Christlike Humility
Philippians 2: 1 – 11.
Introduction
Do
you ever watch the TV show “Pawn Stars?”
The show focuses on a family operated pawn shop in Las Vegas , Nevada
This
illustrates that there are at least two ways to think about the word
“imitation.” It can be used either
positively or negatively.
In
a negative sense, “imitation” can mean something like a counterfeit or a
forgery. We might think of imitation
leather…imitation jewelry…imitation crab meat.
“Imitation” is negative when someone tries to pass off a fake as if it
is the real thing.
Of
course, “imitation” can also be a positive thing. Think of the famous quote, “Imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery.” Children
learn by imitating their parents.
Teenagers and young adult develop by imitating their role models. (Sometimes we have to choose between good
role models and bad role models.) And
Christians grow by imitating the life of Jesus.
Over
the next five weeks, I will be preaching about becoming like Jesus. In these five weeks we are going to look at
five characteristics of Jesus which we should imitate. We should imitate Jesus in his Humility,
Service, Love, Patient Endurance, and Mission
Philippians 2: 1 – 11.
1 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,
2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
(NIV)
Most
of the time, we associate the Book of Philippians with the theme of joy. Philippians is one of the New Testament books
the Apostle Paul wrote from prison. He
was not experiencing happy circumstances when he wrote this. However, he was able to experience the joy of
Christ which does not depend on our external circumstances.
Joy
is a great theme and obviously plays an important role in the Book of
Philippians. However, this is probably
not the reason why Paul wrote this book.
More than likely, Paul wrote Philippians to stress the importance of
unity within the church.
Paul
ended chapter one by telling the Philippian Christians how important it is for
them to live together in unity. There
are cultural forces which are opposing them and hoping to distract them from
the work of the Gospel. In light of
these cultural forces, Paul wants the Philippians to “stand firm” and to
“contend for the Gospel” united together as if they are one person.
Don’t
let Paul’s use of the word “if” confuse you.
Paul is not trying to create doubt about the encouragement and comfort
Christians receive from Christ. Instead,
he is affirming the reality that we do receive encouragement and comfort from
Christ.
It’s
like when we say to someone, “If I am your friend (and I am your friend), then
you can count on me.” Another way to
express this is the use the word “since” in place of the word “if.” “Since I am your friend, you can count on
me.”
In
Philippians 2: 1, we can translate Paul as saying, “Since you have
encouragement from being united with Christ…Since you have comfort from his
love…Since you have fellowship with the Spirit…Since you have experienced
tenderness and compassion…Make my joy complete…”
Then
Paul tells the Christians at Philippi what
will make his joy complete. He wants
them to live together in unity. He wants
the church to experience a kind of fellowship that is different from the rest
of the world. He knows this is the only
way the church stands a chance in a culture of opposition…to be united in mind,
united in love, and united in spirit and purpose.
This
does not mean we are all supposed to think and act alike. No.
There is supposed to be diversity within the Body of Christ. We have different gifts from the Holy
Spirit. We have different personalities
and temperaments. And, we all have different
life experiences. God uses all of that
diversity and brings us together to accomplish one purpose through us.
Diversity
is not the greatest threat to unity within the church. Diversity is a wonderful part of God’s plan
that God uses to make us better together than we can be individually. The greatest threat to church unity is Pride
which causes us to think more about ourselves than about the purpose for the
church.
To
be united in one mind does not mean we all think the same thoughts. Instead, being united in one mind means that
no one is supposed to think of himself or herself as the most important person
in the church.
A Church
of One
Paul
spells this out by describing a couple of different attitudes which are
inappropriate for church members to hold.
It
is always inappropriate for church members to have an attitude of selfish
ambition. We might recognize this better
under the labels of rivalry and competition.
Sometimes
rivalry is a very personal attitude. A
person compares himself or herself to other people and has a superior opinion
of themselves. They are richer or better
dressed and therefore think they deserve to be treated better than anyone else
in the church. Or, they know more about
the Bible than anyone else and think their opinions are more important. (Some people think their opinions are more
important because their family has been in the church longer than all those new
people who have joined less than 50 years ago.)
Sometimes
rivalry is between groups of people rather than individuals. Perhaps the younger folks think they are more
important than the older folks—or the older folks think they are more important
than the younger folks. Or, even worse,
maybe there are cliques of people who divide up according to social standing
and consider their clique the most important clique.
A
church cannot fulfill her God-given mission and purpose as long as there are
rivalries within the Body of Christ.
Another
attitude which has no place in the church is the attitude of “vain
conceit.” There might not be a lot of
difference between rivalry and vain conceit.
“Vain conceit” literally means “empty opinion.” People who have empty opinions are people who
think more highly of themselves than they think of other people. Empty opinions lead people to feel jealous of
other people and to the desire to fight to prove they are right and everyone
else is wrong. A church cannot be of one
mind when everyone is trying to be right.
Individualism
is the American way. We live in a
culture which champions individual rights to the exclusion of anything else. We live in a culture that worships at the
altar of individualism. Individualism may be the American way, but it is not
supposed to be the Christian way of life.
Demanding our own rights can destroy our community and involves a way of
life in contradiction to the Gospel.
There has to be a better way.
That is why Paul proposes a church of one mind…a church of individuals
who think of others before we think of ourselves.
Humility
Humility
is not very popular in American culture.
