Scripture Introduction
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a Sonnet some of you will have heard: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach…. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise…. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”
The Apostle Paul’s love was not so flowery, but it was substantial, and expressed in solid, practical ways. If you would like to follow, I am reading the opening verses of Philippians 1. [Read Philippians 1.1-11. Pray.]
Introduction
A young fellow beginning his career asked an old rich man how he made his money. The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, "Well, son, it was 1932, the depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents. The next morning, I bought two apples. I polishing them and worked all day to sell them for 20 cents. I continued for a month, by the end of which I’d accumulated $1.37."
"And that’s how you built an empire?" the boy asked.
"Heavens, no!" the man replied. "My wife’s father died and left us two million dollars."
That is a parable about relationships. It may seem that all the effort put into loving one another yields only $1.37 worth of good. We want an inheritance! We prefer that God bring perfect people to church—people easy to love, who will give a better return on our investment. Instead, he brings—us together, that we might learn to enjoy one another right in the midst of life.
That is the theme of Philippians. Sixteen times in four short chapters Paul uses either the noun, “joy,” or the verb, “to rejoice.” Apparently, those who know Jesus should be happy. Yet joy is not the same as escaping the pain of being fallen creatures in a fallen world. Jesus wept and grieved while he was here. And Paul taught about the time for godly sorrow. Joy (as it turns out) results when God changes us, not our circumstances.
God offers joy in Christ while suffering with sickness, while struggling with temptation, while misrepresented by a coworker. And, in today’s text, joy in Christ while building a church unified around the Bible and the Gospel.
It seems to me that Christians often expect it to be easy to enjoy one another. “We ought to get along”—without hurt and difficulty. But the Bible implies that doing so is challenging. The New Testament has 26 different “one another” commands. God gives 26 specific instructions about how to relate to each another. Why so many? Because it is unnatural and difficult; it demands death to self and to selfish desires. It will not be easy; but it is good.
The goodness of the way of difficulty is one of the central messages of the cross. God delivers the greatest good through the most terrible and unjust suffering. The cross guarantees God’s joy in the midst of life, good in suffering, blessing in faithful obedience.
Paul writes to a church threatened by disunity brought on by selfishness. But he does not scold; instead, the wise pastor calls for Christ-likeness in our thinking even as he models a ministry of the loving shepherd. He struggles to love sinful people, so he takes active steps to ensure his service as an elder remains faithful in love.
In so doing, we have two main applications from this text. First, we see a loving elder in action, and this becomes the standard and goal for our elders. It is a high standard, but as God conforms us to this job description, our effectiveness will increase and our delight in service will be evident. Second, we are challenged to implement such practical love in our lives. We all want a healthy and unified church; here are five practical steps that each of us can implement to walk in the good works prepared for us by Jesus.
1. Elders Love Us Through Thankful Prayer (Philippians 1.3-4)
The key word is “all”: “In all remembrance… always… in every prayer…. for you all…I am thankful to God and full of joy.” A lack of unity threatens to unravel this church. In chapter two, Paul will plead with these folks to quit operating from rivalry and selfish conceit. Later he will even name names: “Euodia and Syntyche—please ladies, agree in the Lord.”
So where does unity begin? It begins by praying, with thanksgiving, for all of the people in the church.
I found a cartoon that shows a grumpy man saying, “That praying for your enemies stuff doesn’t work. They’re still here and they’re still in good health.”
That is not what Paul has in mind. His prayer is for every person in the church, and he has learned thankfulness for each.
Principle: a healthy and unified church depends on passionate and thankful prayer. The enemy hates for us to love and enjoy one another. He will stoop to any extreme to divide us. The power of God is necessary for us to be unified. And believing elders call on that power through thankful prayer.
Pastor John MacArthur applies this well: “Like Paul, believers who possess God-given joy do not focus on themselves, even in the midst of pain or difficult circumstances. They are rather concerned about their fellow believers’ pain, difficult circumstances, hardships, failures, and sorrows, and they earnestly intercede for them. They joyfully pray for God to bless their fellow believers in every way, above all for their spiritual welfare. Later in this letter Paul expresses this personal trait in an admonition: ‘Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others’ (2.4).
“It seems that throughout most of the history of the church only a minority of Christians have known the true, full joy that God gives to his obedient children. Lack of joy reveals itself in three ways: in negative thoughts and talk about others, in a lack of concern for their welfare, and in the failure to intercede on their behalf. Joyless believers are self-centered, selfish, proud, and often vengeful, and their self-centeredness inevitably manifests itself in prayerlessness” (MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Philippians, 22).
My dream for The Church of the Covenant is that the elders would find the joy that Paul talks about from praying together with thankfulness for all the people. And as a result, I hope that others will call us a “praying congregation.”
Leonard Ravenhill wanted that for his congregation and expressed his concern this way: “The church has many organizers, but few agonizers; many who pay, but few who pray; many resters, but few wrestlers; many who are enterprising, but few who are interceding. Few are praying and praying. The secret of praying is praying in secret. A worldly Christian will stop praying and a praying Christian will stop worldliness. Tithes may build a church, but tears will give it life. That is the difference between the modern church and the early church. In the matter of effective praying, never have so many left so much to so few. Brothers and sisters, let us pray.”
Elders love us through thankful prayer and in so doing they are examples to us all of God’s means of unity and love.
2. Elders Love Us Through Gospel Partnership (Philippians 1.5)
“We must keep the main thing the main thing.” Like all slogans, there is a danger of reductionism. Some people utter that truism and then, instead of making the main thing the main thing, they make the main thing the only thing. The Bible never encourages such a mistake. It is correct, however, that the Gospel is the main thing, and must be so for us.
