Philippians 3:12

Philippians 3:12. Not that I have already obtained. He has been speaking of righteousness which is God's free gift to the faithful, as distinct from that righteousness which the Jew sought by the works of the law. But lest his readers should run into the error of supposing that the righteousness of which he speaks demands no zeal or effort from its recipients, because it is of God's free grace, he proceeds to explain to them his own position and feelings. He has received the gift of faith with which to make a start in the Christian race, but that is only means to an end, which end will not be gained in this life.

or am already made perfect. Such a state is not attained while we live here, he would say. Every day brings its new opportunities either to be improved or to be neglected. If rightly used, they bring men nearer to perfection; but the work is ever doing, never done; for the stature of the fulness of Christ is the Christian's aim, and of this his greatest and best efforts must ever fall short.

but I press on. The figure is from the race-course, on which there must be no stoppage till the goal is reached. For Christians all the earthly life is the running time: they must press on all their days; and this the apostle does.

if so be that I may apprehend. That is, gain the prize in the end, which cannot be without the constant hastening and toil.

that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus. In the previous clause he has spoken of his chance of apprehending or winning the reward, but before his lips have spoken the word ‘reward' his heart corrects the thought that it would be any winning of his own, and he closes his sentence in such a way as to show that he knew how true it was that Christ had sought him; before he sought Christ, the Lord had marked him as a ‘vessel of choice,' or there would have been no thought in his heart about the prize of the high calling in Christ Jesus. Christ, at his conversion, made Saul His own prize, and for this reason only it is that the apostle hopes that in the end he may win the prize in the race to which Christ's grace has sent him forth.