Philippians 2:1-11

Paul was a teacher of basics. He never built skyscrapers without first establishing a sure foundation. He taught from the ground up. We will observe his class on unity—Unity 101. Paul in Philippians 2:1-11 is instructing the church how they are to act one to another. He’s leading them to unity. And it’s unity for a purpose. Vs. 2 says "working together with one heart and purpose." It’s when we follow these instructions of Paul and we, the Church, are united, that we will accomplish our purpose. Four things Paul admonished the church in Philippi to do:

I. Don’t be selfish. (vs. 3)

The society in which we live is a very self oriented society. The big question we ask when we have a decision whether to do something or not is, "What’s in it for me?" or "How will I benefit from this?"

However, the Church is not selfish. For the Christian, the question should not be, "How can this benefit me?" but "How can this benefit the Kingdom of God?" We need to spend less time thinking of what God and what the Church can offer us, and spend more time asking God what we can do for him and his Church.

Self is all about the individual. But the Kingdom is about the body. As Ephesians 4:4 says, "We are all one body." The Church isn’t made up of a lot of disconnected people. The Church is not you over there doing your thing and me over here doing my thing. Imagine if your hand suddenly decided that it didn’t want to work with your arm. Your arm and your foot just couldn’t get along. They both wanted to help you, but they had different ideas about how to do it. So, the hand decided one day that it would just do it’s own thing completely separate from your arm, so it separated itself. It would soon find that it was pretty useless without the arm. In fact, if you had 100 hands, but none of them were connected to arms, they wouldn’t be as good as one hand connected to an arm. For your body to work, it has to work together. And the Church is exactly the same. I’m sure that we all want to fulfill God’s purposes. But if allow ourselves to become selfish, then we end up all doing our own thing. It’s not that we don’t want to do God’s work, but we just don’t want to do it with Brother so-and-so or Sister so-and-so. Well, when we do that, we’re really not accomplishing anything for the Kingdom, because we’re separated from the body. We, the Church, must be a team, working together to accomplishing God’s purposes, because that’s the only way they can be accomplished.

Jesus had certain rights as God (Matthew 26:53, 54). Jesus spent his whole life denying himself for the sake of us. For the benefit of others, he gave up everything that was rightfully his.

You have a responsibility to voluntarily give up your rights, as Jesus did, and embrace the plan of God. Christianity is not about self, but about others.

Paul speaks of a concept in 2 Timothy 4:6, "As for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near." He’s referring to an Old Testament "drink-offering" here, which was an offering in which wine was poured out onto the ground as an offering to God. And it’s interesting that this poured out wine may seem like a waste. But it’s not a waste at all, because it’s an offering to God. What better, more noble use could that wine have gone to than to be poured out as an offering to God. Even if it quenched a thirst, or was used to clean a wound, or to kill bacteria, or any of the other uses it could have gone to, none could have been as glorious as to be poured out to God. And so it is with our lives. There are so many things that we can accomplish with our lives. There are so many levels of "success" we can try to attain. It’s interesting me that the Greek word for "poured out" used here is "spendo" which is the root of our English word "spent." Is your life spent for yourself or for God and his purposes. Did you pour yourself into your ambitions, or do you pour yourself into God’s Kingdom?

II. Don’t live to make a good impression on others. (vs. 3)

In such a success-oriented society, it seems that everyone wants to impress others with their accomplishments. I’ve discovered that no matter how much money people make in America, it’s not enough, because they spend it all trying to live up to their status. But it’s not just in financial matters that we want to impress people. We want people to be impressed with our accomplishments and with our sacrifices. We want people to be impressed with everything we do. It’s a basic part of the sinful human nature--we call it pride. We’re so concerned about what others think of us. And guess what, pride creeps into the church also. People often want others to know of their accomplishments for God’s Kingdom. They want others to know what they’ve given, what they’ve sacrificed. They want others to look at them and see a holy person. Not that it’s wrong for others to see a holy person, unless its not real holiness, but only a show.

Jesus certainly didn’t live to impress others. vs. 7, says "But made himself of no reputation." As the true and only Living God and the Creator of the world, Jesus was deserving of all glory. We know that when Jesus was on the earth, he was 100% man and 100% God. He emptied himself of his reputation, or his mighty power and glory. We see an example of this in Luke 4:9, when the Devil is tempting Jesus, "Then the Devil took him to Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, ’If you are the Son of God, jump off!" What would have been the point here? Well, the Temple was a place where the people gathered to worship, so there were huge crowds. And the pinnacle of the Temple was very high. If Jesus had jumped off and survived, it would have been a spectacular feat. It would have dazzled the crowds. Can I say it would have been impressive? But Jesus, though he had the opportunity to impress others. Now, we do not deserve the glory of men, when we try so hard to impress them, but Jesus was worthy of it all. And he voluntarily set it aside. How much more, we who do not deserve it, should set aside trying to impress others.

