Paul is going to later describe it in this great chapter, this mind-boggling humility of God, the Son incarnating in human flesh, the King becoming a servant. How humbling is that? That God would take pleasure in offering something to us He has paid in full Himself. How humble this is of God. See, Paul is going to connect the dots though.
You receive it now. Do you demonstrate it to others? Have you ever thought you had something figured out only to be completely humbled later?
Maybe you felt confident taking on a challenge, only to find out that you barely scratched the surface. We think we've got things under control, and then something humbling reminds us of just how much more we have to learn. Today, we'll dive into Philippians 2 verses 1 and 2, where Paul calls the church to embrace humility. Humility is a vanishing virtue, but for Christians, it's essential for unity, love, and living out the gospel. Philippians chapter 2. We're going to spend the next few months here, maybe years, I don't know, but we're going to spend some time here. All of our studies together are going to simply fall under the categorical heading that I'm going to simply entitle with this one word, humility.
It's every one of our battles. Now, in this chapter, the Spirit of God through the apostle Paul will command humility. He's going to illustrate humility through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ and His incarnation so beautifully. He's going to apply it, not only to the church, but to every Christian. He begins with a series of statements that we need to get a hold of as he lays the foundation for this chapter. Go back to verse 1. They're just at the beginning of chapter 2, and let's read that verse. If, therefore, there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind. That is in unity. Now, four times you noticed, Paul writes, if there is, if there is.
In the original language, these if statements are what linguists call first-class conditional clauses. I know that's terribly exciting on a Sunday morning, but it actually is. You might be led to read this and think that Paul might be wondering if these four propositions are true. Is there really encouragement in Christ?
Is there any consolation? Is there any fellowship of the Spirit? And so on. The particle I, epsilon iota, with an indicative, could be rendered with the word since, or as surely as. In other words, you can read it like this. Since there is encouragement in Christ, and there surely is, if there is any consolation of love, and there is, or since there is fellowship of the Spirit, since there is affection and compassion, again, all of these are sourced out of God. That's what he's saying.
But of course, that leads you to wonder, well, why doesn't Paul just write since, or translate it from some Greek word, and they're bright, they had a word for that, and then it settles it. The reason is, this brilliant lawyer, former rabbi, is using this form of speech to logically herd us toward an undeniable conclusion. He's like a trial lawyer, bringing the witness to agree to four things, and then delivering his verdict, of which the witness must agree. He's doing the same thing that parents do. Every parent is a brilliant trial lawyer, and the further along you go, the better you get.
You do the same thing in English. That is, you ask questions, and you expect your child to answer yes. And after having answered yes to certain things, then the verdict is self-explanatory.
So here's how it works. You ask your little boy, you call him in from the backyard, and you say something to him like, do you care about your little sister's feelings? And he knows he's got to say what? Yes. And so you wait until he does.
It takes an hour or so, but he finally gets to it. And then you say, well, do you think she would appreciate if you quit taking her favorite doll and writing over it with your Tonka truck? Well, yeah, I guess so.
Well, do you want her to be glad that you're her big brother? Yes. Well, then, if that's true, go back out in the backyard and change your behavior.
That's the idea. If these are true, then something else is true as well that ought to happen. Let's reword then what Paul is writing here with that sense. He's asking these questions. Is there any encouragement in Christ?
He's expecting us to all say yes. Is there consolation in his love? Yes, I know that's true. Is there fellowship in the Holy Spirit? Yes.
Is there any affection or compassion from him? Well, yes, absolutely. Well, then, if all of that is true, and they are, and since they are true, now change something. And that change is to dwell together as a body of believers in humble unity.
Dwight Pentecost paraphrases it this way. If there is any encouragement in Christ, and there certainly is. If there is any consolation of love, and there certainly is. If there is any fellowship of the Spirit, and there certainly is.
If there is any affection and compassion from him, and there certainly is, then fulfill my joy in unified behavior. These four phrases then are not uncertainties, possibilities. They are certainties, truths. By the way, Paul is referring, as you look at those four propositions, not to just simply force supernatural realities, and they are sourced in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. He hints at that in this text. They are experiences of every Christian, or should be.
