Reading: 2 Cor. 12:1; Phil. 3:12-14.
The
Overcomer's Declaration
We are going to gather up what
we have already said, and present it in a simple and definite
way. In the words which we have read, penned by Paul to the
Philippians, we have the Overcomer's declaration, and it is
gathered into a very small fragment of words. "One thing I
do...". Before we can go further, we have to make a little
adjustment, for Paul did not actually say, "One thing I
do". You will notice the "I do" is in italics,
which means that it is not in the original text. Paul said,
"But one thing, forgetting the things which are behind, and
stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on
toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus". The verb "I do" is not there, but
there is a verb which has to come in to make this statement
intelligible, and the verb is found later - "One thing I
pursue". That is the complete statement. "One thing I
pursue". "I press on" - "pursue" is the
better word. "One thing I pursue". Of course, it is
quite right to say, "One thing I do", and I suppose in
order to make the sentence simple for English readers the
translators put those words in, but the correct, or the exact way
of putting it is "But one thing, forgetting the things which
are behind... I pursue..." "One thing I pursue".
It brings the object of pursuit as the governing thing: not what
I do, but the object. Paul is not saying, What I do is
all-important. It is the object that I have in view that is
all-important. So we are at once brought in that way face to face
with the object.
The Object of
the Overcomer
When we ask what the object is,
he calls it "the prize of the on-high calling of God in
Christ Jesus". You notice he has said, "Not as though I
had already attained..." - it is not 'attained'. Properly,
it is obtained and you can put in brackets there - 'the prize'.
"But one thing I pursue - the prize of the on-high calling
of God in Christ Jesus". The has bound up
with it, the prize.
The On-High
Calling
Let us weigh our words as we go
along. "The", the calling in Christ
Jesus. Paul often used that word 'calling', and it is not what we
mean when we say that someone called us. 'You called me', as you
are called in the morning; or someone calls you across the road.
That is not the idea of the word at all. It is what we mean when
we speak of a calling or a vocation. 'This is my calling'. Paul
used the two words in 1 Cor. 7:20. "Let each man abide in
that calling wherein he was called". They are two different
Greek words. One is being called, the other is that to which a
man is called. This latter word can be seen in Eph. 1:18; 2
Thess. 1:11; 2 Tim. 1:9; Heb. 3:1; 2 Pet. 1:10. What he is saying
is, Are you in this vocation or that? Do not seek to get out of
it; abide in the calling wherein ye were called. The on-high
calling, therefore, is a vocation which has to do with glory. It
is that for which we have been apprehended or possessed. He says,
"...that I may possess that for which I have become
possessed by Christ Jesus"; and that possession is the prize
of the on-high calling in Christ Jesus.
"In
Christ Jesus"
Now we must go to the end of
the statement again, to that well-known and yet still-so-little
understood formula - "In Christ Jesus". "The
in Christ Jesus". Our thought about that is
usually as of the sphere which Christ represents, that Christ is
a sphere; a certain specified and well-defined limit or circle.
Well, that is quite true, but that is only half of it. That
defines a bound and sets forth or indicates the exclusiveness of
Christ. That is a realm, and you are either in that realm or out
of that realm; you are in Christ or you are out of Christ, and it
makes Christ a self-contained, settled, fixed realm of things,
and there is no overlapping; it is either in or out.
But the other half is that it
is the inclusiveness of Christ. It is what is inside that sphere.
"In Christ" means that God has put everything of His thought
and intention within Christ, it is all found there. All that God
has designed is in Christ Jesus. It is a mighty fulness,
inclusive and exclusive. You have none of it outside, but all of
it in, and it is what is in Christ by the summing up of God the
Father that is indicated by this - "the prize of the on-high
calling in Christ Jesus". That is why I just took that
little fragment from 2 Cor. 12:1 - "visions and
revelations" of Christ. That is what we want to see - what
is in Christ, visions and revelations. Have you ever for a moment
paused to ask the question - How did Paul get to know all that he
talks about? I pick up the letter to the Romans and I read
through near to the end of the 8th chapter, and I hear Paul
talking about things that happened before ever this world had an
existence, going back into the very presence of God and hearing
the Godhead talking between themselves, so to speak, and
arranging things and saying what They were going to do. How did
Paul get to know all that? Is this imagination? Paul has got it
from heaven. You notice what he says, in 2 Cor. 12 "I know a
man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know
not; or whether out of the body. I know not; God knoweth), such a
one caught up even to the third heaven. And I know such a man
(whether in the body, or apart from the body, I know not; God
knoweth), how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard
unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to
utter". "I will come to visions and revelations of the
Lord". If they were not lawful for him to utter, they are
not in the New Testament, but what is here is enough to get on
with, and he intimates vast things, immense things, things
altogether beyond our comprehension, things which will take
eternity and the vast concourse of a countless host to
understand, to enter into. "Visions and revelations of the
Lord".
