Just this Once -- Philippians 3:13-14

Philippians 3:13-14

"Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (NKJV)


"Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead." Paul wasn’t just talking about the past and the future. He was talking about sin and spiritual growth. How do I know this? Because he starts by saying that he doesn’t count himself to have apprehended. What hasn’t he apprehended? The "prize of the upward call of God" which literally means the benefits of salvation. Paul clearly is stating that while we cannot earn the gift of salvation, once we have received the gift, there are things that we must do in order to continue in that gift.

We are either moving toward God or moving away from Him.

Our relationship with God cannot be static; it cannot ever remain the same. We cannot think that we have matured spiritually to the point where we can rest on past experiences or fully live for Him based on what we learned yesterday. We are either moving toward Him or away from Him. Each day, each moment is an opportunity to decide whose we are. Do we belong to ourselves? Then we may choose to indulge our flesh, to do something which is neither physically nor spiritually healthy. "Well, it’s just this once," you say. One candy bar . . . one order of fries . . . one R-rated movie . . . one sexually-charged date . . . one pencil taken off someone else’s desk. "No one is really hurt. It was just this once."

"Just this once." Is there such a thing? I don’t think so. We are either moving toward God or moving away from Him. There is no such thing as "just one sin" because even that one sin moves us away from God and once we are moving in that direction, changing directions becomes difficult. Think about it. Have you ever driven in San Francisco with its horribly-inclined streets? It’s almost impossible to stop mid-block because the slope is so severe. And, many times, if you do take a chance and stop (or have to stop due to traffic), you find the car sliding backwards even if that’s not what you want it to do.

In our relationship with God, there is no static motion. We cannot stand still spiritually. We are either moving toward God or moving away from Him. We are either choosing righteousness or choosing sin. We are either pressing toward the goal of the upward call or we are disqualifying ourselves. Paul wrote:

"So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:26-27NKJV).

"So that I should not be disqualified." The word here is adokimos which translates also as "reprobate." It is the same word used in 2 Corinthians 13:5 where Paul says, " Examine yourselves to see if your faith is really genuine" (NLT). It is the marker between being truly saved and simply thinking you are. It is literally the difference between heaven and hell. Rather than believe that, because of God’s mercy and grace, we can sin over and over and still serve Him, we need to begin to live our lives as if we couldn’t even do the sin "just this once." In this fight between God and Satan, between good and evil, between righteousness and the lust of our flesh, there is no "just this once." We are either moving toward God or moving away from Him. This needs to become the litany of our lives, the decision of each moment. Are we moving toward God? Each moment needs to be lived pressing upward to His high calling.

© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. 

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Proverbs 6:20-23

“My child, keep your father’s commandment,
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
Bind them upon your heart always;
tie them around your neck.
When you walk, they will lead you;
when you lie down, they will watch over you;
and when you awake, they will talk with you.
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light,
and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,” NRSV

God’s timing is simply amazing!

I subscribe to David Wilkerson’s World Challenge Pulpit Series. Pastor Wilkerson is unlike any other contemporary preacher I have met or read. His words cut to the heart and are filled with Holy Spirit wisdom.

In the sermon I read this morning (“The Healing Power of Afflictions,” 3/31/08), Pastor Wilkerson writes:

“As painful as afflictions are, God uses them to achieve his purposes in our lives. . . . Many believers who face affliction immediately think they’re under unsanctioned satanic attack. . . . Yet, the fact is, Satan can’t lift a finger against any child of God unless the Lord allows it.”

Solomon said something very similar here: “the reproofs of discipline are the way of life.”

Reproofs of discipline. A reproof is a reprimand, an expression of sharp disapproval. In other words, it’s God’s signpost that we are heading in the wrong direction. And it can be as sharp, as strong, as compelling as needed to get us to head back in the right direction.

Reproofs can be emotionally and even physically painful.

I struggle with my weight. I will admit that it’s even to the point where food is an addiction for me. And so, in the last few days, I’ve been journaling what I eat. It not only has kept me on track, but it has shown me how much I focus on, think about food. And while there are physical reasons for my problems with my weight, I also haven’t been willing to discipline my body to the point of “reproofs.”

