Philippians 2:1-4: Completing Joy

Completing Joy: Philippians 2:1-4

Our Scripture reading this morning comes from Philippians 2:1-4. Hear now the words of the Living and True God:

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.

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Most of us have probably heard the song made famous by Frank Sinatra called My Way: a song about an aging man looking back at his life with a proud self-confidence. “I did it my way,” he sings.  As he faces death he looks back uncompromisingly proud of himself.  He does not sing that he did it your way.  He does not sing that he did it our way.  He does not sing that he did it God’s way.  He does sing that he did it his way.  One magazine writer describes the song as “disconcertingly dictatorial,” pretending to “speak up for self-possession and personal vision when, at base, it only calls forth the temper tantrums of 2-year-olds or perhaps the last words spoken to Eva Braun,” Hitler’s mistress who died with him in a Berlin bunker.  We can see Hitler saying the same to her, “I did it my way.”  An article in The Atlantic describes the song as one of history’s greatest monsters, listing the numerous crimes perpetuated by the song, including a string of murders in the Philippines among Karaoke-goers, killed while singing the song.  In fact, Filipino law enforcement created a category for these crimes, called the “My Way Killings.” This has left some to consider whether the song has something inherently sinister or evil about it.  Yet, one author claims that people play it at funerals more often than any other song. 

Now whether you like the song or not, or whether you would dare to sing it at a karaoke bar in the Philippines, or have it played at your funeral, which may come sooner than you think if you sing it karaoke, at least in the Philippines, the message of the song demonstrates a fatal mindset, at least from the perspective of God and eternity. Because you doing you, or me doing “my way,” leads to anarchy and selfishness, not harmony and humility. 

Would we prefer complete misery, or would we prefer complete joy? While me doing ‘my way’ leads to complete misery, me doing ‘God’s way’ leads to complete joy.  Because none of us prove good enough to live our lives our own way without making a mess of ourselves and the world around us.  But by God’s grace, God’s people can pursue harmony and humility in the face of factionalism & pride.  That serves as the main idea of our text today.

 Paul, writing from prison to the church at Philippi, expresses joy in exhorting God’s people in ch1, vv1-11 to abound in love out of gratitude for God’s work in them and for the gospel partnership they share with one another. Indeed, God’s people have great reason to rejoice, because vv12-18 show us that despite trial we endure or motive we have, we can proclaim Christ.  In fact, vv18-26 show us that we can live for him, convinced that death is gain.  Therefore, as vv27-30 demonstrate, God would have us stand firm in the faith, unified with one another, even suffering for Christ’s sake.  But how we stand firm together in unity requires that we…

 I. Pursue Harmony, 1-2

A. We get a glimpse of the good life, 1-2a

“So, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy.”  Herein Paul lays out four conditions of the Christian life.  These four conditions constitute the good life.  If they exist in any proportion, then joy or harmony result in proportion to how much these conditions exist.  For instance, if we have a lot of encouragement in Christ, we will experience greater joy and harmony in life, regardless of circumstance, trial, or hardship.  In contrast, if we have very little encouragement in Christ, even if we have encouragement in other things, we will experience less joy and harmony.  We will depend upon temporary success and ideal circumstances, where we try to avoid trial and hardship at all costs, even at cost to our own souls.  When we find encouragement in finite people or finite things, we will also find that that encouragement can go away in an instant.  God does not guarantee that any encouragement—or anything else he lists here—will last forever, outside of Christ. 

So, first, he mentions encouragement in Christ.  The idea of encouragement means the ‘coming alongside of’ another.  And we can find no greater encouragement then Christ himself coming alongside of us.  We see this wonderfully illustrated in the poem, Footprints, where two walk together.  In that poem, Christ comes alongside of his disciple.  But in times of real difficulty, we find only one set of prints, for, “it was then that I carried you,” Christ says.  Notice that this verse follows closely behind Paul’s admonition in ch1, v27 that we not only believe in Christ, but also suffer for his sake.  We need encouragement when we suffer.  Christ offers that, not only by his example in suffering, but his salvation from ultimate suffering.  Do you need encouragement?  We all do.  We get that in Christ in ways that we cannot get it anywhere else. 

