WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 5/07/06

Philippians 2:1-30 Become Like Christ

Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi is known as the friendliest letter in the NT; he is writing to people he loves, people he remembers with gratitude, people for whom he prays frequently. The very thought of them evokes a sense of joy in him – something we perhaps have some experience of. There are people we are glad to know, glad to meet, glad to talk to; people for whom we thank God and for whom we pray often. That’s part of what it means to be in a Christian community, where people are bound together by common faith and love.

The Philippian believers, like Paul, are people who are “in Christ,” who are “united with Christ.” They have tasted some of the comfort that comes from knowing that Jesus loves them, has died and risen for them, has redeemed them and made them part of his family. They have experienced the fellowship that the Holy Spirit gives to believers – the sense of belonging to Christ and to one another. They have begun to learn compassion and tenderness to each other, and that reaches out across the miles to Paul in a Roman prison.

On this foundation of Christian faith and Christian community, Paul wants them to move forward into new Christian experience. He wants them to find the joy and peace in the service of Christ that he has found. If they will grow in their Christian lives, he tells them that they will “make his day;” they will make “his joy complete.” It’s a word that any leader of Christians could utter: you can make my day by showing more of the life of Christ in our community of faith.

1) Be Like Jesus

How is that going to come about? For Paul there is only ever one answer. Look at Jesus. Become like him. Follow his example. He is – if you will pardon an overworked modern word – the paradigm of what the Christian life should be.

In what way should we, or can we, be like Jesus? In our attitudes. The main work of God in us is to change us from the inside out; to renew our inner motivations and desires so that they become what he meant them to be; to replace our fallen, messed-up, rebellious affections with ones that match our profession of being followers of Jesus, of bearing the name “Christians.”

We need especially to be purged of our self-centeredness, which lies at the root of so many of our troubles. Whether in our families, our churches, or our communities, wanting things “our way” does great damage to our relationships. We put our own interests ahead of everybody else’s. We want to control our lives, our destinies, our families, our children. “This is the way it ought to be done” is our motto in life. We feel entitled to express our opinions on any matter, and we are unwilling to defer to anyone on anything. How many marriages are made living hells by one person whose attitude is “It’s my way or the highway”! How many churches, how many community groups, are ruined by people who will not listen, will not compromise, will not give anybody else a break!

“Consider other people,” says Paul. That is the Christian approach to relationships at every level – in marriage, with children, with employees, with colleagues. Forget your ambitions for the way things “ought to be,” and the conceit that you alone know how everything should be done, and defer to one another. Give other people a break, and let their ideas, their dreams, their priorities, their needs, become factors in deciding what to do.

Consider, most of all, Jesus. He was by nature the eternal Son of God, but did not think it was necessary for him to “hold on” to that status; to grasp it tightly to him, to “stand up for his rights” as a member of the Godhead. Instead he willingly “emptied himself” and ”made himself nothing” so that he could come to live among his lost people and rescue them. He became human, leaving behind his power and glory, and became a man – a 1^st C. Jewish artisan. The Lord became a servant. And he did it fully – not just becoming human, but experiencing what humans experience, all the way to death.

He died on a Roman cross – the very image of humility and shame, a place reserved for criminals and insurrectionists. One NT commentator reminds us that in the 1^st C., “nobody in Philippi or any other church used the cross as a symbol of their faith... there were no gold crosses embossed on Bibles or worn as pendants around their necks; no lighted crosses on church steeples. The cross was a scandal – God’s contradiction of human wisdom and power” (Gordon Fee).

Christians follow a crucified Messiah – a total contradiction in terms – and are called to follow him in a life of humility. Christians are called to be the servants of all, and not the masters; to be slaves to other people’s needs, and not “lord it” over anyone. Humility, it has been said, is a distinctly Christian virtue. In the Greco-Roman world of the 1^st C. – and today – it was and is regarded as a failing, as a weakness. Their culture and ours honor strength (or at least the appearance of it); merit, ambition, competitive spirit. Watch a few “reality shows” on TV and see who is favored: the loud, the dominant, the devious. See how arguing passes as entertainment on “talk shows” and “reality shows.”

