Defiant Joy: A Study On PhilippiansSample

DAY 7: JOY THAT DEFIES REGRET

Paul had a squeaky clean resumé. As we have already seen, he was a Pharisee, which meant he had a long list of religious achievements to his name. In spite of it all, he woke up one day and realized something terrible: his whole life had been a mistake. For most of his life, Paul’s focus had not been on Christ. He persecuted and killed Christians all because of the false conviction that he was doing good. 

Most of us know this feeling of regret. For some it comes from a season of rebellion in which we knew we were running from God. We knew it was wrong, but curiosity and temptation were too strong a pull.

For others of us, we spent our lives trying to be good. And like Paul, our legalism created greater brokenness. This was my story. I went through a phase of extreme self-righteousness. I constantly “instructed” my parents on how to be better Christians, and I was extremely judgmental. In my zeal, I hurt people.  

And then there are others of us, who made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time, and only later realized it was a bad one. 

Whatever the form of our regrets, it’s easy to become weighed down by them. It’s easy to rehearse our mistakes again and again, wishing for a different outcome, and burning with shame as though it were fresh. The power of regret is, for this reason, another thief of joy. 

In the second half of Philippians, Paul says:

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (v. 13).

Paul kept his focus forward, instead of looking behind, and this was another source of his resilient joy. But I think we all know this kind of focus isn’t easy. It’s a discipline. We become like Lot’s wife, a frozen pillar of salt staring back at her former life. Her story is a lesson for all of us, that living in the past creates death in the present. 

And so Paul exhorts us to guard our eyes. Fix our vision on Christ. This will free us from the snares of our past regrets, because here is the glorious truth:

Christ was there in our past.

Christ is in our present, and he’s in our future too, but he was also there in our past. Before we ever made that horrible mistake, He covered it. Every sin, every fault, is all nailed to a cross and it’s forgiven, once and for all guaranteeing our future resurrection. 

Our task now is to look to the One before us who covered the sins behind us.