We have attained (5348) (phthano) originally meant to precede someone, to come before or to anticipate (as used in 1Th 4:15-note). Over time phthano begin to lose the idea of priority and to mean simply to come to or to arrive at. The idea is to come to a particular state or to arrive at a goal and so to attain it. In Mt 12:28 it means to happen to someone.
Phthano pictures progress along a road to a certain point. Paul is thinking of the Philippian saint's progress along the path of Christ-likeness. His idea is, “so far as we have come.”
TDNT says that the...
The LXX uses phthano for a Hebrew term meaning “to show oneself ready,” “to do quickly,” “to accomplish.” In the absolute the word means “to attain,” “to reach,” “to come to.” ... In Philo we find the weaker sense “to attain to” or “to come before.” “To come before” is the usual sense in Josephus. (Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Eerdmans)
Phthano - 7x in 7v - Mt 12:28; Luke 11:20; Ro 9:31; 2Cor 10:14; Phil 3:16; 1Th 2:16; 4:15. NAS = arrive(1), attained(1), come(3), first to come(1), precede(1).
Phthano - 20x in the Septuagint (LXX) - Jdg 20:34, 42; 2Sa 20:13; 1Kgs 12:18; 28.9" class="scriptRef">2Chr 28:9; Ezra 3:1; Neh 7:73; Eccl 8:14; 12:1; Song 2:12; Da 4:11, 20, 22" class="scriptRef">22, 24, 28; 6:24; 7:13, 22; 8:7; 12:12
Robertson comments that...
Paul means simply this that, having come thus far, the thing to do is to go “in the same path” in which we have been travelling so far. A needed lesson for Christians weary with the monotony of routine in religious life and work.
Vincent explains that Paul is saying in essence...
Whatever real Christian and moral attainment you may have made, let that serve as a rule for your further advance. The character of this standard of attainment is illustrated by the words in Philippians 3:15, be thus minded (KJV), and by those in Php 3:17 (note), as ye have us for an example. The individual variations are not considered. He regards rather the collective development, and assumes the essentials of Christian attainment on the part of his readers.
Richards writes that...
In Php 3:11-16, Paul looks again at the idea of spiritual attainment. He himself has turned his back on his own considerable accomplishments under law. He has tossed them aside and considers them worthless. His goal now is simply to be found in Christ and so to "attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Php 3:10-note) This expression does not refer to the coming physical resurrection but to Paul's present experience of a power for righteous living that can be found only by faith and only as Jesus shares His own resurrection life with the believer (cp Php 3:9-note; Ro 6:8-note, Ro 6:13-note). This experience of power comes as we seek to follow Jesus and put into daily practice whatever level of understanding and maturity we may arrive at (phthano).
The picture that emerges as we connect these passages is an exciting one. God does have a high calling for Christians. But we attain it, not by self-reliant attempts to live by the law, but rather by humble commitment of ourselves to Jesus, asking and believing by faith that he will give us the power to follow him. (Richards, L O: Expository Dictionary of Bible Words: Regency)
Eadie commenting on this verse writes that...
The spirit of the warning or injunction is, that knowledge already enjoyed and proved in a spiritual race, should not lie dormant because it is defective. It needed not so much to be rectified, as to be supplemented. Therefore, as far as you have its guidance, take it. Walk up to the light you have, and you will get more. Walk with me so far as you discern the common path, and at the point of divergence God shall rightly direct you as to the subsequent course. He who employs what he has, prepares himself for further gifts. When the morning bursts suddenly on one wakened out of sleep, it dazzles and pains him; but to him who on his journey has blessed the dawn, and walked by its glimmer, the solar radiance brings with it a gradual and cheering influence. (A Commentary on the Greek Text - Online)
F B Meyer...
