Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose. Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. Philippians 2:1-13
Talk about extremes! The very best place to be is in a church that is unified and handling well the threats to unity. The very worst is a church that is splintered, full of cliques and getting worse each year. The unified church is a healthy, risk-taking place, where people dare to love unconditionally. In a splintered church factions center on personal preferences, rather than ministry.
Paul wrote to the Philippian believers, specifically requesting they be unified in their relationships and purpose.
Paul did not just put words on paper to fill a library shelf, he wrote to human beings. And he wrote knowing there would be threats to unity. Common sense tells us that, with humans, good and evil will eventually clash, because as it is with darkness and light, they are mortal enemies.
Throughout the last two thousand years churches have really had only one main problem – disunity.
God speaks to us today through the apostle's plea – he advises:
TO REMAIN IN GOD'S WILL YOU MUST BE IN UNITY.
Our question, of course is:
HOW IN THE WORLD CAN WE DO THAT?
The answer to unity isn't easy, but it can be easily stated:
TO HAVE UNITY, BE CHRIST-LIKE!
…and so, Paul spells-out that which constitutes Christ-likeness…5 ESSENTIALS:
1. Communion with Christ
It is impossible to ACT LIKE Christ if you do not WALK WITH Christ!
This (above all things) could solve the problems of churches around the world in any age. Believers who get away from a close walk with the Master cannot reproduce Christ-likeness in the flesh.
Paul said that the encouragement (or strength) he received from the Philippian church was because they were united, or in communion with Christ.
Belonging to Christ will produce a natural sense of belonging to each other that transcends our sinful nature. It’s like the old saying: Everybody who belongs to Christ belongs to everybody who belongs to Christ. In short, communion begets communion. This spiritual principle holds that it is impossible to be in genuine fellowship with Christ when you are out of fellowship with anyone for whom Christ died. It’s a syllogism you can state backwards or forwards; you can start with the negative or positive:
LOVE YOUR BROTHER/LOVE CHRIST;
HATE YOUR BROTHER/IMPOSSIBLE TO LOVE CHRIST.
2. Compassion for People
Tenderness and compassion are the same word in Greek. They are from the root word which, in English, is spleen. You have that little organ which helps purify your blood. It’s located in the visceral area and the ancient Greeks thought of it as the center or seat of emotion. After all, when you get upset, the first place you're liable to feel bad is the mid-section.
Christian compassion is a matter of being vulnerable enough with each other and the needs of the world's lost, so that we are moved viscerally and volitionally to do something about those needs.
When Jesus stood looking out over Jerusalem, he wept over the people who'd disowned Him throughout the ages. Compassion is a by-product of unconditional love for people.
3. Cooperation in the Spirit
Cooperation is when you are one in spirit and purpose. Our methods may conflict at times, but our goal will always keep us united. Did you know that you can take 100 pianos and tune them to the same tuning fork, and each of those pianos will then be in tune with each other? They’re in tune NOT because they decided to be just like one another – but because they were all set to the standard of one tuning fork. A.W. Tozer shared this in his wonderful little book The Pursuit of God, and he likened the pianos to worshippers in a church body:
…worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.
This is fairly simple when you get your pre-conceived notions of church out of the way. When you keep your eyes on Christ you will be in unity. If unity at any cost becomes your God, you will fight like two cats with their tails tied together.
4. Consideration of Other’s Needs
There are a few things that need to come to an end in any church that wishes to be Christ-like; one of those is SELFISHNESS!
The end of selfishness comes with the beginning of humility.
The word humility comes from two words, dust and midriff. You get the drift? You can't call yourself humble unless you're willing to crawl on your belly through the dust ...for the least of these my brethren.
Paul wrote: Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. That doesn't mean we ought to be nosy busybodies. It means we ought to see to meeting the needs of others, particularly the outcasts and the lost of our community. It is a call to press forward with actions that will be meaningful in meeting those needs.
In every church fellowship there are those who wish to be prominent, petted, or pacified. Everything we do at Mt Zion and Pleasant Hill should not seek to please anyone but Christ. All people here are treated the same – we are lost sinners, saved by grace; we are brothers and sisters. There are no special considerations other than what will please Christ.
This is Christ’s church, not a social club. Consideration is a matter of putting your brother’s needs above your own preferences.
