“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus”
I had the thought of opening this sermon with a great quote by a successful military leader from history, pertaining to the mindset of a well-trained soldier; or perhaps a political figure who had overcome great difficulties.
So I went to the web and discovered that good quotes are not easy to find. I finally located a site that has a long page of quotes about attitude. The first thing I discovered there was that none of them were useable for my sermon, the reason for which I will tell you in a minute or two.
The other thing I noticed is that most of them are suitable to fill a fortune cookie and not much more. Even quotes by very famous people whose names I know and some of whom I respect for what I know of their lives; when I read what they had to say about attitude I found myself thinking, ‘well, that’s just obvious’.
Be that as it may, as I said, none of them have anything to do with this sermon, but I did pick three to share with you just because I had spent the time and they gave me a chuckle.
“Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious.” – Bill Meyer
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems”, says Herm Albright, “but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”
The third one is understandably anonymous. “There is no danger of developing eyestrain from looking on the bright side of things.” Yeah, I’d be embarrassed to claim that one too…
Here is why none of the quotes I found were applicable to my sermon. It is because Paul was not encouraging his readers to have a mindset that would bring them success in their worldly endeavors. He wasn’t advocating an attitude that would help them rise above their hardship.
In fact, if this verse that we have as our text today can be considered a command of scripture since it is Holy Spirit inspired, then it may very well be the most demanding and difficult command of scripture.
For who can have the mindset of Christ? Which of us sinful, self-full creatures can begin to have an inkling of the humility and total selflessness that brought God down to the lowest place of all in order to lift us up?
Nevertheless, in the God-ordained authority of an Apostle, Paul has given instruction here, not just suggestion, and we are wise to consider carefully before assuming that we are anywhere in the region when it comes to living it out.
I think the best way then, for us to understand this attitude that Paul exhorts us toward, is to not look at ourselves, but look at the One who demonstrated the attitude – the mindset – that we are now to pursue.
OTHERS MORE IMPORTANT
Looking back to the opening verses of this chapter, Paul has made clear that his great desire for them would be that they remain united in spirit and in purpose.
He speaks of same mindedness, and love and humility, but I think all of it is contained in and dependant on this one particular focus; let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.
Now if we’re thinking in terms of our interpersonal relationships then that’s kind of a fortune cookie bit of advice, isn’t it?
It sort of falls into the category of Thumper the rabbit’s line in the animated version of Bambi. “If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all”.
Right? Consider other people as more important than yourself, Grasshopper, and you will have fulfillment.
But Paul says this, and then says that we should put the interests of others before our own interests, which is really another way of saying to consider them as more important, and his very next line is our text verse.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.
Now we can see by the sentence structure that he has made reference to the attitude, or the mind set, of Christ and will now go on to describe this mind set.
But if Paul’s Holy Spirit-inspired wish is for the church to be of the same mind as Christ, then the admonition of our text points backward as well as forward.
Are you with me? He wouldn’t tell them to be like-minded and showing love and preserving unity and being intent on the same purpose and humble and self-depreciating, if those things were anything other than what Christ is.
Why tell someone to manifest certain characters in their life, and then go on to tell them to be something entirely different than what he has just described?
So when he says “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus”, although he is now going to talk about the thinking that brought God down to man, by his placement of this admonition he is also saying ‘You will be manifesting Christ-likeness toward one another and toward outsiders if you obey these instructions.
So what he is really saying to us is that Christ regarded others as more important than Himself, and considered the best interest of others before His own.
It’s one thing to say that about a soldier in the field, throwing himself on a grenade for his brothers, but doesn’t that make our brains skip a pixel or two, to think of the Lord of Glory, the King of Kings, the Creator of all that is, regarding others as more important than Himself?
And it successfully, I think, causes us to see the admonition applied to ourselves in a slightly different light.
Oh! I begin to see now, that this does not mean hold the door for the lady, or let that family of 5 get in line first at the pot luck. It doesn’t just mean give up my day at the lake to sit with a sick Aunt or agree to take vacation at Mesa Verde knowing it’s going to be 105 degrees in the shade.
In the light that Christ has shined for me I begin to see that what it means to regard others as more important than myself, is something that I cannot do out of my own nature or in my own strength.
I begin to see that it is an attitude that is going to require a daily death; a taking up of a cross and following the One who went before me.
