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Series: Lenten Steps (“A relationship without steps is stationary.” – Bill EuBank)
“Servanthood” BY DR. JOHN STEPHENS March 12, 2017 TO CATCH THE SERMON Click here to listen to the audio-only version. (Good for when you’re in the car or doing something else.)
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[email protected]. SCRIPTURE 1If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 12Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and
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trembling; 13for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Phil. 2:1-13, NRSV)
SUMMARY Servanthood and unity are not just about having the same mind but on having the mind of Christ. Having the mind of Christ is living out the conviction that all human beings – every man, woman, and child – are beloved creatures of God, worthy of the same grace.
BOB’S COMMENTS
There’s an old proverb that says wherever you have two Methodists, you’ve got at least three opinions! Not only are there big theological and political differences in our churches, but also smoldering resentments from long ago, as well as radical variations in preferred styles of worship. There are also clashes over leadership direction, differences on issues of moral behavior, and so on. With all these differences – just in our United Methodist Church -- how can we even begin to think that we can live the way Paul urges here? The answer is that everyone must be focused on something other than themselves; and that something is Jesus Christ himself, the king, the Lord, and the good news which has come to take the world over in his name. Paul sets this out gloriously in a poem which sums it all up. The motivation for unity is set out in verse 1. You should want to live this way, God says through Paul, because you know the blessing that comes from belonging to the king’s family, from being ‘in Christ’. There should be a growing sense of love within the family, a love that sustains and cheers you from day to day. As we experience one another being Holy Spirit-carriers, we can hardly help the sense that we should work together in a single direction. All this should produce the natural human emotions of empathy and love. If, with all this, you still don’t want to work at living in unity with your fellow Christians, something is seriously wrong somewhere! 2
The inner life of unity is what seems at first sight completely unattainable. At the center of it all – the basic command that drives this passage – Paul tells the Philippian Christians Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… Paul isn’t just urging unity as in everyone think the same thoughts and agree with one another. After all, unity is possible among thieves, adulterers and many other types. Even the Nazis in WWII were united in their genocidal intent! Achieving unity with each other wouldn’t be any good if we were all thinking something that was out of line with the gospel. The love that we must have is the love that the gospel generates and sustains. In particular, we are to perform the extraordinary feat of looking at one another with the assumption that the needs of others are more important than our own needs are (verses 3–4). Think back. Who was it who first arrogantly grasped at the chance to be ‘like God, knowing good and evil, to put himself first’? Why, Adam, of course, in Genesis 3! But what’s the solution? Well, in the Old Testament, God’s people Israel are called to be servant-people, whose suffering obedience to God’s saving plan will be the unexpected way of dealing with the world’s sorry state. But as it turned out, Israel is also in slavery; Israel, too, has gone the way of Adam. So, what was to be done? The poem Paul now places here in vv. 5-13 answers this question and many more. What we have in poetry here is what became later the classic doctrine of the incarnation of God in Jesus the Messiah. There are some things that can, perhaps, only be said in poetry, and perhaps this is one of them. In verse 7 Paul says that Jesus ‘emptied himself’ (GREEK: kenosis). People have sometimes thought that this means that Jesus, having been divine up to that point, somehow stopped being divine when he became human, and then went back to being divine again. This is completely untrue to what Paul has in mind. The point of verse 6 is that Jesus was indeed already equal with God. Paul is saying that Jesus already existed even before he became a human being (verse 7). But the decision to become human, and to go all the way along the road of obedience, obedience to the divine plan of salvation, yes, all the way to the cross – this decision was not a decision to stop being divine. It was a decision about what it really meant to be divine. Jesus retained his equality with God. The point of verses 6 and 7 is that Jesus didn’t regard this equality as something to exploit. Rather, the eternal son of God, the one who became human in and as Jesus of Nazareth, regarded his equality with God as committing him to the course he took: of becoming human, of becoming Israel’s anointed representative, of dying under the weight of the world’s evil. This is what it meant to be equal with God. As you look at the incarnate son of God dying on the cross the most powerful thought you should think is: this is the true meaning of who God is. He is the God of self-giving love. In his incarnation and on the cross Jesus has done what only God can do. Paul is quite clear that he’s not moving away from Jewish monotheism here. In verse 11 he quotes Isaiah 45:23, a 3
fiercely monotheistic Old Testament passage (‘To me and me alone, says YHWH, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear’). Here, then, is Paul’s point: the God who will not share his glory with anyone else has shared it with Jesus! Jesus, therefore, must somehow be identified as one who from all eternity was ‘equal with God’. And his progression through incarnation to death must be seen, not as something which required him to stop being God for a while, but as the perfect self-expression of the true God. This is a God who is known most clearly when he abandons his rights for the sake of the world. God doesn’t save us from suffering, as some early conceptions of Messiah taught; God saves from through suffering. That’s ‘the mind of Christ’, the pattern of thinking that belongs to you because you belong to the Messiah (verse 5). And if you are truly living in him and by his kind of life, the exhortations of verses 1–4 may suddenly make a lot more sense.
QUOTES OF THE DAY 1. “If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.” (Phil. 2:1-5, The Message) 2. “Humility is not about tearing yourself down; it is about raising others up.” (John Stephens)
APPLICATION Try living out these steps to develop the mind of Christ within you this week: 1. Spend time with God. And with other servants of God who model humility. 2. Embrace the imago Dei (image of God) in everyone. 3. Remember that you are subject to the same sin as those you are tempted to judge.
PRAYER God, I offer myself to You - To build with me and to do with me as You will. Relieve me of the bondage of self. May I do Your will always! Take away my difficulties that victory over them would bear witness to everyone around me. In the name of Jesus I pray. Amen.
(This material compiled by Rev. Bob Johnson. This week’s comments are adapted from commentary by Bishop N. T. Wright, Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity
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at St Mary’s College in the University of St Andrews in Scotland. This material does not necessarily reflect the thought or intent of the preacher of the day.)
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