Reproofs of discipline are the way of life.

God’s Word can be such a comfort. He’s the One I run to when I’m in distress, when I’m confused, when life is out of order. But God never intended for His Word to solely be Charlie Brown’s “warm blanket.” His Word is also intended to be that reproof of discipline which turns us away from that sin we’ve embraced and back into His holy presence. The problem is, we like His Word as a comfort, but we don’t really want to be reproved. We want to be loved, but not disciplined. We want to be embraced, but not corrected.

But the reproofs of discipline are the way of life!

Most of us had our childhood inoculations and gave them to our children as well. Regardless of the current controversy regarding them, the fact is, inoculations were developed to ward off greater threats of serious illness: polio, TB, the herpes virus. In other words, we permitted—even embraced—the temporary pain of the injection in order to turn our bodies away from the path of illness and toward the path of health, of life.

Reproofs can be heavenly inoculations. There are sins in our lives, hidden deep, seemingly small and innocuous, that lurk just below the service. In many cases, we have fed these sins, cultivated them, embraced them until they are comfortable, familiar, even welcomed. And yet each and every sin, regardless of how innocent it may appear, is part of Satan’s plan to destroy us and to win victory in our lives over the Holy Spirit. Father God will not permit it! Rather, He allows the “reproofs of discipline,” regardless of how painful they are, to turn us toward Him and to confront our sin brutally and aggressively. Every sin must be weeded out and destroyed. Righteousness and sin cannot live together.

As difficult as the task is, we must embrace His Word with both its comforts and its reproofs. As Solomon says, this is the way of life.

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. RSV

Paul has been admonishing the Corinthian church for allowing (even welcoming) within their midst a man who is knowingly sinning . . . and continues to sin. This is a huge deal in our churches today because we embrace, even in our leadership, those who not only have sinned in the past, but who continue to embrace their sin in one way or another. We refuse to judge them based on the scripture in Matthew 7: Judge not, that you be not judged (v. 1, RSV). But I think the reason we refuse to judge is revealing. I think we refuse to judge, not out of some sense of obedience to God’s word, but because we don’t want anyone messing around in our lives. The old saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.” We embrace sinners because we are sinners ourselves, but more than that: We don’t have to give up our own sin. By embracing the sin of others, we feel protected, justified.

Paul cuts to the heart of all this: Your boasting is not good. You might say, “Well, I don’t boast.” But by insisting that you are accepting, tolerant, basing your argument (wrongly) on Matthew 7:1, you are boasting. I am boasting when I embrace the sinner without addressing the sin in her life. There are many churches in America who define themselves as reaching out to the disenfranchised, the lost, the hurting. Unfortunately, for most of the people attending these churches, the issues of their sins is rarely addressed. “Oh, well,” you might say, “at least they are saved.” But are they? Are they truly living lives obedient to the Word of God? Paul tells in a number of places in the Word that those who embrace sin consciously and continually will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Does a sinner who chooses to sin truly love God?

Not only that, but Paul tells us here (as he has stated earlier in chapter 5) to refuse to associate with the unrepentant believer: “Cleanse out of the old leaven . . . the leaven of malice and evil.” Here Paul gives two synonyms: kakia and poneria. Think about how one uses synonyms. They are most often used to make a point, to emphasize what one wants to say. Both these words connote evilness, wickedness, maliciousness. Paul is telling us that sin, chosen over and over again, has not place within the family of God. Not within our corporate family and not within our own lives. As Father God—through scripture, through the words of another, through the soft voice of His Spirit—reveals the sin within our lives, we are to cut it out, to discard it, to abandon it completely.

Why would Paul, then, tell us to embrace “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth?” Think about it! When we turn our backs on sin, regardless of where it is found, we are being sincere in our faith. When we leave sin behind, wherever we find it, we are being truthful about being believers.

Matthew Henry states:

“Christians should be careful to keep themselves clean, as well as purge polluted members out of their society. And they should especially avoid the sins to which they themselves were once most addicted, and the reigning vices of the places and the people where they live.”

Do we avoid the sins of America, of our society, of our culture? Or do we embrace them, excuse them, justify them, ignore them? As Christians and as Americans, these are questions we need to seriously consider.