Jesus dealt with spiritual pride a lot--especially with the Pharisees. In Matthew 6:1-4, Jesus says, "Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, because then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. When you give a gift to someone in need, don’t shout about it as the hypocrites do--blowing trumpets in the synagogues and the streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I assure you, they have received all the reward they will ever get. But when you give to someone, don’t tell your left hand what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you." And Jesus isn’t just talking about giving money here, because the next thing he does is condemn the Pharisees for the same spiritual pride in their prayer. This is the first danger with being worried about making a good impression on others. You may do a good thing, but in reality it becomes worthless, because it was done with the wrong attitude. We’re so influenced by a results oriented society, that sometimes we forget that God isn’t as interested in our results as he is in our hearts. This sort of arrogant pride also breaks up the unity in the body, which is so vital to the Church fulfilling its purposes. When one person becomes prideful, then the others begin to look at that person in a different light. They may see them as a hypocrite and become disillusioned, whether they are fellow believers or non believers. Worse they may be fooled by the charade and think that person is a spiritual giant and try to emulate them. Then it becomes a matter of the blind leading the blind into the ditch.

Another danger that arises when we are motivated by others’ impressions is that we may not do the right thing for the wrong reason, but the wrong thing altogether. If God rejects a good act done out of pride, how much more will he reject a bad act done out of pride? There are things that must be accomplished for the Kingdom. There are things that must be done. But as 1 Corinthians 12:22 says, "In fact, some of the parts that seem weakest and least important are really the most necessary." There are functions within the body of Christ that must be done, but they are things that nobody sees. They are positions that don’t impress anybody. So, if everybody is so busy doing the things that will impress people, that doesn’t leave anybody to do those things that are truly important. And the body cannot be maintained unless all of its functions are carried out. Surely it may give the appearance of life for a while, but it is not truly healthy. You may succeed in fooling men that you are alright, but God is not fooled. It will be like the church in Sardis, which Christ condemns in Revelation 3:1, "I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive--but you are dead." Sardis was like a well-adorned corpse at a funeral, but God was not fooled! It is possible to be so busy making yourself look good to other men that you never actually do anything worthwhile. The trouble is then that all of your actions are completely worthless. How much better it is to do something that nobody ever knows about, but that will make an eternal difference for the Kingdom of God. How much better it is to never obtain the recognition of men, but for it to be said of you like it was of Noah, "But Noah found favor with the Lord." (Genesis 6:8)

Paul recorded Jesus words to him, (2 Corinthians 12:9). Rather than try to impress people with our greatness, we must realize that the most is accomplished for God’s Kingdom when we recognize our weaknesses and allow God to work through them.

III. Be humble--think of others as better than yourself (vs. 3)

This point goes hand-in-hand with the last point. It once again brings up the subject of spiritual pride. This time it is a little different. The previous statement spoke of being proud of your deeds. This speaks of being proud of yourself, having a superiority complex. Jesus dealt with this a lot too, with the Pharisees.
Luke 18:9-14, stated simply, "Then Jesus told this story to some who had great self-confidence and scorned everyone else: Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a dishonest tax collector. The proud Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer: ’I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t sin, I don’t commit adultery, I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ’O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored."

God isn’t interested in people who think they’re great. In fact 1 Peter 5:5 says, "You younger men, accept the authority of the elders. And all of you, serve each other in humility, for "God sets himself against the proud, but he shows favor to the humble."
And this is talking about relationships again. Not only is God against the proud, but we see here that Peter is also specifically addressing pride within the church. When we think that we are better than others, we destroy the unity of the church, and remember how important that unity is to our fulfilling the purposes of the Church.

Jesus was humble. He took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. Just his becoming a human was humbling for him. But he didn’t even stop there. He continued to humble himself even as a human. He took the form of a servant. He demonstrated his servanthood to his disciples when he washed his disciples’ feet. This was a messy job fit only for a slave. But he willingly took on that task. Because he wanted to show his disciples that the Kingdom is not for "great" people. The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of humble servants, who follow their Servant-Master.

This is a principle of Scripture. James 4:10 says, "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." It is only through humility that you will find exaltation. It is humility that allows you to do the greatest things for the Kingdom. The greatest event that ever took place was the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, and yet it was utter humiliation for him. Before the time of Christ, humility was never considered a virtue. It was a sign of weakness. It was an undesirable trait. But Jesus taught us the power of humility. Humility is a powerful tool that helps to keep the unity of the Church.

IV. Be interested in others. (vs. 4).

Here we move back to the concept of selflessness and teamwork. The Church really is not a one-man show. The Kingdom of God isn’t about what you are doing, or about what I am doing. It is about what we are doing together. We may all have some part that is our own. We each have our own role and function in the body, but we cannot just do our job and forget about everyone else. It’s not that we just do our thing and if someone else does something that has nothing to with us. Instead Paul urges us to take an interest, and a genuine interest in other people. This not only creates effective results, but helps to promote unity in the Church.

Jesus considered others. He took an interest in others. He didn’t die on the cross for himself. He did it for others.

And we must mirror this concern for people. It’s great if we’re accomplishing things for God, however, we have to make sure that we’re not so focused on what we’re doing that we pay no attention to anyone else. Remember the Kingdom of God is about people. We can’t get so caught up in systems and programs that we forget about people. There are lots of things we can accomplish, but if we forget the people, we’ve accomplished them in vain. In order to preserve the unity of the church, we must take a genuine interest in other people.

You will either pass or fail this real life experience of unity depending on how well you practice the basics as taught by the instructor, the apostle Paul, in Unity 101.

“How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in UNITY.