'This one thing I do, forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching forth unto those
things which are before, I press toward the mark
for the prize.'--PHIL. iii. 13, 14.
This buoyant energy and onward looking are marvellous in 'Paul the aged,
and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.' Forgetfulness of the past and
eager anticipation for the future are, we sometimes think, the child's
prerogatives. They may be ignoble and puerile, or they may be worthy and
great. All depends on the future to which we look. If it be the creation
of our fancies, we are babies for trusting it. If it be, as Paul's was,
the revelation of God's purposes, we cannot do a wiser thing than look.
The Apostle here is letting us see the secret of his own life, and
telling us what made him the sort of Christian that he was. He counsels
wise obliviousness, wise anticipation, strenuous concentration, and
these are the things that contribute to success in any field of life.
Christianity is the perfection of common sense. Men become mature
Christians by no other means than those by which they become good
artisans, ripe scholars, or the like. But the misery is that, though
people know well enough that they cannot be good carpenters, or doctors,
or fiddlers without certain habits and practices, they seem to fancy
that they can be good Christians without them.
So the words of my text may suggest appropriate thoughts on this first
Sunday of a new year. Let us listen, then, to Paul telling us how he
came to be the sort of Christian man he was.