What does Paul mean when he says he is "forgetting those things which are behind" (Philippians 3:13)?

"Brethren, I count not myself to have laid hold [whatever others might dream]; but one thing, forgetting the things behind, and stretching out to the things before, I pursue … ." v. 13. The Apostle does not mean that one ought to overlook, or that he did overlook his past sins and failures. On the contrary, it is most evil to forget what Christ has suffered for our sakes, and also the manifold ways wherein we have dishonoured God. This will not at all interfere with settled peace — rather the reverse. A man can rejoice so much the more in the Lord if he fully judge his failure. It is the tendency of a conscience not thoroughly happy to desire to escape from thinking of anything in which we have consciously turned aside to the grief of the Holy Ghost. It is a right thing to search ourselves through and through; it is right to ask God to search and try us, and to lead us in the way everlasting. Confidence in grace, so far from weakening the sense of our own shortcomings or covering over our failure, is the very spring that enables us to see and deal with the reality of things in the presence of God. Thus the Apostle speaks of "forgetting the things behind," not with reference to his failure, but rather to his points of progress, the steps or stages in which he had made advance in the knowledge of Christ. Instead of dwelling upon any attainment, as if it were something to be thought of (like the Pharisee comparing himself with his neighbour), here we have this blessed man forgetting all that might have fed self-complacency or been creditable to himself. His back was on the ground traversed. "Stretching out to the things before, I pursue toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." v. 14. This can only be in the resurrection state. Till then he was content to run. This was his one business. It was to live Christ, because Christ was his object.

"Not as though I had already attained either were already perfect" — for there is no perfection of condition known in Scripture, short of reaching Christ in glory — "but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." He is not speaking here of any mental apprehension of things. He is using a word that is only used, so far as I know, in modern English, in the language of the police court: we know what it means by a policeman apprehending a man. It is then: If that I may lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. What did He lay hold of you and me for? Nothing short of being with Himself and like Him in the glory of God for ever. Now, he says, that is what I am set for. "Brethren, I count not myself to have laid hold of it, but this one thing I do" — Not many things, as so often thought desirable. And what is it? "Forgetting the things that are behind" — that does not refer to the failures of the past: we were not meant to forget them — it is very profitable that we should remember the failures of the past, to be humbled by them. It means that he is not occupied with the milestones, the past points of progress or of victories won. He has no time to take account of the length of the way he has traversed. He views the race set before him with his whole mind on the end of it. "Reaching forth to the things that are before." He is using the most forcible words of the race-course: the attitude of a man in running, with his head and neck extended out beyond the rest of the body, in the earnestness of pressing on to the goal and the prize. "I press toward the goal for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus."

But there is another feature of this race: Paul was forgetting those things which are behind. And the forgotten things included not only his natural advantages but his conquests by faith also. Though, for instance, he had striven earnestly a year ago, he was still to strive; though his spirit had conquered a year ago, it was still to conquer. His habitual attitude was to be "forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before."

Thus we see here the power of a risen and a heavenly Christ, not now treated doctrinally as in 1 Corinthians 15 or 2 Corinthians 5 and elsewhere, but as that which bears on the Christian for the constant experience of every day. Hence that which judged and put aside religion after the flesh, righteousness after the law, all that was now left completely and for ever behind, and the saint is set on the road that nothing can satisfy him but being in the same glorious condition with Christ Himself. Hence he says, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind." This, carefully remember, does not mean forgetting sins. Far from losing sight of our past ways, it is a very wholesome thing indeed to remember them: we are never safe in forgetting what we are and have been. What he means by forgetting the things that are behind is, that we should not think of any progress we may have made in following Christ, — that we should lose sight of everything calculated to give us self-satisfaction. This were to spoil all, because it would please the flesh.

