Introduction: The Christian life is a race, a run, a pursuit.
Paul’s Pursuit can be characterized as a…
- Purifying Pursuit (12a) “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected”
- Pressing Pursuit (12b) “but I press on”
- Proper Pursuit (12c) “that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me”
- Precise Pursuit (13) “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,
- Prized Pursuit (14) I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus
- Perfect Pursuit (15-16) Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything that you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind.