Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of emulating Christian leaders from Philippians 2:19–3:21
How did you learn to pray? If, like me, you were reared in a very conservative Christian home complete with Authorized Version, then you learned to pray in Elizabethan English. The first time I prayed in public doubtless sounded something like, “We beseech thee, Almighty God, that in my mercy thou wouldst deign to condescend and visit us. Vouchsafe to us thy grace through the mercies of thy dear Son who is the propitiation for our sins.”
I’m sure I was saying stuff like that at the age of 5. That’s the only way I knew how to pray because that’s the way my parents prayed. In fact, in our home which was bilingual, we did, that sort of thing in English and French.
On the other hand, if you’ve been brought up in a nice pagan home and haven’t learned to pray at all and haven’t heard anybody pray and, finally, you got converted at the age of 22 in a Campus Crusade circle, the first time you screwed up courage in your heart to pray out loud in a university meeting it came out something like, “Jesus, we just want to thank you for being here,” or something to that effect.
Why? Because that’s about the kind of praying you’ve been listening to. That’s why. In other words, a tremendous amount of what we do has been picked up by observing what others do, even in the Christian faith. A great deal of human conduct is bound up with imitation. That’s why advertising works. If you stick some beautiful woman or some massive hunk beside soap suds or a car or toothpaste, then you sell more soap suds or cars or toothpaste. It must work. They spend billions doing it.
It’s why we’re worried about our children, isn’t it? When they’re very young, they do what we say more or less. As they become a little more independent, then we’re worried about their friends, because they think their independence is they’re not copying us, but what they’re really doing is copying their friends. That’s why we want them to have good friends.
Mimicry is inevitable. Modeling is inevitable. In a society that’s breaking down, how do new generations learn what it means to be a Christian parent? In other words, it is simply not a question of whether we shall imitate, for imitate we shall; the question is who we shall imitate, what we shall imitate, and that question is massively addressed in the passage before us. Look at chapter 3, verse 17.
“Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.” A verse like this is not narrowly doctrinal; it is existential. That is, it concerns how we live. Similarly, part of the reason why Paul describes Timothy and Epaphroditus at the end of chapter 2 and is so self-revealing about his own motives and habits in chapter 3 is that he is concerned to establish and reinforce good models.
He’s not stooping to cheap flattery of his colleagues, nor is he indulging in self-congratulation (“I really am quite a nice apostle, you know”); his aim is to provide clear Christian examples so younger and less experienced Christians will emulate them. Whom should we follow? Which Christians should be our models?
1. Emulate those who are interested in the well-being of others, not their own.
Chapter 2, verses 19 to 20. Paul’s opening words regarding Timothy constitute a wonderful accolade. “I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare.” One of the reasons Paul is sending Timothy is so, when Timothy returns, Paul will find out how the Philippians are getting on (verse 19).
The other reason is Timothy himself reflects Paul’s attitude exactly. Verse 20: “He takes a genuine interest in your welfare.” When Paul says, “I have no one else like him,” he probably does not mean he knows of no other Christians anywhere on God’s green earth who have a similar sort of attitude. He probably simply means that of the helpers he has with him at that moment, Timothy is outstanding. None of the others can touch him in this particular: the transparent interest he takes in others.
There are many different styles of leadership. Some leaders live to be admired, to be praised without ever being so crass as to say so. They give the impression the church exists and flourishes primarily because of their gifts, and the least the church can do in return is to offer constant adulation.
That’s not Timothy’s attitude. He lives for them. He’s genuinely interested in their well-being. Of course, in the light of the letter so far, this is nothing other than a sign that Timothy follows not only Paul but Jesus. Wasn’t that the whole point of chapter 2? “He did not think equality with God something to be exploited but emptied himself and made himself a nobody.”
Those who follow Jesus Christ inevitably learn to cast aside self-interest and self-comfort and self-focus if what it means is they can help others. Whom will you follow? What contemporary Christians will serve you well as good models? Be on the alert for Christians who really do exemplify this basic Christian attitude, those who are interested in the well-being of others.
They are never the sorts who strut their way into leadership with inflated estimates of their own importance. They are the kind who cheerfully pick up after other people. They are not offended if no one asks after them. They’re too busy asking after other people. If no one greets them at the door, they’re never sulking because they’re busy greeting others.
They are the kind who is constantly seeking to do good spiritually, to do good materially, and to do good emotionally. They are committed to the well-being of others. Watch them. Watch how they interact with people. Talk with them. Learn their heartbeat. Imitate them. Emulate those who are interested in the well-being of others not their own.
2. Emulate those who have proved themselves in hardship.
Chapter 2, verses 22 to 30. Paul reminds the Philippians they “… know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel.” The analogy (son with father) is a lovely one, but it’s a bit hard for us to grasp.
