3:12
Paul is not presenting himself as the “finished article” or someone who has already made it. Rather, he is describing the road that he is on, the direction in which he is travelling. There may have been some who claimed to have made it. And there have always been groups that have sprung up every now and then claiming some sort of sinless perfectionism. They never last long, because the absurdity and hypocrisy of their claim usually becomes obvious very quickly. Also Paul does not want the Philippians to become discouraged, but to join him in pressing “on to make it [their] own”. While sinless perfectionism is usually an easily identifiable piece of nonsense, subtler forms can arise. Any individual who claims to have made it in some way can make others feel guilty, and thus seek to establish some form of control over them.
3:13
Paul emphasises that he has not already made it, or “made it my own”. What he does do is forget what was in the past, in his case all his Jewish heritage, but only in the sense of the way he once sought to establish his own righteousness. In a more general sense he continued to value his Jewish heritage. This also involved forgetting the way that he once persecuted the church. Instead, “he strained forward to what lies ahead”. The Philippians were not to be weighed down by past failures.
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