Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Ministry from Philippians 1:1-11
“Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the oversees and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
“I would like to buy about three dollars worth of gospel. Not too much—just enough to make me happy, but not so much gospel that I learn to really hate covetousness and lust. I certainly don’t want so much that I start to love my enemies or cherish self-denial and contemplate missionary service in an alien culture. I want ecstasy; not repentance. I want transcendence; not transformation.
I would like to be cherished by some nice, forgiving, broad-minded Christian community, but I myself don’t want to love those from different races—especially if they smell. I would like enough gospel to make my family secure and my children well-behaved, but not so much that I find my ambitions redirected or my giving too greatly enlarged. I would like about three dollars worth of gospel, please.”
Of course, none of us here would be quite so crass as to put things that way. But just as you can have a kind of de facto atheism, even while maintaining Christian belief, so it’s possible to have a kind of nominal adherence to the gospel without it affecting very much. This temptation is perennial, of course, amongst us who are sinners, a very broad category indeed.
But perhaps it is especially strong today owing to the confluence of a variety of pressures. The rise, for example, of a certain kind of philosophical pluralism in which it is becoming more and more difficult to say, “There is salvation only in Christ. Your life now and for eternity depends absolutely on what Christ has done on the cross. On him and no other.” That just sounds so right-winged, narrow-minded, bigoted, and hate-filled that it is easily dismissed. So we find other ways of softening things down just a wee bit.
Or the pressures of secularization, which does not mean that you start living believing with your whole heart that there is nothing but matter and energy and space and time, a philosophical materialism. Secularization does not do that. What secularization does is push the religious to the margins of life so that you can be religious if you like on Sunday at 11:00, and occasional other Bible studies, and things like that, but what pulsates in your being is not the gospel of Christ; it’s not love of God.
There is a disjunction between Sunday and the rest of the week, between Sunday morning at 11:00 and the rest of the week. Should we also mention the sapping influences of self-indulgence in a culture that really has an awful lot? Paul recognized the insidious evil of somewhat similar pressures in the Roman Empire. Like Western culture, the Roman Empire had begun to decay, settling slowly into self-indulgence and endless pursuit of pleasure.
Pluralism of several kinds made it highly unpopular for anyone to say there was only one way of salvation. In the Roman world, the most excruciating persecution came during the first three centuries from those who claimed that Christians were simply too narrow. Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?
Paul is concerned for the church in Philippi. He founded it in AD 51 or 52, and he visited it after that at least twice before writing this letter. Now the apostle is writing from prison, probably in Rome, probably about AD 61; that would make the church about 10 years old. Paul can see mounting pressures of various kinds gathering around it, and he wants to stabilize those believers he has come to love so much, even as he thanks God for them.
He cannot visit them; he’s in jail. So he writes to them. Indeed, his imprisonment must have given his letter added weight. What a person says when incarcerated and facing the possibility of death is likely to be given a little more attention than what might otherwise be the case. So what does he tell the Philippians as he receives some of their news and as he delivers to them some basics for believers? What does he then tell us by his Spirit through these words 2,000 years later?
Above all, he is committed to advancing the gospel. Notice how frequently the word appears even in the first chapter. Verse 5: “… because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now …” Verse 7: “It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.”
Or in verse 12 he speaks of “… that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.” What he wants is to “… dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.” (Verse 14.) He recognizes that some people proclaim the gospel out of bad motives. “The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition …” But in each case, he is pleased provided Christ is preached. That centers on the gospel.
Then a little farther on, in verse 27, he says, “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel …” A little farther on again, “… striving together as one for the faith of the gospel …” This is a book full of the gospel. It is worth stopping right there, because that’s a word we so frequently think we know and often don’t.
Many of us have come from backgrounds where the gospel is that part of the Bible which tips you into the kingdom, and after that, you have all of your discipleship lessons to make you nicer, better, more holy. Happier marriages. How to bring up parents. What to do with your resources. How to save for retirement and do missionary work after you’re 65 and all that sort of thing.
But first of all, the gospel just tips you in. After that comes the real life change. Now again, we don’t put it quite as crudely as that, but that is the way the structure of many of our churches actually works, isn’t it? We somehow don’t expect the gospel to transform. We expect the gospel to tip you in until you’ve prayed the sinner’s prayer, and then after that comes all the transformation.
But all you have to do is to take a concordance and look through every instance of gospel or preach the gospel and gospel-related words (cross and things like that) through the New Testament to discover how abysmally alien that is to what the New Testament says. In the New Testament, the gospel is the big category.
The big category under which closing with Christ and growing in Christ and coming to consummation because of Christ subsists. This is the big category that controls discipleship. It’s the big category that controls the burden of our message. It controls everything. You don’t have gospel to tip you in, and then the big category is discipleship. The big category is already the gospel, the good news.
Others think of gospel as some of everything the Bible says, and that includes not only the Great Commission, but the first commandment, looking after the poor, waiting for the Lord in the end of times, and being nice to your parents … just about everything. It’s all what the Bible says, isn’t it?
And yet, although the Bible says a great deal, and all of it has to be put together in a coherent way, that’s not quite what gospel means. In fact, it has become common in some circles to quote words from Francis of Assisi (at least they’re alleged to come from him, although there is no evidence he actually ever said them). Those words are, “Preach the gospel; if necessary, use words.”
Oh, it’s such a punchy way of saying, “Live up to insight of living out the truth of the gospel, of being genuinely righteous.” That authorizes, then, digging wells in the Sahel (that’s gospel ministry), and looking after the homeless people (that’s gospel ministry), and so on and so on. Hear me out. I’m not suggesting we don’t dig wells in the Sahel or look after homeless people. I’ll come to that, but it isn’t the gospel.
Do you know why? Because in the first place, the gospel is news. You can no more say, “Preach the gospel; if necessary, use words” than you can tell the news reader of the 10:00 on CBC, “Tonight, give us the news; if necessary, use words.” What you do with news is announce it. That’s what you do with news.
The content of this news is what God has done for us supremely in Christ Jesus, and supremely in Christ Jesus, in particular, in his cross and resurrection. All that flows from that flows genuinely from the gospel, but it is not to be confused with the gospel. One must distinguish between the gospel, the news that you advance about what God has done in Christ, and the entailments that flow from the gospel.
Those who have been genuinely transformed by the gospel will act in different ways because after all, the gospel concerns not only what God has done to reconcile us to God by faith in Christ Jesus who bore our sins in his own body on the tree, but the gospel is also described by the apostle as the power of God to salvation; it is essentially transformative.
It does not only effect a legal cleaning up. It is not simply that we are declared just before God, “My sins reckoned to Christ. His righteousness reckoned to me.” It’s more than that. It is not less than that. It is never less than that, but it is more than that. It is also the new birth. It is the power of God to salvation. It is essentially transformative. So much so that when people claim to know the gospel, when people claim to be Christians, but there’s no evidence in their lives, in the New Testament there’s a big question mark over put them.
It’s not just a question of making a profession of faith. The gospel saves. It transforms. So it is essential that we list and magnify and explain the entailments of the gospel, but all the transformations in the world are not themselves the gospel. The gospel is the good news of what God has done in Christ Jesus.
You can summarize it in a word. I have a pastor friend of mine who takes his interns, and one of the first assignments he gives with every new crop is, “Give me the gospel in one word. Give me the gospel in one sentence. Give me the gospel in one paragraph. Give me the gospel in a 10-page essay.” But it’s always wrong unless you see that it is the good news about what God has done. So if you say, “The gospel is believing in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.” Nope. That’s not the good news.
The good news is what God has done, not what I do by way of response to the gospel. Do you see? It is so fundamental but so regularly overlooked. The gospel is to be announced, proclaimed, taught, and then worked out in our lives in transformation and renewal and anticipation of the consummation still to come. So it’s the gospel of God. That’s what he’s talking about during these opening verses. What does he particularly emphasize in these opening verses? Two things. He tells his readers, in effect …
1. Put the partnership of the gospel at the center of your relationships with believers.
Or as some versions put it, the fellowship of the gospel. It’s really difficult to get a good translation for that word nowadays, because both partnership and fellowship have been made somewhat anemic.