In the ancient world before the Industrial Revolution, most sons ended up doing what their fathers did. If your father is a farmer, the chances are very high you become a farmer. If he’s a baker, you become a baker. Moreover, you learn all of this by being an apprentice to him. You go to work with him. You watch how he does things. You learn the tools of the trade. If your name is Stradivarius, you learn how to make violins, and you learn it by watching it all. Then you go home, and you eventually learned just as much as the old man.
The image is less forceful for us today, not only because most of our children will not follow the vocational path followed by their parents, but also because most of our children never watch us working. We go off to work in an office somewhere or a factory and our children don’t come and watch us. My children don’t come and see me in my office, busy toiling away with books and things. They don’t watch me lecturing in a classroom. They don’t watch me visiting. They don’t come down and see me in intercessory prayer with my students.
Paul’s analogy is the ancient model. Timothy has learned his Christianity and his first steps in Christian ministry from Paul as a son learns from his father. In other words, there has been a mentoring ministry, and Paul insists in this context Timothy has been tested. “He has proved himself,” Paul writes, so Paul is entirely at ease about sending him. “I hope, therefore, because he has proved himself to send him as soon as I see how things go with me.”
Timothy will be a sort of forerunner to the apostle himself. “And I am confident in the Lord that I myself will come soon.” Then there’s Epaphroditus (verses 25 to 30). This paragraph shows Paul to be a leader characterized by deep empathy and real compassion. Look at the wonderfully tender lines in verse 29. “Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor men like him.” Again, it’s holding up a certain kind of model, is it not?
The circumstances are, more or less, clear. The opening words suggest Epaphroditus was himself from Philippi. “I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus.” Back because he has come from there. Epaphroditus had been the messenger of the Philippians to Paul, a messenger “… sent to take care of my needs.” (Verse 25)
Probably, he is the one who bore the financial gift to Paul mentioned in chapter 4. We’ll look at that tomorrow night. Probably, he also supported Paul by his own hard work once he was on site. Now Paul wants to send him back to Philippi, and that is what Epaphroditus wants too, and Paul recognizes the fact. Verse 26: “For he longs for all of you and is distressed because you heard he was ill.”
That’s remarkable. Epaphroditus is not distressed because he was ill; he’s distressed because he heard they heard he was ill. In other words, he was distressed because he feared his fellow believers would be distressed on his account. However much Paul applauds this attitude in Epaphroditus, he won’t let him get away with downplaying the illness. Paul carefully lays out the gravity of the trauma. Verse 27: “Indeed he was ill, and almost died.”
“If he survived, it was a singular mercy from God,” Paul says, not only to Epaphroditus but also to Paul, who was, thus, spared a profound sorrow (verse 27). Paul can scarcely imagine what he would have done if Epaphroditus had been taken from him. “Therefore, I am all the more eager to send him home, so that when you see him again you may be glad and I may have less anxiety.” Those, in brief, are the circumstances that lie behind this paragraph.
Note, too, how Paul casts the matter. He refers to Epaphroditus very collegially. “My brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier …” (Verse 25) Then he concludes, and here’s the point, with an exhortation to the Philippians to hold up such leaders as Christians to be honored and emulated. Paul writes (verses 29 and 30), “Welcome him in the Lord with great joy, and honor men like him, because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me.”
In short, emulate those who have proved themselves in hardship not the untested upstart or the self-preening peacock. It is a constant theme in Paul. I well remember a Christian leader who a number of years ago used to give this advice to younger Christians. He used to say, “One of the most important things in Christian leadership is never to admit any weakness. If you admit weaknesses, others will exploit them to your detriment.” Astonishing rubbish!
Paul wouldn’t understand that (2 Corinthians 12). He says, “I glory in my weaknesses now so that Christ’s strength may operate in me. Pushed to the wall and beyond until there’s only weakness left and then delighting in it, so that Christ’s strength may be seen in me.” The picture of a great Christian man or woman above the fray, standing tall, sort of the Lone Ranger of the spiritual battlefront … That may go well with Western individualism, but it isn’t exactly what Paul has in mind.
Tested? Yes. Battered? Yes. Suffering on occasion? Yes. But strong through weakness rather than living above it all. In fact, one of the most astonishing things about that passage in 2 Corinthians 12, where he boasts about his weakness, is precisely that Paul says he doesn’t like to talk about his spiritual visions and things, “Lest others should think more of me than what is warranted by what I do or say.”
Most of us go through life worried people will think too little of us; Paul goes through life worried people will think too much. Astonishing. If they are going to think of him, it had better be an assessment based on what happens in the public arena, not on the basis of some sort of spiritual power or vision or the like.
