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2:1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:1-13 ESV)
What power do you feel as you hear the name of Jesus? For Paul, it was to hear everything! May it be so for us as well!
I'm having to be very careful with what I say in front of our two year old grandson! He's at the stage where he repeats everything including things I should not be saying. Don't be alarmed I am not cussing. But I do say descriptive things about people I need not say. We went through the whole thing with his older brother who is now six. He did hear a mild (?) curse word about his dog having accidents and so every accident she had, our grandson say the descriptive word and her name. Paul knew that encouragement is key among believers of all ages, especially the newer or younger of believers among us. And he's talking about being positive and loving towards all things. Let's spend some time with his passage for today.
Paul opens this passage with four rapid-fire "if" statements, and the way he strings them together is worth a moment of attention. If there is any encouragement in Christ — if there is any comfort from love — if there is any participation in the Spirit — if there is any affection and sympathy. He's stacking up things that everyone in the room knows are true, building a case with premises nobody can argue with, so that by the time he gets to the conclusion — complete my joy by being of the same mind — the congregation has already agreed to everything that leads there. It's gentle, it's relational, it's Paul at his most pastoral, and it's also a little bit like someone saying "well, since we all agree that gravity exists and the sky is blue and the sun rose this morning — clearly you should stop arguing with each other." The logic is airtight and the tone is warm, which is a combination that is genuinely rare and genuinely effective.
The unity Paul is describing is not the unity of people who never disagree about anything — that would be less a church and more a particularly well-organized echo chamber. It's the unity of people who have the same mind, the same love, the same spirit, the same purpose — who are, at the deepest level, oriented toward the same thing, even when they approach it from different angles. And the obstacle he identifies to that unity is not theological disagreement or personality conflict or the worship wars that have been going on in one form or another since approximately the second century. It's two things: selfish ambition and conceit. The desire to be seen. The need to win. The habit of counting your own interests as the most interesting interests in the room.
The antidote Paul offers is not a management technique or a conflict resolution strategy. It's a Person. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." And then he launches into what scholars believe is an early Christian hymn, one of the most breathtaking passages in the entire New Testament — the great condescension of Christ, who was in the form of God and did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness, humbling Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Let that land for a moment. The one who had every reason to grasp, every right to insist, every legitimate claim to the best seat in every room — chose not to. He looked at the divine prerogatives He could have held onto and said, essentially, I will set these down for now because love requires it. He did not come as the Roman emperor arrived, preceded by heralds and accompanied by soldiers and received with compulsory adoration. He came as a baby in a manger in a backwater town to a teenage girl and a carpenter, and He spent the next thirty-three years giving Himself away so thoroughly that the cross was not an interruption of His life's pattern but its fullest expression.
This is the mind Paul is asking us to have. Not a performance of humility — the kind where you say "oh, it was nothing" while clearly hoping everyone disagrees — but the genuine, downward-moving, other-centered orientation of a life that has been reshaped by what Christ did. Count others more significant than yourselves, Paul says. Look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others. Which is, in the context of a community that has selfish ambition and conceit circulating in it, either an impossible ask or the most practical thing Paul could have said — depending entirely on whether the Spirit is actually at work in the people being asked.
And here is where the passage ends with one of the most energizing and clarifying sentences in all of Paul's letters: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." This is not a contradiction. It is a collaboration. Work it out — live it, practice it, let it take shape in your actual daily choices — because God is already at work in you, producing the desire and the capacity to do exactly what He's asking. The wanting and the doing both come from Him. Your role is to cooperate with what He is already moving in you, to say yes to the impulse toward generosity and humility and other-centeredness when it arises, because that impulse is not random — it is the Spirit working in you toward the good pleasure of a God who looks very much like Jesus.
The mind of Christ is not a destination you arrive at after years of self-improvement. It is a gift you receive and then live out of, imperfectly, gratefully, one ordinary choice at a time — choosing the lower seat, choosing to count the other person's interests as significant, choosing to set down what you're grasping and open your hands instead. And the God who worked through the humility of the manger and the cross and the empty tomb is still working — in you, through you, for His good pleasure and your genuine joy.
PRAYER: Lord, form in us the mind of Christ — the kind that empties itself, serves freely, and finds in the downward movement the joy that grasping could never produce. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Identify one relationship or situation today where you've been counting your own interests first, and choose one concrete act of genuinely counting the other person's interests as more significant than your own.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God, and you matter to me!
Let's be positive about Jesus today in all things, enough to win some new souls over!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