THE ATTAINMENTS
OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
Phil. 3:15-16
THESE words suggest, that there is a great difference in the attainments of Christian people; and in endeavouring to bring this home, so that any who are laggard and sluggard may be quickened in the path of holiness, we may regard this chapter as falling naturally into a suite of some seven apartments, each of which leads to another, as in so many of the picturesque and princely homes of England. May God's Spirit help us to discover in which room we are already, and having discovered it, to press on to the next.
The Disrobing Room. "Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal, persecuting the Church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ" (Phil. 3:5-7). In the grey light of the dawn, we see the young Pharisee, decked out in all the paraphernalia of the dress of his order. His are the phylacteries, his the broad borders covered with texts, his the sacred cord as son of the law, over these the garment of zeal, and over this again a robe that seems spotless--"the righteousness of the law," in which he accounts himself to be blameless. Around the room are burnished mirrors, and as he considers his array in the grey light he imagines himself to be highly commendable and likely to stand a good chance, not only in this world, but in the next. He can only think these things because the light is so dim. Were it brighter, he would descry blemishes in his fairest robes.
The Two Pilgrims. Bunyan well describes such a man in his picture of Ignorance. You may remember how the two older pilgrims talked to the brisk youth as he walked beside them. They asked," How will you fare at the gate?"
"I shall fare as well as other people," was the reply.
"What have you to show that will cause the gate to open, when you come to it?" they inquired.
"I know my Lord's will; I have been a good liver all my life; I pay every man his own; I pray constantly and fast; I pay and give alms; my heart is a good heart; I will never believe that it is as bad as you say."
Bunyan's Own Experience. In his Grace Abounding John Bunyan still further describes this condition:
"Now," he says after his outward amendment, "I was become godly; now I was become a right honest man. Though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I was proud of my godliness. I betook me to my Bible, and began to take great pleasure in reading, but especially with the historical part thereof; for as for Paul's Epistles, and such like Scriptures, I could not away with them, being as yet ignorant either of the corruptions of my nature or of the want and worth of Jesus Christ to save us." "The new birth did never enter into my mind; neither knew I the comfort of the word and promise, nor the deceitfulness and treachery of my own wicked heart. As for secret thoughts, I took no notice of them."
Legal Righteousness Laid Aside. Whilst we stand gazing into this room, the grey light grows into the morning, and beneath its beams the young Pharisee, beholding himself in the mirrors around, flings off first the blameless robe of his legal righteousness, then strips off his zeal, then casts away his Pharisaic dress, puts aside his reliance upon the ordinances of Hebrewism. After stripping off one thing after another, as the revealing light shows how utterly sullied and blemished his robes are, he tramples them beneath his feet, and counts them as refuse and loss. He is horrified to think that if he had not known the light which came from the risen Lord, he might have gone forward to face the Great White Throne, and only then have discovered his mistake.
Have you entered this room? Have you stood beneath the light of God till you abhorred yourself? Have you come to see, with St. Augustine, that the works in which you have been priding yourself are "splendid sins"? Do you realise that, apart from the righteousness of Jesus Christ, your righteousness is as filthy rags? Oh, soul, thou wilt be as certainly lost as Ignorance was, who was carried to hell from the very gate of heaven, unless thou too standest in the revealing light of God, to show thee the insufficiency of anything and everything apart from a simple dependence upon the righteousness of His Son.
The Robing Room. "And be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil. 3:9). "One day," says Bunyan, "as I was passing into the field, and that too with some fear dashed on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly, this sentence fell upon my soul, 'Thy righteousness is in Heaven,' and methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand: there was my righteousness; I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame of heart that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, 'The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever'."
In this, the robing room, the soul which had been stripped of all dependence upon itself, its frames, its feelings, its good desires, its alms, its prayers, its baptism, its conversion, its church membership, and having put all these beneath its feet, receives from the hand of God a perfected righteousness, the righteousness which is from God by faith, a robe which the fingers of Christ have woven, a justification which His blood has purchased, and which His hand bestows to the open hand of faith.
Hast thou realised this? Hast thou attained unto this? Art thou standing arrayed in this?--for in death, and judgment, and eternity, nothing will avail thee but to be clothed in the perfect spotless righteousness of Christ, who was made sin for us, though He knew no sin, that we might be made the Righteousness of God in Him.
