Paul's extraordinary confession — that he has not yet attained, that he presses forward toward something that has already seized him — contains a psychological paradox worth examining outside any doctrinal framework. These reflections explore what it means, in terms of inner experience, to be pursued by the very thing one pursues, and why the act of relinquishment Paul and Peter both describe is not moral sacrifice but a shift in the center of gravity of the whole personality. This is psychology dressed in ancient language, and it asks to be read that way.
First reading
From the letter of Paul to the Philippians — Philippians 3:8-14
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Gospel
From the Gospel of Matthew — Matthew 19:27-29
Then Peter spoke up and said to him, "Look, we have left everything behind and followed you — what then will be ours?"
And Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, you who have followed me, when the world is made new and the Son of Man takes his seat on the throne of his glory, you too shall sit on twelve thrones, passing judgment over the twelve tribes of Israel.
And everyone who has given up homes, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times as much, and will come into possession of life without end."
— Interpretation —
Let us begin with something that is easy to pass over in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, though it is perhaps the most remarkable thing he ever wrote. He says: I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Read that again slowly. He does not say he is chasing something that is running away from him. He says he is trying to lay hold of that which has already laid hold of him. The pursuer is already caught. The seeker has already been found. And yet the effort — the pressing forward, the reaching — remains necessary. This is not a contradiction. It is a description of what actually happens in the inner life when a man begins to awaken.
There is a moment — and many people have known it without possessing any theological language for it — when one senses that something higher is calling. Not from outside, not from the sky, but from within one’s own being, from a place that is both utterly intimate and utterly unfamiliar. One feels apprehended. Seized. And yet one cannot simply rest in that seizure. One must move toward it, press toward it, as Paul says. The calling does not do our work for us. It makes our work possible.
Now let us consider what Paul says he has left behind. He counts all things but loss. He calls them dung — skubalon, the Greek is quite blunt — in comparison with what he calls “the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.” What are these things he has discarded? He tells us plainly: his own righteousness. His standing in the law. His credentials, his tribe, his circumcision on the eighth day, his status as a Pharisee. Everything that constituted his identity as a man of the first nature — everything that said “I am this, I am that” — he now regards as refuse.
This is not humility in the ordinary sense. It is not the posture of a man who says, “I am nothing,” and then waits to be told he is something after all. It is something far more radical. Paul is describing the actual experience of a man whose center of gravity has shifted. The old self — with its carefully constructed righteousness, its knowledge of the law, its place in the hierarchy — has become weightless. Not because it was destroyed by force, but because something of incomparably greater weight appeared.
And now we come to Peter’s question in the Gospel, which on the surface seems rather crude. “We have left everything — what then will be ours?” It is the question of the merchant. The haggler. What is my return on this investment? And yet Christ does not rebuke him. He answers him. Why?
Because Peter’s question, though it comes from the natural man — from the part of us that calculates and bargains — touches on something real. There is a legitimate question buried inside the crude one: Is what I am moving toward real? Will it sustain me? Is there life in it?
And Christ’s answer is extraordinary. He does not say, “You will be rewarded in heaven after you die.” He says something far stranger. He speaks of a palingenesia — a regeneration, a making new of all things — and he says that those who have left houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children, lands, will receive a hundredfold. Not different things. A hundredfold of what was left.
What can this mean? If we take it literally, it is absurd. A hundred mothers? A hundred houses? But if we understand that Christ is speaking in the language of inner meaning, something opens up. When a man begins to detach from his mechanical relationship to life — from the possessiveness, the identification, the clinging that binds him to people and places and things as though they were extensions of his own ego — something remarkable happens. He does not lose those things. He begins, for the first time, to actually have them. He can love his brother when he no longer needs his brother to confirm his identity. He can inhabit his house when his house is no longer a fortress against the world.
The hundredfold is not addition. It is transformation of relationship. It is seeing with new eyes what was always there.
Paul presses toward the mark. He has not arrived. He says so explicitly. And this is itself part of the teaching. The new man is never a finished product admiring himself in the mirror. He is always in motion, always reaching forth, always forgetting what is behind — not out of amnesia, but because the past self, the old righteousness, has no weight anymore.
What apprehends us is always ahead. And we, pressed toward it, discover that the running itself is the life.
Scripture: Unified English Version — an original rendering synthesized from the King James and New American Bible translations