Often churches split and divide and lose their witness in the community, not because they have particular preferences—those are wonderful. But when we make our particulars of equal significance with the gospel, we lose all power. The gospel knits our hearts and lives together—believing the gospel, encouraging one another with the Gospel, working the gospel down into our own and each other’s lives.
Just like Paul wrote a letter to the Philippians in which he prayed for them, someone sent me a letter this week with a prayer: “Glenn, May you be most satisfied when Jesus is most glorified in His working out His will for you and us, as we seek the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; that our one body and one spirit in Christ will demonstrate to all within and without our church that He is our LORD; and we, His children, His sheep, will love Him more than ourselves and our desires. May the Name of Jesus so resonate and quicken this prayer that your walk with Him today will undeniably glorify Him, Amen.”
That is Gospel partnership. We know the main thing is the Good News of what Jesus has done, and proclaiming and believing that unites us. Our elders love us by pointing us to the Gospel as providing our partnership.
3. Elders Love Us Through Hopeful Confidence In the Future (Philippians 1.6)
“I am sure….” It could be translated: “I am confident; I am certain”—Paul believes in these people. He trusts them because he believes in the God who causes all things to work together according to his sovereign plan for the revelation of the glory and grace of Jesus.
One thing which sets Christianity apart from other belief systems is an unflagging hopefulness about the future. Of course, if you look around, there are many reasons to despair. There is even a group of people at the University of Chicago, who keep what they call a “Doomsday Clock,” showing how close to catastrophic nuclear destruction we are by how many minutes before midnight it is.
Paul, likewise, could have looked at his circumstances and been filled with despair. He was chained in jail; jealous preachers were claiming his imprisonment as proof of their superior ministry; and the church was in danger of being split by selfish rivalry. Yet he writes of his sure confidence.
Here is another principle which will sustain us through many troubles: What enables Christians to enjoy one another is not living in the past, but confidence in the future.
This is why it is so critical that the elders develop together a vision for the future. We do not ignore or forget our past, but neither can we recover or reclaim it. Just as we cannot go back to Eden, we cannot return to the glory of a former day.
Philippians 3.12-16: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.”
Our elders love us by helping us hold true to what we have attained while (at the same time) remaining future focused. In so doing, they help us to remain confident about one another and thinking the best of each other. Officers must be hopeful about the future.
4. Elders Love Us By Depending On Grace (Philippians 1.7)
What does Paul mean by that strange wording at the end? How did these Christians share in grace during Paul’s imprisonment and defense of the Gospel? He is what he is saying: “Though I was imprisoned by the authorities and slandered and attacked by those who claimed to preach the gospel, though I had to defend myself again and again, you Philippians stood by me, knowing and insisting that it is only by grace that we stand.”
James Boice: “The Greek says, literally, ‘all of you being participants with me of grace.’ It is not that Paul’s grace is shared with them. It is rather that all alike, from the great apostle to the most humble believer, are participants in the grace of God. No truth will more quickly overcome divisions among Christians than the truth that we are all equally sinners and all equally recipients of grace.”
Paul is an apostle; Jesus spoke to him personally. Yet why does he feel a deep love for these people? Not because he is super-spiritual, but because we are all brothers in Christ Jesus. The elders love us by depending on grace themselves, and by pointing us to the grace we share and which unites us in heartfelt love for one another.
5. Elders Love Us Through the Love of Jesus (Philippians 1.8)
It is not enough, is it, just to tolerate others in the church? I must miss you when you are absent; I must delight in you when you are here. We must yearn to be together with the same love which Jesus Christ has for us!
Lucian was not a believer. He lived around AD 180, and was jealous of the relationship that the Christians in his day had: “It is incredible to see the fervor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing. Their first legislator [Jesus] has put it in their heads that they are brothers.”
Jesus said it this way: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13.35). Not by our perfection; but by our heartfelt love as mutual sharers in the grace of God.
Newspaper columnist George Crane tells of a wife who came into his office full of hatred toward her husband. "I do not only want to get rid of him, I want to get even. Before I divorce him, I want to hurt him as much as he has me."
Crane suggested an ingenious plan: "Go home and act as if you really love him. Tell him how much he means to you. Praise him for every decent trait. Go out of your way to be as kind, considerate, and generous as possible. Spare no efforts to please him, to enjoy him. After you’ve convinced him of your undying love and that you cannot live without him, then drop the bomb. Tell him that your are leaving him. That will really hurt him." With revenge in her eyes, she smiled and exclaimed, "Beautiful; that will get him good!" And she did it with enthusiasm, passionately acting as if she loved him. For two months she showed love, kindness, listening, giving, reinforcing, sharing. But when she did not return to Crane’s office, he called her and asked if she was now ready to go through with the divorce.
"Divorce?" she exclaimed. "Never! I discovered I really do love him." Her actions changed her feelings. The ability to love is established not so much by fervent promise as often repeated deeds.
C. S. Lewis wrote the same in Mere Christianity: "Do not waste your time bothering whether you ’love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less."
And why do this? Because Jesus has put in our minds that we are sisters and brothers!
6. Conclusion
The woman’s husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, yet she had stayed by his bedside every single day. One day, when he came to, he motioned for her to come nearer.
As she sat by him, he whispered, eyes full of tears, "You know what? You have been with me through all the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house, you stayed right here. When my health started failing, you were still by my side. Do you know what I think?"
"What dear?" she gently asked, smiling as her heart began to fill with warmth.
"I think you’re bad luck."
Have you ever wondered if bad luck brought you here? It did not; a sovereign and merciful God has you here so that we can come to look like Jesus by learning to love one another. You cannot succeed by your own power. Will you seek his Spirit to become one who enjoys other Christians? Think about that. Amen.
