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Christ's Humility and Greatness

Philippians 2:1-13

Good News Translation (GNT)

  1  Your life in Christ makes you strong, and his love
   comforts you. You have fellowship with the Spirit,(a) and
   you have kindness and compassion for one another.
  2  I urge you, then, to make me completely happy by having
   the same thoughts, sharing the same love, and being one
   in soul and mind.
  3  Don't do anything from selfish ambition or from a cheap
   desire to boast, but be humble toward one another,
   always considering others better than yourselves.
  4  And look out for one another's interests, not just for
   your own.
  5  The attitude you should have is the one that Christ Jesus
   had:
  6  He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that
   by force he should try to remain(b) equal with God.
  7  Instead of this, of his own free will he gave up all he had,
   and took the nature of a servant. He became like a human
   being and appeared in human likeness.
  8  He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the
   way to death - his death on the cross.
  9  For this reason God raised him to the highest place above
   and gave him the name that is greater than any other
   name.
10  And so, in honour of the name of Jesus all beings in
   heaven, on earth, and in the world below(c) will fall on
   their knees,
11  and all will openly proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

   Shining as Lights in the World
12  So then, dear friends, as you always obeyed me when I
   was with you, it is even more important that you obey me
   now while I am away from you.
   Keep on working with fear and trembling to complete your
   salvation,
13  because God is always at work in you to make you willing
   and able to obey his own purpose.

   Footnotes
   Philippians 2:1 You have fellowship with the Spirit;
   or
   The Spirit has brought you into fellowship with one
   another.
   Philippians 2:6 remain; or become.
   Philippians 2:10 It was thought that the dead continued
   to exist in a dark world under the ground.

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Commentary taken from 'word-on-the-web' supplied by Scripture Union and an extract from thoughts of St. Giles, Northampton

Be like Jesus

Paul now appeals to the shared experience of the Philippians for his moral instructions. The repeated 'Your life', 'You have', 'and you have', in verse 1 means something like, 'Since you have experienced.' While some Christians neglect the importance of experience, others tend to overstress it.

Our sensory experiences are processed and stored as memories and knowledge. Any experience needs interpretation, so our experiences of God must be interpreted in line with biblical truth.

For Paul, the believers' shared experience in Christ is the basis for living together in unity and humility. They should think alike and love alike, being one in mind and purpose.

It appears that the issue of unity in the church was as much an issue in Paul's time as it is today and can only be addressed if we heed Paul's next exhortation. To strive for unity implies that we let go of 'self'.

Our lives are to conform to the pattern laid out by Jesus - humble service, foregoing our rights, giving all for others (vs 2,3). Simple? The challenge is massive, the sacrifice painful; but the rewards are immeasurable.

Paul urges the Philippians to be other-focused: to regard others better than themselves and to see to the interest of others instead of their own. While this seems unachievable, it is the remedy for many of our problems.

Most of us take ourselves too seriously and are too busy with our own interests. Paul now presents the supreme example for imitation presenting the Christ as the ultimate model of moral behaviour. Jesus is our example.

No matter how exalted or important any of us think we are, we cannot have a higher place than the one Jesus left.

And yet he 'did not consider equality with God something to be grasped' (v 6). He poured himself out (literally 'emptied himself') for the sake of humanity. So is it really so tough to put aside ambition and selfishness?

Jesus is manifesting the 'form' of a slave, the lowliest of human beings, in order to serve us, on a cross. Imitating Christ means that every position we hold should become a position of service.

Jesus was always was the pre-existent, divine Son. The humiliated, crucified Christ is the exalted, cosmic Christ - worthy of worship.

Serving others in humility and with their interest at heart is not something to be done occasionally; rather, it should become second nature because we have become servants.

Paul talks about 'working out our salvation' to describe growing in the faith. We all know that we can have seasons of drifting along in our Christian faith. Paul was concerned to not let that happen. We don't grow well when we drift because we stop doing some of the very things that will help to support our growth. Paul is calling us to work at it because we need to take our own spiritual health seriously.

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