A career of experiencing Christ

 This week's verses are Philippians 3:10-16:

My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already attained this—that is, I have not already been perfected—but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let those of us who are “perfect” embrace this point of view. If you think otherwise, God will reveal to you the error of your ways. Nevertheless, let us live up to the standard that we have already attained.

 This is the apostle Paul writing again about the concept of attaining rank in the kingdom of God. There were people following religious disciplines as a way to distinguish themselves from people who did not, and these people were causing problems for the early Christians by blurring the whole idea of grace with their endless rules and things. Paul knows the situation better than most people would, because that was his life back when he was a Pharisee.

We can sometimes engage our religion as a way to puff ourselves up, internally or externally. Internally, we want to feel like we are making progress in life, like we are nearing the finish line of righteousness, like maybe we will finally solve all of these issues that get in our way. Externally, we want to impress others, to be accepted by them, maybe even to be praised and lifted up by them. We want a higher position over others, to be above average in some way. And so we fall into this trap Paul has been describing.

But this week Paul gives us the alternative. There is still striving, and hard work, and a rule to our lives, but we aren't doing it to be more than others or to make ourselves "perfect" in some way. It's as Jesus describes it, where he is on a journey but there is no final home that he can end up in where he can take off his shoes (or have others take them off if they feel worthy) and relax. We suffer the path to the cross, stumbling and getting back up again, until it is finished and we are taken up.

If anyone could point to himself as being ahead of everyone else in the Christian life, Paul would be it. He had a great testimony of getting saved after being a murderer. He encountered Christ supernaturally and suffered persecution. He planted multiple churches. His faith was evidenced in miracles. But instead of working on a book or a podcast or some other self-promoting vehicle to evidence his greatness and provide royalties for a comfortable retirement, he focuses on following God even when it hurts.

He structures his life around this pursuit of God, not measuring how far he thinks he has come, or how is "good enough." He doesn't have a five year plan. His life is simply Jesus. And he recommends it to us, even having lived the worldly alternative of wealth and credentials and perks and recognition that he enjoyed as a Pharisee. To him, an intimacy with God is like the Psalms say it is. It is better than riches and glory.

I bet none of us live this way. I bet we never even consider living our lives this way. I bet we never planned to live this way even in our idealistic youth, when our guidance counselor was trying to get us to commit to some career path. None of us said "I want to know God, experience the power of his resurrection, share in his sufferings, and be like him in his death, and somehow attain resurrection from the dead." Right?

But Paul, who would know better than any of us, tells us that this is the way to go. We're tempted when we become Christians to just go "OK I get to go to heaven now. So let me plan a nice long comfortable retirement and pick out some good Netflix series to watch while I wait several decades (hopefully) to die. Maybe I'll go to some church retreats and read some books so that I can have a degree or two when I get to heaven." But what if what we're actually supposed to do is more like the thing Paul is telling us?

This week, consider what your life would look like if your sole mission was to know God, to suffer, to die, and to experience resurrection? How would it look if you decided to never decide that you had done enough, or had grown enough, or that you had been perfected to some acceptable degree? Is there anything you can do with the time you have left, to be more single-minded?