Secondly, Paul says, “if there is any comfort in love.”  The idea of ‘any comfort in love’ means speaking closely with, showing genuine concern, even consoling one another, with Christ himself again shown as the ultimate example of comfort in love.  He tells his people in John 14:27, “Let not your hearts be troubled.”  For, he gives us his peace.  He consoles the downcast.  A bruised reed, he will not break.  We should take little comfort in other things in life if we do not have comfort in the love of Christ.  Now that comfort does not mean that we will always feel comfortable, but it does mean that we know where to find comfort when we need it.  And we always need it.  And we find it in Christ.  And we extend it to one another regardless of how uncomfortable life gets.  I would like to grow in this.  I would like to better love those around me, offering them the same comfort I experience in the love of Christ.  Some of you do this wonderfully.  You know the comfort in love Christ offers you.  And you extend that to others, generously.  Thank you.  We need that.

Thirdly, “any participation in the Spirit.”  Now the word ‘participation’ comes from the Greek word koinonia, our word for ‘fellowship.’  Participation or fellowship in the Spirit constitutes the ultimate community.  In our day and age of rampant individualism, isolation, and loneliness, God, by his Spirit and through his church offers a community like no other.  My family and I reflected on this the other night coming home from community group.  We get to participate in a community like no other.  But the question remains, do we?  Do we truly participate in this community?  Do we not only know the Holy Spirit but also his holy people, made holy by his holy Son?  If so, then participate.  Find fellowship here, fellowship that points you to God. 

Fourthly and finally, if there is “any affection and sympathy.”  In other words, show tenderness, have gracious feelings, thoughts, and emotions for one another, demonstrated in acts of kindness and compassion.  That might require that we learn to walk in one another’s shoes, that we imagine what others go through, that we imagine the life we each lead.  What do older members and younger members, married people and single people, married parents and single parents, seniors, children, teens, and all the rest go through.  But don’t just imagine.  Get to know one another to increase your affection and sympathy for one another.  Where affection and sympathy lack, selfishness and ignorance often reign.  We see this running rampant in our culture today.  We talk at one another, but we don’t truly know one another.  Have affection.  Have sympathy. 

When we do, we—like the Philippians—complete Paul’s joy, we complete our pastor’s joy, we complete our joy, we fill that joy to overflow when we have all four of these in abundance.  In fact, the verb ‘complete’ serves as the main verb in these two verses.  It means to fill up.  Fill up your joy, brothers and sisters.  Fill up the joy of your pastors.  Encourage one another in Christ, comfort one another in love, participate in the Spirit, have affection and sympathy.  Do not content yourselves with small portions of any of these.  Christ offers great joy.  In fact, the angels declared at his birth that they brought glad tidings, or good news, of great what? —Joy.  Paul wants them to fill up his joy.  If we find these four conditions manifested in the lives of believers, we not only get lives of complete joy, we not only get a glimpse of the good life, but…

 B. We also get a glimpse of the good church, 2b

Complete my joy, “by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”  In other words, stand unified and harmonized in the truth.  We should never pursue unity and harmony at the expense of the truth regarding Christ.  Because the negative of those four conditions in vv1-2 result in a church—result in God’s people—having a different mind, having different loves, resulting in division, pettiness, factionalism, and general weakness.  And do you know what that results in?  It results in a church that has little ability to affect anything positive in the world around us.  That would complete our misery, not our joy.  So, if we want complete joy in the Lord we should have the same mind about him, with him—with Christ—as our same love, in full accord and of one mind.  Now this harkens back to what we saw in ch1, v27 where we received the same admonition of standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.  We need to ‘be of full accord,’ meaning that we share that same purpose.  One commentator describes it as “fellow-souled,” a linking of souls together for a divine purpose.

