What Does Philippians 3:13 Mean?
Brothers, I do not count myself as having seized it. But this one thing I do, letting go of what lies behind and stretching out toward what lies ahead.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,THE KEY
You can admit you have not yet grasped the goal while already stretching toward it.
THE MEANING
What lies behind does not have to remain the direction your attention faces. You can be unfinished and still be moving toward what is ahead. The verse holds humility and forward motion together now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that your past must define your direction or that you must have already arrived before you can move forward.
THE ROOT
ἐπεκτεινόμενος
epekteinomenos
GROWS FROM
τείνω
teinō
to stretch or extend
“stretching out toward” in this verse is epekteinomenos. The Greek word pictures stretching oneself toward what is ahead. Its root also appears in the verb for stretching out a hand, making this forward reach bodily and active, not merely a change of thought.
ALSO GROWS
ekteinō: stretch out, extend
ἐκτείνω
This is the same root in Jesus’ command to a man to stretch out his hand in Mark 3:5.
epiteinō: stretch further, intensify
ἐπιτείνω
The root can carry the sense of extending or straining further, adding force to the image of reaching toward what is ahead.
κατειληφέναι
kateilēphenai
GROWS FROM
λαμβάνω
lambanō
to take or receive
“seized” in this verse is kateilēphenai. “Apprehended” belongs to the Greek family of taking hold or receiving. The verse places not-yet-possession beside active reaching: movement toward the goal does not require claiming to have grasped it already.
ALSO GROWS
lambanō: take, receive
λαμβάνω
This basic verb shows the taking and receiving beneath the idea of grasping the goal.
epilambanomai: take hold of, seize
ἐπιλαμβάνομαι
This related form makes the image of laying hold explicit, sharpening the contrast with stretching toward what is still ahead.
THE PATTERN
A way forward opens as what lies behind is released and attention turns toward what is ahead.
Do not remember the former things, nor fix your gaze on the things that went before.Behold, I am making a new thing; now it sprouts; will you not perceive it? I will even lay a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the parched land.Therefore, since we also have so great a cloud of witnesses lying around us, setting down every weight and falling short that so easily wraps around us, let us run the race lying before us, remaining under it.THE THREAD
And when he had looked around at them with swelling anger, pained together over the stoniness of their hearts, he said to the man, Stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was set back in place, whole as the other.“Stretch forth” uses ἔκτεινον (ekteinon, “stretch out”), from the same root τείνω (teinō, “stretch, extend”) as “reaching forth.” In Mark, the extended hand is restored; here, the same root pictures reaching toward what lies ahead.
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