Unity Of Mind And Spirit

Opening illustration: The church is called the body of Christ. Have you ever thought about what it would be like if the members of our physical bodies behaved like the members of the spiritual body sometimes do?

HEART - "You know, I’m just stuck in a rut. For the last 45 years all I do is beat and beat. Lub, dub... lub, dub... lub, dub ... I’m tired of it. It’s time for someone else to step up and do this job. Okay, feet, it’s up to you. You pump the blood.

LUNGS - We are so under-appreciated around here. I don’t think the other organs realize that they couldn’t do their jobs without us. If we quit doing our job for a few minutes, everyone will finally see how valuable we are to this place. The brain thinks he’s big stuff. Humph! Let him do without some oxygen for a while and we’ll see how important he is!

LIVER - "Why do I get all the dirty work? You think it’s fun making bile? I’ve been in this body for 45 years now and do you think anyone has ever asked me to make any decisions, pump any blood, or perform any functions that are noticeable outside the body? Sometimes I wonder why I bother."

APPENDIX - "Ha! Just watch the rest of those organs work. Day after day, hour after hour, they work themselves do death. I’m just along for the ride. Why contribute when I can just sit here and get the same nutrients and oxygen that they get? Why get involved?"

You get the idea. The point is that the individual parts that make up our bodies were created specifically for certain tasks within the body as a whole. The body works as a finely tuned machine when all the parts do what they were uniquely gifted to do. There are no unimportant parts -- except the appendix. Don’t be an appendix in your church.

Let us turn to Paul’s letter to the Philippian Christians in chapter 2 and meditate and apply the unity through humility Christ showed through His life in ours.

Introduction: Our text was NOT primarily written as a warning to unbelievers; it was intended to be an incentive and an example for Christians. It was meant to teach us about unity in humility, using our Lord Jesus Christ as the supreme example of humility. Have we thought of our Lord as subordinating His interests to ours, and His happiness to ours? Have we wanted to think of God as serving me, rather than we as His servants (remember Paul’s words in 1:1). Now our Lord did come to serve, rather than to be served (Mark 10:45), but our whole focus and orientation in looking at this text has been wrong if I think only in terms of the benefits I have received from our Lord’s incarnation, suffering, and death on the cross of Calvary. Paul’s words remind us that our Lord put His Father’s interests above His own, and the fruit of this is seen in His obedience to the Father’s will, even unto death. The result is that our Lord is exalted, but the primary aim of our Lord was to bring glory to the Father. He did not subordinate His interests to the interests of the Father in order to further His own interests. He subordinated His interests to the Father’s; so that the Father’s best interests would be served. Our Lord’s exaltation was a fringe benefit, as we see it now, and not His primary goal.

What will it take to be unified in mind and spirit?

1. SUBMISSIVENESS (vs. 1-2)

The apostle introduced his comments on submissiveness by giving his readers four incentives. He stated each one in a conditional clause that he introduced with the word "if." He assumed each one to be true for the sake of his argument (a first class condition in Greek). The translators have supplied the verb that Paul did not state. The NASB has "there is," but the NIV gives a better sense of Paul's meaning with "you have." We could read each of the four clauses, "Since you have …"

(i) The first reason Christians can and should be submissive to God and to one another, is that Jesus Christ has exhorted us to do so ("encouragement in Christ"). His teachings while on the earth, as well as those that followed through His apostles after He returned to heaven, especially Paul, encourage us to be humble. Similarly, Jesus' personal example during His earthly ministry also encourages us.

(ii) Second, Paul's love for the Philippians, which came as an encouraging (rather than comforting) gift from God ("consolation of love"), should impel them to respond positively to his request also.

(iii) Third, the "fellowship (of the Spirit),"that the Holy Spirit creates, should also make Christians submissive. It seems best to take this reference as including both our participation in the Spirit, and the "in common life" (fellowship with other Christians) that He has created for us. We should probably regard the genitive as both objective and subjective rather than just objective. The former incentives also come from being in Christ and from love. Another interpretation is just our participation in the Spirit.