 So, we pursue harmony.  But notice that we pursue harmony in specific ways.  And we do not have harmony without these specific ways.  We have harmony when we have encouragement in Christ, comfort in love, participation in the Spirit, with affection and sympathy.  When we do, we complete the joy of those who serve with us and alongside us.  Because we have the same mind, and the same love, being in full accord and of one mind about who Christ is and what Christ does.  Then—and only then—do we have harmony.  Think of it this way.  Imagine that each of us serves as members of an orchestra playing our various instruments, with our pastor serving as the conductor.  This week we have a guest conductor.  Imagine each of us just playing whatever we wanted, like when the musicians warm up ahead of time.  I play Beethoven’s Fifth; you play Mozart’s Requiem… at the same time, all the time.  I might make beautiful music on my own, and you may too, but if we play different tunes, we pursue chaos, not harmony.  Too many churches sound like orchestras warming up, lacking harmony, chaotically pursuing different tunes.

We must pursue harmony.  Without it, we either have chaos or superficiality.  In other words, we either play different tunes, or we pretend to play.  When we do, we have nothing.  Now that does not mean that we should never disagree.  We do.  In fact, if you sat in our elder’s meetings, or even our member’s meetings, you see that we have disagreements.  But after we have prayed, and made our view known, and discussed it, we pray again, we vote, and we continue on.  We continue on because we know that each of those elders and each of those members love Christ more than they love their own way.  Sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes we sin.  So, we repent.  We seek restoration with God and one another.  We set aside petty factionalism to pursue harmony.  But know this: we never have harmony until we…

 II. Pursue Humility, 3-4

A. Humility means we think more highly of others than we do of ourselves, 3

“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”  Now I cannot think of a verse that my wife has quoted more to our children than this one.  Because in our immaturity we think about ourselves a lot.  And we often think a lot about ourselves, even if we mask it in self-deprecating comments.  Some of us never grow out of this.  But the antidote to this kind of conceit or selfishness does not merely require that we grow, that we mature.  It requires a particular kind of growth.  It requires growth in humility.  Because regardless of our age and experience, we may still lack humility.  In fact, very often, our experience tends to make us think even more highly of ourselves.  Benjamin Franklin says this of pride: “even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”  He characterizes the struggle for humility as an ongoing wrestling match.  We need to wrestle for it, lest pride pin us to the floor.

So how might we win this struggle?  How might we grow in humility?  How might we count others more significant than ourselves?  For one, we can see people the way Jesus sees people.  How often do you see Jesus focused on himself?  While he cares for himself, by getting away to find rest and renewal in his father, he often focuses on others.  And when he does, he treats the sickest—tax collectors and sinners—relatively gently in his call to repentance, while saving his harshest rebuke for those who think they have no need of a doctor, the Pharisees, the most hypocritically religious.  Jesus tends to believe the best about other’s actions and motives, until their behavior truly proves otherwise.  Until behavior proves otherwise, we should not harbor suspicion or contempt for others.  In 1 Corinthians 13:7, Paul’s chapter on love, he says that “love believes all things.”  I have noticed that once contempt enters a relationship, it spreads like cancer.  I have seen this happen, where one person assumes evil of the other person’s motives.  So, they show little to no trust.  Instead, they show contempt.  I once had a chaplain supervisor in the Air Force say, “We’re all just doing the best we can.”  Now I don’t necessarily believe that.  I know I can do better.  But if I can believe that about others—that they’re doing the best they can—then I can probably, more easily, count them as more significant than I do myself.   

Notice that in this verse, Paul compares humility to its opposite: rivalry or conceit, the idea of selfish ambition.  Doing nothing from rivalry or conceit requires that we do not give ourselves to a pattern of hypercritical and accusatory thoughts of others.  Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “Criticism in a true sense is never merely destructive”—as in the criticism of literature, or art, or music, or anything else—“it is constructive, it is appreciation.”  He goes on to compare criticism with hypercriticism: “The man who is hypercritical… delights in criticism for its own sake and enjoys it.”  Jesus reminds us in Matthew 7 that with the measure we use to judge others, God measures to us.  In other words, when we act as the judge, we set the standard of our own judgment.  Like Haman in the book of Esther, we put the noose around our own necks that we intend for others. 

