Humility of Christ (Philippians 2:1-11)

Philippians chapter 2, starting in verse 1.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.

Every one should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.

Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.

And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.

For this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

We thank you for this passage that you have us going through here this morning.

Lord, I pray that as we go through this, that you would open our eyes and our ears, our minds and our hearts to the things that you have for us.

Lord, speak to us now through your word, we pray.

Change us, make us more and more into the people that you desire us to be.

And in the context of this passage, Lord, show us how to be Jesus to one another here within this body, the people that are sitting all around us.

Show us how to love each other well in unity.

And Lord, we continue to pray for our country.

Lord, with all that's going on, with all the division and the hate and everything that we're seeing going on, but we pray for revival.

Lord, our country, our world needs Jesus.

So I pray that you would use us as a church to be a beacon of light to our neighbors here in this community and throughout the world, and that you would use us for your glory.

Lord, we love you so much.

And we thank you for this time together.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So the biggest problem with the church is that humans are involved.

You're expecting something a little more insightful, probably, right?

But as long as there are humans involved in church, there's going to be conflict.

As much as we try to be obedient to God's will and the voice of the Holy Spirit, and as much as we try to abide as closely as we can in Christ, we fail.

And sometimes we let our flesh get the best of us.

And we allow the pressures of the world to win out.

And that brings conflict within the church body.

You know, when I was working down at Calvary Chapel, Oxnard years ago, I had this guy that for the first time was really starting to get serious about his faith.

And he was coming into my office a couple times a month, and I was just having conversations with him, and I was teaching him how to play the guitar.

And this guy worked in the medical field.

He had a very stressful, high-pressure job.

And one day during his guitar lesson, he just was having a rough week.

He just stopped playing and he looked at me and he said, It must be so nice to work at a church where you don't have to deal with stress and conflict and difficult people, but you just get to play your guitar and read God's word.

And I remember just looking at him blankly, was like, really?

And as I told him that I felt like a good chunk of my job was conflict resolution, he innocently thought that something was really wrong with our church because we had to deal with that kind of stuff within the body of Christ.

Our passage today is proof that sinners sin.

And unfortunately, Christians sin against each other too.

And what's really hard is Christians sometimes sin against each other even when they have the best of intentions sometimes.

So today is really instruction on how to limit that as much as possible.

And the instructions to come are as much for me and you as they were for the Philippian church 2,000 years ago.

And while Paul is going to give us some practical ways to do this and to do this with humility, the ultimate answer to everything we're going to cover here today is going to be for us to live like Christ.

He's going to say it, for us to adopt the same attitude as Christ.

So that's really where we're headed in this passage here this morning.

Now, as we look at verse 1 here, Paul's going to start with a series of rhetorical questions here.

And if these things are true, which you'll see they obviously are, then Philippi and abide here in Atascadero.

We have the responsibility to do what he says in verse 2.

So look at verse 1 with me.

If then there is any encouragement in Christ.

Again, rhetorical question.

The obvious answer is yes here.

And when you see this word encouragement, think strengthening, think consoling.

You know, some of the translations you're holding probably say consolation right there.

We also see the same word that we see here in 2 Corinthians 1 5, where it says, For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort, that's the same word there, overflows.

Is there encouragement in Christ?

Is there comfort in Christ?

Yes, and this verse tells us it overflows to us, it strengthens us all through Christ.

Look at that second part of verse 1.

It says, if any consolation of love, the love of Christ is the greatest consolation.

I can spit that word up, consolation and comfort that we can ever experience.

His perfect love that placed our human needs above his human needs as he walked among us as a man on this earth.

He placed our life above his own.

And he loved us with perfect love.

And he did it with joy and with sacrifice.

Because he desired each and every one of us that much.

By simply thinking about Jesus and the love that he has, that should bring us such great comfort.

When everything else may seem like it's going to shambles, we can remind ourselves of how much we are loved and the hope that we have and the future that we have in Jesus Christ.

You know, what no matter what happens on this earth, if we are in Christ, we have everlasting hope and comfort in the love of Christ.

Remember, Paul's writing these words from prison.

He gets it.

