Press On Towards the Ultimate Goal

Press On Towards the Ultimate Goal
Philippians 3:1-21
October 12, 2025

When we follow Christ, everything changes. The bible teaches that we are transferred from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of His light.

The dominion of darkness rules this physical world. Those who are carnal, living driven by the flesh and the urges of the flesh live with their primary focus on this physical world. It defines them and everything they do. They chase hard after the “successes” of this world as a goal and a purpose in life.

Those who are spiritually minded see the bigger picture. Their vision has expanded past the next x number of years here on earth. They see eternity. This expands your goal and purposes past your date of death.

Paul reminds them of this and addresses the profound impact this has on the life of a Christian. It impacts now and eternity.

In verse 20 he says, ‘For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.’

He reminds them of the real goal of life. This is the question before us as well? What is your goal in life? Is it to finish school, go study, find a job, find a wife, get a few kids, work until you turn 65, make enough money, try and enjoy the few years you have left, if any, and then die? What is the goal? Self-gratification? Comfort of ‘things’? Having earthly experiences? What is the goal?

Although all of this is also part of the experience of living on earth, there must be more than this.

Your goal in life, will determine your values, which will determine your actions.

Paul cuts through the noise, and reminds them of the true goal of life.

Do you want life? Do you want peace? Do you want joy? Do you want purpose? Understand your real citizenship.

I. Safeguard Your Soul

• Paul starts off this chapter again by warning them about the Judaizers. They were the ones that were teaching that to be saved you had to be circumcised and you still had to keep the mosaic law as well. He says that he knows that he’s repeating this again but it is important that they not be drawn into trying to be saved by works again, that which the Judaizers proclaimed.

A. Put no Confidence in the Flesh

• He starts by drawing a comparison between false circumcision and the true circumcision. What is false circumcision? He’s referring to the circumcision in the flesh.
• Now you might say, ‘How can this be false because you can see it happening in front of you with your own eyes. It is real. It hurts!
• What makes the circumcision of the flesh false, is that it was given as a spiritual directive to have a spiritual impact. Yet, it had no true lasting spiritual impact in their lives.
• In other words, one can be circumcised in the flesh, going through the ritual, but still have nothing change in the heart. It is putting your faith in a fleshly work hoping it will make a spiritual salvation impact.

Isaiah 29:13, Then the Lord said, Because this people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me,

• Contrary to this, the spiritual circumcision is a circumcision done by Christ through you placing your faith in Him. The physical circumcision was a type of this, pointing to a time when Christ would through His Spirit come live in us and do a circumcision of the heart; cutting away the sinful nature and its principles that guided our lives, and placing in us a new heart wanting to follow the will of God as we saw last week in our previous study.
• Paul goes further, though, and makes a radical statement. He says that we should put no confidence in the flesh. He says that if anyone wanted to make a claim of confidence in the flesh, he would exceed even that.
• He goes on to list all his qualifying virtues which would be looked upon as righteousness: Circumcised on the 8th day, of the nation of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a pharisee of the law, with passion and zeal he persecuted the church, if measured in righteousness against the law, he would have been found blameless.

B. Count everything as loss

• Yet with this whole pedigree and history, he says he counts it all as loss, willing to lay it all down and seeing it as rubbish. Why?
• Because he found something that has surpassing value. Knowing Christ. He has suffered the loss of all those things that used to define him, so that he could gain Christ and be found in Him.
• This becomes his ultimate goal. If anything else defines you, it is a fake definition. It is shallow, not real.
• Your degrees against your wall don’t define you.

Illus – With many degrees, this thought can arise. ‘People now think I should know everything.’ This leads many intellectuals to feel like frauds, because although people think they have it all together and know all things, they know deep inside that they are also struggling. “ The more I know, the more I realize how little I know.”

• Your sport accomplishments shouldn’t define you. One injury, and you’re out.
• Your celebrity status doesn’t define you. People worship the image they have of celebrities, instead of the real them.
• Knowing Christ is paramount. He makes us righteous. He defines you. He brings you in right standing with God, the One who made you, knows you, purposed you. He wants to restore you.

Illus- It is like stripping away all the paint and gunk off a priceless 14^th century antique piece of furniture that has been abused for hundreds of years.

• The stripping of part is sometimes hard.

Illus – I once saw a movie about an heiress to a multi-million-dollar fortune who had her money stolen from her.  To survive, she had to work at a normal 9-5 job, go through the experience of making money to pay rent, buying basic food, and paying utilities. Then later, running into friends from her previous life, she suddenly realized how shallow that life was.

• It is the same with our Christian walk. God allows us to go through experiences to make us deeper people, people with substance, people with life experiences, walking with God on hills, but also through valleys.
• God makes us righteous and grows us in righteousness.
• How does this happen? It is based on faith. Not law, not works. We are called into relationship by receiving by faith God’s promise, trusting in His heart and path for us.
• The wonderful thing is that it is not an impersonal experience. There is a deeper goal. A surpassing value. Something that is more important and valuable that the things you are “losing” or laying down. Knowing Christ. Trading ‘rubbish’ to gain Christ.
• Something that is full doesn’t have space to be filled. You first must take out the trash before something more beautiful can replace it.

Illus- A trash can can be filled with trash or jewels.