The apostle has already led us up to the blessed Object before him. What he has been just enlarging upon is the example of the Lord's humiliation, but he is now going to enlarge upon the glory which is his strength for such a path as this; the light which now shines for us upon the path, and shines more and more unto the perfect day. It is beautiful to realize that the very thing that is wanting to him now, as we look at him here, is the very thing which makes him a pilgrim and a racer, — an Object outside himself, something which he has not yet attained, but to which, because of its glory for him, he gives his whole energy to pressing on for its attainment. This is what characterizes all that we have here. His look is forward only. A racer does not look at the road on each side. He looks at what is before him; and so it is that in everything here, the principle is "forgetting that which is behind, and pressing on to that which is before." This is true of all attainment and experiences by the way, as it is of other things. It is not merely the world which is left behind, — that surely; but he himself, whatever up to the present he might be, is still left behind. It is Christ before him that gives oneness of purpose and character to his present life.

In a glorious passage of Scripture, instinct with spiritual life and vigour, the great Apostle Paul wrote, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, FORGETTING THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE BEHIND, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14). He was surely right in forgetting the things which were behind in his earnest desire to make speed on the bit of road immediately before him. He was like the athlete making for the goal. To be occupied with the ground over which he had travelled, instead of that which lay before him, would have been foolish in the extreme.

Clearly to this the Apostle had not yet attained, nor was already perfect; but he followed after, if that he might apprehend that for which he was apprehended of Christ Jesus. Christ had laid hold of him for glory; he desired to lay hold of it that the glory might have its full power over his soul. He would forget all the things behind, and do but one thing, pressing toward the mark for the prize of the calling of God on high in Christ Jesus. He would not forget grace, and what it had done for him (1 Tim. 1:12-16), but would forget, i.e., not rest in — all attainments by the way. If I had a twenty-mile walk before me, I might be thankful when the fifteenth mile stone is passed; but it would not do to rest there, but I must leave the fifteenth and sixteenth behind as all others, and press on towards the end. So pressed Paul: the glory, yea Christ was before him; he would not stop short of that. He exhorts the saints to do the same: "let us, as many as be perfect, be thus minded "; and if any had not properly learned their heavenly calling, God would reveal even this to them. But all are responsible to walk up to attainment, whether great or small. The Apostle then calls upon the saints to imitate him (in 1 Cor. 11:1 he qualifies it, "even as I also Christ") in running this race towards the heavenly goal, and bids them mark any amongst them who walked in the same way.

(Vv. 13, 14). If he had not yet attained the prize, neither did he claim to have apprehended in all its fulness the blessedness of the prize. But he could say, "One thing — forgetting the things behind, and stretching out to the things before, I pursue, looking towards the goal, for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus." Good for us, if we too could have such a vision of Christ in the glory and the reality of "those things which are before," that we should be led to forget the things that are behind. Paul not only counted them loss but he had forgotten them. We could not boast in something we had forgotten. As with every other spiritual blessing, our calling on high is set forth in Christ.

Second, the apostle can speak of "forgetting those things which are behind." In thus speaking he does not refer to the world as such, or his sins, or the old man — things which are evil and, for faith, judged in the cross. He refers rather to things which, in their time and place, were excellent, and gain to him as a natural man — the whole Jewish system with its worldly advantages and religion according to the flesh — things the glory of which had become "no glory" by reason of the glory that excels (2 Cor. 3: 9-11).

In the last letter that I received from a valued friend, now with the Lord, he wrote, "A RUNNING HOUND NEVER LOOKS AT ITS TAIL." He was referring to Philippians 3:13-14, "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." I shall never forget the trite saying, there is a volume of wisdom in it, as will be understood when it is seen that the reaching forth in the verse is the word that describes a hound at full stretch. But the Christian who is continually looking back, and brooding over the past and mourning over his failure, is like a hound that has ceased to run and is feeding on its own tail, if such a thing can be imagined. Nothing vitiates a man's spiritual energy like brooding on the past; nothing hinders him in the heavenly race like this, and it matters not whether it is his sins or his sorrows that he broods over, the brooding itself is fatal to all spiritual growth and strength. Both are dishonouring to God, for if a man broods over his sins he doubts the grace that abounds over them all; if he broods over his sorrows it is probably because he is at war with the will of God. Both sin and sorrow should humble us and make us walk in lowliness of heart before God, and not proudly or boastfully; but there is grace for the sin, and there is sympathy for the sorrow, so that while we feel them, and feel them deeply, we are not to be overwhelmed by them but find our God and His resources in Christ Jesus greater than both, and finding this press onward to the place from whence the grace and sympathy come.