First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
March 13, 2011
OLD ATTITUDES THAT NO
LONGER SERVE YOU
The ABCs of Spring Cleaning -- Part 1
Isaac Butterworth
Philippians 2:1-11 (NIV)
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:
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.
When I was in college, I worked as a youth director at a little church out in the country about an hour’s drive away. There were two families in that congregation that didn’t get along. When they came to worship, they would take up their positions on opposite sides of the room and glare at each other with contempt. When it was time to leave, they would do everything in their power to avoid contact with one another. They had long since given up speaking to each other.
Once, I asked the pastor about it, and he said he had looked into it. But everybody he asked told him the same thing. They didn’t know why these two families didn’t get along. When he asked what started the whole thing, nobody could recall. So, he went to the heads of the two families and asked: ‘What happened to create such division between you?’ Guess what? They couldn’t remember either! Supposedly, their mutual resentment had once served them well, but now they were serving it: feeding a debilitating enmity toward one another even though no one could give a single good reason for doing so! I thought to myself: ‘Here are people who make it a point to go to church every Sunday. They form their lips around words of praise, they submit their ears to hearing the gospel of reconciliation, and presumably they offer their prayers to the One who is called the Prince of Peace. Yet none of it makes any difference. They’re the same people when they leave as they were before they came.’ I was astounded.
Then, I began to look into my own heart. And I had to admit that I, too, was resistant to the change that Christ seeks to work within me. Like anyone else, I can exempt myself from the claim of the Spirit on my life. Like anyone else, I can excuse myself from submitting to the transformation offered in the gospel. Like anyone else, I can rationalize away the the truth to which I am called not only to assent but to embody as well.
No show of hands, of course, but do you find that to be true of yourself? Our beloved Savior has claimed you and freed you from sin’s grip on your life, and you have turned to him and fallen into his embrace. Nevertheless, you find yourself still plagued by sin’s power, and not only do you yield to it but you justify doing so!
You and I have been given new life by the grace of Christ; you and I have breathed in the fresh air of the Spirit of Christ. Yet, we still follow the scent of our former ways. We still entangle ourselves in old patterns. We still maintain old attitudes that, if ever they did have a place in our lives, now no longer serve us. They just distract us and defeat us.
Paul talks about this very thing in his letter to the Philippians, in chapter 2, the passage we read just moments ago. Look how Paul begins. He says, ‘If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit’ -- in other words, as Eugene Peterson puts in his paraphrase in The Message, ‘if you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ’ -- ‘then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose’ (vv. 1f.).
What is Paul doing here? He is pleading with God’s people to be united. And why? Because they’re not! They’re anything but! And why is that? Paul tells us. It is because of self-promoting attitudes. ‘Do nothing,’ he says, ‘out of selfish ambition or vain conceit’ (v. 3). That’s what was going on in Phillipi, and, chances are, that’s what’s going on in your heart and mine. We operate out of ‘selfish ambition [and] vain conceit.’ We push our way to the front. Why? Because we think it’s our right to be there. We seek our own advantage. Why? Because, as far as we’re concerned, that’s all that matters.
But the Spirit of Christ will not collude with us in this distortion of our souls. Instead, he calls us to humility. That’s the word Paul uses: humility. In Greek, it is a combination of two words, one meaning ‘low to the ground’ and the other meaning ‘to think.’ So, humility is what? It is a way of thinking. It is an attitude in which we do not think of ourselves as being above other people but, rather, below them. It is a way of thinking in which our needs do not come first but, rather, the needs of others do. In fact, Paul comes right out and says that: ‘Consider others better than yourselves,’ he writes. ‘Don’t look out only for your own interests,’ but also for the interests of others (NLT).
