One of the pronounced themes about the book of Philippians is this whole idea of joy and rejoicing.
But why? I think this is a book, if you will, about having the mind of Christ. Thinking about real life circumstances in light of the thinking of Christ. I need to live with a gospel transformed mind. My perspective on the circumstances of life must be shaped by the gospel.
We are living in a day where we are blitzed with information all the time. And our brain is designed that in one way, shape, or form, it does process that information. And when it does, it informs or it transforms our perspective.
And I am here to challenge us today that there are things in life that we need to at least understand whether my perspective on those things is informed or transformed. And so I believe in this book as we study it together. What is God saying should be my perspective on that.
And if I make the change from one to the other, will it result in me living a life that is marked by a peaceful, settled joy in God. Welcome to The Daily Platform, a radio program featuring chapel messages from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today Dr. Alan Benson is continuing the study series called The Mind of Christ from the book of Philippians. Take your Bibles, return with me if you would, Philippians chapter 1. Philippians chapter 1. Paul opens this book and we touched just on that opening last Monday together. We won't read all the first 11 verses like I did the last time, but I do want to read the opening. He writes this, Philippians 1 and verse 1, Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ. To all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons, grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Last time we were together we opened this passage and we began to look at how it informs our understanding of the whole of the passage and in particular the lens that we are going to take in looking at this book of Philippians which is the lens of perspective.
How should I live this life? How should I view the affairs of life through a gospel transformed perspective? Or in light of pursuing the mind of Christ which he lays out for us as the heart of chapter 2 in exemplifying Christ's mind as he was challenging the believers at Philippi about relationships how should that mind inform the way that I see not just all of life but actually even see myself? And so he addresses his audience with regard to who they are and capture just minimally the nature of the relationship and we talked about how this is probably the most relational of all of Paul's writings. And I believe as Paul is writing to them he is informing them about what's going on in his own life. And it seems like they have some information and that their understanding of that information is troubling to them. And so there's a sense in which Paul is writing to actually give them not just understanding but through that understanding to give them comfort and in doing that he actually is going to talk about himself chapter 3 verses 4 through 10 he actually lays out his understanding of himself both his past and things that people would have considered to be incredible.
Wow, what a guy. Like this is the religious Michael Jordan, if you will. Like he is the cream of the crop and yet he actually is going to write about that and in a sense in light of this perspective through the cross, the mind of Christ, a gospel transformed perspective, he actually goes to the opposite extreme and says that was worth absolutely nothing. So with that said he is going to talk about life being lived with a perspective that says the greatest thing I can do is display the gospel.
Whatever it is I'm called to do, whatever my vocation is, my career, whatever my role might be, whether that's grandfather or father or husband or friend or employee, whatever my relationship might be, the greatest thing that I can do is have a perspective that allows me to see all of that through the lens of saying how can I display what Christ has done for me in the gospel? And that comes down to not just how I view and treat others, I believe it starts with how I view myself. The issue of identity today is a big one. It has entered into the realm of social discussion. Who am I?
How do I identify myself? Because of that then it radically impacts something that I believe is a hole in the heart of every image bearer, somebody that God made, and that is the issue of belonging. Do you remember way back in Genesis when Adam and Eve fell? One of the very first and most shocking and sober accounts is that when God returns to His creation, He has to say, Adam, where are you? And that question was a probing question that when Adam responded to it, he responded out of a broken relationship that said, you know what? Here's what we did and because of that we hid ourselves. The relationship was broken and when it was broken, we made an assumption about what our sin did in your thinking of us.
We felt like we were in shame, we gotta go hide. The relationship was broken and at that point the fellowship between Creator and creation, which God intended, was broken. And from that moment on, we as fallen creation have struggled with a sense of belonging. And that is one of the things that Christ, through the gospel, transforms. Paul, I think God, points that out as He talks about who He is.
So I don't want to make too much of this but I actually am going to focus on it because of the nature of the book. So I want us to see Paul's unusual self-designation. Notice he says, Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ.
Now, unusual, not because it's never used. Paul actually uses this a lot in a number of his books. Peter refers to himself this way. They use this word, it's a word that actually John MacArthur wrote an entire book on called Slave. It's the word bond servant. And I think it's a word that then I think he intentionally uses because he's going to communicate to them what is going on in his life and what his attitude is about having that going on in his life. Paul is actually here, I think, going to speak out of having done some introspection, looking at his own heart, and coming to an evaluation that causes him to say, here's who I am. I'm the servant, I'm the slave, if you will, I'm the bond slave.
When you study out this word, you'll find that the word servant is really broad and then within that word, in the New Testament in particular, there's a lot of categories and you actually come to 16 different designations of some form of slave and one of them is this word, bond slave. And I think we need to understand what that means. But in light of that, I want to stop and think for a moment about introspection. When you talk to you, who is that person that you talk to?
What are they like? What do you think of that person? Now, stay with me, I'm not being weird. Self-talk or introspection is a unique capacity of an image bearer. Your dog, after tearing up something that belongs to you, never goes outside and says to himself, Rufus, what were you thinking?