Amongst these visions and
revelations, he has seen the of God in Christ
Jesus, he is intimating that there is such a thing, and he is
telling us about his own attitude toward that thing, he is
seeking with all his heart to get all believers to take the same
attitude and to be of the same spirit and mind as himself.
"I labour, striving according to his working, which worketh
in me mightily" to "present every man complete in
Christ" (Col. 1:28-29). It is the same thing. He has seen
what is in Christ as the of believers, and that
object is before him. It is an immense thing represented by
Christ in the purpose of God from eternity to eternity, and he
sees that that thing, that immense thing in Christ, is the
inheritance of the sons of God."...bringing many sons unto
glory" (Heb. 2:10). It is the inheritance of sonship, and,
as you so well know, sonship, according to the New Testament, is
something more than spiritual childhood. It is the full-grown man
spiritually, and this is the inheritance of the full-grown sons.
Two Aspects
of our Inheritance in Christ
(a)
Conformity to the Image of Christ
"The on-high
calling". I could not, even if I stayed and if I tried,
speak to my own satisfaction or yours of what that on-high
calling is, because I do not know. I can only come with this
tremendous impact that it is something very great, very glorious,
and say that this is the object which makes Overcomers and will
make the Overcomer company of which we have been speaking. It is
this object, and it is this attitude which will do it. This is
only an appeal, with a feeble presentation of the ground of
appeal. It is what God has revealed in visions and revelations to
Paul as to our inheritance in Christ, and it has two sides or two
aspects.
Firstly, it has to do with His
nature. God has wrought out in the Person of His Son in human
manhood right through to completion His thought for the new race,
the new creation; taking it to the depths where "He who knew
no sin was made sin for us" (in our place), and raising it
to the highest heights, placing it at His own right hand,
glorifying it with His own glory, filling it with His own
fulness, and so expressing Himself in that glorified humanity,
telling us that that is the pattern to which He would conform us
and has predestined us. "Foreordained to be conformed to the
image of his Son" (Rom. 8:29). The Church is called to that
and every part of it in its own measure to share that termed 'the
fulness of him that filleth all in all' (Eph. 1:23) as to nature.
This Church, of which we are parts, this Body of which we are
members, is called to be so changed, firstly inwardly and finally
outwardly, as to have the very glory that now fills Christ
resting upon it. "A glorious church having the glory of God:
her light was like unto a stone most precious" (Rev. 21:11);
called unto his eternal glory (1 Pet. 5:10).
"I will come to visions
and revelations", and the first one of those is what Paul
saw on the way to Damascus and called "the heavenly
vision". "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision" (Acts 26:19). He came to see by instruction of the
Holy Spirit and by Divine revelation, heaven-given vision, that
that which he saw on the Damascus road was the thing unto which
he was called - to share that glory, to be glorified like that in
Christ Jesus, and he says, That is the prize of the on-high
calling! It has to do with our nature being conformed to the
nature of Christ, sinless, therefore capable of being endowed
with Divine glory.
(b) Service
in Christ Jesus
But the other half is that it
has to do with service, the service that is in Christ Jesus; His
work. "The of God in Christ Jesus" -
the work as well as the nature of Christ in glory. The New
Testament has not a few intimations as to what the work of Christ
is and is destined to be throughout the ages of the ages. It is
to minister God to the creation, to fill the creation with God,
to keep everything fed by God. God is life, God is love, God is
everything that is glorious, and to be the agency, the vehicle,
the vessel of ministering God to the creation is the consummate
vision of the book of the Revelation, in the form of the city, in
the form of that which is right at the centre of the city, upon
which the city lives, from which it derives its life; the tree of
life, the river of water of life, and then the leaves of the tree
for the health of the nations. It is all a symbolic intimation
that here is a great ministry centred in the Church in Christ
Jesus; the Church, one with Christ Jesus, to minister life,
health, glory and all that God is, beyond itself.