And that leads us naturally into the next essential for Christ-likeness:
5. Cross-Bearing for the Sake of Others
Paul reminds the church that the man who died on Calvary wasn't like any other man; HE was God! Paul says Jesus made himself nothing. The King James Version says he emptied himself; this is a picture of sacrifice.
In the temple a sacrifice of an animal was made for sin. The blood and water were poured on the altar - an emptying. The animal’s life-blood was emptied-out, poured on the altar, satisfying the death-demand of sin.
Jesus, as the perfect Lamb was with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit; existing as one God; we call that the Trinity. Like a glass contains water and can be emptied, so God poured Himself into the form of a man and died for us.
W. E. Orchard said: It may take a crucified church to take a crucified Christ before the eyes of the world. If a church is to be Christ-like (and therefore unified) it will be through cross-bearing.
• Our comfortable seats in our air-conditioned auditoriums are not cross-bearing.
• Paying our tithes is not cross-bearing.
• Serving on committees, workdays and kitchens aren't cross-bearing.
CROSS-BEARING IS DYING FOR OTHERS.
• Do you have Christ-likeness, ready to give yourself up for this community?
• How about people of different race, language, or any other barrier?
• What about the unchurched and uncaring?
• What about the dirty street people?
So…we have these 5 essentials:
Communion with Christ, Compassion for People, Cooperation in the Spirit, Consideration of Other’s Needs, and Cross-Bearing for the Sake of Others. These are the essentials for Christ-like living in the Kingdom of God. And they lead to:
6. Crown-Wearing
Paul uses a play on the sound of words in today’s Scripture. He wrote that Jesus …humbled himself and became obedient to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor. Three of those words tell us something incredibly important in making sense of all this compassion, cooperation, consideration of other’s needs, even to the point of bearing another’s cross. Two of the words, humbled and obedient come from the same basic word, while exalted sounds just like them. Paul is telling us there is a definite and proportionate relationship to these. The principle is as follows:
YOU WILL BE LIFTED BY CHRIST IN HEAVEN
TO THE SAME DEGREE YOU HAVE LIFTED HIM HERE ON EARTH.
Cross-bearing and crown-wearing always go hand in hand. Jesus bore the cross before he wore the crown. Don't forget that the spiritual issues of life far outweigh the material or natural, and in the spiritual realm things are always reversed from the way they were in the natural; the last being first, and so on.
Christ likeness is the goal. If friends, or a family, church, or even a nation would be unified, enjoying genuine fellowship, then Christ-likeness is what we seek. This also means God will not honor anything we do if our hearts resist living a Christ-like life. It is the reason marriages fall apart, churches die, and nations crumble. God rejects the pride of self. He wants us to deny self, like Jesus did.
Paul gave a ringing, stinging piece of advice for any member of any church, anywhere, and at any time – work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
BELOVED, THIS ISN’T A MATTER OF HOW TO GET SAVED,
IT’S HOW YOU LIVE WHEN YOU ARE SAVED.
Working on genuinely living-out your salvation to the fullest is a matter of letting Christ have complete control of your heart…giving Him your life’s steering wheel so His impact on you totally transforms the way you live.
Back in the mid-90’s Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat stood on the White House lawn and shook hands on national TV. The worldwide press corps went wild over the Jewish and Arab leaders making peace. What they skipped over was “…the fact that the two leaders had been invited to have dinner together with the Clintons at the White House, and they refused. What matters in the Middle East is eating together. You cannot kill someone you have shared a meal with.” The handshake was a formality…and the following decades have proven that deception and hatred were still in their hearts!
In the same way, the church can settle for having a SHOW of unity, a handshake on the Whitehouse lawn – OR we can push on to the real thing. Shows of unity are displays of handshakes and smiles and ceremonies. Real unity is when there is Christ-likeness because we care more about pleasing God than man.
And if the church in America and around the world ever gets done with people demanding their own way, but rather looking to Christ for its marching orders, the Christ-like unity we discover will cause the kind of tears of joy none of us have ever experienced before!
Our Prayer
Father, it’s not the heroes we see on television and the stage we wish to follow; help us to reject that hollow form of life; let us have the power to live Christ-like lives, honoring to all You have planned for us.
For the glory, honor, and praise to which You alone are worthy, o Lord, we pray in the Name of the Son, cooperating with the Spirit, to honor and exalt the Majesty of the Father. Let it be so in each of our lives…Amen!
Title Image: via Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation
