I. The past has its uses. Not for nothing did God bestow upon us memory; not for nothing do His servants recollect themselves, look back, call to mind, remember. (1) We want the past for purposes of humiliation. We might almost content ourselves, if we desired to humble the pride of any one, with saying to him, Let memory work; think of that shameful fall which you had yesterday or the day before: that broken resolution, that outbreak of temper, that irreverent worship, that omitted duty, and that secret sin thought of, not done. I can scarcely see how he can be proud whose memory is not dormant. We must not entirely forget the things that are behind, so far as our past sins are concerned, if we would be humble as we ought to be. (2) Again, we want the past for purposes of admonition and warning. It is thence that we draw experience. A man cannot live out half his days without becoming wise as to his failings and infirmities. If we were in such a sense new men every morning as that the past were a blank and the future a conjecture, we should be far worse equipped than we are for the work and the conflict of the present.
II. But there are two senses in which we ought all to forget the things that are behind. (1) It is possible that upon some the memory of the past may have an elating influence. There are those who trust too much to a past conversion and look too little to a present consistency. Hear St. Paul utterly disclaiming any such trust; telling how he forgets the things behind, and reaches forth only to the things before; nay, declaring his conviction that he might even preach to others, and yet himself be a castaway. (2) But far commoner is the opposite risk; far more in number are they whom the thought of the past deeply depresses. May it not be said to such persons, Forget the things behind? When the question is of courage or cowardice, of resistance or of flight, then forget the things behind: let past falls be forgotten; let past proofs of weakness be disregarded and dismissed; put your trust in God, and in His name and strength go forward.
C. J. Vaughan, Lectures on Philippians,p. 247.
References: Philippians 3:13. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons,p. 4; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 141; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 237; F. W. Farrar, In the Days of thy Youth,pp. 51, 275; T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons,p. 290; J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son,pp. 278, 291.