• So, Paul says he’s not just laying down stuff, losing stuff, being emptied for no reason. No, it is to make way for something better.
• He reiterates it again, that it is for the purpose that he would know Him, Jesus, and the power of His resurrection.
• Coupled with that, experiencing fellowship and an understanding of His suffering, being conformed to His death. But it is for this wonderful promise to be fulfilled: that I can also attain the resurrection from the dead.
• This concept Paul is talking of is scary to some people and puts them off, because it seems like it has everything to do with losing things and dying to things. But the focus is not on the dying to and losing things. The focus should be on what you gain when you let go of those things.
• The more you lay down the things that have stench of death, the more space there is for God to work His resurrection power in your life. The more you die to lies, the more space there is for truth, the more you die to unimportant things, the more space there is for important things.

II. Partake in His Resurrection Power

• The promise is that, as we let go of things, we get to know Jesus better and we see the power of His resurrection working in our lives.

A. Press on to take hold

• The wonderful thing about what Paul is doing here, is that he gives us a hope as we are on the journey. With all he went through, he is also still on the journey and hasn’t laid hold of it yet.
• This is very encouraging because it shows us that it is a process. And God is right there in the process.

Illus – I remember when I was young, around 9 or 10 years old, my dad would have me wash the car. I remember that after I was finished, he would come out to inspect the car. I looked at the car and it looked perfect to me, until he opened the doors and showed me some area that I missed, or looked from a different angle in the light and there would be water streaks on it. Or we would look inside, and there would be great areas where there was still dust which I missed. I needed the eye of someone who knew what the end result should look like to show me where my blind spots were.

• As we walk on our spiritual journey and grow in our spiritual life, we have many blind spots. Most people, when they look at themselves, struggle to see the areas that they need to change and grow in.
• They struggle to see the impact that their past is having on them. They struggle to see the things that are still triggers impacting how they act and why they do what they do.
• Experiences and difficulties we go through reveal this to us. God already knows it, but He uses circumstances to shine the light on it.
• The beauty of God is that He does not only show us the truth, but He shows it to us in love. Because the plan with showing you the truth, is to show you that there is a way out.
• There is healing available for the heart. There is truth available for the lies. There is acceptance available for the rejection. There is life available in exchange for the death in your soul.

B. Forget what lies behind, reach to what is ahead

• It is from this perspective that Paul says, that when God’s light of truth shines on the soul, it is very evident that the fullness of experiencing the power of His resurrection have not been attained yet.
• Paul has not fully been conformed to the death of Christ yet. He has not yet fully grown into what God sees him as yet, but he presses on to lay hold of that for which he also was laid hold of by Christ; Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.
• Firstly, forget what lies behind. Burn the bridges to your past sinful, death ridden life. Don’t go visit the old you, hanging on to the failures, sins, the disappointment, insecurities and condemnation. Let go. Look forward.
• Another aspect of this is to put no confidence in the things of this world. Do not with pride lean on your intellect, your wealth, your successes, or whatever other earthly things people lean on for purpose and validation.
• God might have blessed you with some of these things, but don’t let it be the foundation that your life is built on, because in the end it is all like sand on the seashore. There is only one rock that we can build our lives on, and that is Jesus Christ.
• Then secondly, press on to lay hold of that for which you were laid hold of by Christ. This is a very deep phrase. The core understanding is that you were first taken hold of by Christ. He took hold of you for a purpose. He took hold of you to bring about this change that we’ve been speaking about.
• Our response is to take hold of that in faith, aligning with Christ and the Holy Spirit, agreeing with him that it is the direction that we are living towards.

Illus – Let’s say a child is stuck on the rocks at the ocean. Big waves crashing and the tide is coming in. A parent comes out onto the rocks, takes the hand of the child, and leads him of the rocks.

• Take hold. Don’t let go.

C. Live as a Heavenly Citizen

• Paul then encourages them that this is not just an airy fairy concept but it has a practical application.
• Walk in the example set before you. Walk with those who are serious about Christ and follow their example. Because there are many who walk as enemies of the cross and their end is destruction.
• Their God is their appetite; appetite for everything that is wrong and sinful. Their glory is their shame, setting their minds on earthly things. What a sad state to be in.

Illus- I remember working with people who would spend their weekends drinking  and partying, coming back to work on Monday with a hangover, but boasting on how they were so drunk that they couldn’t walk straight, puking all over the parking lot, not even remembering how they got to bed. And I would think with heartache for them, do you call that life? You glory in your shame? Isn’t it more glorious to glory in good and godly things? To glory in the fact that you are a loving parent, a good husband or wife, someone that is dependable, responsible, loving, caring, selfless?

• And this is what Paul urges them towards. Be awake. Do not be caught up in the same things that the people of this world are caught up in. For our citizenship is in heaven.
• We live by different rules. We set our lives by different principles. We are guided by our new citizenship.

Illus – When you move to a new country, there are different rules and regulations to learn. If you want effective results, you need to learn the principles of the new country. Just take driving on the right side of the road, or understanding imperial versus metric, understanding the tax laws, understanding the nuances of cultural unwritten rules.

• We are called to live as citizens of the heavenly Kingdom. This worldly system and the one that rules this worldly system, Satan, is opposed to the Kingdom of God. Although they might use the same words, it doesn’t always mean the same thing. Justice, love, trust, might be the same words but it has a vastly different meaning. This world is ruled by a dictatorial spiritual ruler that wants to destroy by coming as an Angel of light. He uses deceptions, lies that sound like the truth, and any means necessary to fool people.

We are called citizens of another world. We live by different principles and we are called to live in the light, to discern the truth to spread hope, to live a life following Christ energized by His love for us and knowing that we can stand on His faithfulness, because He is faithful and true