Read Philippians 3:12–14
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains.” (Acts 9:1–2 NLT)
I have always had an affinity for Paul.
Not the Paul polished by centuries of Christianity into a nearly untouchable saint. Nor the Paul some would rather reduce to a sinner, remembered primarily for the violence and persecution of his past. I am drawn to Paul the man—the complicated human being who somehow embodied both.
Because before Paul became one of Christianity’s most profound voices for the radical love and grace of Jesus Christ, he was Saul of Tarsus.
And Saul could be terrifying.
He was a Diaspora Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a Pharisee, educated in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, and fiercely committed to what he believed faithfulness to God required. He also moved within the wider Greco-Roman world and possessed Roman citizenship. Paul belonged to overlapping worlds, and those worlds would later profoundly shape his ministry.
But Saul wasn’t wandering around searching for meaning or wondering what he should do with his life. He believed he already knew. He was so certain of his righteousness that he participated in the persecution of people he believed were dangerously wrong.
Acts introduces him approving of Stephen’s execution. Soon afterward, Saul is entering homes and dragging followers of Jesus away to prison. Eventually, he heads toward Damascus carrying authority to arrest followers of the Way and bring them back to Jerusalem.
Then Christ meets him on the road, and everything changes.
But Saul does not simply disappear and some pristine Saint Paul take his place.
The man who becomes one of Christianity’s most profound voices for grace remains the same man who once participated in violent religious persecution. Paul carries that history with him. He remembers it. He writes about it. He knows both the terrifying damage religious certainty can cause and the astonishing grace of discovering that even the person who caused that damage is not beyond redemption.
That is the Paul who fascinates me. Not sinner or saint, but sinner and saint—a human being capable of terrible harm and extraordinary faithfulness. A violent persecutor transformed into a passionate proponent of the very Christ—and the very people—he once persecuted.
And Paul keeps moving.
The man who once traveled from place to place trying to stop the Jesus movement eventually travels throughout the Roman world proclaiming Christ, forming communities of faith, enduring opposition, suffering beatings and imprisonment, and continuing forward anyway.
By the time Paul writes to the Philippians, there is quite a lot behind him. He is writing from prison, although scholars continue to debate exactly which imprisonment. Rome has traditionally been the leading possibility, while Caesarea and Ephesus have also been proposed. What matters for Philippians is that Paul is confined, his future uncertain, and the possibility of death very real.
If ever there were a moment to look backward and declare the journey complete, this was it.
Paul could remember Damascus, churches planted, lives changed, miles traveled, friendships formed, some other friendships ended, suffering endured, and a life radically transformed by Christ. Yet Paul says he hasn’t arrived.
Instead, he writes: “I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…”
Paul is not telling us to erase our histories. He spends plenty of time remembering his own. In this very chapter, he recounts who he was, what he once valued, and how encountering Christ changed his understanding of it all.
Paul remembers the past. He simply refuses to live there.
The past can teach us, shape us, wound us, humble us, and remind us of God’s faithfulness. It can show us how far we have come and warn us against becoming who we once were. But yesterday cannot be the place where faithfulness happens today.
Neither can tomorrow.
That can be easy to miss when Paul speaks so passionately about pressing toward what lies ahead. We can become so fixated on the future that we treat the present as little more than a waiting room. Someday I will serve. Someday I will forgive. Someday I will speak. Someday the church will change. Someday I will finally become who God wants me to be.
But Paul is not sitting in prison waiting for someday. He is writing, encouraging, teaching, praying, witnessing, and loving people now.
That may be the paradox at the heart of moving forward with God: we reach toward what lies ahead by living faithfully in the present.
Yesterday is beyond our reach. Tomorrow has not arrived. God has given us today.
That has been the movement beneath every God beginning we have explored in this series. God calls, accompanies, opens doors, closes others, creates something new, gathers unlikely people into one Body, and asks us to leave some things on the shore. But none of those beginnings was ever meant to become a place where we could settle permanently and announce that the work was finished.
Paul refuses to make that claim even after everything he has experienced. He has not arrived.
Neither have we.
That is not failure. It is discipleship.
A God beginning is not a finish line disguised as a starting point. It is an invitation into a life continually being transformed by Christ, and that transformation happens in the present. It happens in the conversation we choose to have, the person we decide to notice, the injustice we refuse to ignore, the forgiveness we offer, the truth we finally speak, the tradition we are willing to reconsider, the neighbor we welcome, and the work immediately before us.
We can honor yesterday without living there. We can hope for tomorrow without escaping into it. And we can live faithfully today while trusting that God is already preparing what lies ahead.
Sixteen devotions ago, we began talking about God beginnings. Now we have reached the end.
Except, of course, we haven’t.
Every ending eventually becomes part of what lies behind us, and every new beginning eventually becomes the present in which we are called to live.
Remember what God has done. Look toward what God may yet do. But live faithfully where God has placed you today, and from here, keep following Christ toward what lies ahead.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Faith remembers yesterday, hopes for tomorrow, and follows Christ today.PRAYER
God of every beginning, keep me from becoming trapped in yesterday or lost in tomorrow. Teach me to live faithfully today, trusting you with whatever lies ahead. Amen.
Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).