Fellowship in many of our circles means something like Christian friendship, so that if you have a cup of tea with a pagan neighbor over the back fence and talk about hockey, that’s friendship. But if you do it over another fence with a Christian neighbor, same cup of tea, same hockey teams, that’s fellowship.
You listen to the exposition of Holy Scripture, and then afterwards you’re having a cup of tea or whatever it is your church offers at the end of the service, and you’re talking about everyday things, and you’re having Christian fellowship because you’re doing it with Christians after a morning service. But that’s not exactly what the apostle has in mind.
Partnership almost sounds too legal a term. What the expression has in mind (I don’t care whether you use fellowship or partnership) is joint commitment to an enterprise. If two fellows want to buy a fishing smack in the first century and start fishing on Lake Galilee, they’ve entered into a fellowship, into a partnership. They’ve sunk their time and resources and energy into it. The word often has economic overtones to it because people are putting value into it, but it’s because they share the common goal, the common joy.
So to enter into partnership with Paul in the gospel means to enter into this relationship that puts the gospel as the shared goal that shapes everything in both parties. What does he say? “I thank my God …” (Well, that’s what Paul often begins with in his letters; he begins with a warm expression of thanks, and only in one or two cases does he not do so when he wants to drive hard to a point.)
“I thank my God every time I remember you.” Now in fact the expression in the original is ambiguous. It could be, “I thank my God every time I remember you,” or it could be, “I thank my God every time you remember me.” Both actually make quite a lot of sense in the context. And as I’ve studied this over the years (I’ve taught Philippians in Greek I don’t know how many times to how many generations), I keep waffling back and forth because I can’t decide.
Both make quite a lot of sense, actually. “I thank my God every time I remember you.” You’ve been such an encouragement to me in the faith, I watch your witness, I watch your generosity, I am so grateful. (We’ll come to some of the evidences of that shortly.) Or, “I thank God every time you remember me,” because after all, it was the Philippians who were the first to supply support for Paul and his team as he moved down the Greek peninsula. Either way, it’s not just who remembers whom that is the important issue.
Notice what he says, “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now …” This partnership, this fellowship, not only the money they sent which enabled Paul to put aside his leather-making trade, his leather-working trade, and give full time to the ministry but also their prayers for him, their own evangelistic zeal in promoting the gospel in Philippi, their commitment to the local church, their letters back and forth, the reception of Paul’s emissaries.
They were sold out to the gospel in remarkable short order. This despite the fact Paul did not spend much time in Philippi. The first time he was there, of course, he was ridden out of town. And this with an eschatological dimension, “… being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Now it’s worth stopping to think about that.
In many seminaries there are endless debates about whether someone can lose his or her salvation and, of course, those debates then trickle out into the church. I’ve come to be convinced that the nature of the debate is fundamentally misaligned. There are many passages in the Bible that make it almost a definition of who is a true Christian to say that true Christians, finally, persevere to the end.
It’s a definitional matter. After while you can see why this is so. For example, in Hebrews 3:14, “We have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end,” or in some other translations, “… if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.” Now remember the context.
Here, the writer to the Hebrews is talking about those Jews who escaped from slavery in Egypt but then died in the desert before entering into the Promised Land. They had received enough grace to escape from but not enough grace to get into. And now the writer says, “Don’t be like that,” because we have been made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfastly to the end.
By definition, that’s the way it works. We sometimes have too easy a theology of gospel conversion. People can make a profession of faith, and we think, “Well, he signed a prayer card. Once saved, always saved. He’s in.” But then what do you do with the many, many passages in Scripture that warn about spurious conversions?
Think, for example, of the parable of the sower reported in Mark 4 and Matthew 13. One of the categories of soil is rocky ground. Rocky ground in Palestine meant ground with a limestone bedrock not far under a thin layer of topsoil. As the seed falls into the ground, that thin layer of topsoil warms up the fastest in the spring in the early rains. So the seed germinates fastest. It seems to be the most productive of the lot.
