An Attitude Like Christ

The Apostle Paul often instructed us as believers to have Christ-like attitudes but what exactly does that mean in our day?

We'll find out on Truth for Life weekend as Alistair Begg teaches another lesson for life. We're looking at the opening verses of Philippians chapter two. I want to talk to you in the time that we have concerning attitude.

Attitude. Paul was concerned for the attitude of people in Philippi. He wanted to make sure that they would have harmonious relationships, that they would live in tender heartedness towards one another. It was important for them as a church family to be enjoying this kind of unity of heart and mind and purpose. And surely it is of vital importance that on a large campus such as this, with people coming from all kinds of backgrounds and bringing to the place all kinds of attitude, it is of significance that we pay attention to what the Bible has to say concerning the kind of attitude that will foster unity.

And the interesting thing is that in seeking to inculcate a spirit of unity amongst these Philippians, Paul does not give them seven principles on establishing unity. Rather he points them to the foundational element which will be the forerunner to the kind of harmony of relationships that is necessary. And the foundation, he says, is to be found in humility. He then does not give them seven principles on how to develop a humble heart. But he then turns their gaze to the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says, if you will consider the Lord Jesus Christ, then you will find in him the very example and pattern of attitude which needs to pervade your relationships with each other.

I want you, he says, to be humble, to be unselfish, to be concerned for the well-being of others. And so he holds before them this example of self-sacrificing love. Look at what he says, your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, notice, who being in very nature God. By starting here, the extent of the humility of Christ is made most apparent. Notice the participle that is there, being, who being in very nature God, indicating that Christ was already in very nature God before he came into this world. He always was God. John says that in his prologue, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

There was never a time when Jesus was not God. Now you say, well, this is a, you know, a Tuesday morning in Cedarville, Ohio. Do I really need to know this kind of thing? It seems such arms-length theology.

Give me something far more practical. I'm not a prophet, but listen to me. If you get this wrong in your generation, it is unthinkable to conceive of what Christianity will look like in the North American continent twenty-five years from now. The average young person coming into an institution like this is singularly unable to argue against Unitarianism, Mormonism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, except with a knee-jerk reaction to spit out one or two pre-learned verses, but with very little knowledge at all of why it is so vitally important that we would understand this phrase. Now, of course, part of your university career is going to give you the opportunity to unpack this, to think it through, to learn it.

You're in an immensely privileged position here. I hope you will never forget that. I hope you will embrace it with open arms, that you will seize every opportunity that is provided in the days that you have, not only to learn in your own academic discipline of study, but also to soak up every opportunity to become students of the Bible. Those of you who have studied church history at all will know that for the first three or four hundred years of the church, there were great debates which ensued over the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ. People came up with an idea, then they convened a council. The council discussed it, rebuked the heresy, and they moved on. There were those who denied the reality of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and so they resisted this phrase, and they taught that Jesus, this Jesus, was only a man. That is just as the Unitarians teach today. At the other end of the spectrum, there were those who denied Christ's humanity. The first group were saying, he isn't really divine, and the second group were saying, he isn't really human. He has a phantom body, and the eternal Christ came on him at his baptism. A third group denied the integration of the two natures of Christ, both human and divine. Arius and Arianism, which emerged from it, is the father of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and all others who have a deviant view of Jesus.

They denied the reality of the divine nature of Christ, declaring Christ to be neither God nor man, but something in between. The first being, the first created being, the highest of all the beings that God has ever created. Paul says, no, being in very nature God. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Phillips paraphrases it helpfully, and creation took place through him, and none took place without him. Therefore, he cannot be a created being. Now it took till about the middle of the fifth century, the Council of Chalcedon, to get it all sorted out, and they put together a statement that would keep most of us awake at night. Let me give you just a little flavor of it for those of us who are tempted to think that this is somehow marginal. They referred to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son, Lord, the Only Begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusively, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.

You think they're trying to make the point here with these words? The distinction of nature's being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, the Only Begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Graham Kendrick, in the twentieth century, grabs all that, and he says, Meekness and majesty, manhood and deity, in perfect harmony, the man who is God. Paul says your attitude should be like God's attitude, who being in very nature God. Jesus is eternally, truly, totally God.

Now, that, you see, is the starting point to make this humility so incredible. In light of that, look at what he says. He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. Again, Phillips, he did not cling to his prerogatives as God's equal.

The highest place that heaven affords was his by sovereign right, but he had a greater priority than his own interrupted glory, a priority that emerged from all of eternity, that he would deliberately and voluntarily set aside the prerogatives which were his in the eternal context of harmony between Father, Son, and Spirit. And he made himself nothing. Or, if you like, he stripped himself of all privilege.