So let's take a closer look at them. First, Paul refers to encouragement in Christ. Now, the word encouragement is from a word that can be translated comfort. Paul is basically asking the Philippian congregation, have any of you ever experienced the comfort of Christ, and when did you? Well, he knows that every believer in Philippi is going to go back to that moment when they were introduced to the gospel, place their faith in Christ, and that began this relationship of encouragement. It came in Christ. That's what he's talking about. But for you today, is there encouragement in Christ?
Yes. When did it begin? When you became related to him. And you're growing in that understanding of Christ who is always faithful.
And the older you get, the more you treasure that as well. I'll be at a funeral today for a man who accepted Christ 10 months ago at his kitchen table, a Jewish man. I would often see him at the car dealership over the years, 20 plus years. His children were little at one point, and he'd visit every so often in the old building and then quit. I'd see him and I'd invite him back, share the gospel with him, and he would always tell me, Stephen, look, look, with a smile on his face, Sunday is the perfect day for golf.
Okay, but you know the invite's out. I'd just rehearse it whenever I'd see him, lost touch with him over the last four or five years, until 10 months ago. When his daughter, Jess, who's now grown up, a believer, married, emailed me. And her email started out by saying, I don't know if you remember my father.
Of course I did. But he has stage four cancer, and I think he wants to talk to you. So I came over and had the privilege of opening the Old Testament and delivering to him the gospel that we rehearsed from Isaiah 53 and other passages and asked him if he understood and would he like to make Jesus Christ his Messiah, with tears coming down his cheeks. He said yes. And did he ever change?
Sunday became not the best day for golf, but worship. He sat right down here, about four rows from the front, right at my right, and he was always smiling, just drinking it in, until he couldn't come anymore. A week or so ago, before I left for Israel, Jess emailed me and said, look, hospice has been called, and before you go out of the country, he may not be alive when you get back. And so I went over. I walked into the room where he was in their home, and I said, Eric, I'm going to go see the place of your fathers.
And this is where you and I are going to live forever one day. And just like he was, he said, wow. I read in John's description of the New Jerusalem from Revelation 21 to 22, and he drank it in. You see, he had discovered a greater encouragement in life than anything else. It was now in Christ. Later on, Paul is going to effectively tell the Christians not to keep this encouragement to ourselves. These are spiritual realities found in the Lord, but they're to be delivered and declared and demonstrated to, first and foremost, one another, and then to our world. Secondly, notice Paul writes of the consolation of love. The consoling effects of the love in a seed of the source would be Jesus Christ. When the world looks at us, do they believe we have a consolation in Christ?
Do they believe that we have a source to which we can go to be consoled? This is a reference to the love of Christ for us. In fact, it can be translated literally. It's very similar to the previous word, but it's a little different in that this word talks about speaking to someone in a friendly manner, pulling up a chair, getting real close, and just reminding them of the consoling truths of Christ's love.
It's offering solace, you could translate it. And by the way, it came to mind just two days ago, I stepped into another room from which people do not emerge alive. This room held a woman who'd walked with Christ for decades. Didn't know her, but her daughter and her daughter's family belonged to this fellowship. She invited me to come and to meet her mother. And when I got there two days ago, I walked into the room and then stopped because Elisa was real close to the bed there at the head where her mother lay, and she had her Bible open, and Elisa was reading passages of Scripture in just a quiet voice, and her mother was just listening.
I thought, man, this is an illustration of what we're talking about. This is speaking solace to someone of Christ. I finally interrupted them. I walked over on the other side of the bed, and I said, carry on, though.
I'm here, but you just, I love what you're doing. Let me just listen in. And she had a study Bible that had notes, and she began to read the lyrics of a hymn text. And she read it, and I said, you know, that's one of my wife's favorite hymns. And she said, really? She says, I don't know it. Do you know it? I said, I do. Did you sing it?
Right now? No instrument? I sound really good with an orchestra and a thousand people. No? Sing it, please. So I did.
I'll admit I changed the key a few times, lost the melody line somewhere in there, but they didn't know any different. The lyrics go like this. He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater. He sendeth more strength when the labors increase. To added affliction, he addeth his mercy. To multiplied trials, his multiplied peace.