That’s verses 3 and 4, but in verse 5, Paul gets to the heart of it. ‘Your attitude,’ he says, ‘should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.’ And, if you look at the next three verses, verses 6 through 8, what you see is this. Christ himself is God -- which, as you can imagine, carries with it certain privileges -- but our Lord did not grasp at privilege. Instead, he relaxed his grip on any entitlement that he might have enjoyed and ‘made himself nothing.’ He emptied himself...of self. That was Jesus’ attitude. Being by nature God, he took on the nature of a man. ‘He humbled himself.’ Remember that word? Humble? He lowered himself. And became obedient -- even to the point of death. This is Jesus’ attitude. And Paul says, ‘Your attitude should be the same as’ his. Any other attitude is useless; it doesn’t serve you any more.
So, what are you going to do? I’ll tell you what you’re not going to do. You’re not going to imitate Jesus. That’s what you should do; in fact, it’s your moral obligation to do so. It is your responsibility to pattern yourself after him. But you cannot do it. Not in your own strength. It is only by the grace of God that you will be able to demonstrate Jesus’ attitude. Only by God’s grace.
Now, let me say something about grace. Grace is sorely misunderstood. It has become ever so mushy. We think grace simply describes how God overlooks our sins. We imagine God saying, ‘It’s all right. I understand. You’re just human. Everybody sins. You’re no different. It’s no big deal. I’ll just look the other way.’ And we think that’s what grace is.
But that’s not what grace is at all. Do you know the name, Dietrich Bonhoeffer? He was a Lutheran pastor who died for his faith in one of Hitler’s concentration camps. Bonhoeffer coined the phrase, ‘cheap grace.’ In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, he wrote about this ‘cheap grace.’ ‘Cheap grace,’ he said, ‘is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.’ Cheap grace isn’t grace at all.
But what is? What is true grace? It is costly grace. ‘Costly grace,’ Bonhoeffer says, ‘is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.... It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him’ (p. 47).
Grace is the means by which, and the only means by which, you are empowered to live a life of holiness and humility. God gives you this grace, and, if you are to receive it, it will cost you everything. It will bring with it the alarming awareness that you do not measure up. It will create in you a desire to be holy and humble. Grace will make you want to rid yourself of each and every old, useless attitude, and with it the whole self-centered mindset, And, by God’s grace, you will come to see in yourself a tendency toward inflated self-importance. And it will be to you as a gangrenous affliction to your soul. And you will long to have God cut it out. That’s what grace does.
But God’s grace will not simply perform surgery on your spirit. It will also heal. It will give you the strength as well as the desire to be holy and humble. And it will sustain you in the enduring practice of these graces. In short, by his grace, God will create a need and then -- and, again, this is by grace -- he will satisfy that need.
If he does not create the need, if he does not plant in your heart an unrelenting need to have the attitude of Christ, you will sense a need for everything else. Happiness, maybe -- almost assuredly! Convenience, yes! A life without frustration, certainly! Comfort. Wealth. Plenty to eat. Stylish clothes. A nice home. Yes. Yes. All those things. Control of your situation. Maybe even control of others. But, unless God gives you a sense of need, you will not desire holiness, nor the humility that attends it. You will want none of this unless God plants the desire for it in your heart.
The Christian life is no self-improvement program. It is a self-effacement program. You must come to the end of yourself. And the starting place for you is the cross. It is there that all your selfish ambitions meet their match. It is there that Christ ‘humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!’ It is there that his blood was poured out for you. It is there that you will die to yourself and to your self-centered agenda.
And if you do not start there, no matter where you go, you will be on the wrong path. You may do well. You may have the acclaim of others. You may profess religion, practice religion, and promote religion. But until your heart is broken at the cross, until your pride and vanity are crucified with Christ at the cross, you cannot be holy or humble or any of the other. And you will be locked in old attitudes that no longer serve you.
There are crosses all over this building. On the outside, on the inside. One in here, another in the chapel, still another in Fellowship Hall. Crosses are not hard to find. What is hard to find are the people who are willing to position themselves before the cross and cry out to the Savior who died there long ago that they might have the same attitude that Jesus had, that they might die to self daily -- for that is what it takes; ‘I die every day,’ Paul says (1 Cor. 15:31). Who is it that will die to self every day -- and be made alive to God? And become an embodiment of the holiness and the humility that formed the mind of Christ? Who? It could be you!
