We are invited to press forward until we are able to grasp that for which we have been grasped by the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul does not count being converted to Christ, being born-again, speaking in tongues, and working in the ministry as being anything more than Christian basics. The wealth of glory in Christ available to the believer goes far beyond the basics!

There are few if any of us who have laid hold on Christ to the degree to which we have been called. Are we to wink at the challenge and compare ourselves among ourselves?

Indeed we are not! We are to forget what we have achieved to this point. We are to acknowledge that God never commands us to do anything but that He stands ready with all the power and wisdom (grace) we ever will need to perfectly and completely fulfill all of His expectations concerning us. We are to reach forward toward the horizon that the Holy Spirit is revealing to us as an individual.

We are to fan our first love into a consuming fire. We must prepare ourselves to be cut to the bone and to the marrow of the bone. Our resolve must harden as the finest steel. God's knife shall prune. It shall circumcise what is useless and dead in our personality.

We are to begin once more in Christ with the zeal and zest of the newly converted. We are to return to our first love and do our first works. We are to know nothing. We are to be as a child although we may have been in the ministry for several decades.

We may be satisfied with our present attainment in Christ. We are to remain satisfied no longer. We are to ask God for our own mark, our own goal. We do not doubt that Christ will present us with a clear goal. We do not doubt He will match our total sincerity with total sincerity.

There is something terribly sincere about Calvary!

Having been shown that clear goal, that definite mark, we are to press forward with every fiber of our personality in order that we may arrive at that goal. We do not beat the air. We are running to win. We can gain the crown of glory, through the grace of Christ, if we are willing to bring our flesh under subjection to the Holy Spirit; if we are willing to be made weak in order that the wisdom and strength of Christ may be poured into us—and through us.

What should be true of each member of the Body of Christ who is mature in his walk in Christ?

He is to have the attitude of Paul, the attitude of stretching forward in pursuit of an intimate knowledge of Christ; the attitude of receiving His incorruptible, eternal resurrection life; the attitude of sharing His sufferings.

What will happen to each saint who has an attitude different from this?

God will bring him or her to the attitude that Paul is expressing here.

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you (Philippians 3:15). (from A Study Guide for the Book of Philippians)