Philippians 3:12-14 – Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
When Paul was young, he was Saul, an avid persecutor of Christ’s followers, who probably instigated the stoning of Stephen and at least did nothing to stop it. His life’s mission was to seek out and destroy the Christian sect, but the Lord had other plans for him. Jesus recognized in Saul that the nature of his character could make him just as devoted a leader and presenter of the gospel as he had been a Pharisee. Saul’s Damascus Road experience and what immediately followed were enough to convince this young man of Jesus’ true nature and His message of real salvation. One thing it did not do was erase from history Saul’s past. Paul, now just as avid an apostle but who was also drenched in the blood of saints, was so convinced of God’s forgiveness (“forgetting what is behind”) that he found it easy to preach it to others. He recognized that in his Father’s boundless mercy and infinite grace he was made new again (Remember Jesus’ nighttime meeting and discussion with Nicodemus?), so his past was erased completely. What mattered now would be how he lived the rest of his earthly life.
That kind of concept is a difficult one for us to grasp. Our finite human brain cannot seem to wrap itself around the idea of total forgiveness. We appear to hold on to those past sins and feel unworthy of starting over with a slate that is completely clean. But it makes no logical sense that Christ would preach total forgiveness if God was going to pick and choose which sins to forgive and which ones He would not. Excluding Jesus’ condemnation of a hardened heart in Matthew 12 and Mark 3, literally every single sin is forgivable! For us not to forgive ourselves (a hardened heart?) means we believe our thoughts are higher than God’s. Repentance, or turning from sin of the past, and asking for God’s grace to accept us will release us from our bondage of that sin, but if we continue to dredge it up, we are like the Israelites and will be wandering in a spiritual desert. We cannot call ourselves clean if we feel like we are not. The Lord has washed us perfectly. We must learn to forgive and forget our past so we can move on to bigger and better things, which is what we were made for and what we are promised. Forgiveness of self may be difficult but it is not impossible when we have Christ in our heart. Just look at Saul the murderer who became Paul the advocate of Christ. And if God forgave murder most foul, then He will forgive us. Now forgive yourself and start over, fresh and new.