Then the early rains stop, the Mideastern sun pelts down, the roots look for moisture, and they hit the limestone bedrock. The plant keels over and dies, and the plant never produces any fruit. Then as Jesus explains this parable, he draws attention to short-term converts. He says, “The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy.” They seem to be the most promising of the crop. (Matthew 13:20)
“But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.” In other words, it is assumed that even under trouble and persecution, the real fruit, the real seed that falls in soil that is genuinely prepared, where the roots go down deeply, that’s the soil that ultimately produces fruit unto eternal life. You find the same sort of thing taught in Colossians 1:21–23. That is to say, the Colossians truly are believers if indeed they hold the beginnings of what they learned steadfastly to the end.
“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”
So also here, “I thank for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” What a wonderful pastoral touch. Implicitly he is urging them to persevere. At the same time, he’s explicitly saying that if they do persevere, it’s God working it out within them both to will and to do of his good pleasure. In fact, that’s the language Paul himself will use in the second chapter.
Many, many themes in the rest of the book start surfacing in these opening verses. In chapter 2, Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling …” Not because God has done his bit and now it’s all up to you, but because “… it is God working in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Even your willing is the fruit of his work. Even your doing is the fruit of his work, which does not remove obligation from us; it mandates it, but authorizes at the same time great confidence in the God of the gospel, the God who began this gospel work in you, and for those who are truly his, he will continue it, he will complete it, and they will persevere even to the end.
This end is defined as the day of Christ Jesus. For any Christian reader, of course, that means the very end, the day when Christ Jesus returns, the consummation of all things, which means that once again Paul is looking at salvation eschatologically. Now I know that there have been times and periods in the history of the church when we’ve fought so much over the details of the end that we’ve divided on all kinds of matters. I understand that.
But today perhaps many of us are falling into another kind of danger. We want so desperately to show that the gospel is relevant that we focus on the here and now: the gospel will give you importance in your life, it will give you significance, it will sort out your family, it will give you self-discipline, it will make you into a nicer person.
Again, we’re usually not quite as utilitarian as that, but that’s what underlies of a great deal of our gospel appeal, is it not? But reread the Gospels. Reread Paul. Reread the Apocalypse, and you discover again and again and again that first-century believers closed with the gospel in the first place because this is what saved them from the wrath to come.
So that even when Paul is preaching to pagans who don’t have the same view of history, the same linear view of things that brings you to the end of all things at the end of the age, even when he is preaching to people like that as in the sermon in Acts 17, it’s not long before he introduces idolatry, the fact that history is going somewhere, that God himself has appointed a judge at the end of the age to whom everyone must give an account and this judge, God, has labeled, as it were, in history by raising him from the dead. Do you see?
There is an intrinsic preaching in gospel ministry in the New Testament that warns people to flee from the wrath to come. Now again, again, again do not misunderstand me. This does not mean that the gospel does not transform us now. Of course it does. We receive forgiveness of sins now. We receive the Holy Spirit now. We enjoy the communion of saints now, but all of these things are happy but, at best, pale reflections of the glory yet to come, which is why the church across the centuries has been able to cry, “Yes. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
Where is that pulsating in our churches today? That’s lack of gospel vision. Because the good news of what God has done in Christ Jesus is that in Christ Jesus, in his death and resurrection, men and women are already made sons and daughters of the living God in anticipation of the consummation that is theirs in the day of Jesus Christ.
So the burden of what Paul is saying in these opening verses is, “Put the fellowship of the gospel, the partnership of the gospel, at the center of your relationships. I thank you for the evidence that you’ve already done so, and this is what I pray for you regarding. I am confident that he who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to the day of completion, and I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
Before leaving these opening verses, it really is very important to see that Paul’s stance is not cold, mechanical, and professional. Verse 4: “In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy.” Verse 7: “It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart …” It’s worth pausing there to remember that heart for us has purely emotional overtones. “I love you with all my heart.”
But in the ancient world, the symbolism of physiology was shunted down. For us, we think up here and we love here. So “I love you with all my heart” runs about here. In the ancient world, heart was the center of your entire personality and was actually closer to what we mean by mind, and your emotions were bound up with your gut or with your kidneys. So older English versions find the apostle Paul speaking of “bowels of compassion.” It doesn’t fly too well in contemporary verses. But nevertheless, that’s what he says.