His love has no limit. His grace has no measure. His power has no boundary known unto men, for out of his infinite riches in Jesus, he giveth and giveth and giveth again. This is delivering solace, the consolation of the love of Christ. But God demonstrated that kind of love to us in that while we were even in the act of sinning, Christ died for us, Romans chapter five. I mean, what kind of humility is that?
That God would die for us through Christ. Paul is gonna later describe it in this great chapter, this mind-boggling humility of God, the Son incarnating in human flesh, the King becoming a servant. How humbling is that? How consoling should it be to us that God would hunt us down to save us? How consoling would it be that from eternity past we've been chosen to be the bride of Christ through faith alone, that God would take pleasure in offering something to us he has paid in full himself? How humble this is of God. See, Paul is gonna connect the dots, though. You receive it now. Do you demonstrate it to others?
Let me move on. Thirdly, Paul points out next in verse one, he points to the fellowship of the Spirit. This is the koinonia of the Spirit.
We've already encountered the word koinonia before in chapter one. Partnership, fellowship. In chapter one, Paul refers to the koinonia, the partnership of this church with him in the gospel. So remember, koinonia, yeah, we had a good fellowship, is more than a dozen donuts or a potluck or even a Bible study.
This word is deeper. All those things might be symptoms of it, but it relates to people who are joined together in the gospel, who stand together for the truth of the gospel. So Paul says, I thank God for your koinonia with me, your partnership with me in the gospel. I found it interesting to discover in the secular Greek culture, the word koinonia referred to inheriting a possession, a common possession. In Paul's day, if heirs inherited a piece of property, common possession, koinonia, meant that each heir was not inheriting a piece of that property. It's that they were together inheriting all of the property, which has a powerful application to this particular spiritual reality.
The apostle Paul is telling us that believers in Christ are heirs. We have inherited, as it were, the Holy Spirit. We have koinonia with the Holy Spirit. We have common possession, which means that you believers over here don't have a little bit of him, and you believers back there have even less of him because you got here late, and those over here, you have a little bit of him, and other churches, they have a little bit of him, and we all got a little piece of the Holy Spirit.
No. What this means is that every believer has common possession. By faith, we have been all made to drink of one spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, 13. We have all individually become temples of the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 6, 19. In other words, we have inherited the Holy Spirit, and our koinonia with him means that we have inherited the entire property, or in this case, the entire person of the Holy Spirit.
We have all of him. How humbling is that? I mean, if we were God, we'd just dole it out a little bit, one little bit here and there. You behave, you get a little more.
You behave, you get a little more. No, we have, by faith in Christ, inherited the entire person, so our fellowship with the Spirit is even now complete. Now, this is a spiritual reality, but it must be demonstrated as a living reality if the Spirit condescends in great humility to inhabit us, to bring us about as common possessors as heirs of him. How willing are we to fellowship with each other, the other heirs? You know, there's a lot of trouble in a judge's chamber when the inheritance is distributed. How do we treat each other as heirs of the Holy Spirit? Does it bother you that you are worshiping with people that you didn't get to handpick?
And if you did, would they be different than what God has chosen to bring? If the Spirit of God recognizes us as joint heirs, how do we recognize each other? What do we think of each other? When we see each other, who are we to one another? Paul wants to elevate our sense of we're all equal heirs to the inheritance of the Holy Spirit, which gives us koinonia.
I love C.S. Lewis's, again, his insight when he wrote decades ago, and I'll edit it down a little bit, but he said this. You need to remember that the most uninteresting person you talk to in the church, talking about believers, may one day be a creature, which if you saw him now, as he will be then, you would strongly be tempted to worship him. In other words, if we can see where we're gonna be as shining immortals one day, if we can see each other now like we will be then, we might be tempted to fall down and worship. So glorious will be the splendor that God has reserved for us, Peter wrote. Now he says this, C.S.
Lewis. It is in this light that we should conduct all our dealings with one another. There are no ordinary Christians.
You have never talked to a mere mortal. That's good, isn't it? Let's keep that in mind.
