Forgetting What Lies Behind

On leaving the past in the past

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the Apostle Paul and to utter the words, “forgetting what lies behind” as he does in Philippians 3:13.

In Acts 26:10, Paul confesses to King Agrippa that “not only” did he “lock up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them.” In other words, Paul was complicit in the suffering and murder of many Christians. So, when he talked about “forgetting what lies behind” he must have had some of these images come to mind of dragging early Christians to court, to jail, to their deaths. And yet he found it within himself to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). That’s incredible to me. How did he ever move on from that past? Didn’t it just haunt him?

What I expect Paul to do once he is converted on the road to Damascus is to go to every Christian he ever harmed, every family of every Christian he ever voted to put to death, and make amends. Maybe he did some of that. I don’t know. The Scriptures don’t record a Reconciliation Tour. I guess it’s possible that he used some funds from his tentmaking to donate to widows whose husbands he voted to put to death. But what if he didn’t? What if he just repented to the ones he met on his missionary journeys but focused on the mission God had given him to spread the gospel?

What does that say about our ability to deal with past sins that seem insurmountable in their consequences?

I wonder if one reason we don’t see Paul on this mission of reconciliation is that some harms in life can’t be righted by us. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t an excuse to not seek reconciliation, accountability, or forgiveness. But just an acknowledgement that sometimes there are some sins we commit that have consequences that we cannot fix. Let me rephrase that because I just stumbled across an error: all sins have consequences that we cannot completely make right. And some sins we commit have consequences that are profoundly out of our hands to rein in, which is part of the evil of sin in the first place.

Paul couldn’t un-murder those innocent martyrs. He couldn’t even undo the harm of dragging them to jail. These sins had consequences that rippled through the lives of Christians throughout time.

And yet, I believe God forgave him for these sins and was provident over the consequences. I don’t think Paul could have fixed all the harm he had done if he spent every second of his life repairing the harm that he had done in those few years of Pharistical fervor. Just as Paul couldn’t pay the spiritual debt of his sins, he couldn’t correct the real-world consequences of his sins. Christ had to pay the debt. God had to be sovereign. Paul had to trust that God would work his will through the consequences of his sins to bring His glory. Paul had to trust that God was making all things new, including the consequences of his actions.

And none of this is to minimize the reality of his actions, but to acknowledge that there’s no way to pick up all the pieces of your sins. It wasn’t true for Paul, and it’s not true for you. And if you think you can manage your sins and their consequences, you’ll either run yourself ragged into scrupulosity, or become a self-righteous fool who ignores their actual sins, who doesn’t really understand how widespread the consequences spread.

In other words, there will be some sins you will commit in this life that you simply cannot even begin to make right except before God. You can’t correct, undo, fix, rectify, control, manage, or contain the consequences. They are beyond your human ability to address. There’s nothing for you to do aside from repent before God and trust him to be sovereign over the situation. Sometimes you won’t even know what those consequences will be. Time, distance, and agency prevent us from knowing what the consequences of our sins might be.

The Internet has only made this worse. Porn use is an excellent example of this phenomenon. If you allow yourself into the world of porn, the consequences of your participation can ripple beyond borders and your ability to do anything meaningful to rectify your participation. And it’s not just porn.

I haven’t dragged Christians to court or jail or to their death. But like everyone, there are parts of my past, especially my distant past I regret. Sins I look back on with shame and remorse. Things that I cannot rectify or solve. This is not unique. This is all of us.

Christians are taught that while Christ forgives us of the spiritual debt of our sins, the worldly consequences still remain. And that’s true. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think it’s also true that in those consequences, God is at work, bringing about his perfect will, making all things new. That he does not leave us in those consequences, but walks with us, sometimes guiding us toward reconciliation and sometimes teaching us to accept our inability to change the past and our need to trust in him and move on. Learning to tell the difference is a matter of wisdom and prudence.

The full context of Paul’s words in Philippians 3:13-14 give me hope for tomorrow:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

For all of us, there will be sins and regrets that we need to forget, for it “lies behind,” even if it is as dark and serious as murdering your brother in Christ, and “strain forward to what lies ahead.” The here-and-now reality of the world God has given us demands our attention. There are obligations and duties and loves we have right now that God is calling us toward. And they are no easy tasks; they require striving as in a race. There is a letting-go here. An acceptance of things past as under God’s loving, sovereign care.

Because the prize is infinitely great. The prize is not behind us in pulling together all the scattered fragments of our sins. The prize is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, the hope of the one who will bring justice and peace and righteousness.

It seems to me that part of the obligation for the Christian is to learn to live with consequences of sins which they cannot contain and cannot rectify and perhaps cannot know, and to learn to trust in God for the work of redeeming all things in his will, choosing instead to forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.

Easier said than done. I pray that God gives you peace over your past so that you may look to the riches which lie before you in Christ.

by Alan Noble / Substack

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