You really can’t imagine a young man saying to his young woman, “I love you with all my kidneys” today, but nevertheless, that is closer to biblical symbolism. Which means when we hear this “I hold you in my heart,” this is not just sentimental twaddle. It includes emotion, but it means a massive commitment of mind and soul and being. Value system. “I hold you in my heart, in the very center of my being: what I think about, what I love, what I acknowledge, what I swear by.” “I hold you in my heart.”
So this is not some mere professionalism. I know a minister of the gospel in another country who was very affective for many years, and it came out that he was leading a double life. Not many people knew it at that time. His wife had agreed to give him two months of silence while he tried to sort things out. During that two-month period, he conducted a wedding.
In this wedding that he conducted, he spoke eloquently of faithfulness, truth telling, watching your imagination, loyalty, the parallel between Christ and the church and husband and wife, and that Christ does not have many brides and neither do we. On and on and on. At the end of it, his wife, aghast, said, “How could you say all of those things? How could you say all of those things when your life is the way it is?” He said, “I’m a professional.”
But Paul is no mere professional here. What gives him his joy? Every memory of them. It reminds you of 3 John, doesn’t it? “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking according to the truth.” “I hold you in my heart, so it is right for me to think this way because you are at the very center of all that I am.”
Many in this room, I’m sure, are ministers of the gospel. There are times when we’re tired, browned off by people who have been nasty or mean, discouraged, a bit self-focused, but if we’re not to be mere professionals, merely clank out the obvious verities with a certain kind of doctrinal faithfulness, but to approach apostolic faithfulness, then so help us, God.
We will work hard at the relationships in the church, and even beyond, that center on the promotion of the gospel, that see what God is doing in Christ, that love this good news, that understand that the eternal destiny of men and women hangs on it. It transforms them now. There’s a partnership, a sharing, a mutual giving and receiving, a mutual dependency that tastes already of the eternal communion that will one day be, all secured by the gospel now.
We will do everything in our power to feed that and foster it and exemplify it, because we hold to the people whom we serve in our hearts. Indeed, it’s as if he can’t let it go with a brief reference. He’s got to unpack it a wee bit. “It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel …” In chains in prison and, therefore, able to speak to guards and the odd visitor but not out on the streets announcing the gospel, preaching the gospel, defending the gospel.
“Whether I’m in the one situation or the other doesn’t really matter all that much, from one perspective,” he says. Either way, “… all of you share in God’s grace with me.” There is this deep union of the saints in the gospel. He may have other overtones in mind as well. It may be that not only have they sent down some support for his ministry, which he will mention in chapter 4, but they may have sent down some books and food and so on.
Roman prisons often did not provide you with all the food you needed to sustain life. Relatives and friends had to do that. They may have been supporting him in other ways as well, but in one way or the other, “God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Oh my, does that bring us reflection.
There are moments in our ministry when we really do believe we love the people God has put in our charge with the affection of Christ Jesus, but sometimes not. That’s what the apostle Paul says here, because he understands the importance of this fundamental point: put the partnership of the gospel at the center of your relationships with believers.
Let me tell you, that illuminates a lot of things practically, too, doesn’t it? We come from quite a few different denominations in this room. Some of us are very suspicious of this particular theological aberration, as I perceive it, in your denomination, and others are very suspicious of my openness actually to talk occasionally with some charismatics. We can make jokes of it, but at the same time, these feelings run deep, do they not?
I’m not saying that the issues are not important. With my whole life, I do not want a lowest common denominator theology. Lowest-common-denominator theology always rushes toward lowest-common-denominator preaching. You keep trying to find the lowest common denominator so that you’ll never offend anybody about anything. I don’t want that! I don’t want that, because this fellowship in the gospel, as we’ll see in a few moments, finds Paul also praying for excellence in understanding.
No, no, no. There is something more going on here. It is locating the unity of the gospel as that which ties us most tightly together. Our unity is around the truth of the gospel and the fellowship of the gospel and the partnership of the gospel, and there you can cross a lot of lines so long as you’re dealing with someone who really does know what the gospel is and is living it out and pulsating with it, thinking it through, understanding it, proclaiming it. Do you see? There’s more yet to be said, which brings us now to the second point.