He gets what he's he's practicing what he's preaching here.

He gets that life is short, that in the scope of eternity, that life is just a vapor in that scope.

And his comfort we see over and over again is in Jesus Christ.

And he's experiencing that comfort while he's in prison for the sake of the gospel.

Look at the next part of verse 1.

It says, if any fellowship with the Spirit, any koinonia is the Greek right there, any koinonia with the Spirit.

This is a joint participation or a joint association in something.

This really speaks of acting in oneness, having the same goals, having the same investments, so to speak.

You know, the Holy Spirit is inside of us.

How much deeper fellowship could we ever experience?

You know, He's filling us, He's indwelling us, He's coming upon us, and He wants to live through us if we allow Him to.

And when we come to faith in Christ, we immediately have that fellowship with Him.

And then as we mature in Christ, this fellowship will grow deeper and deeper and deeper.

Our goals and our investments will align more and more and more with God's.

That is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Now look at the next part of verse 1.

If any affection and mercy.

Now, this is the same word, affection here, that Paul used to tell the Philippians that he loves them with the affections of Jesus Christ in 1.8.

That's that same word here.

Meaning the deepest places, the affections, the deepest places, meaning the deepest places of the heart, how we would look at it.

The King James Version says bowels, like the deepest places within you, inside of you.

And then mercy here, mercy means to have pity.

And from God, that pity means us not getting the punishment that we deserve.

If your faith is in Jesus, we have experienced the deepest affection and mercy of God through the forgiveness of our sin.

Not getting the punishment we deserve for our sin, which is hell.

That eternal separation from God.

Because God had pity on us.

He saw the situation that we put ourselves in when we first sinned.

And he saw that there was no way out for us.

And he had pity on us and sent his son Jesus Christ to give us an option to get out of that situation, the only option to get out of that situation.

And there's no greater mercy.

So Paul takes all of these rhetorical questions that we see here in verse 1 that are an obvious yes, and he uses them as a reminder to the Philippians of God's love and how God, how Jesus, how the Holy Spirit treat them, this Philippian church.

And he does this before he tells them how to treat each other.

If God does all of this for you, he's telling them, the encouragement, the consolation, the fellowship, the affection, the mercy, he's basically saying, is it too much to ask that you extend those same things to each other?

You know, if God loves us in this way, how are you above loving one another in that same way?

That's what he's getting at.

And if these things are true, look at verse 2.

Make my joy complete.

This is really a pastor's heart here that we're seeing in Paul.

Paul takes joy, genuine joy in the successes of this church.

And the success that he's seeing in them as they love each other as Christ loves the church.

You know, as a pastor, it's hard to think of anything that's more disheartening than to see disunity within the body.

It's also hard to think of something that brings more joy than seeing the church dwelling together in unity.

Psalm 133.1 says, How delightfully good when brothers live together in harmony.

So Paul says, make my joy, which is Christ's joy, complete by, and then look at the next part of verse 2, by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

This doesn't mean that it doesn't matter how we think or how we love or how we are united in spirit as long as we're united.

These are all things that God has told us how to do.

These are all things that we've seen Christ do throughout the Gospels.

So it's being united and doing these things according to God's direction that brings joy.

Because we could be very united in heresy, couldn't we?

Our unity has to be according to God's word.

So how should we think?

With the mind of Christ.

How should we love?

With the love of Christ.

How should we be united in spirit the same way that we are united with Christ?

And Christ is united with the Father as one.

How should we be intent in one purpose?

The same way that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one and united in truth and have one purpose together.

And they don't ever contradict each other.

So, really, how should we be like Jesus?

Have that same attitude as Christ.

Now, we get to see how to practically do this.

You know, what this looks like and the action within the church body.

Look at verse 3.

He says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit.

This, what we're talking about here, is what our flesh desires on its own.

It's that gimme, gimme, gimme part of us.

You know, I want packs on the back.

I want people to realize how wonderful I am and how important I am, and they better appreciate who I am because if they knew, you know, stuff like that.

Selfish ambition.

You know, it's also translated as strife in some translations.

Because that's what selfish ambition causes, is it causes strife within the church body.

