Philippians 3:13

Philippians 3:13. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended. So anxious is the apostle to avoid any seeming of confidence, that he repeats in substance the statement of the previous verse. The need for labour in the spiritual race is not ended for him, nor must it be for others. And in the word ‘count' he expresses this very strongly. It is not the word which has been so rendered in Philippians 3:8. Here the word signifies the making of an accurate reckoning. This St. Paul had done calmly in his own case, and knows the result. The prize is not yet reached.

but one thing I do. That I may ever be getting nearer to that result for which Christ laid hold on me, and plucked me back from my old life. And that ne speaks of one thing only, shows how he felt the singleness of eye with which the great work of salvation was to be pursued.

forgetting the things which are behind. Those advantages on which as a Jew he had set such store, and which, if he had continued to value them, or even to think of them, would have proved a stumbling-block to spiritual progress. And there were behind the apostle also those years of labour for the cause of Christ on which some men would have been tempted to dwell with thankfulness and hope; but these too he will forget. He will even forget, as he runs his race, those days of his overmuch zeal for the Jews' religion, in which he persecuted the church of Christ. For of these acts he has sincerely repented.

and stretching forward to the things which are before. The figurative language of the race-course is still maintained, and in this verb we have pictured the outstretched neck and the body leaning forward which are needful for the diligent runner. By the ‘things which are before' we must not merely understand St. Paul to mean ‘the prize,' as the final result of the contest. He means rather, in addition to that, yet preceding it, all those parts of the race which are yet to be run, the struggles through which he may have to pass, and how he may finish the remainder of his course most to God's glory and the church's profit.