Philippians 3:12–14

Philippians 3:12 — "Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect"

Paul opens with a striking act of self-correction. Having just described, in verses 8–11, his supreme desire to know Christ and share in His resurrection, he immediately guards against triumphalism. The verb elabón ("obtained") looks back to the prize mentioned at the end of Philippians 3:14 — Paul has not yet grasped it. More theologically loaded is teteleiōmai ("made perfect" or "been perfected"), from the root teleioō, the same word used in Hebrews 12:23 for the "spirits of just men made perfect." This is not a casual disclaimer of holiness; it is Paul asserting that full teleíōsis — the complete conformity to Christ's death and resurrection hoped for in Philippians 3:10 — remains an eschatological reality, not yet fully possessed in this life. Yet the tension is immediately resolved in the second half of the verse: "I press on, that I may take hold of that for which also I was taken hold of by Christ Jesus." The Greek katalabanō ("take hold of," "apprehend," "seize") is used twice — first for Paul's active striving, then for Christ's prior, decisive act of seizing Paul. The structure is crucial: Paul's pursuit is entirely grounded in and responsive to Christ's prior initiative. On the road to Damascus, Christ apprehended Paul first (Acts 9:3–6); Paul now races to lay hold of the fullness of what that transforming encounter was meant to accomplish. Grace precedes and enables effort.

Philippians 3:13 — "Forgetting the things which are behind"

Paul narrows the focus further: "one thing I do" (hen de). This singular concentration echoes the contemplative focus of Psalm 27:4 ("one thing I ask of the Lord") and anticipates the undivided heart of monastic spirituality. "Forgetting the things which are behind" does not mean moral amnesia or denial of one's history. In context, "things behind" refers both to the religious credentials Paul listed and renounced in verses 5–8 (circumcision, Pharisaic zeal, blameless legal righteousness) and, more broadly, to any past attainment, failure, or stage of growth that might arrest the runner mid-race. The spiritual peril is the same in both cases: looking backward causes one to stumble. "Stretching forward" translates epekteinómenos, a vivid athletic present participle suggesting the full extension of a sprinter breaking through the finish line, torso lunging ahead. This single Greek word became one of the most generative terms in the Eastern Christian mystical tradition.

Philippians 3:14 — "The high calling of God in Christ Jesus"

The Greek brabéion ("prize") is specifically the winner's award — a laurel wreath in ancient games — as opposed to the race itself. Paul uses the same word in 1 Corinthians 9:24. The "high calling" (anō klēsis) is literally the "upward calling," the summons from above, which is simultaneously God's vocation given in baptism and the eschatological summons to the fullness of glory. In Christ Jesus — this phrase anchors everything. The prize is not an abstraction; it is the person of Christ, the beatific communion with the Trinity made possible through the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery.

Typological and Spiritual Senses

At the typological level, Paul's race recalls Israel's desert pilgrimage toward the Promised Land — a journey requiring the constant abandonment of Egypt (the past) in favor of the inheritance ahead. At the spiritual sense (sensus allegoricus), Paul's athletic image maps the whole arc of the soul's journey toward God: initial conversion (being seized by Christ), ongoing purgation (forgetting the past), illumination (stretching forward), and ultimate union (the prize). The patristic tradition, especially Gregory of Nyssa, would develop this tripartite structure into a comprehensive mystical theology.

Catholic tradition brings a uniquely rich interpretive lens to this passage, particularly on the interplay between grace and freedom and on the nature of Christian perfection.

Grace and Cooperation: The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that justification is not a one-time forensic declaration but an ongoing process of interior renewal: "Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man" (CCC 1989). Paul's verse 12 perfectly encapsulates this: the Christian is already justified (seized by Christ) yet not yet perfected (still pressing on). This dynamic is precisely what the Council of Trent defined against both quietist passivity and Pelagian self-sufficiency — that humans cooperate with grace that is entirely God's gift (Trent, Session VI, Decree on Justification, Ch. 5).

Gregory of Nyssa's Epektasis: The great Cappadocian Father built his entire mystical theology around epekteinómenos (v. 13), coining the term epéktasis — the soul's endless, joyful, never-satisfied stretching toward the inexhaustible God. In his Life of Moses and Homilies on the Song of Songs, Gregory argues that perfection in this life is precisely the capacity for endless growth into the divine life. This is not a frustrating incompleteness but a beatifying dynamism, since God Himself is infinite.

Saint Augustine echoes this in his Confessions (I.1): "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You." The restlessness Paul describes in verse 14 is, for Augustine, the hallmark of a properly ordered soul.

Saint Thomas Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 184) uses Philippians 3:12–14 when discussing the nature of Christian perfection, arguing that charity, the bond of perfection, admits of degrees in via (on the way), and that striving (nisus) toward its fullness is itself the mark of the perfect Christian. Pope Francis, in Gaudete et Exsultate (§17), quotes this passage directly in his call to universal holiness, noting that "we are all called to be holy" and that sanctity is not a finished achievement but a daily recommitment.

Contemporary Catholic life is beset by two opposite temptations that Paul directly addresses. The first is spiritual complacency — the assumption that one's sacramental life, moral record, or theological knowledge constitutes an arrival. Paul, who could claim more religious credentials than most (vv. 5–6), explicitly rejects any such resting on laurels. The second temptation is paralysis by the past — allowing past sin, failure, spiritual dryness, or even former spiritual highs to dominate one's present orientation. Paul's "forgetting what lies behind" is not an endorsement of cheap grace but a pastoral liberation: the Sacrament of Reconciliation is precisely God's mechanism for making such forgetting possible, releasing the penitent to "stretch forward" without the weight of guilt.

Practically, this passage calls every Catholic to identify what, concretely, is their "one thing" (v. 13). Is daily prayer consistently the organizing center of life, or do a hundred competing commitments fragment the sprint into a shuffle? Paul's athletic metaphor also confronts the cultural myth of the spiritual "highlight reel" — that faith should produce constant feelings of consolation. The runner strains; consolation is the prize at the finish, not the fuel mid-race. The fuel is the prior, irreversible fact that Christ has already seized us.