"Not that I have already obtained this [the resurrection from the dead] or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." (Philippians 3:12)
The Christian faith turns the tables on our usual way of seeing the world. It's not about our pursuit of some prized commodity called "salvation" so we can claim a spot in heaven for ourselves; rather, it's about God's pursuit of us in Christ, seeking us and claiming us for his own.
That flips the script on our culture's mentality, where everything is a matter of earning the prize, reaching the benchmark, or fulfilling the requirement in order to "get" some reward at the end. We even talk about the "pursuit" of happiness or "achieving" enlightenment, and the loud talking heads of our day seem to shout incessantly about whether we look like "winners." So it should come as no surprise that popular religion often thinks in those same terms: folks will ask how many "souls we have won," or how many "stars" we have racked up in our "crown," or how we can get all the blessings of God if only we will reach out and claim them. I don't know about you, but I've heard every one of those expressions on the lips of Respectable Religious People who had all been caught up in seeing salvation and eternal life as objects to be grasped, rather than seeing salvation as what happens when God grasps a hold of us.
That mindset pictures God as merely a referee who watches the game from the sidelines or some cosmic Olympic judge deciding whom to award the gold medal to based on our performance. But as the apostle Paul tells it, God does things differently. God crosses the line from the sidelines onto the playing field. God is the One who pursues us. God is the One who has sought us out. God is the One who claims us, even through the grip of death and beyond it into resurrection. And once we know we have been claimed by this God, we continue on the path God has set us on to arrive at the destination toward which God with walking with us.
That's what's going on in this verse that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. After talking about his hope for resurrection, Paul stops his train of thought and says, "Not that I've already attained it." Well, of course not--you can't arrive at resurrection until you have come through death, just as you can't get to Easter without first going through Good Friday. But that said, Paul insists, he finds the strength to keep going and reach the destination of life beyond the grip of death--indeed, to "make it my own," for one reason, and this is the kicker: "because Christ Jesus has made me his own." We have reason to keep going in this life of faith, even when it means the way of the cross, because Christ has already claimed us to belong to God forever. Christianity isn't about us auditioning or trying out to claim a spot on a team with precious few openings; it is about the life we live with daring and courage when we realize God has already claimed us as beloved.
As long as we are stuck in our culture's way of seeing Christianity my pursuit of some prized called salvation (whether you win it with good deeds done or prayers prayed or having passed your theology exam or whatever else you might imagine), we'll always see ourselves in competition with everyone else for a spot on the team or a prize that is a scarce commodity. We'll end up trying to push others down to put ourselves ahead out of some misguided notion that there's only so much of the heavenly prize to go around. Or we'll be constantly dogged by the fear that if we're deemed not good enough, we won't achieve salvation or earn eternal life.
But once we realize, with Paul, that the Good News means God has claimed us already, we can confidently take each next step toward our destination without fear of not making the team and without the need to slow anybody else down. In a world that sees everything as a competition for scarce resources or limited prizes, that will make us stand out. We'll be the ones who have nothing to prove to anybody else, and therefore can spend our lives simply walking in the way of Jesus because we know we are his.
What a difference it makes to see ourselves rightly in the light of the Gospel--to know that we are not sprinting in order to earn God's stamp of approval if we are good enough (or at least better than someone else), but rather that we are running the marathon because we know we have already been claimed for the team and belong to God already. We're not chasing after salvation like a prize to be clutched from God's hands; salvation is God having sought us out already as we realize we are the ones in God's hands.
Lord God, let us see ourselves rightly as beloved ones claimed as your own through Christ.
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