The Room of Intimate Fellowship with Jesus. "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death" (Phil. 3:10). As we look into that chamber, we find that hard by the entrance is a deep grave-like aperture. It looks as though a tomb had been hollowed out in the stone floor; beyond is a table on which the bread and wine commemorate the body and blood of Christ; against the wall a rough and heavy cross is planted; affixed to the wall are a scourge, and a crown of thorns. The room, therefore, might seem forbidding, were it not that a celestial light shines full upon the thorn-crown, and whilst we look, it seems as though it were gleaming with jewels, as though the topaz, jasper, carbuncle, and all manner of precious stones had been caught amid the thorns, and become woven into its texture. Every day the true-hearted soul must enter that room. We must never really get beyond it in this life. It must constantly be our resort, that we may know Christ and the power of His Resurrection.
The order of this verse appears to stand in the reverse direction to our experience. It begins with knowing Him; then it passes to the power of His resurrection, then to the fellowship of His sufferings, and lastly, to conformableness with His death.
Conformable to the Lord's Death. With many, the reverse is the way by which they are led. That is, they begin by being "conformable to His death." Do you know what it is to lie down in that grave of Christ, till the voices of the world's tumult and the throb of passion subside, till you realise how little this world is, and how much eternity? Have you attained to this? Have you become conformed unto His death? What was that death? In its judicial aspect, an atonement for human sin; but looking at it from the human and personal side it was the bringing of every natural desire into absolute subjection to the Will and Law of God--the desire to live, the desire for love, the desire for popular adulation, and human friendship. From the earliest of His recorded temptations, our Lord made this the rule of His Life. He would not gratify the natural appetite of hunger until He was certain of being in the line of His Father's Will. This is what the Cross means, and this involved Calvary. If, then, our Master would not make stones of the desert bread, to feed His natural hunger, because the Father had not bade Him eat, we may not yield, even to what seems natural, until our Father says we may. And if we carry out that principle of subordinating everything to the will of the Father, we shall certainly come to the Cross, and out of the Cross comes the diadem of victory. You conform to His death, you eat of His flesh, you drink of His blood, and then pass on to know the power of His resurrection.
But as we have seen, the reverse is also true, and happy are they who have experienced it. They begin by knowing Jesus in the most intimate and blessed fellowship, and almost without realising it they are led on to realise that they are walking with Him, not in the energy of their own nature, but in the powers of His Resurrection. The Spirit of Holiness, who raised their Lord from the dead, is doing the same for them, they experience the mighty energies that emanate from the risen Saviour, and in His strength walk on their high places. But in doing so, they are brought in contact with the virulent hatred of their fellows. As men hated the Master of the House, they hate those of His household. The full tide of human opposition surges up against them, as an adverse current which breaks in clouds of spray on the undaunted progress of an ocean steamer. Presently the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless abyss makes war against them, and overcomes and kills them, and their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified; but after three days and an half the Spirit of Life from God enters into them, and they stand upon their feet, and they hear a great voice from heaven saying unto them, "Come up hither." (See Rev. 11:6-12.) They know the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, and are made conformable unto His death, but they attain to His Resurrection. They drink of His cup, and are baptised with His Baptism, and so come to sit on His Throne.
The Room of High Endeavour. "Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal, unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13-14). In this room are various pictures of Alpine ascents, photographs of the high summits which other souls have scaled. Around are the prizes that have been won in the arena by successful conflict. On every side are the marks of achievement; and in the midst of the room, unfurled as though it were soon to be grasped and borne forth, is a banner with the "strange device," Excelsior! Everything, therefore, that betokens past achievement is accounted but as the stepping-stone to still further effort. The soul leaves behind it as a mere memory, the things which it has attained, however great and beautiful in themselves, because some higher ascent calls to it. Is this the attitude of your soul?
