While it is well for us to notice the various steps in the progress of our race toward the “mark,” we are to remember that the illustration does not fit perfectly, but that rather while there is this order of progression it is less distinctly marked in our experiences, in which duty-love but gradually leads into the higher forms, remaining, but subordinately, to the end. It is a part of the blessed arrangement of God that those who are running…
That we may clearly comprehend this subject (the mark of the prize, perfect love), let us notice how small were the beginnings of this grace of love in our hearts; and let us hope that many, as they trace the matter here, and compare it with their own experiences, will be able to find large developments in their own characters – that they have passed one after another of the quarter-mile marks in the way, and that they are rapidly…
With foot-racers there is a prize offered likewise, but it is not the prize that is hung out to their view while on the race-course; it is not the prize toward which they run, but the mark. There is the quarter-mile mark, the half-mile mark, the three-quarter-mile mark, and the mile mark at the close of the race; and each racer watches for and encourages himself as he passes one or another of these marks by the way, until finally…
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” – Phil. 3:13,14. – Few in the nominal (or professing) church see any particular mark or any particular prize with definiteness; – to be sought and to be attained. The majority are merely fleeing…