No. Where Paul will talk at length is how he has been shipwrecked more often and put in jail more often and beaten more often and played more often, all the kinds of things nobody would brag about in the ancient world. In the ancient world, no teacher would work with his own hands (that was beneath him), but Paul worked with his own hands. He says, “I’ll brag about that. Those are the things that show my weakness.”
Look around the church, brothers and sisters in Christ. Don’t emulate the self-promoter, the strutting Christian, the self-promoting peacock, the person who is always strong. Look around for the people who have suffered a bit. Look around for the people who have been tested and stayed firm. Look around for the people who have wept and put down deeper roots. Emulate such leaders.
3. Emulate those whose constant confidence and boast are in Christ Jesus and in nothing else.
Chapter 3, verses 1 to 9. Paul begins in most of our English versions with, “Finally, my brothers …” There have been a lot of jokes about that finally. One child allegedly asked his dad what the preacher meant when he said, “Finally,” and his father muttered, “Nothing.”
Some critics eager to prove Paul did not write all of this letter think this finally right in the middle shows it’s a pastiche of collections that have been slopped together by some editor without his head screwed on quite right. In fact, our common translations have made things unnecessarily difficult.
The Greek word used here often serves in Late Greek simply as a kind of connecting particle like our “So then,” or something like that. What Paul is doing is picking up the theme of rejoicing that goes all the way back to chapter 2, verses 17 and 18, that closed the section we looked at last night.
There, if you recall, he is prepared to offer himself as a kind of drink offering, a libation, on their sacrifice. Whereas we often think of the apostles and great leaders as those who offer their lives in sacrifice, Paul views the church as that which is offered in sacrifice, and his offering of his life even in martyrdom is only a kind of drink offering slopped on top, as it were. If that’s the way they view him and view themselves, then, he says he’s prepared to die a martyr’s death, and he’s glad, and he rejoices with them, and he wants them to rejoice with him.
Then in the following verses we just looked at he has told of two of his helpers, Timothy and Epaphroditus, who have similarly displayed their willingness to suffer and to give for others. Paul writes, “So then, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord!” Do you see? It’s rounding off this section of rejoicing as they watch Christian leaders in this business of sacrifice.
At the same time, it’s also transitional. In the verses that follow, although Paul will warn against some false teachers in very strong language, the issues will turn, at least in part, on this willingness to put aside what the world and self-interest might choose in favor of the wonderful privilege of pursuing Christ.
Paul has told the Philippians these things before. That’s why he says, “It’s no trouble for me to write the same things to you, and it is a safeguard for you.” (Verse 1) The same things to which Paul refers are probably not things Paul has already said in this letter since he really hasn’t talked about these things before.
Rather, “The same things I used to say when I was there,” or something like that. A little review in spiritual matters is entirely salutary. That’s why Peter writes, “I want to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance.” It’s one of the reasons why some churches have liturgical calendars. You go over certain basics and review them again and again and again. We need review. It’s one of the things the Lord’s Supper does. Is it not? It forces us to review. “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Paul embarks on his review. He says, “Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.” That’s strong language. Almost certainly, Paul is referring to a recurring problem in the churches he founds.
There were many devout Jews who were prepared to believe Jesus was the Messiah so long as he was sort of added on top to their Judaism. They were even prepared to have some Gentiles being Christians provided they became Jews first and out of this newfound “Jewishness” accepted Jesus, but what that meant was the critical thing for them was they became Jews, and once they were Jews, they added Jesus on top. It wasn’t really Jesus that made the difference; it was becoming Jewish and having a bit of Jesus added on top.
All of this presupposes the Old Testament disclosure of God in temple, in priests, in sacrifices, the Levitical system, slaughtered animals … All of that is the ultimate in God’s purposes and Jesus is simply added on top, but, if instead, those things are given in order to look forward to an ultimate sacrifice and an ultimate temple and an ultimate Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world …
If those things are provisional and anticipatory, then, when the ultimate thing to which they point comes, you cannot properly insist on keeping all of those pointers as even more absolute than that to which they point or else you ultimately diminish that to which they point. That’s Paul’s reading of the Old Testament. It’s the whole New Testament reading of the Old Testament.
Read the epistle to the Hebrews. There are wonderful grounds for reading it that way. For such Jews, the sign of entrance into the covenant was circumcision. These Jews who also held they were Christians wanted the Gentiles to become Jews and be circumcised. Once they were circumcised, they were done. They were in. Then they were supposed to obey the law. They were pledged to do so. If they add a bit of Jesus on top, well and good, but of course, that means it’s not Jesus ultimately who is the Savior.
Paul points out that even in the Old Testament biblical writers made clear circumcision of the heart is more important than literal circumcision. Snipping a bit of skin off a genital does not make a person transformed in heart. It doesn’t do it. It becomes a metaphor for circumcision of the heart, an expression found again and again in the Old Testament. It’s found in Deuteronomy. It’s found in Jeremiah. It’s found in Ezekiel.