Now, what this means becomes clear when we read the phrases that follow. What does it mean that he made himself nothing or that he stripped himself of privilege? It's not that he gave up the qualities and the attributes of deity. He made himself nothing, not by subtraction, but by addition. He made himself nothing, not by the subtraction of divinity, but by the addition of humanity. It says B. B. Warfield, the Lord of the world became a servant in the world.

He whose right it was to rule took obedience as his life characteristic. Let's just pause for a moment. We've done enough just to pause for a moment and say, okay, hold on here. You know you don't have to last very long in a dorm before friction sets in. You know how easy it is for friends to be divided as a result of misplaced words and unkind glances. You know that it is possible for a whole academic year to suddenly take a major left-hand turn, and when people, faculty, counselors try and trace it to its root, it discovers that there at the center of it all is the ugliness of pride, the exaltation of self, and the disunity is born of this. And the temptation of course is to go to the Christian bookstore and see if we can find a book that will help us to dismantle all of this dreadful superstructure that we've been building.

Now, there will be helpful pointers there, but that's not the answer. If that had been the answer, then Paul would have done that in Philippians 2. When he got to the end of verse 4 and he said, I want you to live in harmony with one another.

I want you to live in unity of purpose. He would have then followed it with seven or eight very, very practical pointers as to how you're able to achieve this, but he doesn't. He says, your attitude should be like the Lord Jesus Christ. He was in very nature God, but he didn't hold on to his prerogatives. Instead, he made himself known as the Lord of the world. Instead, he made himself nothing.

Now, how does this work out? Well, in practical terms, he took the very nature of a servant, taking the very nature of a servant. He became as much an earthly servant as he had been a heavenly sovereign. Of course, this is most wonderfully worked out in the experience of the disciples in John chapter 13, you will remember, when just before the Passover feast with the evening meal already served, Jesus got up from the meal, and he took off his outer clothing, and he wrapped a towel around his waist.

And after that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him. And the Creator puts his hand in the bucket and attacks the dusty feet of his motley crew of followers. And yet how easily we say, if she thinks I'm going to apologize, she's got to be crazy.

If he wants me to say, sorry, he's going to have to do something first. I didn't start it. Therefore, I don't need to end it. My dear friends, look at Christ. Look at Christ. There die all our selfish aspirations, taken the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness. Being made in human likeness. He became what he had never been before, without ceasing to be what he had always been. He chose to be born as a baby, to live as a man, to suffer as an outcast, to die as a criminal. He exchanged the homage of angels for the hatred of men.

He remained everything involved in being God, and at the same time became everything involved in being man. Do you realize how distinctive this is on the panorama of world religions? There is nothing like this anywhere else. Go and study them. Don't let your friends and neighbors bank you into a corner in relationship to these things. Learn what they have to say.

Listen to what they have to say. The Zen Buddhism, which is increasingly prevalent, the thoughts of Islam, which are sweeping across the country as people who don't know very much, are saying, why should we be concerned about these issues? Be prepared to think them through, and be prepared to uphold this amazing picture, this quite unfathomable picture that the Creator of the universe doesn't call down to humanity from some vast territory in the netherworlds, but comes down and invades our planet, takes His form with us, walks with us, hits the dusty earth, you see. And in it all, He is establishing an attitude, which is to be the attitude of those who are the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why Paul says, He was found in appearance as a man, being found in appearance as a man. That phrase is misleading to many at first reading, because it appears to be saying what we're saying it isn't saying, namely, that He wasn't really a man, but He looked like He was a man.

When you read that phrase at first, you say, that seems to be what it's saying. But if you look more carefully, you realize it is conveying the reverse of that, namely that at first glance, Jesus appeared to be a man and nothing more. After all, He came walking down the street like a man. He had the sandwiches with the other men. He drank the water that was provided. He fell asleep due to fatigue. He grew up and He learned the alphabet.

His mother explained to Him the difference between red, green, blue, yellow, and purple. And at first glance, it would appear that what we have here is just a man. He didn't have a halo that was hanging off the top of His head. So when He walked down the Galilean streets, people said, aha, there He comes. Nor did He have a supernatural glow to His countenance. The people said, which one is Jesus? He was found in appearance as a man, yet He was not merely what He appeared to be, for there was to Him more than meets the eye.

And that's the point in the phrase. He was found in appearance as a man. He had all of those constituent characteristics. And yet when you gazed into Him, you realized there is more here than meets the eye. That's why Jesus Christ, superstar, and all of those old musicals render too as a picture of Christ, which is at best sentimental, but it is earthly. He's a man, just a man, sings Mary Magdalene. And I've seen so many men before in many different ways. He's just one more.

