The river of forgetfulness.
Paul has sketched in the preceding verses what we may call his spiritual programme. Much of the attainment lies before him still, so much, in fact, that he lives in the future instead of in the past. His life is a race towards a goal. Now, just as in a race the runner forgets the ground gone over in his occupation with the remainder and the goal, so, in the spiritual life, there is a forgetfulness essential to progress. There is a river of Lethe in the city of God, which the prize-winners must drink if they are to run as giants refreshed. Let us study for a moment or two this river of forgetfulness.
I. THE MEMORY OF PAST SINS AND FAILURES MAY ONLY REPRODUCE THEM, 12, 13.) Memory is a precious gift; without it progress would be impossible. It is memory which enables us to carry on the advantages of past ages to the coming time. But the misery is that we burden memory with thoughts and feelings which cannot help, but hinder our future development. It is these thoughts and feelings which we must learn to forget. We content ourselves with mentioning here two.
1. Sins. Brooding over sin is a very unhealthy process. It is not the self-examination God recommends. It only reproduces and increases sin. Repentance is a grace which sorrows over sins as offenses against God which must not be repeated. We must not allow repentance, therefore, to be turned into repining. But can we safely forget past sins? Yes; if we come to the blood of Jesus and get washed therein, we may with safety forget our past sins, so far as the remembrance of them would detain us from a better record in time to come.
2. Failures. These, too, may be remembered so as to quench all hope of improvement. We may regulate our hope by the probabilities of the past, like calculations based upon statistics. But there is one factor in the spiritual life, the Spirit of God, who can put all past experience to shame and silence. Hence we are encouraged not to regulate our hope by the failures of the past, but by Lethean grace to face the future as if we had a successful record behind us. To translate a paragraph from a modern French author: "Feeble natures live in griefs instead of changing them into the apophthegms of experience. They saturate themselves with them and use them to retrace their steps daily into past misfortunes. To forget is the grand secret of strong and creative natures—to forget as Nature does, who never regards herself as passe, but recommences every hour the mysteries of her indefatigable births (enfantements)."
II. THE MEMORY OF PAST SUCCESSES AND ATTAINMENTS MAY DETAIN US FROM MORE SPLENDID TRIUMPHS. (Philippians 3:12-14.) The temptation is to make the past the standard and so to cut down the possibilities of the present and the future. But, as it has been well said, "It would be better to forget our whole life, sins and all, than to look back with a sense of satisfaction." Contentment with the past is fatal to all progress. Christianity never meant us to dote upon a golden age behind us, but to expect a golden age to come. Hence we must forget past attainments and successes and forge ahead. It is the looking back that endangers the climber who is passing upwards. His one hope of reaching the summit is by forgetting the things behind him and "grinding" on.
III. BY THIS POWER OF FORGETFULNESS WE SECURE PROPER CONCENTRATION OF CHRISTIAN PURPOSE. (Philippians 3:13.) For it is essential to enthusiasm to have our nature unified into a single glorious purpose. Hence Paul could say, "This one thing I do." He would not allow the past to distract him from proper concentration. One purpose of perfection dominated his whole life and conduct. Hence his draughts of the Lethean river fitted him for the sublime and single purpose of attaining the ideal of Christ. The soul who refuses to be distracted by the past, and sets himself steadily to fulfill the mission God has given him, will find in his concentration the secret of power.
IV. WHEN CHURCH MEMBERS FOLLOW UP THIS PRINCIPLE OF FORGETTING THE PAST, THEY COME TO SEE EYE TO EYE IN THE END. (Philippians 3:15, Philippians 3:16.) Paul advises the Philippians to be "thus minded," that is, to unite in forgetting the past, and if in other things they do not see eye to eye as yet, they will come to unity at last. It is a most important principle to follow. When individuals fall out, we advise them to "let bygones be bygones," and begin again. This is exactly Paul's idea. There seems to have been some dissension in Philippi, as verse 2 of next chapter shows. Here is Paul's recommendation: "Forget the things behind." It is upon the past our squabbles are built. Take away the memory and then we can begin afresh. It would thus seem that the city of God could ill spare this river of forgetfulness. Indeed, it is only in the city of God that it flows in crystal purity and can be drunk without danger. There are muddy streams which ingenuity provides, intoxicants which rob mankind through the senses of their memory; but the waking-time comes, and the furies are afoot once more. In the Lethe of God, on the contrary, we may drink and forget a painful, imperfect past, so far as this would keep us from a nobler future. "God," says Vinet, "in the ineffable power of his Spirit, makes us date from where he pleases. He separates us from that which was ourselves. He creates a new man, to which the old one is a stranger. For him there is no crime that cannot be blotted out, nor any restitution impossible; for him there is no time flown on without recall, no destruction, nor any manner of death. The past can swallow nothing up." Let us, then, judiciously cultivate this forgetfulness, and make the past the subordinate thing Christian progress requires it to be.—R.M.E.