In fact, he goes further. He says under the terms of the new covenant inaugurated by the Lord Jesus, circumcision of the flesh is simply not the sign of entrance into the covenant community. No. He says in Romans, chapter 2, what we need is circumcision of the heart by the Spirit not by the written code.
That’s the background of the challenge Paul faces. Often, some of these Jews followed Paul around after he planted churches and stirred up trouble in these churches he had planted trying to win these Christians to their particular view of the law. Paul fears their arrival is impending and dangerous, so he takes the opportunity to warn the Philippian Christians about them and to arm them with some sound information so they can withstand the assault.
“Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.” (Verse 2) He’s not just using crude language; he’s using their language. For such people, there were Jews and dogs. That’s the way they talked. Jews were themselves, and dogs were all the Gentiles. Paul flips the categories. He says, “If you look at things from God’s perspective, the dogs, in fact, those filthy beasts, those curs on the street, are not the ones who have trusted Christ; they’re the ones who find reason to get around Christ. Thus, they are doing evil.”
They’re not the ones who are circumcised. They’re the ones who are mutilating themselves. They’re proud of their circumcisions, but we might as well call them not the circumcision but the mutilation for all the good that it does. That’s what he says. In fact, he says (verse 3), “It is we who are the circumcision.” Not, of course, the circumcision of the flesh. That’s not the point. “It is we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.” (Verse 3)
Some people might say such things just because they’re jealous. Maybe they’re Gentiles and they wish they really had been steeped in the proper Jewish tradition, so they have to sort of defend themselves by a sour-grapes theology, but not Paul. He’s not speaking out of barely suppressed jealousy as if he were frustrated because he himself enjoyed none of these privileges of status and training and race.
No. Far from it. What does he say? He could easily have boasted about such things himself. Verse 4: “If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.” Then he lists what he has in mind, the kind of things that would fit very well into first-century conservative Jewish culture.
For a start, he himself had been done on the eighth day, the proper time, a full-blooded Jew covenantally belonging to the people of God. Not only so, he was a Benjamite springing from one of the two tribes that did not rebel at the time of the great division. More than that, culturally he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. That is, though he was born in Tarsus and exposed to Greco-Roman culture, he was reared in the Hebrew tongue. He wasn’t just a Jew; he was a Hebrew who spoke the mother tongue and had a great deal of his education down in Jerusalem.
Not only so, but of the various sects and denominations and parties, he belonged to one of the most prestigious, strict, disciplined, informed, and widely respected: Pharisee. Not only was he a Pharisee in name, but he understood the claims of fledgling Christianity were dangerous to conservative Judaism.
Therefore, he was consistent within that heritage and persecuted the church, far more zealous than a lot of other Pharisees who were quite willing to live and let live. In fact, as for the full sweep of the kind of righteousness you could obtain under the law, the NIV’s legalistic righteousness is a bit harsh.
Quite frankly, Paul was faultless, he says, in verse 6. By this, he doesn’t mean he attains sinless perfection. He simply means he followed the law in all of its prescriptions, and when you sin, then you go and offer the sacrifice prescribed. He just did what was prescribed. He was good at it! He was utterly exemplary.
In all of those circles, he would have been viewed as exemplary, touted as the toast of high Jewish circles with a reputation for learning and godliness and religion, truth, integrity, consistency. Now he says, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.” It’s as if he’s totted it all up and transferred it from the credit column to the debit column, put a big minus sign in front of it, and now he has subtracted, he says.
What’s left? Christ. Then, as if we may not have gotten the lesson yet, he uses even stronger language. He writes, “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” (Verse 8) And lose them he did.
He was written off by his erstwhile friends and intellectual peers. He lost the security of a home. He became a constant traveler. The kinds of sufferings he endured make for an astonishing list in 2 Corinthians 11. Yet, none of this is uttered by word of complaint. He’s not having a pity party. No. He calmly asserts, “I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”
Here Paul exposes his fundamental values. On the one side stands everything the world has to offer including the privileged world of learned and disciplined pious Judaism. Respect, honor, education, influence, and university posts or the ancient equivalent. On the other side stands Christ.
Nor is this some kind of fanaticism, some kind of misguided judgment from someone who has lost his bearings in life, for in Paul’s understanding, Christ (fulfilling that law) and Christ alone reconciles us to God. Christ by his death and burial and resurrection reconciles anarchic men and women to God. God has disclosed himself in Christ. Christ came down and bore our sins in his own body on the tree. This is dealing not simply with party politics for three-score years and ten or however long we live. It’s dealing with all eternity.