It is the sort of thing, if I am a military Colonel, for example, that is going to cause me to regard both those in rank above me, and those in rank below me, as more important than I, because it has nothing to do with the rank and file of this life or with the priorities of worldly esteem.
It means I now have to become a servant to all, seeking no gain or comfort for myself that would diminish another’s worth or impinge on the filling of their needs. More than that, it means I must seek to be less than what I am so that they might be more.
And this might take the mind of the diligent student to the meeting between the priests and Levites and John the Baptist in chapter 1 of John’s gospel.
They came asking, “Who are you?” and the wording of his response is interesting. Because he didn’t begin by telling them who he was. He began by being very clear who he was not.
“I am not the Christ”. Hear it? He knew who they were looking for, and he knew that what they really wanted to know was if this fellow drawing crowds down by the Jordan was claiming to be Messiah.
And when they pressed him further to tell them about himself, he wasn’t John the Baptizer. He wasn’t ‘forerunner of the Christ’… he was a voice.
Just a voice. Can you imagine?
Now you know, so don’t deny it, that most of us would at least want someone to know what we had endured. “You know, I spend every day out here eating locusts dipped in wild honey, and wearing itchy camel hide. My nights are lonely and cold, and in the morning there’s always people gathering at the river bank waiting for me to dip them in it. They don’t even give me time for breakfast sometimes and…hey…can’t a guy get a little bit of privacy once in a while? Nevertheless, I endure because this is my calling…this is ministry… (sigh…)”
And what does this say to the trend in our modern Christian culture, toward taking pride and even being encouraged to take pride in being a ‘Child of the King’. Oh, we’re children of the kingdom! We’re princes and princesses and therefore we should expect to be treated as such. Now this is not wrong up to a point, because we should be rejoicing that God has given us a spirit of adoption whereby we are aware of His grace toward us and confident that we are accepted in His presence.
But when the teaching steps over the line to claim some supposed rights in this world, and obligate God as our Father to keep us from all harm and discomfort and give us ‘stuff’, then we need to stop and wonder then, if we’re the princes and princesses because of Jesus, why did He go through this world as the suffering servant, poor and humble and as a lamb to the slaughter?
Well, the prosperity lite preachers would use the same passage I will be using in just a minute, and say, ‘He became poor that we might become rich’. But if you take that kind of sloppy and senseless application of the scriptures to a logical conclusion, they are diminishing the work of the cross to simply a means by which we might be fat and happy in this world, and friends, that is damnable heresy.
What was the attitude of John? I’m a voice crying in the wilderness, and after me comes One whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.
Now folks, I want you to remember that John is the elder cousin of Jesus. We can have no idea what their relationship was like growing up or how they related to one another at family gatherings. But when the Holy Spirit revealed to John who his cousin really was, his humble declaration was ‘He must increase but I must decrease”. Jn 3:30
And it should come as no surprise to us then, that later Jesus announced to the multitudes that among men born of woman there has been none greater than John. Because in the Kingdom of Heaven many who are first will be last and the last first. Matt 19:30
Putting others first, being concerned with their good and their interests primarily, is not a matter of manners or good taste.
It is a mindset that marks Christ as the eternal Son of the Father who though He was rich for our sake became poor so that we, through His poverty, might become rich. 2 Cor 8:9
Not in the sense of monetary, worldly wealth, but He came down to the lowest parts of the world and in the lowest position, so that He might raise us up to the highest Heaven.
And Paul says that we should also have this mind set toward one another individually and as the church corporately toward all.
Before we move on from here I want to share something with you from The Adequate Man: Paul in Philippians, by Paul Rees (Westwood, NJ Revell 1954)
“Look at Him – this amazing Jesus! He is helping Joseph make a yoke in that little carpenter’s shop at Nazareth. This is the One who, apart from His self-emptying, could far more easily make a solar system or a galaxy of systems. Look at Him again! Dressed like a slave, with towel and basin for His menial equipment, He is bathing the feet of some friends of His who, but for their quarrelsomeness, should have been washing His feet…
“He humbled Himself! “Don’t forget this,” cries Paul to these dear friends of his at Philippi. ‘Don’t forget this when the slightest impulse arises to become self-assertive and self-seeking, and so to break the bond of your fellowship with one another!”
