Philippians 3:13-14 Commentary

Paul — apostle, church planter, author of a third of the New Testament — opens this passage by admitting he has not arrived. 'I count not myself to have apprehended.' After decades of ministry, imprisonment, visions, and church-planting across the Roman world, he still describes himself as someone in pursuit rather than someone in possession.

What follows is a three-part strategy, and Paul introduces it with a phrase that rules out everything else: 'this one thing I do.' Not among the several things. One.

First, forgetting those things which are behind. Second, reaching forth unto those things which are before. Third, pressing toward the mark for the prize. The image is a runner in a Greek stadium — head down, arms driving, body leaning past its own centre of gravity toward a finish line he can see.

The verse is often quoted as a motivational line about leaving the past behind. That is part of it, but the sentence does not stop there. Paul is not describing recovery from failure; he is describing the permanent posture of a mature Christian life. Forward-leaning, unsatisfied, single-minded, still running.

Philippians 3 begins with a warning against those who put confidence in the flesh, and then Paul does something unexpected — he proves he could out-qualify all of them. Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee, zealous, blameless under the law (3:4-6).

Then verse 7: 'But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.' Verse 8 goes further — he counts them 'but dung, that I may win Christ.' The Greek word is deliberately crude.

So by the time we reach verse 13, Paul has already discarded his pre-conversion achievements. What is remarkable is that he now discards his post-conversion ones too. The 'things which are behind' that he is forgetting include not only Saul the persecutor, but Paul the apostle — the churches planted, the sermons preached, the sufferings endured. None of it counts as arrival.

He is writing from a Roman prison, probably around AD 61-62, to a church he loved deeply. He is chained, aging, and facing possible execution — and he describes himself as a runner.

καταλαμβάνω (katalambanō), 'apprehended' — to seize, to grasp completely, to take hold of and make one's own. The perfect tense here means Paul has not reached a settled state of possession. Notice verse 12 uses the same word in reverse: he presses on 'that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.' Christ has fully grasped Paul; Paul is still catching up.

ἐπιλανθανόμενος (epilanthanomenos), 'forgetting' — a present participle, meaning continuous action: continually forgetting. It does not mean amnesia. In Greek usage it means to disregard, to no longer let something exert influence. Paul remembers his past clearly — he recounts it in this very chapter — but he refuses to let it govern him.

ἐπεκτεινόμενος (epekteinomenos), 'reaching forth' — a vivid double-compound: to stretch oneself out toward. It describes a sprinter's torso extended past his legs at the tape, straining beyond his own stability. Nothing casual survives in this word.

διώκω (diōkō), 'press' — to pursue, to chase down, to hunt. It is the same verb the New Testament uses for persecution, and Paul used it of himself in verse 6: 'concerning zeal, persecuting the church.' The intensity he once aimed at Christians he now aims at Christ.

σκοπός (skopos), 'mark' — the goal, the target one keeps in view. English 'scope' descends from it. In the stadium it was the marker at the end of the track that runners fixed their eyes on.

βραβεῖον (brabeion), 'prize' — the victor's award, handed down by the brabeus, the judge who presided over the games from an elevated seat. Paul uses the same word in 1 Corinthians 9:24.

ἄνω κλῆσις (anō klēsis), 'high calling' — literally the upward calling. Some translations render it 'heavenward call.' It may allude to the winner being summoned up to the judge's platform to receive the wreath.

This is the most quoted and most misused half of the passage, so it is worth being precise.

Paul is not commanding spiritual amnesia. Scripture repeatedly commands remembering — remember the Sabbath, remember the Lord's death, remember the way the LORD led you. Paul himself recounts his conversion three times in Acts. Biblical forgetting is not erasure of memory; it is the removal of a memory's power to determine the present.

Two categories of 'things behind' are in view.