It's doing things for your own gain without caring about what happens to anybody else.

You know, in a church, this is uh can be seen as positioning for office or positioning for notoriety, putting yourself forward and not caring what it does to others.

You know, I was in worship ministry through music for like over 20 years before we planted this church.

And I don't know if there's a ministry in church that has to be more careful of selfish ambition than the worship ministry.

I haven't seen that abide, praise the Lord.

But selfish ambition is probably the biggest thing that a worship ministry has to look out for.

People that want to get up in front of people and show everybody how talented they are.

You know, that look at me, I'm up in front and I'm shredding my part and I'm looking good doing it, or you know, whatever it might be, while supposedly doing it for the glory of God.

That's one picture, I think, of selfish ambition.

The second thing that we see here, though, is conceit.

So think arrogance and pride kind of go hand in hand.

If you've ever had somebody show up to a Bible study of some sort, and you can just tell that they are there to let you know that they know more about the Bible than you do, and they know the application better than you do.

They just want to prove how smart they are.

Um, and they want everybody to just listen to them.

That's conceit.

That's arrogance, that's the pride that we're looking at here.

You know, people that love God and love his word with the best of intentions want to use their knowledge and experience to build others up, to help them mature in their faith and to not shame people, but to lift them up with God's word.

People that are conceited work out of pride, not love.

And that's just like one example that I could think of.

But a lot of times, that's where legalism is born, out of conceit.

That's where the pride leads to some action that they want everybody else to have to follow as well.

So Paul says to do nothing out of selfish ambition and conceit.

But look at the next part of verse 3.

But in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.

Now, this is the opposite of what our flesh wants, right?

These are hard things to do.

You know, it's so easy to have a me first attitude.

We can do that without any effort.

It's easy to look out for number one.

It's hard, though, to put others first.

That has to be an intentional effort, oftentimes with sacrifice involved.

And humility here, humility means having a humble opinion of oneself.

This is not having a self-deprecating attitude or a self-loathing or a false humility.

That's not what this is talking about.

This is a humble opinion of self.

This means you know who you are in comparison to Christ, and not others, but in comparison to Christ, and you know who you are in Christ.

And that leads to knowing you aren't any better than anyone else.

So it says, in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.

Other translations right here say, let each esteem others better than himself, or count others more significant than yourself.

This is not about treatment.

It says consider, esteem, count them as more important.

This is having a humble opinion of yourself and truly believing here that others are more important than you are.

This is brain stuff, not action stuff.

Yeah, we're gonna get to the action stuff.

But if you have this mind, that will lead to the actions that Jesus wants.

So Paul isn't saying clean up your actions, he's saying clean up your thinking first, and then he gets to the actions.

You know, and I was as I was going through this this week, I was just thinking of how opposite this is from our culture.

Doesn't this rub up against a lot of what the world is trying to teach us?

The world's saying, hey, love yourself.

You have to love yourself before you can love others.

Or, you know, people do something selfish and they'll slap a self-care hashtag on it just to justify it as, you know, so it's okay, and then people will applaud that.

The enemy is the one that wants us to focus on self and self-promotion and self-ambition and on conceit because that's the opposite of what's good for us, and it causes division.

So, what better thing could he focus on than doing those things within the church?

Focus on self and then cause some division within the church.

But God says no.

He says, put your focus on others.

In humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.

Doesn't that go right along with the two greatest commandments that Jesus gave us?

To love God and love others.

Those commands are not just for the benefit of God's kingdom.

He gave us those commands because that's also what's best for us as well.

You know, if you're overwhelmed with fear and anxiety or whatever your current life circumstance may be, focus on God, focus on others.

Go out and serve others if you're struggling with that.

Start praying for others.

And you know what happens?

You're no longer focused on yourself, and you aren't allowing those thoughts to run wild, and you're not allowing your thoughts to run to every possible bad outcome that could come in your future.

Because you're putting others first and you're shifting your focus away from self.

Does anybody here?

You don't have to raise your hand, but does anybody here have trouble when you go to bed dealing with anxiety?

Or maybe waking up in the middle of the night and having anxiety and then having trouble going back to sleep because you're just not able to take your thoughts captive.

