Believers find joy through humbly following Christ in all circumstances. This is a Bible study teaching for “Joy through Humility” on Philippians 2:1-15 from the “Explore the Bible” series from Lifeway.
Today’s lesson is on the second chapter of the book of Philippians and our theme is “joy through humility.” Ms. Barbara already gave you a great overview of the back story of the book of Philippians a couple weeks ago. This week, we’re going to talk about the culture the church of Philippi was set in.
Philippi was a city in Eastern Greece that, even before the time of the Roman Empire, was a major commercial hub because there were gold mines nearby. When the area was under Roman control, they constructed the Via Egnatia, which ran from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea … kind of like our I-10.[1] Philippi was along this route, and because of this and the gold mines, it had a favored position as a city in the Roman Empire.
The city was prosperous, influential, and well-connected. If you were a person of influence in that city, you were somebody.
This is the context of the congregation that Paul was writing the letter to. They were in an environment where it would be easy to get focused on the wrong things and caught up in ambition. And we know from Erroll’s lesson last week that apparently some people were caught up in wrong motivations. They were sharing the Gospel in an attempt to wrangle a position in the church like they would a political position in the Roman Empire.
But as Paul wraps up his letter to the church, he redirects their focus on what is really important.
Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? 2 Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.
They lived in a city that had everything that culture had to offer. Paul is asking them, “Does belonging to Christ matter? Is there any difference between your priorities and that of the world’s.” If what we value most is earthly things, then what is the point of it all to begin with.
Paul is telling the Philippians that the point of Christ coming is not only to bring man in relationship with God, but also man in relationship with each other. The leader guide for this lesson had good words on what this fellowship means and what it actually looks like.
The ideal of thinking the same way is not a call for unity at all costs, especially at the cost of truth. The same thing must always be also the right thing. … This kind of unity is much deeper than outward appearances; it roots in the feelings or emotions of the heart. To be outwardly evident, unity must stem from inward reality in which behavior and feelings are not in conflict. Otherwise, believers will find themselves play-acting. From heart-based unity stems agreement on a singular goal. That goal includes doing the right thing in our relationships with others as well as pleasing God in what we choose to accomplish together.[2]
The body of Christ is just that … the body of Christ. It’s not the body of a particular country, or affiliation, or political party, we have unity in Christ. But in order to have that unity with each other within the body of Christ, we have to first have unity ourselves with Christ himself.
Jesus is truth. He is righteousness. He is justice. He is the full embodiment of the fruits of the spirit that we are told should be evident in our own lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control. (Galatians 5:22-23)
One of the people I’ve been following lately on social media is Dr. Diane Langberg. She is a psychologist who basically pioneered counseling people who had been sexually abused in their church or faith community. This is a quote from an article that she wrote titled “Trauma as a Mission Field,” this is about a specific type of corruption in the church, but this quote is applicable to all deviations from the heart and will of God.
We are the church. That means we are the body of Jesus Christ and He is our Head. In the physical realm, a body that does not follow its head is a sick body. That is also true in the spiritual realm. We are His people and I believe with all my heart He has called us to go out of ourselves and follow Him into the suffering of this world bearing both His character and His Word.[3]
What Dr. Langberg is saying is the same thing that Paul writes in Philippians 2:2
If we are out of harmony with God, we certainly can’t be in harmony with each other.
There can be no harmony in the church if there is no harmony with God. Headless horsemen may exist in legends, but in reality, a headless body is nothing but a corpse. And that is what I think we see in so many areas of the church: diseased and decaying limbs because rather than connecting to the Spirit of God, they are trusting in the flesh, placing a priority on the things of the world, and mistaking their self-interest for piety.
Paul was trying to guide his church in Philippi around these shoals, to keep them focused on the true things of value. Paul knew that focus on these things, putting trust in money or in the power of the Romans, would shipwreck the church, as Jude later tells the church, warning against false teachers:
11 Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion. 12 These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. (Jude 1:11-13 YLT)
And so he lines out very clearly how to keep themselves connected to that sources of living water.
3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
We hear a lot today in the public square about what people think “their rights” are, you even hear some of the same things in the church. But what is Paul saying, think of others more highly than you do yourselves, to look out for the interest of others, not just your own. And what did Jesus have to say on this subject?
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (Matthew 16:24 ESV)
The Philippians were similar in many ways to the U.S. today: they were a wealthy and comfortable society, they had influence. They had many opportunities for distraction with their dramas, sports, and as a location of Roman games. But Paul tells them they should be laying that aside and thinking of others first saying:
5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
This passage is the basis of the theological doctrine called “kenosis.” Some translations will render the verse as “he laid his divinity aside.”
