1. PHILIPPIANS FOR TIMES LIKE THESE #17 – Striving For Perfection

2. WHAT IS PERFECTION?  Last thing you remember calling “perfect”?  Felix Felicis – Horace Slughorn’s two perfect days.  As Christians we are supposed to be perfect. What does it mean? How?

3. PAUL’S STAND ON PERFECTON  Philippians 3:12 – “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”  Reference is to attaining the resurrection from the dead.

4. A LIFELONG STRUGGLE  Paul states he hasn’t yet obtained that perfection.  No view of “once saved always saved”  1 Corinthians 9:24-27 – “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win….Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air, but I discipline my body and make it my slave….”

5. TWO MEANINGS OF PERFECT  In vs. 12, PERFECT indicates the eternal perfection awarded by God when we reach heaven.  Ephesians 1:4 – “ …just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him....”

6. HEBREWS 5:9  “And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation….”  Hebrews 12:23 – “…to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect….”

7. WHAT IS OUR GOAL?  Pressing on to seize that for which we were seized!  1 Corinthians 6:20 – “For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”

8. FORGETTING AND REACHING  3:13-14 – “Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

9. DISPOSING OF OLD BAGGAGE  Forgetting what lies behind…  Our memories are amazing things.  PBS – Memory Hackers – science just now learning something about how to make the mind forget something.

10. ACCEPTING GOD’S FORGIVENESS  What did Paul have to forget?  We are charged with letting the past remain in the past.  Past failures as well as past successes. Each day a day for pressing on to the prize.

11. THE RACE – HEBREWS 12:1-2  Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

12. RUNNING THE RACE WELL  RACE = AGON – from which we get our word AGONY.  Christianity is a challenging race. It takes strong, determined people who won’t back down.

13. FORWARD WITH NO REVERSE  3:15-16 --Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

14. MEANING OF PERFECT IN VS. 15  Spiritual perfection from union with Christ  Hebrews 10:14 -- For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

15. 1 JOHN 4:16-17  “…God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He so also are we in the world.”

16. LIVING BY THE STANDARD  Paul challenges the church with holding on to the standard to which we have attained.  That standard seems to be striving for perfection.  Don’t back down.  Don’t give up!