In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer gives seven principles for eradicating selfish ambition from Christian community.  Allow me to share just a couple briefly. To eradicate selfish ambition, we, first, recognize our own sinfulness and the fact that we can only live by God’s grace.  When we do, we show more concern for our own sins and failings than we do for other’s sins and failings.  Second, we refuse to consider our time and position so valuable that we allow for no interruptions to help others with unexpected needs, no matter how small or menial.  So, if we concentrate on confessing our own sin, and helping others—however inconvenient that might prove at times—then we can move towards a kind of humility that counts other more significant than ourselves.

B. Humility puts others’ needs on equal par with our own, 4

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others.”  Now in a sense this goes back to the Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12 where we treat others as we would like others to treat us.  Again, Jesus serves as the prime example of what it looks like to put other’s interests above his own.  Friends, he could have stayed in heaven, requiring humanity to pay for our own sins.  And he would have shown himself perfectly just in doing so.  Instead, he showed mercy.   He considered the interest of others as more important than his own.  And those who take his name, who claim Christ, Christians, should do likewise.  As works in progress, we strive towards this kind of selflessness.  

We consider the other’s interest, knowing full well that we reap what we sow.  If we sow selfishness, we will reap the selfishness of others in good measure, such that we will always feel the lack.  But some might say, if I do what you suggest, I will get taken advantage of.  But doesn’t Jesus tell us to get taken advantage of, at least in some small degree?  Doesn’t he say, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles?”  In other words, go above and beyond the call of duty, even if it means getting taken advantage of.  Jesus may require that from us to look out for other’s interests, to count others as more significant than ourselves.  Sometimes he even allows that at the expense of our own interests so that we can pursue humility.

 For those who know me, you know that I really looked up to my dad.  My dad died January 1^st of this year.  I cannot tell you just how much grace God showed me to not only give me a good father but allow me to live here for almost the past five years to have that deeper relationship at the end.  If I could choose just one thing to emulate in my dad, I would want his ability to think highly of others.  Now I am not suggesting that he exhibited that quality perfectly.  But I noticed very little criticism of others from him.  Oh sure, on rare occasions he fell short in this area.  But it seemed to happen less often with him than it does with me.  I would attribute his ability to think highly of others to his personal humility.  My dad did not think more highly of himself than he ought to think.  In fact, I don’t think he thought about himself that much at all.  My dad knew that it was by grace that he was saved through faith, and this was not his own doing; it was the gift of God, not a result of works, so that he did not boast.  I pray that God would make me more like him in that area. 

 God calls us to pursue humility.  In other words, he calls us to see ourselves accurately.  We have a lot to be humble about if we would just see ourselves as God sees us.  The Puritan, Thomas Brooks, says that souls that soar “up above the bounds and limits of humility, usually fall into the very worst of errors, as experience does daily evidence. The proud soul is like him who gazed upon the moon—but fell into the pit.”  In other words, we can set our sights so high, having such lofty opinions of ourselves, that we walk into traps set right in front of us, falling into every snare we come across.

But God’s people can pursue harmony and humility in the face of factionalism and pride. Paul will go on to describe in the following verses what true humility looks like, evidenced most clearly in the God of all the universe.  For, Jesus himself, humbled himself.  How? — Philippians 2:8, “By becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Jesus did not consider whether he could do it “my way.”  He considered others.  Friends, if the God of all the universe—a God who has no compelling reason to show humility, for he is by very definition all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, worthy of worship and obedience—if he can humble himself, surely, we can too.  But this kind of good life found in a good church—a life of harmony and humility—only comes when we see ourselves rightly, as God sees us: as sinners in need of a Savior, a Savior who died for our sins on the cross to purchase us out of death, sinners who cannot generate harmony and humility on our own.  So, we confess our failure.  We ask God to give us both the desire and the ability to pursue harmony and humility, as we go along our pilgrim’s journey, stumbling occasionally, confessing always, and continuing on, until Christ returns, or calls us home.  As we come to the Lord’s table, can we do that?  Can we confess how short we fall in the pursuit of harmony and humility?