Phillipians 3:13

​“I don’t think I got but this one thing: that I should get more—should always be getting more Christ—His righteousness.”
v11-12: to get righteousness from God IS to get running after more righteousness.  Receiving this type of righteousness—true righteousness—is bound up with the pursuit of it. It is not, however, getting any other type of righteousness—which is false righteousness; which is the righteousness of law; or any system, phrase or three step doctrine through which one which gets something—even if the thing is what many call righteousness.  As if opening the door of Salvation is the goal when Salvation unto righteousness is the place one begins to live when he walks beyond it.  The other is inherently a kind of self-righteousness because the moment one gets it, he got what he wanted—he has it and so has the luxury to pause and go to lunch, or go back, or go anywhere else but back there. But the moment one has Christ’s righteousness, he doesn’t have something as if he has a thing—he has something rather like he has a beautiful motion or a golden horizon—the righteousness of Christ beckons to him, calls him forth because it is alive; as alive as Christ is alive; because Christ’s righteousness is Christ himself.  It speaks to his soul.  It is something he may have  freely because (and only because) he must have more! Any other kind of thing one calls righteousness—if it ends at the beginning, stops where it starts, allows for catching even a breath of unrighteousness; for a time of “study” and pursuit of other things; for lazily wandering around denominations; for taking his soul out for an occasional weekend 5K the seminarian calls Sanctification, but at a pace only the most lazy, inexperienced, or false could believe is an actual race—is not the righteousness from God. It is not what Jesus Christ was up to.   Jesus was running a dead-sprint of goodness. 


Once anyone has a thing as boring as a doctrine he never intends to keep; the fire he warms himself by he soon forgets.