THE DIVINE DESCENT
Then Paul moves forward to describe the unfathomable way this attitude of humility was demonstrated in Christ. C.S. Lewis shared some insight to the incarnation in his book, “Miracles”. It is lengthy and worth the read, but here is just a short part of what he has to say there.
“In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; …down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.” Miracles, C.S. Lewis chap 14, para 5
When a king descends from his throne he is no less king, but often comes down to meet with his subjects, to defend them in battle, to bestow gifts.
Let’s chart this descent of our Lord, not a descent from who He was but from His high and lofty heavenly throne to become one with His created ones so they might be made one with Him.
Paul says “…He existed in the form of God”, and made reference to His ‘equality’ with God.
I’m not going to bore you with a word study here. There are certain theological truths that make up the foundation of belief in the true God and His Christ, and they are not points of debate for us, but of unity.
Jesus Christ existed eternally and unchangeably and will forever continue to exist as God. He did not become less than God in order to become a Man, but while temporarily refusing to exercise His divine prerogatives still he was no less than fully God. Remember my imperfect analogy of the descending king.
So God, fully God, humbled Himself as a bond servant and was made in the likeness of men. He entered into time and this world in the body of a human being, in the likeness of His creation, and not only so, but as a helpless infant.
If you continue to read in Philippians 2, verse 8, being then found in appearance as a man, which in itself is a humbling; a coming down; a descent, He further humbled Himself, as a man, by becoming obedient to the point of death.
Going farther down, He not only humbled himself to the point of death, but the most humiliating, ignoble death of all; death on a Roman cross.
Have you ever wondered what sort of death you will eventually die? I know most of us don’t want to think about such things and to dwell on them with regularity and even with fascination would be morbid and unhealthy, but I don’t think it can be called unwise to occasionally give thought to our mortality and recognize that at some point and in some way each of us will leave this world in the death of our body.
Ever since I stood at my father’s bedside in 1998 and especially as I pass my mid 50’s and have my annual visits to the doctor for what she calls an engine check and tune up, I just once in a while am brought to the place of wondering what it will be for me.
Unless the rapture occurs first, which would be better, I think I’d like to go peacefully as my dad did, with family standing around singing a hymn.
But I have to face reality also and admit that I am not less deserving than any other man of a less noble, less peaceful demise, and the laws of averages, I think, would indicate there is every bit as much chance if not more, of being found like Elvis between the tub and the toilet, or dying suddenly in a car crash, or wasting away with a cancer or Alzheimer’s.
Now I’m not trying to joke here and I certainly do not mean to disrespect anyone who has died in an untimely or unseemly way. I just want to make this point.
The Prince of Heaven deserved no death at all. But He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on the cross.
And as one writer put it, His death was a point of obedience where ours is mandatory. We don’t have a choice; He did.
More than that, His humbling, His humiliation, was not only one of subjection to the Father’s will. It was subjection also to the will of men. It was a humiliation that included mocking, spitting, physical torture, slander, scourging, stripping, being forced, bloodied and torn in shreds to haul His own implement of capital punishment up a hill, nailed to it without mercy and raised up for all eyes to gaze upon in demonic hilarity while His blood mixed with the dirt.
HAVE THIS ATTITUDE IN YOURSELVES!
Does Paul’s admonition now, to have this attitude in yourselves strike your ears with a little more discomforting impact?
And if not before do you now begin to comprehend that Paul calls for an attitude; a mindset; that can only be demonstrated in our lives by the grace of God and power of the Holy Spirit?
Arm yourself with this passage from Philippians 2 and have it at the ready when you encounter someone who wants to accept Jesus of Nazareth as a good man or a great teacher and on equal plane with the historical religious leaders and prophets of the past.
Read this to them and ask them how they can possibly continue to cling to such a position.
Because no mere man, however good, great, powerful or noble, has ever been to such heights so as to come down.
No mere man could ever be brought down so low as to get his shoulders under…under…fallen humanity, and rise up again bringing them with him.
Arm yourself, Christian, with this passage from Philippians 2 and have it at the ready when you encounter your own penchant for self-seeking and self-will.
Read it again to yourself and ask yourself how you can cling to your hunger for recognition and your disdain of suffering and humility in your passing days.
Read it and as you do, go on to see that…
“For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
And remember that as He was so you are in this world, but in the kingdom of Heaven the first shall be last and the last first.
