desires, by saying “but one thing I do.” By summing it up as “one thing,” Paul is telling us he now knows what his focus is, what his goal is, and what his number one priority is. Paul knows that there are many things which can hold us back, but only one thing which will allow us to break loose and let God move like a river through our lives, and through the church. We cannot run two races at the same time. We cannot serve two masters at the same time. On the list of the priorities of our life, only one thing can stand at the top, and it is that one thing which determines how we live here and now, and where we will live then and there. It all begins with “those things.” The “one thing” is so big, so important, so vital to our spiritual life that this “one thing,” will release us from “those things,” so that we may gain the prize. We will not experience the “new thing,” until we make up our minds to do “one thing”–forget “those things.” Not only must we forget those things, we must keep looking ahead. We cannot live in the past. The past is gone and it will never be here again. The question for today is, “What lays ahead?” The cry of the church must be, “We will be anointed with fresh oil.”
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