As defiant as your cat may seem and as proud, they're not sitting there thinking, I'll go see you when I'm good and ready. It's a unique capacity of an image bearer, someone that has the capacity of soul. We see this kind of self-talk throughout the Scriptures, particularly in the Psalms. There are times when we question our own thinking, right?
Psalm 42 5, 42 11, 43 5 all say this, why art thou cast down, O my soul? He's talking to himself. In a sense, he's saying, what are you thinking?
Why are you disquieted in me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. And so he's actually talking to himself about himself and asking himself, what are you thinking?
And why are you thinking this way? There are times that we are to speak truth to our thinking. Psalm 103 says, bless the Lord, O my soul, all that is within me, bless his holy name, bless the Lord, O my soul.
Forget not all his benefits, who forgives you, who heals you, who redeems you, who crowns you, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles. He's speaking truth to his own soul. This is introspection, it's self-talk. And it's not the purpose of the message this morning, but I do think that there's real danger in the wrong kind of self-talk.
And I think that God has a plan for the right kind of spirit-led scripture-informed self-talk that we primarily see in the Psalms. Wisdom literature is a genre of scripture. It's literature that, if you will, simply is directed at living life skillfully.
And it has so much to say about what we think of ourselves and how we handle ourselves. Proverbs 3.7, be not wise in thine own eyes. Proverbs 4.23, keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Proverbs 23.7, speaking about not just responding to what a man does, but actually understanding that what he does may not be who he is and says for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Proverbs 23.12, speaking of the heart, says, apply thine heart unto instructions. Verse 17, let not thine heart envy sinners. Verse 26, give me thine heart.
Verse 33, thine eyes shall behold strange women and thine heart shall utter perverse things. My point is to ask this question. When you have this kind of self-talk, what does the conversation tell you about what you think of yourself?
That opinion matters. I believe that Paul has settled his identity in Christ so that as he writes to these people in incredibly difficult circumstances and he writes that we are the servants of Jesus Christ, he is saying exactly what he really believed about himself. This is who I am and this is why all that I will say throughout this letter to you actually has integrity. This is the source of my perspective about all things in this book, so how do you think about yourself?
How do you talk about yourself? So let me make a little statement that I think oftentimes can be used somewhat tritely, but I think actually is very potent. You've no doubt heard it before, but I want to make it in this setting and frame it in this context because I think as we look through this book, we actually can see it in action. We can see it practiced by the apostle Paul. That little statement is this, preach the gospel to yourself every day. By Paul calling himself a servant of Jesus Christ, that actually is what he is doing and we'll see that in just a minute.
Why would he use this term servant? What is the theological context in which he is using that? But at the heart of this little statement is the instruction to remind yourself who you are in light of the gospel.
And that has multiple applications. The gospel preaches to you whenever you are proud, vain, and arrogant. And it says you have nothing to boast of yourself. When you came to the cross, Jesus didn't meet you part way.
He didn't say, wow, you're so good you only need 2%, or wow, you're so bad you need 98%. It was all of Christ and none of you. And so there are times whenever I find myself becoming proud or vain or arrogant that I must preach the gospel to myself and say don't forget who you were. The gospel preaches to you whenever you are weak and broken and failing.
This is why Paul could say I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. I don't have to stay in my failure. I don't have to accept the status that because I failed I'll always fail.
I don't have to accept the status that because I was broken I am now forever broken. The cross changes all of that and I must in those times preach the gospel to myself. The gospel preaches to you whenever you have fallen, sinned, and are bound in shame. And it says you can be forgiven.
Don't live at guilty distance from your God. You see the gospel preaches to every one of us with the reminder of who we are, Paul's favorite self-designation, in Christ. This is the identity in Christ. So how is it that Paul is speaking about himself? First of all we have to ascertain the meaning and I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of context but I do want to set us free from the idea that I know what slavery is because of my American context. Therefore I know what he means when he calls himself a slave and I want us to understand that that is not at all what Paul is doing. What we knew is the American experience of slavery was evil, unjust, wicked, and actually turned on its head God's understanding of all people that he made as his image bearers. So Paul is not here talking about that. That somehow I am devalued and I don't have identity or I'm less than made in the image of God because I'm a slave.
That's not what he is doing. He actually is speaking to a cultural reality with regard to this word bondservant and actually without going into a bunch of details but at that time and in this part of the world the bondservant was a station in life and for many of them it was an identification with a household. There was a process by which the bond came about. There was a legal agreement.
There was a choice that was made and I'm not here to say it was a right one but it actually was their cultural setting and it's informed by both the Jewish and the Roman world. And so who Paul is writing to here would really matter but what he is going to say is I actually have an identity and that identity is sourced in who I belong to, who I bound myself to, and what the terms of that agreement were. And that person is Jesus Christ. And so who He is and what He did directly speaks to who I am and thus in reciprocity who I am and what I do actually speaks to how I value that relationship with Him.
So it's a mindset, if you will. Paul is writing to them and he's saying, I am experiencing certain things in life like being in prison. I'm experiencing relational dynamics.