What are you going to show off with in 50 billion years or so? “I was very learned in my New Testament department. I had a great degree in chemistry, you know.” Fifty billion years into eternity, you’ll still be pleading Christ or you won’t have anything to show at all. Paul is not some fanatic; he’s profoundly realistic. It’s just elementary common sense. He’s building for all eternity. That’s why he spends time talking about this righteousness, a term that could equally be rendered justification. Do you hear what he says in verse 9?
“I want to be found in him not having a righteousness, a justification, God’s declaration of righteousness in my life. I do not want righteousness that comes from obedience (I can’t obey enough; I can’t please God), but that which is through faith in Christ, this justification, God’s declaration that I am just because Christ has died for my sin, this justification that comes from God and is by faith. In the flow of the chapter, Paul insists the Philippian believers emulate those whose constant confidence and boast is in Christ Jesus and in nothing else.
Most of us in this sanctuary, I suspect, would not be greatly tempted to boast about their Jewish ancestry and ancient rites of race and religious heritage, and still less, that you grew up learning Hebrew, but we may be tempted to brag about still less important things: our wealth, our political or industrial successes, our denominational alignments, which version of the Bible we use, whether we’re respected in society, our political alignments.
Be careful of people like that in the church. That’s what Paul says. Eventually, they think they should be accepted because they know the right people or they say the right things or they belong to the right associations or they’re in the right clubs. At the end of the day, you’re not quite sure they really do rely on Jesus. They tend to see everyone else around their little group as somehow inferior.
Somewhere along the way, inadvertently and maybe even maliciously, they imagine faith in Christ Jesus and delight in him is a little less important than it ought to be. Look around, instead, for those whose constant confidence is Jesus Christ, whose constant boast is Jesus Christ, and whose constant delight is Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the center of their worship. He’s the center of their gratitude, the center of their love, the center of their hope. They are gospel people. After that, doubtless we’ll sometimes need to argue about relative peripherals, but in the first instance, emulate those whose constant confidence and boast is in Christ Jesus and in nothing else.
4. Emulate those who are continuing to grow spiritually, not those who are stagnating.
Verse 10 is often cited by Christians today. What is astonishing is it was first written by an apostle who had known Christ for 30 years. He says, “I want to know Christ,” though, of course, in some sense he did know him. He had known him for 30 years!
What he means is he wants to know him better and better. If you love someone, then you know that person, at least in measure, but your love for that person ensures you want to know that person more and more. A good marriage uncovers to the eyes of one spouse more and more about the other spouse as long as the marriage endures. A good marriage is constantly uncovering something about the other spouse, isn’t it?
That’s the way Paul views Jesus. “The riches bound up in him are unending,” he says. We shall spend all eternity getting to know him better, and we shall discover that knowing him is knowing God. The fund of knowledge of God is inexhaustible, and already during our pilgrimage it is our delight. It is our duty to know Christ better and better.
“Let me be specific,” he says. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” What does that mean? In Paul’s usage, the power of his resurrection is the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead. According to Paul, that same incomparably great power, to use his expression in Ephesians 1:19, that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that is at work in us to make us holy, to make us mature, to make us transformed increasingly into the likeness of Christ.
“I want to know that power.” It takes a great deal of power to transfer us out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. It takes great power to conform selfish, self-centered people like us into self-denying Christian disciples. “The same power that raised Jesus from the dead, I want to know that power,” he says.
That’s not all he wants. He wants the fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Here’s that word fellowship again I introduced a couple of nights ago. Partnership, if you like. Paul wants to identify with Christ in his sufferings, to participate in those sufferings, to know Christ better by experiencing sufferings as Jesus did. That’s what he says.
After all, this is the apostle who had written earlier, “For it has been granted to you, a grace gift, on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on his name but also to suffer for him.” (Chapter 1, verse 29) Paul is not the sort of chap who is prepared to tell converts how to suffer but is unwilling to suffer himself. He says, “I want to participate in Christ’s sufferings.”
It is very important to see there’s not a trace of spiritual masochism here. It’s not as if he goes around with an Eeyore-like expression on his face saying, “I’m prepared to suffer,” and generally generating gloom and doom. That’s not the idea at all. For such people, suffering gives them a kind of perverted joy. Like the old joke about a masochist and the sadist. The masochist says, “Go on. Hit me. Hit me. Make me suffer. Make me suffer.” The sadist says, “No, I won’t.”
Paul isn’t one of these sorts of people who is just waiting to be made to suffer. That’s not the point. Paul simply understands his Master was, as Isaiah puts it, a Man of Sorrows and familiar with suffering, and he feels as part of knowing that Master he should follow him. That means (verse 10) becoming like him in his death.
