-Paul has just shared a full list of lofty yet very core spiritual aspirations: gain Christ, be found with His righteousness, know Him, know the power of His resurrection, share in His sufferings, and be resurrected. No problem. However, much of the progress towards any of these will depend on personal cooperation and effort, and thus none of them are guaranteed to those who follow Christ, at least not in this life. It should be clear that the NT authors are indeed wary of a spurious or empty faith that fizzles before the finish (cf Matthew 10.22, Matthew 24.13, Luke 8.12-15, Luke 21.19, Romans 2.6-7, Romans 8.17, 1Corinthians 9.24-27, Colossians 1.11, 2Timothy 2.12, Hebrews 3.12, Hebrews 10.36, James 1.3-4, James 2.26, Revelation 1.9). Endurance. Perseverance. Suffice it to say, salvation and perseverance go hand in hand. If you are truly having put your faith and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and the salvation of your soul, you WILL persevere until the end of your life or until Jesus returns, whichever comes first. Because if this is the case, if you ARE really in Christ and inasmuch as God was the One Who in fact put you there, God Almighty has made you an entirely new creation. Christ lives in you through His Spirit, never to leave (Hebrews 13.5). You WILL endure whatever comes your way, whether suffering or hardship or loss or persecution. Not that there won’t be temporary setbacks along the way, but generally speaking the course of your life will be up and in, closer to and more like Christ, daily putting on my spiritual running shoes and getting back out there again to pursue Christ and all that He has for me.
-And to be sure, the very salvation (and Savior) I would pursue and seize (as it were) and the very perseverance which both shows and gains me that salvation go hand in hand with having been first seized by Christ Jesus Himself. That is the order Paul gives us here. He says he was seized (grabbed, grasped, caught, apprehended) - sometime in the past - by Christ. And we have an idea of when Paul would say that took place - on the road to Damascus, when Jesus appeared to him in a blinding light and changed the course of his life (Acts 9.5). Christ in fact had a clear plan for Saul-who-would-become-Paul, to carry His Name and Message to the Gentiles, to be a conduit of His love and power and blessing to those who knew nothing of the promises and blessings of the God of Abraham, and for Paul this would involve much suffering. For all the rest of us who have likewise been seized by Christ, whether or not we go on to demonstrate resurrection power and share in Christ’s sufferings is another question, and depends to a large degree on how I run the race, on the extent to which I let go and go low and on the level of effort I put forth in actually pursuing Christ and towards seizing all that He has for me.
-But to Paul’s point, he says he hasn’t arrived yet. He has not yet fully received salvation or his Savior, he has not finished the race nor has he been fully made perfect. He has a long, long way to go. As C.S. Lewis put it, relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done. Yesterday’s pursuit and dependence and obedience do not buy me any time off today. Each and every day is a new opportunity to pursue Christ and what He wants for me, to love Him and trust Him and to rely on Him and become more like Him. And this is what that warning in Hebrews 3.12 means, not that we would be believing yesterday and unbelieving today, but rather that we would stop pursuing today and thus reveal that I was not in fact believing yesterday. We don’t want to find out that our heart is actually an unbelieving one. And so we do work out our salvation - what God has worked in - with fear and trembling, every day. Because we have not yet finished the race, we have not yet been made perfect. We continue with a heart that is humble and contrite and obedient and repentant towards God and trusting in His forgiveness through the shed blood of Christ each and every day. The pursuit, the race continues every day. And it is never finished until we take our very last God-given breath. Yes, we have a long way to go - but one day at a time. Every race, every marathon is completed one step at a time. Our job, like Paul before us, is to just press on. Keep running. Keep pursuing. Get up tomorrow with a thankful and dependent and expectant heart. And press on, up and in and closer to Jesus.
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