"The of
God in Christ Jesus". It is what is in Christ Jesus as to
nature and purpose. We must not think that the glorification of
the Lord Jesus is the end, an end in itself. Our glorification is
not going to be an end in itself. God does not believe in ends;
there is no end to Him and He does not believe in having ends.
"Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall
be no end" (Isa. 9:7). That is not only a matter of time
limit; that is a matter of expansion, dimension, increase. It
does not mean that the increase of His Kingdom will not cease at
a certain time, it means the increase itself will go on
and on, fulness so boundless. The high calling in Christ Jesus is
to maintain that eternal increase. You may think that this is
extravagant language and very high talking, but I will come back
to the practical thing in a moment, now, to ourselves.
Hindrances to
the Pursuit of the Prize
We have already said in our
previous meditations that the Church being gathered out of the
nations in this dispensation, and being slowly formed into a
vessel, and inwardly changed, and spiritually developed, is being
prepared to receive the resurrection glory of Christ with a view
to ministering that glory, being the agency of that glory in the
Kingdom which is coming, the everlasting Kingdom, when the
kingdom of this world shall become the Kingdom of our Lord and
His Christ, invested with His glory. Now Paul by revelation had
come to see what Christ risen and glorified signified as God's
thought and intention, for the Church which is His Body, and he
says, That is our calling, that is our destined vocation. Then,
if that is the object that He has in view and presents to us, the
Christian life is something very much more than getting
converted, however much that may be - and it is a great thing.
Never let us be content with that. The good can be the enemy of
the best in that respect if we are not very careful. That being
the object, there has got to be an attitude, and Paul says, As to
the object, this is my attitude; one thing I pursue, I am a man
of one object, and upon that object I bring everything to bear,
to converge, so that one thing in all things becomes the only
thing that matters. As to the past - forgetting. In this chapter
of his own history, he refers to two things in the past, things
which he deliberately forgets. They are two forms of things that
could very much interfere with this pursuit to rob of this prize.
In the first place he mentions the prizes of this world, the
other prizes. The prize of inheritance; look at the chapter -
what he inherited as a Hebrew of the Hebrews! What an
inheritance! The prize of inheritance, the prize of status - a
Pharisee. If you really get a thoroughbred Pharisee, you have the
embodiment and personification of status. Then there was
attainment, he was a scholar of the best school. And so much more
in that realm of prizes here. He says in effect, if I rest upon
anything of worldly prizes, worldly status, anything at all that
I have or am as to this world, it will interfere with this quest
and get in the way of that prize, so I forget it, deliberately
forget it, I banish it from my mind.
Beware, young people. The enemy
can offer you prizes in order to steal the prize from you,
he can substitute for the prize - and I am not saying that there
are not prizes so far as this world goes. There are prizes, there
are things for which men barter their souls and when they have
got them, they find them wholly empty at the end. Beware of the
counter-prizes. If you are going to be an Overcomer, you have got
to be like this Overcomer and say, These things do not count so
far as this one thing is concerned, those things must take a
subservient place. You may say, I am successful! Do not say you
are successful until you can say you have got the prize of the
. It is an attitude - forgetting those things for
the one thing. This does not mean that you should accept a low or
meagre level of life and work, and be second or third-rate
people. It only means that the chief end should overshadow
all else.
Then he refers to another side
which he deliberately forgets, which can equally retard the
progress and arrest the advance and slow the step.
"Persecuting the church" - he speaks of that to this
church. The blind folly of yesterday, the blindness and ignorance
of the past and what I did in it. Oh, Satan is so ready to bring
up our past to paralyse us. The foolishness, the weakness, the
mistakes, the blunders, the sins - yes, he is always bringing
those up and saying, This disqualifies you, puts you out of the
running, this prize is not for you! Look at yourself, look what
kind of history you have! And Paul says, I put that out of the
way, I am not going to be discouraged by past failures. An
Overcomer must not be discouraged by past failure, though that
has been repeated. If ever there was one who should have felt
himself disqualified for this prize, it was this man. I
persecuted the Church, I consented to Stephen's death, I held the
clothes of the witnesses; I pursued the saints into distant
cities, I cast into prison both men and women; I can never hope
to be awarded that prize! Ah no! "Forgetting the things
which are behind". "But one thing".