That is, just as Jesus had been crucified, so also Paul wants to take up his cross and follow him. Christ Jesus died to self-interest; Paul will die to self-interest. Jesus faced the opposition of people who couldn’t stand the truth of the gospel. If that is what Paul has to go through as he proclaims the truth of the gospel, he will wear it as a badge of honor.
Isn’t that what the earliest disciples said in Acts, chapter 5, verse 41, when persecution first broke out in the church? There we are told they counted themselves worthy. They learned to rejoice in persecution because God had counted them worthy of suffering disgrace for the name. It’s almost as if they said, “Thank God! God is finally entrusting me with a little bit of persecution. I wear the badge with honor.”
Paul is saying, “I am especially delighted if it helps me know Christ a bit more.” Some of you who have tried to witness or come from homes that really have opposed the gospel … maybe a little whiff here and there … have you not discovered when you’ve held up the flag with honor and integrity and a certain humility and paid a little bit of a price (not too much in this culture but a little bit) …
Haven’t you felt as if you have been identified with Christ a little more? You go back home and you get down on your knees, and somehow it may not be a very articulate experience; nevertheless, you know Christ has been with you this day and you have been honored to be identified with him.
One reason why Paul adopts this stance is because he holds the end in view. He says he wants to know Christ in these ways (verse 11). “And so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” By this wording, somehow he does not mean to inject doubt as to whether or not he will attain it. It’s not what the word means in the original. The word simply means Paul is uncertain as to the timing and circumstances. Might it come in his lifetime so he’s transformed or will he have to die first and then be resurrected?
We know from his first letter to the Thessalonians that’s what he hoped for. He didn’t know. Either way, somehow he will attain to the resurrection from the dead, and in Paul’s mind, attaining that glorious and the final resurrection, the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness, is bound up with his persevering knowledge of Jesus Christ that is growing and deepening. For knowledge of Christ Paul yearns.
In other words, Paul isn’t stagnating. That’s the point. It is this attitude more than any other that ensures, when Paul tells us we are to imitate him, he is not setting himself up as a guru. “Just do what I do. I have arrived. Just follow me. You’ll be all right.” It’s not like that. Rather, he sees himself as a pilgrim a little further down the path. We follow him as he continues to follow Christ. Do you see?
That’s why there’s no trace of arrogance in it, and that’s why he makes it clear to these readers (verse 12), “Not that I have already obtained everything or have already been made perfect. I’m not saying, ‘Follow me,’ because I have arrived, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” What he is aiming for is the attainment of the very purpose for which Christ called him.
As if this one disavow isn’t enough, he repeats himself. He says, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
In other words, he refuses to stand on past triumphs. He strains forward to the glory still to come. Nor is he setting himself up as some exceptional apostle by thinking this way. In verse 15, he says, “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.” There’s no other proper way to look at it. That’s what he says, and by implication, those who are immature should think this way too.
That is, they should follow us until they learn the same way. That’s why he adds, “And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.” Meanwhile, all Christians without exception should at least live up to the level of what they already know. Surely, they shouldn’t slide away and not even live up that high. Hence, verse 16: “Only let us live up to what we have already attained.”
The implications are staggering. Christians should never be satisfied with yesterday’s grace. It is a shocking thing for Christians to have to admit they have grown little in their experience as Christians. As Paul would later exhort Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, “We are to be diligent in the Christian responsibilities laid on us so others may see our progress, and that includes life and doctrine.”
If you’re a Christian leader, a Christian preacher, or a Christian teacher, people should watch your life and doctrine and see you have made progress. In five years’ time, this church should be convinced that Peter Adam has grown in both life and doctrine beyond where he is now or he has failed. That’s the truth. Obviously, these things apply with certain urgency to preachers and teachers who will be followed, but it is mandated of all of us that we grow (3:15). “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.”
It is not so much that we leave old truths behind and old steps of holiness behind as it is that new truths and applications of old truths open up before our eyes and shape our knowledge and our lives so powerfully that others see the improvement. “She prays better than she used to. She is more consistent in her devotions. He is godlier. He is wiser. He is more disciplined. He loves the Bible more. He understands more of Scripture. She really is wonderful nowadays as she helps others, isn’t she?”
Our sins become less and less excusable in our own eyes. After all, those who are most saintly are inevitably most deeply aware of how sinful they are and how odious sin is to God. Holiness becomes more and more attractive. The glories of the world to come make all the glories of this world fade into dull grays by way of comparison.
Sadly, not all believers (not even all Christian leaders) adopt this stance Paul views as normal and normative, so look around carefully, brothers and sisters. Look around carefully and emulate those who are continuing to grow spiritually not those who are stagnating. That’s Paul’s point. Beware of those who project an image of smug, self-satisfaction. Imitate those who imitate Christ.
