What is the upward call of God (Philippians 3:14)?

The word "high" simply means "above." The same word is used in Colossians 3:1, where we are bidden to "seek those things which are above." The prize, of the calling to the things above, is surely that full and perfect knowledge of Christ Himself, which will be possible for us when our bodies are changed and fashioned like to His body of glory at His coming.

Whatever line of truth Paul is engaged with, his objective is the same, he is looking towards the prize, "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus". The full realization of it is seen at the end of the chapter, when we shall be with and like Christ for ever. As "God's high calling" it does not refer to things down here, it stands in relation to Christ up there. A calling away from earth altogether.

This is the first part of the gospel, and with this the mass of God's people would seek to be content. Nevertheless, the gospel proclaims far greater blessings, for it tells us of the calling of God. Not only has God saved us, but we read He has “called us with an holy calling.” In this passage the calling is referred to as “an holy calling”; it is also spoken of as “the heavenly calling” (Hebrews 3:1) and “the calling on high” (Philippians 3:14). Salvation sets us free from our sins and the judgment-doomed world: the calling links us with heaven and all those spiritual blessings which God has purposed for us in the heavenlies in Christ. Therefore the blessings of God's calling are “not according to our works”, nor our thoughts, nor our deserts, but “according to His own purpose and grace”.

The gospel is well worth the while, "for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes," being entirely above the distinction which the law or circumcision made. It is of the Spirit, not of the flesh, not national now but personal. God "saved us." It is the fruit of His work in Christ; and that work was finished on earth, and accepted in heaven, and abides for ever, complete and unchanging. Men may be moved away from the hope of the gospel by ordinances on the one hand or by philosophy on the other. Both are of the world, and almost equally worthless; both are absolutely inefficacious to save, though one be a sign, the other purely human. But God "saved us and called us with a holy calling." Here "holy" is emphatic and most suitable to the Epistle and the state of things contemplated. Always true, it was urgent now to press its "holy" character. It is a calling on high or upward, as we read in Phil. 3:14, in contrast with the earthly things in which men find their glory to their shame. It is a heavenly calling, as we see in Heb. 3:1, which those needed especially to consider who were used to the external calling of Israel in the land. It is God's calling with its hope in and with Christ where the creature disappears from view and His eternal counsels for the glory of His Son are developed for the soul, as in Eph. 1 and 4. But now in the growing declension of such as bore the name of the Lord the apostle binds together God's salvation with His holy calling. An evil time is not at all one for lowering the standard but for unveiling it and for pressing its importance.

270 The scriptural development of this must be sought in Ephesians. But I will cite from the Philippians the elaborate statement of the apostle, to shew that it was a risen glorified Christ who for him was the pattern-man. "If, by any means," he says (chap. 3:11), "I might attain to the resurrection from the dead. 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." Again, "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" — the calling ἄνω. "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." That for which Christ had apprehended him, that to which God had called him, that which Christ would accomplish by His power, that in which Christ was the pattern-man, was a heavenly state, a glorious body, not what He was as incarnate. So, in 2 Corinthians 5 "We have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. … Not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now, he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God." Paul had only known Him in glory; His gospel is the gospel of the glory. So it is not after the image of the first Adam that we are created anew at all; nor is it any infusion of divine principles into a partly fallen man, restoring him, which is contemplated by grace. All this is false. The cherubim and a flaming sword kept from the first the way of the tree of life. Death is pronounced, and maintained on all that is of the first Adam.

The apostle addresses his brethren in Christ as "partakers of the heavenly calling" (Heb. 3:1). This calling, in another scripture, is styled "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:14). And again, it is spoken of as the calling of the Father of glory (Eph. 1:17-18). In those who are the subjects of it God is to show in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace (Eph. 2:17); and in them also the Lord is to be chiefly admired in the day of the presence of His power, though that is to be a day in which all His works shall praise Him, a day of clouds of witnesses to His glory both in heaven and earth (2 Thess. 1:10-11).

These different passages clearly show that if God calls us it is because He has a purpose in His heart which He desires to gratify. Moreover we learn that the "call" involves that we are called out of one world lying in darkness, or ignorance of God, to come into the marvellous light of all that God has purposed for Christ in another world. Further, if we are called to heaven, it is that we may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. The prize of the calling on high is to be with Christ and like Christ.

But the Apostle tells us more; he not only looks abroad and sees the failure of the saints, but he looks up and sees the glory of Jesus. He sees Christ in the glory, the prize of the calling on high (Phil. 3:14). He sees that God has called us to be with Christ and like Christ in glory, and he sees the blessed end of the wilderness journey with all its sorrows and failure. With this glorious end in view, he forgets the things that are behind and presses on to the goal.

Individually, in the soul's progress, it speaks of that blessed time, in relation to each believer, as expressed by the apostle: "Forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark (or goal) for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus." No development of character, even of the new man, no fruitfulness of life here, can ever be mistaken for "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" which is the consummation of all God's thoughts and purposes; thus, most suggestively, the culmination of highest individual blessing merges in the corporate, where each individual will not only be perfectly blessed, but be in absolutely harmonious relationship with the whole family of the redeemed.

Again, as the chosen nation was partaker of an earthly position and hope, we can understand well the force of describing the believers in Christ from its midst as "partakers of a heavenly calling." Such indeed they were. They entered the new privilege not by a tie of birth but by call of God; and this, as it was from Christ in heaven, so it was to heavenly glory, bearing earthly rejection, suffering and shame, as the Epistle shows from first to last. The calling upward or high calling of Phil. 3:14 answers to it.