Welcome to the “Front Porch.”
Last week, we turned to the third chapter of Philippians, where Paul announces that he was “pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Our discussion led us to this question: What exactly was the “mark” he was referring to?
I don’t think the answer is exactly what we think it is. Our first reaction would be to call the mark “heaven,” which is the ultimate mark, but not precisely what Paul is talking about. The answer comes earlier, in verse eight, when he says, “I have suffered the loss of all things that I may win Christ.”
That, I believe, is the mark: “To win Christ.”
Of course, winning Christ ultimately means we win heaven. But we can’t win heaven without winning Christ, so winning Christ comes first.
Maybe this all makes more sense when we pause to consider that for much of his life, Paul had the wrong “mark,” the wrong aim and focus. In fact, it was the opposite of winning Christ – it was to defeat Christ. Defeating Christ was his sole aim, and nothing else seemed more important to him.
Paul learned where he went wrong and changed course – “stopped on a dime,” as we say – changed his “mark” and “pressed toward” that mark with everything he had for the rest of his life. We read what Paul writes, almost as if we’re reading his manifesto on “The Secret of My Life,” even though his living to win Christ was no secret at all.
We step back and realize that we need a supreme aim like the apostles. Regardless of the outward activities in life with which we involve ourselves – regardless, says one writer, of whatever we do in business, in our studies, at school, out in our shops, in the kitchen, in the nursery, by the road, or at home – we must keep this one supreme aim in view: to win Christ.
WHAT DOES
“WINNING CHRIST” MEAN?
But we still need to put into practical terms what it means to win Christ.
I’d say it means making Christ our closest possession, possessing Him with all our faculties – heart, soul, mind, and strength – and giving Christ our head and our heart, our passions and our desires.
It means not having Christ occasionally, but having Him abide in us as the branch abides in the vine, abiding in us to restrain and control us, to transform us, and to conform us into His own likeness.
It means we experience the blessings that flow from Him, blessings that are “exceedingly abundantly” more than we can imagine (Eph. 3).
It also means we need to lose some things. We lose our uncertainties, hypocrisies, selfishness, wrong attitudes, and lukewarmness – or, as Paul says, “I have suffered the loss of all things.” That’s what it means to win Christ.
But there is also a catch. I hope no reader stopped short of the end, because the caveat here is essential to our journey to win Him.
We can never reach the point where we think we have already accomplished it or that “have arrived.”
Paul says, in essence, “Don’t think I’ve already reached that goal. No, I make every effort to reach it.”
Or, as our text says, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
As I used to tell my ballplayers when I wanted to stress a key point, “the key word is ‘press.’”
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently came out of retirement twice for teaching tours at Ferris and Waxahachie High Schools. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) have slowed down some of their travels and reconvened in their evangelistic work with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the working to publish “Crossing The Georgia Line” that ran in the Ellis County Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, and see frontporchgospel.com.