2. Put the priorities of the gospel at the center of your prayer life.
Verses 9–11. Now he has said a little earlier, verse 4, “I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel,” but he hasn’t actually said what his prayer is, what the substance of it is. Now he tells us. Verse 9: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”
For what does Paul pray? Paul prays, first of all, for what is excellent. I know that at a superficial level you can say what he prays for, first of all, is love, isn’t it? “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more …” But read the rest of the sentence: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ …”
In other words, even the prayer for more love is in some sense instrumental. Now there are prayers for increased love in Paul that just end there. “I pray that your love may abound more and more.” Paul says that sort of thing pretty often. But here, the prayer for love, abounding more and more in love, is that they might abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.
And this to the end, “… that they may be able to discern what is best, most excellent, and may be pure and blameless for the day of Jesus Christ.” In other words, there is not a hint here of lowestcommon-denominator theology for the sake of love. “Oh, in our church we don’t like to talk about topic X, Y, or Z because that just brings division; we just emphasize Jesus.” Which Jesus? Jehovah’s Witness Jesus? Mormon Jesus? Which Jesus?
In The Gospel Coalition I’m sure we’ve made many, many mistakes. We have a pretty robust theology of confession of state and a pretty robust vision of ministry, but there’s another principle that we’ve adopted from the beginning. Granted that all of us on the council are deeply committed to the statement of faith and the theological vision of ministry, deeply committed to it. On every other topic, we will talk about anything. We will not bury differences.
So we’ve just come through council meetings where we had panel after panel after panel talking about complex, difficult, challenging things because we want to bring each other to accountability under God’s most Holy Word. In fact, Paul hasn’t got to it yet, but 11 times in this book Paul says something about being of one mind. That’s part of the excellence he’s here pursuing. Being of one mind does not mean agreeing to disagree. That’s not being of one mind. All it means is agreeing to disagree.
Being of one mind means that under the authority of God’s Word you try to work out together what the text really does say. We may not be able to do it, but Paul says, “This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that you may be able to discern what is best …”
What is best not only in knowledge and depth of insight, but then in how to live. “… that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” In other words, our theological depth and our progressive sanctification are both dependent on increasing intimacy which is itself in part a function of love, and that’s what Paul prays for. Isn’t that remarkable?
Because, you see, when people in the local church don’t really love each other, when they start disputing things, pretty soon they hate each other. If they don’t really love the truth, they don’t really want to come to the truth. They just want to have peace, but it’s the peace of agreeing to disagree. It’s not the peace of knowing God a little better and increasing in knowledge and depth of insight.
This is so important, even for those in the ministry, that Paul can write to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, “Let all see your progress.” And in the context, the progress is both faith and life. So that people in your church after 5 years should be able to look back and say, “You know, when he came, he wasn’t a bad preacher. He had some genuine insights into Scripture, but it just keeps getting better.”
They ought to be able to look back, and they ought to say, “He’s always been a disciplined bloke, you know, but transparently he loves the Lord even more and his prayer life just keeps improving.” Do you see? Because ministers should be leading the congregation in what Paul is praying about. Namely, that your love will abound more and more, that you may increase in knowledge and depth of insight, to the end that your life may be pure and blameless until the day of Jesus Christ.
This is no casual approach to Christianity, some take it or leave it thing, some avocation. This pulsates with the very heart of what the cross is all about, and it’s within that framework, then, that Paul keeps talking about a variety of things connected with the gospel, things that are so alien to so many of us: one mind, Christian living, suffering. Don’t forget the book has begun with Paul in prison.
I was talking with David Short an hour or so ago regarding some of the challenges he’s faced. He mentioned that one of the verses, one of the contexts that comes back to him again and again and again, is the end of chapter 1 (which I’m not supposed to talk about; that’s for the next speaker), yet it’s part of the excellence. You must see that it’s part of the excellence.
“Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel …” That’s proclamation. That’s witness. That’s bearing witness to Jesus Christ. It’s proclamation.
