I was reading something rather interesting several days ago. Did you know that neither the kangaroo, nor the emu, can walk backwards? Most other animals can walk backwards without turning around if they need to, but not these two. These two animals, both endemic to Australia, are on the coat of arms of that nation. One reason they were selected was because of the fact that they can’t walk backwards, only forwards. With their eyes always looking forward, they are making progress, which symbolizes the goal of the people and country of Australia. Looking and moving forward, not backward, is what our Scripture for today encourages us to do.
The Apostle Paul, who wrote this letter to the Christians in Philippi, had a rather distinguished background in the Jewish religion. He was from the tribe of Benjamin, and had been educated by the renowned Jewish scholar Gamaliel. He was also a very devout Pharisee who strictly followed the Mosaic Law. Before getting saved, Paul was very proud of how zealous he was for the Jewish faith.
As our Scripture begins, though, instead of being proud of all of his religious accomplishments, Paul was just the opposite. Instead of thinking that all the things he had done would deserve gold stars and medals, he said that he counted them as a loss, as garbage, as a waste (vs. 7-8). All of Paul’s Jewish religious rituals that he once thought were a spiritual profit to him, were actually worthless and damning. He counted them as actually a spiritual loss.
So what did Paul think was important? What did he count as being worthwhile in his life? Paul threw away, both literally and figuratively, all his past religious accomplishments for the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Having a knowledge of Jesus is not simply to have an intellectual knowledge of Him. It is to know Jesus personally as one’s Savior. Being saved is infinitely more important than any religious rituals or practices one may have ever followed, whether Paul as a Pharisee, or us today. Having a personal relationship with Jesus, and striving to know all we can about Him, patterning our life to be like His, should be our ultimate goal. As Paul believed, and taught others, next to Jesus, everything else is nothing.
Paul continued on, stating that all of his righteousness, all of his good and religious deeds, and there were a lot of them, was worthless (vs. 9). What about all the money we might give to the church? What about the hours we might put in practicing with the choir or preparing Sunday School or Bible study lessons? We might want to count them on our profit side, but as the Scripture teaches us, we are made righteous only by trusting in Jesus. All of our works amount to nothing. As Paul said, they are rubbish, or garbage. When we are saved, we exchange our sins for His righteousness (II Corinthians 5:21).
Now that Paul was a believer, he wanted to forget all the things he once thought were so spiritually important, the self-righteous works that he had once been so proud of. Now his goal was to be more like Jesus. He wanted to forget all the things he had done in the past, both the good and the forgiven bad things, and progress forward, to reach his goal of being more like Jesus (vs. 12-14). He energetically, aggressively pursued this goal.
What about us? Are we striving for that same goal? Or are we looking back on all we have done in the past? Are we counting our past works as something to be spiritually smug about, or excessively grieving over past mistakes we have already confessed? Like a runner in a race, we need to continue to strive towards the goal. The runners won’t make good progress if they are continually looking back.
We should not let anything take our eyes off of our goal of knowing Jesus. With the single mindedness of an athlete in training, we must lay aside everything, and forsake anything that distracts us from this goal. Like the kangaroo and the emu, we mustn’t go backwards. Instead we need to keep progressing forward, forgetting what is behind, and looking and striving for the goal, for the prize we have in Christ Jesus.
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