But, it wasn’t very popular in the First Century Roman Empire
either. In fact, no one in Paul’s day
considered humility a virtue. They
thought of humility as a weakness.
Humility was considered the opposite of pride, and the Romans considered
pride a virtue.
The
word Paul used for humility was associated with slavery. We might even say that Paul is telling the
Philippian Christians they ought to adopt the mentality of a slave. They should think of themselves as the lowest
of social standings and unfit.
Perhaps
Paul is thinking about the Old Testament teachings about how God works. For example, the Old Testament teaches us
that God often chooses people who seem to be small and insignificant to
accomplish big things through them. It
also teaches us that God shows grace to the humble and opposes the proud
(Proverbs 3: 34).
It
seems there are two ways we are supposed to be humble. We are to demonstrate humility in our
behavior toward other people, both inside and outside the church. And, we are to be humble in the way we
approach God. God hears our prayers when
we approach him as people who are unfit and unworthy.
Jesus as the Model of Humility
It
would be good enough for Paul to appeal to an Old Testament text or story to describe
Christian humility. However, Paul went
one step farther. Instead of appealing
to the Old Testament, Paul appealed to the character of Jesus himself.
More
than likely, Philippians 2: 6 – 11, contains the words of an ancient hymn. Modern translations like the New
International Version recognize this as a long quotation and set these verses
apart with indentations.
Since
Paul does not cite his sources, we are left with some unanswered
questions. Did Paul write this
hymn? Did Paul quote from a familiar
hymn sung in the Philippian churches? Of
course, that doesn’t really matter. What
matters is what the theology of the hymn teaches us about Jesus and how Paul
uses that theology to inform his ethical teaching about humility.
One
way to read the hymn is to note the way Jesus moves from Heaven to earth and
back to Heaven. The preexistent Jesus
left Heaven and came down to earth. The
earthly Jesus went to the cross—the lowest point of his earthly life and the
lowest point of the hymn. But, the cross
is neither the end of Jesus nor the end of the hymn. Jesus went from the cross to being exalted by
God in the resurrection, and now Jesus lives in an exalted status at the right
hand of the Father in Heaven.
One
of the differences between us and Jesus is the fact that our lives had a
beginning. There was a time—before my
birth—when I did not exist. There was
never a time when Jesus did not exist.
We read about this in John 1: 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
(Then John connects the preexistent Word with Jesus in John 1: 14, “The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…”)
Just
as John says the Word was with God and the Word was God, Paul tells us that the
preexistent Jesus was every bit of the nature of God in his essential
nature. Yet, Paul tells us, Jesus did
not consider equality with God something to be grasped.
What
do you think it means to say Jesus did not consider equality with God something
to be grasped?
I
can think of two examples of people who tried to grasp equality with God.
The
first example comes from the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God had placed Adam and Eve in the middle of Paradise . They did
not have to work for their food, because they were living in perfect harmony
with God’s creation. All the food they
could ever desire was right there for the taking. Adam and Eve didn’t need clothing or shelter,
because there was no shame to separate them and no danger for them as long as
they were caretakers of God’s creation.
But, that wasn’t enough for Adam and Eve. They were not satisfied with their status as
creatures in God’s creation. They wanted
to be equal to God. Because they
considered equality with God something to be grasped, they overstepped God’s
boundaries. As a result of their sin,
Adam and Eve lost Paradise …and all of humanity
now experiences separation from God.
The
second example comes from the traditional understanding of Satan himself. According to legend, Satan started out as one
of God’s angels named Lucifer. Lucifer
was not satisfied with being one of the angels.
Instead, he considered equality with God something to be grasped. When Lucifer tried to grasp equality with
God, he fell from Heaven to Hell.
These
two stories have something in common.
Adam and Lucifer had a misconception of what it means to be equal with
God. They were tempted, because they
thought equality with God means they could do whatever they wanted to do. They thought equality with God means having
your own way and getting everything you desire.
According
to the hymn in Philippians 2, this is not what Jesus demonstrated. Jesus had equality with God. In his preexistent state, Jesus was equal to
God. Yet, Jesus did not consider this
equality something to be grasped or held on to.
So,
in verse 7, we read that Jesus made himself nothing. He emptied himself. He poured himself out. Jesus took on the nature of a slave, a human
being. And, Jesus poured himself out on
the cross…the most humiliating form of death ever known.
Jesus
shows us what true equality with God really looks like. Equality with God is not having your own way
and getting everything you want.
Equality with God is giving yourself away. Because Jesus has the character of God, Jesus
gave his life as a sacrifice for others.
The cross is the ultimate symbol of humility.
Because
Jesus humbled himself and went to the cross on our behalf, God exalted Jesus in
the resurrection and ascension. Today,
Jesus occupies the highest status possible.
Jesus is Lord…the name above all names…the name that brings all
creatures and all kingdoms to their knees.
Jesus was exalted because he willingly humbled himself and gave his life
away for others.
Conclusion
The
hymn in Philippians teaches us that God’s ways are not like our ways.
We
think the path to greatness is the path of upward mobility. It requires us to promote ourselves, to
champion our own rights, to prove we are right, to prove other people wrong,
and to compete against other people.
This is not God’s way.
God’s
way to greatness is downward mobility.
The
more we exalt ourselves, the more we prove how small we truly are. The person who gives themselves away for
others will receive God’s greatest gifts.
The person who loses their life will receive true life from God. The person who humbles himself or herself
will be exalted by God.
No comments:
Post a Comment