Past failures. Paul had approved the stoning of Stephen and hunted believers house to house (Acts 8:3). If any Christian had grounds to be paralysed by his record, it was him. He refuses. Guilt over what God has forgiven is a weight the runner is not required to carry.

Past successes. This is the half most readers skip. Paul lists his credentials in verses 4-6 precisely so he can throw them away. Achievements produce complacency as effectively as failures produce paralysis. A believer coasting on a conversion story from twenty years ago is as stalled as one crushed by an old sin.

The practical test is simple: does this memory make me press forward, or does it make me stop running? Anything that stops the running is behind, and Paul's answer to it is the same in both cases.

Philippi was a Roman colony, and its residents knew athletic competition well. Paul's readers would have pictured the stadion — a straight sprint, no lanes, no second place worth naming.

Several details in the metaphor repay attention.

A runner cannot look backward. Turning the head breaks the line of the body and costs speed. Paul's 'forgetting' is not primarily an emotional discipline; it is a mechanical necessity of running well.

A runner fixes on one mark. The skopos is a single point. Divided attention produces a divided stride. Hence 'this one thing I do' — the singular is the whole argument.

A runner strains beyond comfort. Epekteinomenos describes a body pushed past its balance point. Paul does not present the Christian life as a stroll of gradual improvement; he presents it as effort.

The prize is awarded, not earned. The brabeion came from the judge. Paul's straining does not purchase salvation — chapter 3 verse 9 is explicit that his righteousness is 'not mine own... but that which is through the faith of Christ.' He runs because he has been apprehended, not in order to be.

Philippians 3:13-14 is one of the clearest places in the New Testament where grace and effort sit in the same sentence without contradiction.

Verse 12 supplies the foundation: Paul presses on 'that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.' The initiative was Christ's. On the Damascus road Paul was seized, not recruited. Everything after that is a response to a grip already established.

The same logic governs the whole letter. Two chapters earlier, Paul writes 'work out your own salvation with fear and trembling' and then immediately, 'for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure' (2:12-13). Divine work does not cancel human effort; it grounds it.

This rules out two errors at once. Passivity — the assumption that since salvation is by grace, growth requires nothing — is refuted by diōkō, a verb of aggressive pursuit. Legalism — the assumption that effort earns standing — is refuted by verse 9, where Paul's righteousness is explicitly not his own.

There is also a doctrine of Christian maturity buried here. The most mature believer in the New Testament is the one who most clearly denies having arrived. Spiritual danger begins the moment a person believes he has apprehended. Sanctification is progressive; it terminates in glory, not in this life (1 John 3:2).

1. Name the thing behind you. Most stalled Christians can identify it in a sentence — a failure they replay, or a season of usefulness they have retired on. Say it out loud, then decide it does not get a vote in this year.

2. Reduce to one thing. Paul's phrase is 'this one thing I do,' not 'these several priorities I balance.' Ask what a single-minded pursuit of Christ would remove from your calendar, and remove one of them this week.

3. Define the mark. A runner cannot strain toward a goal he has not located. What does obedience to God look like in your life over the next twelve months, concretely enough to be measured?

4. Expect strain. Epekteinomenos does not describe comfort. If nothing in your discipleship costs effort — no discipline of prayer, giving, service, or repentance that stretches you — you are not running, you are standing at the line.

5. Refuse arrival. The moment you feel you have mastered the Christian life is the moment Paul would tell you to check your position. Maturity sounds like 'I count not myself to have apprehended.'

6. Remember who grabbed whom. You are not running to be caught. You are running because you already have been. That single fact is the difference between exhaustion and endurance.

Philippians 3:13-14 gives the Christian life a shape: past released, eyes forward, body straining, one goal, one prize, given by a God who took hold first.

Paul wrote it in chains, near the end of a life most believers would consider finished work, and still called himself a runner mid-race. That is the standard the passage sets. Not achievement, but direction. Not arrival, but pursuit.

The question the verse leaves is not whether you have accomplished much. It is whether you are still leaning forward.