“… without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but you will be saved—and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.” Do you hear that? It’s been granted to you. It’s a gracious gift. “… not only to believe in him …” The faith that you exercise has been given to you as a gift. It’s been granted to you to believe in him. And not only to believe in him, it’s also been granted to you to suffer for him, and that’s just not how we think. Supposing the message of Philippians, including excellence even in suffering, became so much a part of Christian conviction in Canada that every time anyone of us was insulted or put down, any time anyone of us endured sneering condescension, or maybe even got jacked up at work because of taking a moral stance on fiscal matters, any of the occasions of that order, we took it and said, “Thank you for this gift, heavenly Father. You’ve given me the gift of faith, and now you’ve given me the gift of suffering for Jesus’ sake.”
Wouldn’t that transform all of our witness? Wouldn’t it take away our fear? Have you ever reflected on Acts 5:41? The disciples are beaten up, and the text says, “They rejoiced because they were counted worthy to suffer for the name.” I don’t think I understood that verse very well until a few years ago when I tried to think through what was going on in their heads judging by how you move from the end of John into the opening chapters of Luke.
Don’t forget, just a short while earlier on the night he was betrayed, Jesus said things you can read in John 15: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they hated me, they will hate you. If they receive me, they will receive you.” So the Christians were supposed to expect opposition. And a little earlier in Matthew’s gospel, Matthew 10, “You will be hated by all men, you’ll be brought before rulers and authorities, and you’ll be beaten and tormented.” All of this.
And then what happens? Pentecost. The power of the Spirit. Thousands converted. Such glory in gospel ministry. A few of the authorities don’t like it, but who gives a rip about them? Everything is going great guns. They have 5,000 in the church pretty soon, and that’s just the men, besides all the women and children. I mean, you’ve got a church of 20,000 or 30,000 there in the opening months of Acts.
And then on top of that, the Christians are in such great esteem that some of them hide along the road just trying to sneak under Peter’s shadow, for goodness’ sake! You can’t get much more esteemed then that. He was sort of the rock star of Jerusalem. It was unbelievable, such popularity. And people getting converted. I can imagine the apostles saying to one another, “You know, this is pretty good, but you know that suffering stuff that Jesus talked to us about? Where’s that? Are we doing something wrong? He did warn us, didn’t he?”
And still people get converted, and still their reputation knows no bounds. And then finally, Peter and John get beaten up, and they say, “Yes! Thank you, Jesus, it’s about time.” They rejoiced because they were counted worthy to suffer for the name. Don’t you see? It may be we are coming to a place in many Western cultures now where that will have to be our attitude.
It’s wonderful what God has done in so many ways and given us so many freedoms, but you know, Jesus did warn about suffering. “It’s been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on his name, but also to suffer for his sake.” That’s a grace gift, and it’s coming. And we want it. Not because we’re masochists. Not because we say, “Go ahead, hit my cheek, and then hit the other one. I love the pain!” But we want it because we want gospel faithfulness, and in our world, that’s going to cost something.
So we want it because it’s a gracious gift from God in this world, which apart from Christ, is damned and defiant and ugly. We want it. It will mark gospel fidelity. It’s part of our pursuit of excellence, to learn to think together, which means we’re going to have to get together enough to be able to air our differences in the light of Scripture and be like those in Berea who studied the Scripture to see if these things are so or not.
Instead of just siting proof texts to defend our own little positions we need to form the kinds of fellowships where we can talk things out under the authority of Holy Scripture and come to one mind in Christ, precisely because we love each other, for the gospel’s sake, that we pursue what is excellent and grow in knowledge and understanding and insight to the end that we might be blameless and pure on the day of Jesus Christ.
That’s what Paul prays for. So the question becomes.… When was the last time you prayed for this in your church? Brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to return to Scripture, not only for our understanding of the gospel itself but for understanding of how to pray, what our goals should be, what our priorities must be.
3. Paul’s pursuit in prayer of what is excellent is not idolatrous.
There is a kind of pursuit of excellence that is idolatrous. Some people are perfectionists in a pretty ugly sense, and they are very impatient with those who can’t meet their high standards. That can be so in every domain: needlework, machine shop, how to ride a motorcycle.