You know, the best way to combat that.

Is to quote Scripture and to pray for somebody else.

A great way to, in humility, consider others as more important than yourself by taking the focus off of self and putting it on God and then putting it on others.

And not only, it says here, not only consider someone as more important, but look at verse 4.

Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.

Here's the action part of it.

We talked about the mind, cleaning up the thinking.

Here's the action part of it.

To place the interests of others ahead of your interests.

It doesn't mean that you don't have interests or that you shouldn't pursue your own interests, but that you see the interests of others being ahead of yours.

And this can sound scary, can it?

But think of it this way: if we're all seeking and submitting to the Lord, if we are all abiding in Christ and walking by the Spirit, if we're all united in love and in the Spirit and already thinking in the same way, the interests of others should also be the interests of Christ.

Right?

So, how do we do this?

Well, Jesus shows us all the way throughout the four gospels what this looks like in practice over and over and over again.

But here are some highlights and how he did this.

Paul tells us in verse 5, look at it with me.

Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Your translation may say, or grasped, or something to be held on to.

This is speaking right here of Jesus' willingness to serve, his willingness to step from his position and his glory in heaven and walk among us in humility as a servant.

I'll tell you what this is not speaking of, or this is saying what Jesus did not do.

Jesus did not come down, say, I'm God, I'm gonna sit here, you're gonna feed me grapes, you're gonna wash my feet, you're gonna do whatever I say, or else I'm gonna call down lightning from heaven and I'm gonna destroy you and you're gonna wish that you never lived.

That is that's the that's the opposite.

He could have, he's God, he can do whatever he wants.

He didn't exploit his equality with God, but instead gave us an example of how we should love and serve God and love and serve others.

And if the king of the universe, the name above all names, that spoke creation into existence, wasn't selfish, wasn't conceited, considered others as better than himself, how on earth can we be okay with doing any of those things on our own to others?

So instead of exploiting his position, look at verse 7, instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.

Let's get this out of the way right in the beginning here.

Did Jesus become any less God when he came to earth?

Hopefully, emphatic no, right?

Everybody?

Yeah, yeah.

That phrase taking on here means in addition to.

And he placed our human interests above his human interests.

He placed our eternal interests above his earthly comfort.

As he showed us what perfect sacrificial love looks like.

You see, the emptying that Paul is referring to here is in regards to the verses that follow.

So we're gonna see the how to Jesus doing this and emptying himself.

Look at the second part of verse 7 and verse 8.

And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.

Up until Jesus coming to earth, did he ever have to obey anyone or anything?

No, he's God.

But now on earth, he had parents to obey and to honor.

Remember, he fulfilled God's law, and I'm sure he did it in this way.

Just because he's God didn't mean that his parents said, Hey, Jesus, take out the trash.

And after a long day, he didn't want to, but he would do it to respect and obey and honor his parents.

So there were things that Jesus had to do that he probably didn't want to, but he did it because he was fulfilling the law.

He had parents to honor and obey.

With that, he now had to obey civil laws and civil authorities of the land to the capacity that they weren't asking him to sin or compromise, obviously.

But he didn't have to do that in the past.

And he was obedient to the point of death.

Hebrews 5, 7 through 8 says, During his earthly life, he offered prayers and appeals with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

Although he was the Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.

Jesus laid down his whole 30 plus years on this earth as a sacrifice for us.

It wasn't just on the cross, it was his whole life.

And he learned obedience, it says in Hebrews, through suffering.

Even death on a cross.

A death that was invented for max humiliation and for max pain.

Remember why Paul is telling them this?

So that they may adopt the same attitude as Christ.

You know, this is what he's calling us to as well, right here in Atascadero.

To humbly lay down your life for Christ and for each other.

And isn't that what Paul's doing as well?

As we've already pointed out, he's laying down his life.

He's currently in prison for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of encouraging churches in that time.

He's in prison and he's writing all of these things.

I think he's done a good job of adopting that same attitude of Christ, and now he's encouraging other believers to do the same.

Now look at the results of Jesus doing this in verse 9.

For this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.

Men crucified and buried him.