There are people that are out there saying things about me out of envy and strife and how I think about them and respond to them is directly impacted by who I see myself to be in Christ. Paul is going to use this phrase to say, you know what, in light of all of those things, I am not attaching my value to people's opinions of me, to the station I have in life, to what has happened in my circumstances, my value is rooted in the fact that I belong to somebody. And this is the meaning, so in light of that then, I think there's an acknowledging of the transaction. How did this come about? Why would he say he was a bond slave of Jesus Christ? And I want you to see that here is where this begins to take on theological meaning. Why would he say that? What were the terms of this relationship?
Why would he say I belong to somebody? So just listen to things that the Scriptures say. Ephesians 1.7, in whom we have redemption, let me stop, that is the theological word that actually comes from the marketplace that captures this idea of being a bond slave. This is right from the marketplace. We think about the only place I ever hear about redemption is in church, but we actually don't. You actually redeem coupons all the time. Someone has given you a value and it means nothing to you until you take it in and say, oh, by the way, I've got a coupon and it reduces your bill. There's a redemption that happens where the value is applied. And here is the terminology theologically with regard to this ownership status.
We have been redeemed, purchased, bought back. Is that what the Bible says? In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. Paul writes to Titus who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people. The author of Hebrews writes this, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. Peter wrote it this way in 1 Peter 1, for as much as you know that you're not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vein or empty conversation or lifestyle received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, he continued who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree so that we being dead to sins should live under righteousness by whose stripes you were healed.
You see redemption is this concept of a purchase contract. I was actually indebted. I had a debt hanging over me.
There was a price, if you will, on my head. And so what did Jesus do? He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, that we might as a result be made the righteousness of God in him. In other words, he paid our debt. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
These are all incredibly familiar terms, but young people, you have to realize that they are the terms of relationship. This is why I ought to have my identity secure in Christ. He paid your debt and he bought you with his own blood. When I am tempted to be proud, I have to say, could I have bought myself out of my own station?
Absolutely not without Christ. When I'm failing and feel like I'm going to stay in utter failure, I have to ask myself, how did Christ see me when he died in my place? When I'm overcome by sin and shame because I have sinned and feel like God could never forgive me, I must look at the cross and say, what did he already pay? And would I expect him to ever pay more?
And I hope the answer that resonates in your soul is, could he ever pay more? You see, this is the transaction that ought to cause me to settle my identity. My identity isn't rooted in my successes. It isn't rooted in my career path. It isn't rooted in the acknowledgement of others.
It isn't rooted in all of the other areas where everybody in this culture says you should find your identity. It is rooted in the fact that I am in Christ. I am redeemed. So that means that I must accept the terms.
What does that mean? Paul writes 1 Corinthians 6, what? No, you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God. And you're not your own. You are bought with a price.
Therefore what? Glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. He adds in chapter 7, ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men. And he amplifies it in 2 Corinthians 5 when he writes this, for the love of Christ constraineth us because we thus judge. If one died for all, then we're all dead. And that he died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again.
And that means that I must then accept this mindset. If I belong to Christ, how should I view life, including myself, in light of the fact that I am his? And I believe that that's going to frame all that Paul says. Paul is going to talk about the Gospel, particularly throughout this first chapter. He'll talk about the fellowship of the Gospel. He'll talk about the furtherance of the Gospel. He'll talk about the defense of the Gospel. He'll talk about the faith of the Gospel.
And when he does it, he is always dealing with particular areas of challenge in life. But what I want us to see today is in order to have the right perspective on any of this, I must begin with settling my identity. Young person, if you are here this morning and you have never come to the place of exercising your personal faith in the crosswork of Jesus Christ, seeing that you're a sinner who couldn't save yourself, that you had no hope outside of what Jesus did for you, and you have never humbled your heart and said, oh God, I am a sinner and I'm not coming to come to terms with you about success in my life. I am coming based on your terms that I need Jesus and nothing more in order for me to have eternal life.
And in that, I want to see that I belong to you in everything. Then young person, today for you is the day of salvation. Humble your heart, exercise faith in what Jesus did for you, and ask for his forgiveness and be saved.
Young person, if you are living today and you say, yep, I did that. I'm saved. But you look at your life and you're overcome with pride or you look at your life and you're overcome with shame and you look at your life and you're overcome with brokenness and any of it is causing you to devalue your lock for God today. It is time to come back and preach the gospel to yourself. I believe we'll see as we go through this book, there are many of you that live in constant relational turmoil because somebody doesn't like you or because somebody does.
And I'm here to tell you that the turmoil is because you haven't settled who you are in Christ and you struggle because they do like you or they don't. And we'll see perspectives like that on a whole lot of other things in life. But the right perspective is to look at you first and ask yourself, am I living with just informed perspective or transformed perspective because of what Jesus did for me? Father, don't just shape our thinking, shape our living. Help us, O God, to settle our identity in Christ and desire to live all of life in light of that identity. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Alan Benson from the study series in the book of Philippians called The Mind of Christ. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform.