But this kind of pursuit of excellence, though it does produce some people who are very supercilious and condescending to those have not reached their level of self-control, ideally, if it’s genuinely Christian, is spared such idolatry by the last clause, “… filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”
Once again we’re being told that if we are pursuing such excellence and are, thus, passionate about being pure and blameless for the day of Christ, it will come about because we’re filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes from Jesus. The imputed righteousness that is ours and the fruit of all of that is experiential righteousness in our lives, and all for the praise of God.
So once again, we are anticipating themes a little farther on in the book. We’ll see that Paul is happy to lay out a whole profile of what this looks like in the fourth chapter, and in the second chapter (as I’ve already mentioned), he points out that even as you are to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, it’s God working in you, because after all, it’s the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, through his gospel.
Would it be too much to say that whereas 40 years ago many people in Christian faith were often focused on separation, moral integrity, purity, and things like that but often slipped into legalism, today we are so little concerned about moral purity and integrity that we are not greatly in danger of legalism so much as lack of self-control? Oh, that’s a generalization; I know that.
But while there have been many of us in the last few years, for example, that have argued in book after book and volume after volume, in debates and the like, to defend a robust doctrine of justification.… Which had to be defended. It really was important. We couldn’t lose that one. It is pretty central. Luther was right when he speaks of it as the defining faith of the church. There are many things that are the defining faith of the church, but that one is so easily lost. It was important to fight.
Yet at the same time, you can actually fight to defend the doctrine of justification by faith and become very self-righteous and hateful while you’re doing it, too. That’s also possible. I want to know if the young men and women who are growing up in our churches are disciplined in the matter of porn. I want to know if they’re disciplined in the matter of finances. I want to know if they’re disciplined in what movies they watch. “Garbage in; garbage out.”
Not because I want to establish a new legalism. No, no, no. God help us. We don’t need that. “I watch fewer R-rated movies than you do.” There are so many ways in which you can think of yourself as better or stronger or wiser or deeper, but at the end of the day, if you’re a Christian, God help us. Aren’t you in pursuit of excellence? Not what you can get away with. Excellence. Purity. Which is, after all, nothing but the fruit of righteousness that comes from Jesus and the gospel.
And that must shape all that we do: how we put our services together. Don’t ask yourself if such and such a song is orthodox. The criterion is too low. Jesus is Lord. Great. That’s a great truth. Great. Sing it 16 times and you’ve got a chorus. That’s orthodox. Is it the best you can do to justify singing that particular song? Do you see? You pursue excellence in everything you do, in what you choose in the disciplines of your life.
Not because you want to be a new legalist but because this is the fruit of the righteousness of the gospel in your life. This gospel that is the power of God unto salvation to those who believe. And this, for the praise of God. “… to the glory and praise of God.” That, and that alone, is what will finally spare all such efforts from becoming new legalism. We learn that we gain these things by God, his gift of grace in Christ Jesus and the gospel. We learn that all of them are shaped for the glory of God, precisely because he is the author and finisher of all things.
Three dollars worth of gospel? Three dollars worth of gospel is no gospel at all. All it does is produce legalists, hypocrites, short-termers, and blind guides leading the blind. Brothers and sisters of Christ, we proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. Let us pray.
Grant, heavenly Father, that we may die daily and enjoy rapturous pleasure in the contemplation of Christ and in obedience to him. We thank you for the faithfulness of your eternal Son in going to the cross on our behalf, in doing his Father’s will, planned from before the foundation of the earth, brought to fulfillment in real history.
And now we beg, Lord God, for such an enduement of your Spirit that we may hunger to be faithful as he was faithful, to be obedient to your dear Son, our Lord and Savior, as he was obedient to you. We long to live out the fruit of the righteousness of Christ that we have received in the gospel, and this for the praise and glory of God. Enlarge our vision. Increase our understanding.
Multiply our love toward one another, even in this conference and in the days after the conference, that we will be committed to knowing this gospel better, to pursuing one mind, to receiving from your hand both the gift of faith and the gift of faithful suffering, and to eschewing the weights that so easily slow us down, the mediocrity into which it is so easy to drift; passionate instead, precisely because we are debtors, to offer ourselves to your dear Son afresh. Forgive us our sins, which are many, and grant that we may learn to live increasingly with eternity’s perspectives in view. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
