“How’s your race going?” my friend asked me.

The good news is that God remembers my track record no more. And, through faith in Jesus, not yours either. While the world tells me to obsess upon how I’m doing and how I’ve done, God doesn’t ever point to it and say, “See? This is why you’re such a success. Pat yourself on the back!” or “This is why you’re such a loser. Pull it together, man!” Instead, God points to Jesus and says to me, “I have given you His record as your own, and it is flawless. It is perfect. His success is yours; it belongs to you now. Get used to that, because I’m going to be telling you all about it all the time. It will change your life.”

Speaking of the religious busybodies and track record accountants of his day, the apostle Paul writes to the Philippians in chapter 3:7-11:

“The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself.”

Look behind and you’ll see that you’ve got a new track record—it’s perfect. It’s His. Look ahead, and the race is to know Jesus, who has everything for you already, even before you’ve taken a step. You win. Race won. That is your new track record.

(See Philippians 3:1-14; Colossians 3:1-4; 2 Corinthians 3:1-10; Romans 4:23-5:2.)