5. Emulate those who eagerly await Jesus’ return, not those whose minds are on earthly things.
Verses 17 to the end. Once again, verse 17 is transitional. It applies to what precedes and to what follows. It brings to a focus everything we have said so far. In case we have not discerned that Paul has talked so much about his own attitude toward growth and maturity precisely because he wants others to follow in the same track, he now makes the point clear.
“Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.” In other words, Paul did not just give them a system of doctrine; he told people how to live, how to set up a pattern of life that would become a model others should follow.
There are two unavoidable implications here. First, part of what Paul taught new converts was how to live. He speaks of “the pattern we gave you,” what we would call the lifestyle. Secondly, once again, the apostle assumes many such elements in Christian discipleship are more easily caught than taught. They’re observed. They’re watched in others.
You learn how to become a Christian parent by watching Christian parents. The best way to learn how to have devotions with your children is by watching parents who do have devotions with their children. The best way of learning how to pray with great intercessory prayers is listening in to a great intercessory prayer warrior.
Thus, when you live in a time of declension so the models of preaching and of praying and so on are going down and down and down, when we have better and better guitar players and fewer and fewer prayer warriors, it’s hard to generate patterns in the church others can follow. That leads on to his closing texts.
There are some patterns you should not follow. “For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” (Verse 18) These are not outsiders. These are not unbelievers, because the Philippians wouldn’t be tempted to emulate them. That just doesn’t make any sense. Paul would not find himself in tears over complete unbelievers who were dangerously likely to lead the Philippians astray.
In the context, Paul is contrasting the model he and other mature Christians provide with what these people are doing. They’re not going to be following complete non-Christians, so it appears these people make some sort of profession of Christian faith and draw some away, but in reality, they are enemies of the cross of Christ.
That is, every generation produces some of these tricksters. They are not to be confused with the Christian preachers who are mentioned in chapter 1 who really are preaching the gospel, however mixed and confused their motives, nor are they to be confused with pagans who are completely outside the church. Rather, these are people who talk a good line, and they are viewed as being inside the church, but they dupe the unwary and the undiscerning, they parade themselves as Christian leaders, they perhaps exhibit a great deal of power, but what is missing?
What is missing? Judging by Paul’s expression, it’s a focus on the cross. They are enemies of the cross. That is, there is no principled self-denial. There’s no sold-out passion to the gospel. Religion is power politics. It’s ecclesiastical control. It’s ecclesiastical enculturation, but there’s no sold-out commitment to the gospel, and there is no sold-out commitment to die daily for Christ’s sake. There is no principled repentance.
It’s all a religious game, but they are ever so smooth. Paul wants to know more both of the power of Christ’s resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. Enemies of the cross of Christ just never adopt that stance. They never do. Doubtless, who these people are was clear both to Paul and to the Philippians. Paul adds enough details so the first readers would make the identification.
He says, “Their destiny is destruction.” That is, they’re not real believers. “Their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.” That is, far from being drawn to suffering for Christ’s sake, they are endlessly drawn to creature comforts. They please themselves. Their god is located no higher than their belly. The kinds of things they really value, far from being inspiring and glorious and worthy of emulation, are frankly a bit shameful.
In brief (verse 19), “Their mind is on earthly things.” It is not that they focus on explicitly wicked things. It’s not as if they’re trying to seduce the people into frank, outright immorality. It’s as if, rather, all of their values and cherished goals are tied to what belongs to this world and this earth. No part of them breathes with the passion of Paul, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. They are to be pitied. Certainly, they are to be avoided as far as any modeling is concerned.
Nor are we to think Paul is merely angry and upset. Paul’s vigorous denunciation isn’t calloused or spiteful. In verse 18, he says he issues it even with tears. He is grieved to find professing Christians, Christian leaders in the church, who are, in fact, idolaters (their god is their belly), who are wretchedly lost. “Their destiny is destruction.” We are reminded of the tears of Christ who could denounce Jerusalem and then weep over the city. We need Christian leaders who can denounce not out of angry pique but with tears of compassion.
What Paul insists, then, is genuine Christians cannot adopt the stances of these enemies of Christ. By contrast with them, Paul insists in verses 20 and 21, “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
In other words, Paul insists in the strongest terms that genuine Christianity, the kind he wants imitated, lives in the light of Jesus’ return. It is Christianity that joins the church in every generation crying, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” In other words, Christianity prepares people for heaven, for that is where our true home is. That is where our citizenship is. That’s our true destiny.