I have often said that I think
Paul really did have a hand in the writing of Hebrews; whether he
actually wrote it or not, he is there, and you remember -
"Let us... lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so
easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is
set before us, looking off unto Jesus" (Heb. 12:1-2). The
weights that impede, hold back, the sin so easily besetting -
what is it? There is no chapter division in Paul's letter, we
have to run straight on. "Now faith is the assurance of
things hoped for the proving of things not seen... By faith... By
faith... Let us lay aside... the sin which doth so easily beset
us". If we are going to run, all unbelief, all doubt, all
questioning must go; the easily besetting sin of doubt, unfaith,
must be stripped and laid aside to run this race unto this prize.
"I forget". The Lord would have us forget in that sense
anything that would get in the way of this attitude. As to the
past, I forget. As to the present, I gird myself, I press, I
pursue. I may be a doctor, a teacher, a nurse or anything, but in
and through all things, I have one object and my earthly calling,
earthly vocation, earthly business, must be made the sphere in
which this end is pursued. It must not be the thing in itself and
the end in itself, but my occasion, my opportunity and my means
of learning Christ. There is plenty in everyday life to make a
real knowledge of Christ necessary, and so we should turn
everyday life to use, in its adversities, its trials, its
difficulties, to gain Christ, to know Christ. It is a present
thing, it is not all in the future. It is a present thing, this
movement to the great consummation.
Let us get this word - I
pursue. In Phil. 3, that word occurs twice. You will not find it
in the translation. Paul says he persecuted the Church. That is
exactly the same word as he uses here - I Pursue. It sounds
strange to say. I persecute the prize of the on-high calling, but
you can see the meaning. How did Paul persecute the Church? Well,
he did it very thoroughly and he stood at nothing, he let nothing
get in his way. He went the whole way in persecution and not only
men, but women; this thing related to Jesus of Nazareth had to
go, lock, stock and barrel, and he would not spare himself until
this was done! That is the spirit of Saul of Tarsus. He says, I
bring that spirit right over in relation to Christ. He uses the
same word. That is the spirit of the Overcomer, nothing less than
that will do.
The Present
Practical Value
I must close here by coming to
that which I suggested just now would come back to us before we
finished - the present practical value of this. It all looks so
future, so heavenly, so beyond, but it is not. Dear friends, we
should be very, very much the poorer if all this in the New
Testament through and by the Apostle Paul was not there. I mean,
how impoverished we should be had we not got what Paul brought,
what the Lord has given us through that dear man. He never knew
it was going to be like that. He wrote some letters out of his
heart for some immediate local or localised situations and needs,
to help curtail people in certain places over certain present
difficulties and problems. He never knew they were going to be
"The Epistles of Paul", lasting two thousand years,
read the world over, fed upon and building up the Church for
which he had such a concern, and bringing multitudes into greater
fulnesses of Christ. There it is, and it is all due to this
attitude and what he was prepared to pay in taking this attitude,
of being of this mind and this spirit. That is where the
practical thing is. If you are going to be an Overcomer of this
sort, if you are going with the Lord wholly and utterly, to
persecute in this thorough-going way God's full end, to pursue it
like this and pay the price - do not do it with this motive and
object - there is undoubtedly going to be tremendous enrichment
of others, and the fact is, and it is a settled law, that the
enrichment of others can only come in this way. Those who will
not pay the price forfeit the fruitfulness. The real values of
Christ have come all the way through the centuries through men
after this sort, men of this mind. You may say that you are not a
Paul, you are not a great person in the Church. No, but greatness
is not measured by what you are in yourself. Your greatness and
your value and your fruitfulness will be according to the
utterness of your abandonment to God's full thought. He will see
to the rest, and many will thank God that you paid the price,
that you suffered for an utter way for the Lord, that you counted
not the cost too great. That is the way of fruitfulness, and that
is how it is that Paul has been such an enriching factor, simply
because of his attitude, his spirit, because he carried this out.
"One thing...". Not a man of divided interest, an iron
in every fire. "I pursue the prize of the on-high calling of
God in Christ Jesus". Because he so pursued, saints have
been enriched and helped, strengthened and made full in every age
since. That is possible, it is true. If you go the whole way and
suffer with the Lord for His full purpose, that in itself will be
the way of the enrichment of others, and that is where the thing
is so practical. It comes down out of the ethereal, the merely
visionary. You be out and out for the Lord and many will get the
benefit. And so, as we have been saying, by a remnant the whole
Church comes into blessing. The remnant satisfies God and then
the whole is benefitted because God is satisfied.
The Lord make us of this
spirit, of this kind. "One thing I pursue".