Does it shock us to think that as a Christian we are called to humility, to deference? – that Christian community is marked by grace, love and service? Then how far have we drifted from the Christian message, and how much is that to blame for our ineffectiveness as witnesses to the gospel? Does grabbing power, or lobbying for legislation, or boycotting corporations, or sounding off on a TV show, seem like something that Jesus encourages in the gospels? Then why are Christians doing these things? Whose agenda are we pursuing?

Jesus willingly humbled himself as a servant and experienced a shameful death, and God has now exalted him. He is now named “the Lord,” the title that the OT reserves for God. Paul echoes Isaiah 45 when he says “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess” that Jesus Christ is Lord – the very language that YHWH, the LORD, used to speak to his people Israel.

Because Jesus humbled himself and obeyed his Father’s will, he was vindicated and exalted. That, says Paul, is your pattern as Christians. Serve others, defer, submit, be humble, and God will lift you up. Try to control everything and everybody, and God will throw you down. Did not Jesus say “The greatest among you must be your servant;” “The Son of Man came to serve;” “When you take a seat at a banquet, choose the lowest place, so that the Lord of the feast may come and say “Friend, move up to a better place.””

2) Work Out Your Salvation

Christian community, family life, true life, can only be lived well by people whose hearts have been changed to put down self-centeredness and put in its place a willingness to serve others. To build up our various little communities, we must stop grumbling, stop complaining, stop arguing, and learn with the help of the Spirit to defer to the needs of others.

Few things are more destructive of families or churches than grumbling and arguing. They have their root in self-centeredness, and every one of us needs to learn to put them aside for the sake of other people. Complaints and criticisms, wanting things our way, will never make for happy families or healthy communities.

As Christians, Paul says we have to follow the example of Jesus. If we are already united to him by faith, if we are part of the redeemed people he calls his family, then we must now “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” Do not be confused here – he does not say “work for your salvation” but “work out your salvation.” We are to carry out, fulfill, as part of a Christian community, what we already believe but do not yet practice. We are to do it with humility and gratitude to God for saving us, for counting us among his redeemed ones, and not with pride or self-confidence.

And do not think we are called to do something impossible, or something that is all our own work! Because God himself is at work in us – “he has begun a good work in you” when you embraced Jesus Christ by faith – and he now continues to work in us “both to will and to act” for his pleasure. He is at work within us, even now, to refine our desires and our motivations. If we feel any desire to be better Christians, that is a sign that he is already at work in us by his Spirit. If we have been motivated to do one good thing in his name, it is a sign he is moving us to act as Christians.

Do not despair! You may feel that you are making no progress as a Christian, that you are still too full of doubt and sin and self-pity and grumbling. At times you may wonder if it’s too late for you to ever become anything better. Do not give up! There are times when we all feel that way! But God is at work in us “to will and to act.”

Here is the balanced Christian life: we are counted as the Father’s redeemed children when we come to Jesus in faith and are “united with Christ.” We become part of a community of faith where God’s people love us, nurture us, teach us, care for us. We have Jesus as our example, and the Holy Spirit as our guide and strength. We are called to work – to become better disciples, to put away the attitudes and actions that are not becoming for Christians and do nothing for Christian community, and to put on the humility, the service, the purity, that do belong with the name Christian. God is at work in us, creating new desires and motivating new actions that are pleasing to him.

When we embrace Jesus as Lord, and welcome the Spirit’s work within us, we can gradually become joyful, peaceful Christians who “shine like stars” in a darkening world. God’s grace saves us, his Spirit gives us faith, his Word teaches us the way, his people love us and support us as we progress in a life that is more and more “worthy of the name” of Jesus Christ.

Let us pray...