Have You Forgotten Some Things? Have you learnt to forget? Are you living upon your past attempts, their failure, or success? for any of these will cut the sinews of your strength. You must forget even your sins, God forgets them, saying, Try again. You must forget your innocence, the innocence of your childhood; purity tried by fire is better. You must forget, also, your realised ideals. You must forget things which have become dear to you, but which have hindered you, clinging to you as barnacles to the bottom of the great steamer, hindering its progress. You must forget all that, and from this day must confess that you have not attained, that you are not perfected, but are going to climb to the rare heights of Christ-likeness; always doing what Christ would do, if He were in your place; always taking as the sufficient question of your life, "What would Jesus do if He were situated as I am?"
The Room of Compassion. "Many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the Cross of Christ: whose end is perdition, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame" (Phil. 3:18-19). There is a tear bottle here, in which the tears of Christ were caught once, though long since they have been transmuted into the pearls that glisten in His crown. But that tear bottle is there for the tears of those disciples who have learnt His compassion; for as the Redeemer wept, so do His redeemed weep still, and say, even weeping, of others, "They are the enemies of the Cross of Christ." May that compassion, like a fountain, send the tears in rills from our eyes. God forbid that we should live in such a world as this, without weeping over the enemies of the Cross; and it should be borne in mind that the enemies of the Cross, here referred to, are not those who have rejected Christ, but those who once professed Christianity, and had the creed and reputation of godliness, but in their heart of hearts, and in their lives, have denied the Lord that bought them.
The Room of Expectant Hope. "Our citizenship is in Heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ" (Phil. 3:20). This room has a window looking East; and it is so situated that it is hardly possible to descry the river; for the view lies across the river, to a fair and beautiful horizon; and the soul which has passed through the earlier stages, stands with eye fixed, and every nerve and muscle strained, looking for the dawn, whilst the morning star shines clear in the sky. "We look for a Saviour." It is the saved soul that waits for the Saviour. We are saved from the wrath of God; we are being saved day by day from the power of sin; but, oh, we long for Him who shall appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation!
The Room of Confident Anticipation. "Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself" (Phil. 3:21). To subject. Look at this. He who in the second chapter was subjected, in this chapter subjects. You must be subjected before you can subject.
(1) We confidently anticipate the moment when the body of our humiliation, which has so often limited and hindered us in our work, which has hungered and thirsted, fainted and grown weary, whose eyes have failed, whose knees have faltered, and hands hung down, shall exchange its corruption for incorruption, its mortality for immortality, being transfigured into the likeness of the body of His glory----ethereal, vigorous, incapable of fatigue but a perfected instrument for a perfected nature.
(2) We anticipate much more than that. Death, thou shalt be subdued. Grave, thou shalt be subdued. Sin, sorrow, pain, evil, ye shall be subdued. The Lord comes to subdue you as we confidently expect. This room enshrines masterpieces of art, commemorating the great past. That picture is of the overthrow of Pharaoh; and that of the destruction of Midian; and that of the defeat of those mighty Assyrian hosts which menaced Hezekiah; and here are the cross and empty grave--symbols of the victory of the Son of God over the world, the flesh, and the devil. Yes! He shall overcome; it is His right. He shall subject all things unto Himself; it is the Father's promise. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our God, and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever. Let us hasten unto the coming of that day of God! (F. B. Meyer. The Epistle to the Philippians - A Devotional Commentary)
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Greek Word Studies ( - )
Read freely Greek Word Studies from the Austin Precept text commentary of the Bible in text and pdf format. Precept Austin is an online free dynamic bible commentary similar to wikipedia with updated content and many links to excellent biblical resources around the world. You can browse the entire collection of Commentaries by Verse on the Precept Austin website.We have been "bought with a price" to be "ambassadors for Christ" and our "salvation is nearer to us than when we believed" so let us "cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" "so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming." (1Cor 6:20, 2Cor 5:20, Ro 13:11, 2Cor 7:1, 1Jn 2:28)