We are in the assembly of future shining immortals who will reign with him. Fourthly, Paul points out the reality of affection and compassion in the last part of verse one. Affection, if any affection and compassion, then surely there is in Christ, the antecedent, the source. Affection, we need to understand this correctly, refers to the inner person, okay? Your King James translation might translate it bowels of mercy.
It's a little brutal, but it's a good translation. The generation of Paul's day considered the bowels the inner organs, even the intestines to be the seat, the origin, the source of emotion. It's the word, the Greek word splanchna. It even sounds a bit disgusting, but that's the guts, okay? In fact, we use the expression today.
We talk about having a gut, what? Feeling, okay? Tracks back here. It's interesting to consider Paul ran Hallmark from the Judean hills. All the Valentine cards back then would have been a little different. They would have read something like, I love you with all my entrails. I have you forever in my kidneys.
I have a longing for you way down deep in my colon. I know I'm having too much fun here, but over time, they sort of centered on the heart as being that organ from which emotion comes, which is great because I love you with all my heart. Sounds a lot better than I love you with all my kidney or whatever, my liver. Now, the next word Paul introduces here is the word compassion or tender mercies. This word refers to displaying concern for somebody's misfortune.
In other contexts, he's gonna actually write to the Corinthians and say that God is the father of, and use this word, God is the father of mercies. God is the father of deep feeling and emotion. Now, it's important to recognize here that these words are intertwined, these two.
He's not just being redundant. Affection, follow this here, is the internal source of emotion. Compassion or mercies is the actual expression of that emotion.
One author from Great Britain called affection the root and compassion its fruit, and that would be a good way of understanding it. It's one thing to say, well, you know, I do have a heart. Well, do we see it? Do you express it? Do you demonstrate mercy? I'm a merciful person.
That's great to hear, but do you do it? That's where Paul is driving us in making these realities. Now, these four propositions or realities are true. Now, Paul drives home the point. Verse two, look there, he says this. Make my joy complete. Make my joy complete by being of the same mind.
Make my joy just off the charts by being unified in humility. That's what it means being of the same mind. Now, it might sound contradictory for the Apostle Paul to be talking to us and laying the groundwork for humility, and then he tells the church to do something that'll make him feel good. Okay, it sounds contradictory.
You're right, it does at first blush. But in this context, Paul is actually informing the church that there is a joy that is richer, deeper, sweeter than any self-centered, self-promoting, self-congratulating desire. The grace of Christ creates a new heart source. And that finds its greatest joy, its deepest emotion in seeing the church, in seeing Christian friends grow more unified. Paul is saying this is what would send my joy skyward for you to demonstrate the humility of God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit.
The Trinity is bound up in these propositions by demonstrating their version of love, their version of encouragement, their version of care and compassion and affection. Now, don't miss this, don't miss this. Paul is under house arrest, remember? He's chained. He has no freedom of movement. He's isolated from his friends.
The church leaders in Rome have nothing to do with him. They don't even know where he's staying, remember? And here he says what would make me so incredibly joyful would be to see and hear that you as a body of believers are unified in humility. I can't help but wonder, you know, how would I fill in that blank? How would you fill in that blank? Under house arrest, no movement, no friends, being vilified, what would make me so happy would be blank, what would you say?
Well, I, come on, get rid of these chains, give me freedom of movement, vindicate my name, bring back my friends, right? Paul is effectively saying, what would top off my tank? It isn't getting out of house arrest, it isn't getting all my friends back, it isn't being vindicated, it isn't being rewarded for serving Christ.
None of that, no, no, no. Paul says it would bring me incredible, fulfilling joy to see the church demonstrating humility toward one another. That was Stephen Davey and this is Wisdom for the Heart. This message is called The Vanishing Virtue. Let's bring back this vanishing virtue and live with the heart of Christ. We have a resource to help you get to know the book of Philippians in more detail. Stephen has written a book based on his teaching through the entire book of Philippians. This resource is available at wisdomonline.org. It'll help you dive deeply into this important and practical book. If you'd like information about this resource, please give us a call today at 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-482-4253. The Philippians commentary is also in the store section of our website. When you navigate to the website and open the store, you'll see a category called Commentaries and you'll find Philippians there. I encourage you to add it to your library and I encourage you to join us back here next time on Wisdom for the Heart. Thank you.
