Intro: Christmas gifts, Star Wars, and the Past

Merry Christmas friends! I hope you all had a great time with family and friends, made some awesome memories, and got perhaps one or two sweet presents along the way. Possibly one of the greatest gifts I recieved this Christmas was, you guessed it, the release of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

I won’t spoil the movie for any of you but it is very much like all the Star Wars films before it. When you strip away all the science fiction and fantasy, all the great galactic wars and blaster rifles and force lightning and lightsaber duels, at the heart of it all is the story of a family and friends trying to let go of their pasts and mistakes. Trying to move on from heart ache and brokenness and forge a new hope and future for themselves and the people around them.

Paul spoke of this very idea of letting go of the past and pressing on towards what is ahead in his letter to the Philippians:

“12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” —Philippians 3: 12-14

Next week we will explore the idea of pressing on into the future with Christ but today we are going to dive deep into letting go of the past and what that means for us.

Letting Go: A context of Good things, Bad choices, and Everything in Between

“3 For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” —Philippians 3: 3-6

Paul is writing to warn the Philippians of people who are trying to influence and chain them to living out the constraints of the law of the past instead of
pursing the righteousness of God through the freedom of His grace. To continue to live out the past by placing their confidence in their flesh, (their own abilities and strengths), and earn their way to God.

So Paul begins to remind the Philippians of his past, his reasons to put his confidence in his own strengths. He was a faithful and fully confirmed Hebrew, from one of the most celebrated tribes of Israel, a trained scholar of the most legalistic and zealous branch of the Jewish ruling class, and dutiful and meticulous follower of the Law.

All of that sounds good, nothing wrong or out of sort until you remember what accompanied all of those confidences. A pride that convinced Paul that he and his fellow Pharisees were capable of following God perfectly even when secretly they knew they could not. A pride that compelled him to enforce an unmanagable set of rules on the people of Israel for the impossible task of earning God’s righteousness. And a pride that led Paul to persecute and murder the people of God for the sake of earning the righteousness of God.

Paul’s love for God, his deep knowledge of God, and desire for others to know God were all good things. But despite this, he still made bad choices that ended up hurting people and haunting him all the way through his life. Paul made mistakes, he did not follow God as he should have. And so it makes sense that he writes in verse 13, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead”. Paul’s past did not speak well of him. It did not earn him the righteousness of God. It, in fact, identified him as both an enemy of Jesus and His church.

But even though Paul’s choices, his past made him look exactly like those who killed Jesus, he did not simply “forget what lies behind”. If you look at all of his letters, Paul frequently mentioned his past as he shared the story of his life to show the grace and mercy of God to the people. Indeed, Paul’s extraodinary ability to speak on and teach on the nature of who God is and how to follow him is thoroughly based in his past, in his deep study of God and the Holy scriptures. So while we are called to let go of the past, why does Paul do so and yet, not do so?

Speaking for your Past

Paul’s past, like my and your past, isn’t simple good or bad, it’s both. He could not truly let go of it, forget it, without throwing out the good too. And so the answer to how we deal with is, I believe, found in the next few verses.

“7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” —Philippians 3: 7-11

The temptation is to read these verses in light of the very modern and well meaning counsel, “Don’t let your past define you”. But we know that to be impossible. We are always defined in some ways by our pasts, by our choices, by our successes and our failures. All of those decisions and circumstances and life happenings have helped to shape how we see the world around us and how we live in it. The trick is to not let your past speak for you, but to speak for your past.

Paul chose to speak for and into and from his past, from his successes and failures, by viewing it and speaking of it through the eyes and heart of Jesus. Whatever lead him away from God, whatever view or perspective took his eyes and heart from God, he counted those things as a loss, yes. But in verse 11 he says “by any means possible” he is striving to attain the righeousness of God. Meaning, that instead of choosing to let his past speak for him, letting it define him, Paul chose to use his past, speak for it through Christ, so that his past would be redeem by Christ, look like Christ and define Paul as an imperfect man who is striving to live in the present and presence of Christ.

And so this brings us back to our original text:

“12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” —Philippians 3: 12-14

Paul uses present tense language, “I press on to make it my own”, choosing to daily and continually own his past so that his future would look like Jesus. Forgetting what lies behind, letting go of the past doesn’t mean just trying to ignore the past or trying to keep it from defining you. We cannot keep from being defined by our pasts in some ways, but we can choose to decide what our pasts say about us and how they define us. Don’t let your past speak for you. You speak for your past and define your past through Jesus. And watch what Jesus will accomplish through it and through you.

You are loved. Believe it!