Winter graduation ceremonies were held last weekend at my university. Graduation is always one of my favorite days. I love seeing excited students and meeting proud parents. I particularly like the fact that my institution encourages faculty and student interaction. Every student walks across the stage (well, halfway across the stage) and is greeted at the bottom of the stairs by the president, the provost, the dean of the college or chair of the department (depending on which one handed the student his/her diploma cover) and the faculty from the department that are attending. It makes for a great celebration.

However, there is some question about what is we’re celebrating. Certainly, graduation is an ending. For bachelor’s students, it’s the culmination of around 4 years of hard work. For many, it’s the end of formal schooling. It often marks the end of dependence on parents. For many, it marks a truer end of childhood than either the 18th or the 21st birthday. It’s the end of spending much time with the faculty students have grown close to. It’s often the end of spending much time with the friends of the college years. Close and long-lasting as those relationships often are, they frequently become long-distance relationships at graduation.

As much as graduation is an ending, college and universities don’t typically bill it that way. We hold “commencement” ceremonies. Much as we want students to look back with fondness on their years with us, we want them to look at graduation as the beginning: the beginning of true adulthood, the beginning of a career, the beginning of membership in the alumni association, the beginning of making your own money so that you can start giving back to your alma mater (a bit cynical, but true). Why? Well, we want successful alumni who do have jobs and are happy and successful and inclined to give of their time and effort and money. And people are more likely to achieve that success if they look forward.

The same thing, I believe, is true of us as Christians. We can look at that moment when we put our faith in Christ as a sort of graduation from earthly life into a life of faith in the spirit. And our success in that new life may depend a bit on which way we are looking. It’s good to remember where we came from and what we owe Christ, but we are not encouraged to dwell there. We are to be dead to our old selves and living a new life. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” II Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” Philippians 3:13b-14 (ESV).

I could go on with verses along the same lines, but I think it’s more important for us to think about what it means to look forward. Most importantly, I think it means not dwelling on what we did. Yes, we want to recognize the tremendous debt we owed and were saved from, but focusing on the details and realities of our sins will not make us stronger and will not bring us joy. It’s more likely to encourage us to wallow in guilt, which is never of the Spirit. Scripture says God no longer sees our sin once he has forgiven it, seeing, instead, the righteousness of Christ, so why do we waste so much of our lives staring at it? Instead, let’s spend that time focused on the one who forgave those sins and deepening our relationship with and understanding of him.