Since the time of the apostles, there have always been Christian thinkers and writers explaining the doctrines of Christianity. The writers in those first three hundred years are known as the “Ante-Nicene Fathers” because they wrote before the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. It’s just that it was illegal to be a Christian in the Roman empire up until 311 AD, so the really hairy debates, like the finer details of the nature of Christ, didn’t really heat up until that point.
There were seven ecumenical councils, basically all church conferences or all calls, held between the first Council of Nicea in 325 AD ending with the second Council of Nicea in 787 AD that are considered the “Christological Councils.” Over those 400 years, people hammered out what it is that we say that we mean when we say that Jesus is Lord. In between those 7 meetings, there were letters written back and forth and many debates.
It was at the fourth council, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD that they addressed the nature of God and how Jesus acted on earth … and this passage in Philippians was key.
The Chalcedon Council defined the hypostatic union, meaning that Jesus is one person, but has two natures: one fully human and one fully divine. He never stopped being divine, but he laid that divine nature aside to experience and participate fully in our world as man so that he could redeem man. That is the doctrine of kenosis: that Jesus laid his privileges and power aside as God and submitted himself to the full human experience.
This is something that a lot of people have problems understanding. They talk about Jesus walking on earth among us as if he were something other than we are, like some hybrid God-man like the heroes of the Greeks and the Romans.
That is not the orthodox Christian belief. Jesus was God, and always was God among us, but he lived and acted as man, a man completely submitted to the will of the Father. Everything he did, he did as a man empowered by the Holy Spirit. So the communion he had with God while here on earth is the same communion we can have … but we have to humble ourselves, just as Jesus did.
When we put our own will first, we won’t have that community, that unity, and harmony with God, and as Paul said, we can’t be in harmony with each other if we aren’t in harmony with God first.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Paul has shown us the example we are to follow, now he gets more explicit.
Shine Brightly for Christ
12 Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. 13 For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
We are to “work hard to show the results of your salvation.” Salvation is not a result of works, but there should be evidence of the work of that salvation in our lives. Paul continues.
14 Do everything without complaining and arguing, 15 so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. 16 Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ’s return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless. 17 But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God. And I want all of you to share that joy. 18 Yes, you should rejoice, and I will share your joy.
Paul tells the Philippians that true joy is found in service to God. And as much misdirection as there seems to be in the church as a whole right now with many putting their faith in political structures than in God himself … the intent of at least one of the groups that settled in America was to create a place where communion in God could occur. The goal of the Puritans, led by John Winthrop, who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony wasn’t to build a nation that could dominate and control … but one where man could live in humble submission to God and in harmony with each other. In 1641, he gave a sermon titled a “A City on a Hill” where he gave his vision of the colony as a place that would be different than the rest of the world, one that would be a “bright light” like Paul encouraged the Philippians to be. See how similar it is to the passage we just read.
Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
This is where we started. How did we end up in a place where “American values” are seen as being where everyone is just in it for themselves?
We can’t put God first and ourselves first at the same time, it is either one or the other. If we put ourselves first, we won’t be in communion with God and we can’t be in communion with each other. The consequences of the “me first” attitude is that in an effort to put our own interests and happiness first, we are actually losing it, because true happiness, true joy, can only be found in God.
This is a quote from City of God by Augustine. City of God was written over a span of 13 years, but he began the book after the sack of Rome. The great city of the once mighty empire had been brought to its knees.
as it is, cannot be happy except by partaking of the light of that God by whom both itself and the world were made; and also that the happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God.[4]
He wrote to a bewildered church and society and pointed out that true security and true joy can only be found in God. Augustine’s advice is as true today as it was 1500 years ago, joy can only be found by cleaving to God.
This Bible lesson was originally taught by Carla Alvarez on September 19, 2021 in the Kingdom Citizen Bible study Class at the Second Baptist North campus in Kingwood, Texas.
Endnotes
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Egnatia
https://www.worldhistory.org/Philippi/
[2] Joy Through HUmility, Philippians 2:1-14 Lesson Guide (Lifeway, n.d.).
[3] SysAdmin, “‘Trauma as Mission Field’ by WRF Board Member Dr. Diane Langberg,” Text, World Reformed Fellowship, last modified June 19, 2011, accessed September 19, 2021, http://wrfnet.org/resources/2011/06/trauma-mission-field-wrf-board-member-dr-diane-langberg.
[4] Augustine, The City of God, ed. Anthony Uyl, trans. Marcus Dods, Revised. (Woodstock, ON: Devoted Publishing, 2017), 166.