No, he's not. Why would you ever give your life up for a mere man, for a Galilean carpenter who walked across the stage of history 2,000 years ago, and for whom salvation came to a crushing end in the cul-de-sac of a Palestinian tomb? And having gone to this extent, his humiliation was not yet complete, because you will notice is that he humbled himself and his obedience.

I don't like the NIV here. It says, and he became obedient to death. The King James Version says he became obedient unto death.

That's better. His obedience was not to death. His obedience was to his father. And in obedience to his father, he became obedient unto death. As the Son of God, he became man. He came to undo the disobedience of Adam, to experience the judgment of God, which Adam brought crashing down on the human race.

And to do so, he had to become obedient to the Father's will and plan. The hymn writer says, O loving wisdom of our God, when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. Can you imagine Mary in those early moments after the angel is gone, sitting and scratching her head and saying, I don't know? Imagine in the arrival of the shepherds as they come and bow down at that strange little scene, and then the wise men with their gifts, and then watching the growth of this boy, and then the trip to Jerusalem, and then the loss of him in the midst of all of the comings and goings, and then the backtracking to Jerusalem, and then finding him there in the temple as he discusses with the intelligency of the day, and as he dialogues with the rulers and the leaders. And they say to him, Jesus, you know, we were looking for you.

We were halfway home, and we've come back for you. And he says, did you not know that I had to be in my father's house? And the Mary who had gathered up all these things and pondered them in her heart, looks into the eyes of this 12-year-old boy, and finally, you fast forward the video, and there she stands at the foot of the cross, and she looks up and she hears him speak down to his disciple, and he says, hey, here's your mother, and mother, here's your son, bearing shame and scoffing rude in my place, condemned he stood, and he sealed my pardon with his blood, because he's a wonderful Savior, the eternal God by whom all things were made. Walk down that Jerusalem street, because it was the only way whereby you and I could be saved, the only way whereby you and I could have our sins forgiven.

He alone could bear that punishment. Even angels, Peter says, long to look into these matters. And it is in light of all of that that the introductory phrase grabs hold. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. I don't know what your SAT score was, and frankly, it's none of my business or my concern. I don't know whether you're athletic or pathetic. I don't know whether you're ten pounds higher than you want to be or ten pounds less than you long to be.

I don't know whether, fellows, your chest is as large as your waist or the other way around. There are precious few things that you have control over from this point forward into this academic year. But I can tell you two. One is the level of your effort. You might not be particularly brilliant, but you can try as hard as anyone else around you. And the other is your attitude.

A and E. Attitude and effort. Where is our attitude to be? We have seen. Well, then, should our effort be to press on towards the goal to win the prize for which he called us heavenwards in Christ Jesus. I hope that whatever else happens on this campus in the next twelve months, that people will drive away from here saying, there is such a sense of unity and harmony amongst the faculty, amongst that student body, amongst the administration. It would seem as though they are all for Christ. And they're all for one another.

And they seem to be committed to be in that way forever. There's a Christ-like attitude about that place. You're listening to Truth for Life Weekend with Alistair Begg. You're probably aware that October is Pastor Appreciation Month. And while we're in the closing days of the month, we want to encourage those of you in church leadership by recommending a collection of messages Alistair calls the basics of pastoral ministry. It is not easy being a local church leader. This series of 30 messages will help you address challenges that come from within the church, as well as some of the pressures we face from the outside. There are four modules you can work through at your own schedule.

Each module has a corresponding study guide that can be downloaded for free. Alistair draws from decades of pastoral experience to provide guidance and encouragement to help you establish and maintain Bible-based leadership. You'll find both the audio messages and the companion study guides online when you search for the basics of pastoral ministry at truthforlife.org. This weekend marks the anniversary of Reformation Sunday. It was more than 500 years ago that Martin Luther began to see the full impact of the Bible's truth that salvation is not the result of our efforts to be good enough. It's a gift from God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ. To help you gain a deeper insight into what all of this means, we want to recommend a book called The Beauty of Divine Grace. This book unpacks what the Reformers discovered as they looked at the Scriptures, the joyful messages of the Gospel that salvation is by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in the Scriptures alone, all for the glory of God alone. These alone statements are sometimes called the five solas, and as you read The Beauty of Divine Grace, you'll look carefully at each of these truths and see how to apply these assurances to your own life. You can learn more about the book The Beauty of Divine Grace on our website truthforlife.org. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. How did Jesus remain peaceful, loving, and pure while he lived in a world full of chaos and confusion? And how can we think like him while we exist in a broken world? Join us next weekend to explore the answers. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.