Christianity is not interested in simply giving you a happy life down here. It may give you a happy life down here, but that’s not the focus. If cheerful identification with Christ and his sufferings in this world finally issues in the spectacular glory of the Lord’s return and the splendor that follows, then we, too, are vindicated in a fashion analogous to the way Christ is vindicated in chapter 2.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I am profoundly persuaded genuine spirituality in the Western church cannot long survive if we lose this vision and passion for heaven. Christianity merely becomes a lifestyle not a destination. Happy the believer whose epitaph is the couplet, “Of this blessed man let this praise be given: heaven was in him before he was in heaven.” Emulate those who eagerly await Jesus’ return not those whose minds are on earthly things.
So I conclude. Yes, we must emulate those who are interested in the well-being of others and not their own, but we must be such people ourselves. Yes, we must emulate those who have proved themselves in hardship and not the untested upstart in the self-promoting peacock, but we must become such people.
Yes, we must emulate those whose constant confidence and boast is in Christ Jesus and nothing else, but that must be our boast, too. Yes, we must emulate those who are continuing to grow spiritually and not those who are stagnating, but, of course, if we do we shall grow ourselves. Yes, we must emulate those eagerly await Jesus’ return and not those whose minds are on earthly things, but, then, our minds will be on heavenly things no less than theirs.
We shall look out on a new generation whom we may influence for Jesus’ sake. That is the mandate. Go and make disciples. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to emulate worthy Christian leaders. We are called to be worthy Christian leaders whom others will emulate. God help us.
In working through Paul’s letter to the believers in Philippi, we have summarized his arguments together in several simple formulae. First, put the gospel first. Secondly, adopt Jesus’ death as a test of your outlook. Thirdly, emulate worthy Christian leaders, and fourthly, never give up the Christian walk. Why summarize chapter 4 under that rubric? There are three reasons.
First, verse 1 of chapter 4 has as its burden the exhortation to stand firm, and this exhortation looks simultaneously backward and forward. The backward part is clear from the first word. “Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!” That is, the argument picks up from the end of chapter 3, where as we saw, Paul has warned people about false leaders and bad examples.
He says, “Watch out for those who parade a certain kind of pseudo-Christianity that may, for a while, take you in. Beware of them.” They are described as those whose god is their belly and whose end is destruction. Don’t be deceived by them. Instead, he says, in chapter 3, “Emulate those who make much of the cross and whose spiritual life is vital and who are already homesick for heaven. Their citizenship is in heaven. Therefore, my brothers, this is how you should stand firm in the Lord.”
There’s a sense in which chapter 4, verse 1, stands as a kind of culmination to what precedes. Yet, it also points forward. In the original language, “This is how you should stand firm in the Lord,” includes in it a little word, thus that regularly (not quite always, but regularly) points forward. We know it in John 3:16. “For God thus loved the world that he gave his Son.”
Thus, the thus points forward. It doesn’t always do that but very often, and I suspect it does here as well. In other words, the therefore carries you into the next section as well. “This, then, is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.” Now he gives a whole lot of exhortations that flesh out how you’re going to go about this business of standing firm.
Secondly, many of the themes in this last chapter have already been introduced in Philippians 1 to 3, but when they are repeated here, Paul casts them in such a way, as we shall see, that they foster endurance, perseverance, keeping on going. This will become clear, I think, as we precede.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we cannot help but see the specific injunctions in this chapter are those that are calculated to foster endurance. We may put it this way. What kind of exhortation will best help Christians persevere in the way of Christ? Will it be an exhortation to read your Bible every day? Will it be an exhortation to recite the creeds?
While all of those things, I’m sure, are useful, when you push hard on these subjects, almost all of them are attitudinal. Some obedience is merely formal. Some other kinds of obedience sink into a pathetic kind of legalism. What Paul is after here is to emphasize integrity in relationships, fidelity toward God, quiet confidence in him, purity and wholesomeness in thought, and godliness in heart attitude.
What he’s after in this chapter is a whole stance, a heart attitude, that ought to shape everything we do and everything we touch. The burden of Philippians 4, then, is never give up the Christian walk. We may usefully unpack the theme in seven components.
1. Resolve to pursue like-mindedness with other true believers.
Verses 2 and 3. The concrete case immediately before Paul is two women, Euodia and Syntyche, who cannot seem to get along. What is shocking about this situation is these two women are not peripheral people known for their bad tempers and wagging tongues and little else.
No. They are (verse 3) women who have worked with Paul in the cause of the gospel. They have been at the forefront of evangelism. These are not backseat busybodies. “They have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel,” Paul says. There’s no hint or heresy or immorality in them. They simply cannot get on.
What does Paul do? You probably have never seen a situation like this (two people who can’t get on), but if it should ever arise in your church, here is what you do. First, Paul pleads with them. That’s rather nice, even of itself. He doesn’t begin with heavy-handed authority. He doesn’t cite his apostolic credentials and tear a strip off them. Indeed, for all that the appeal is personal and impassioned; it really isn’t calculated to shame them.
