Scripture describes salvation not as a singular, once and for all moment. Rather, salvation consists of the Spirit’s sovereign work of regeneration (the new birth), sanctification, and final glorification. The initial work of regeneration may be seen as a coin. On the one side is the Spirit’s sovereign work. On the other side is our response of repentance and faith through which we are justified before God. Glorification is the eternal state of peace and joy in the blessed presence of God in glorified bodies, inhabiting a new creation.

In Philippians three, Paul’s emphasis is on that middle stage of salvation in which day-by-day God progressively sanctifies us, or conforms us into the image of Christ. And while we remain passive in the Spirit’s work of regeneration, sanctification involves effort. This is not to say that we are justified by grace but sanctified by works. However, we are justified by grace through a living faith. The Apostle Paul, the great champion of God’s free grace tells us here that in this life we will need to “press on” toward that prize to which God has called us upward in Christ Jesus.

Though Paul presses on toward this prize and calls us to join him in that same pursuit, he is not suggesting that we may gain Christ by virtue of our own merit. Christ has already made us his own (vs. 12). And so the striving that Paul describes here is a sanctified effort. It is a straining forward that is carried along by the knowledge that Christ has graciously saved us. Those whom Christ calls, he keeps. “My sheep hear my voice…I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).