God lifted him from the grave to the name that is above every name.

To supreme majesty.

Nobody higher.

No one greater.

No one with more authority than Jesus.

Highly exalted in every way.

But that's God's economy, isn't it?

And I think really what Paul's wanting to teach this Philippians church that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

Jesus came and lived as the least, and God raised him to the greatest, to supreme majesty, to this position that we see in verse 10.

Look at verse 10 with me.

So that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So we see God exalting Jesus in verse 9, and then now everything else as well, exalting Jesus in verses 10 and 11.

And the way this is phrased, this is all humans from all time, and it might include all spiritual beings as well.

That's confessing Jesus and bowing down to him.

It might be angels and fallen angels and demons, etc.

Because under the earth here, it may mean humans that have been buried, but it can also be referring to the enemy as well.

Now, in this day, Christians are going to be bowing and confessing because they want to, and they are just overjoyed and they can't contain themselves because that's their Savior, and this is something that they they want to do.

But those whose faith is not in Christ, they're going to be doing this too.

Not because they want to worship Jesus, but because they're still going to recognize that Jesus is God.

It will not be deniable at this point.

Even for those whose faith is not in him, they still recognize who he is.

Yeah?

Jesus is God.

Jesus is the Son of God.

They're going to come to that recognition, and they are not going to be able to remain upright, and they're not going to be able to remain silent.

On their way to hell.

Think about that.

But all will, everyone ever will come to a place of recognizing that Jesus is in fact God, the name above all names.

This is in everyone's future.

Think about that.

From Adam and Eve to the last child that will be born before the return of Jesus.

This is in every single person's future.

So the question is will you bow with excitement and joy in your heart?

Are you going to admit that Jesus is God in terror and in hate?

You're going to do it either way.

So I want to encourage every heart that is here today to bow your heart to Christ and to confess him as Lord.

If you're already a follower of Christ, do it again.

You cannot do that enough times.

If you've never done it before, make today the first time that you've ever done it.

And I want to encourage you, don't just do it because you're scared of hell.

Do it because of the love of Christ that we've been talking about here today.

He did all of this for you.

Romans 5, 8 through 10 says, but God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, still his enemies, Christ died for us.

How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath?

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, then how much more?

Having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life?

He has proven his perfect love for us.

And a little bit later in Romans it says, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And you can do this in your seat right now by simply confessing him with your mouth and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

He will forgive your sins.

And you can start bowing and confessing him here today.

And that means a hope and a future with him for all of eternity, face to face.

Do it in your seat right now.

If you have not done that before, maybe you need to do it again.

Will you please pray with me?

God, we thank you for your love.

We thank you for your mercy.

That you looked upon the human condition and could see how much trouble we were in, and that we could not do this on our own.

And you gave us Jesus.

We thank you for the greatest gift we will ever know.

We thank you that we can be forgiven, that we can be washed, that we can be cleansed by the blood of Jesus that was spilled for us on the cross.

And we thank you, Lord, that you raised him three days later to the highest position with all authority, the name above all names.

So, Lord, we just want to bow before you in awe today and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Help us to all come to that realization now, before it's too late, to give our life completely to you.

Lord, we thank you for the love that you shower us with every single day.

How you care so deeply for us, that you know the most intimate detail of every action and thought that we've ever had, and you love us anyway, and you forgive us and you give us the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that you see us as holy ones, as your saints.

God, we thank you so much for the privilege that we have of being called your sons and daughters and of worshiping you.

Lord, help us to be in awe of who you are and all that you've done for us.

Nothing that we deserve.

But you love us, and we thank you so much for that.

Lord, I pray as a church that you would help us to not do anything out of selfish ambition or conceit or putting our ourselves first, putting our agenda ahead of others, whatever it might be.

Help us to love in that unity and in that oneness that you desire us to have with you, that you have with Christ and with the Holy Spirit.

Help us to submit to your will more and more daily.

Help us to abide closer and closer with Jesus Christ.

Help us to walk by the Spirit in every moment of every day.

To come to a place of being more and more like Jesus on a daily basis.

So help us to apply these scriptures here today and pray that you would continue to change us and make us more like you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.