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You’re the Mighty King who came and died for me. Could there be a

greater paradox? Gracious Lord God, we pray that you would allow

us to grasp more clearly what it means during this time: not only that you

came and laid down your life for us and, in doing so, established a pattern

for the way our lives would look, but also that you reign supreme now and

always, and in every moment that you alone are worthy.

We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

 

After I graduated from seminary at Gordon-Conwell, the place where I prepared for ministry, Sharon and I were privileged to move to Cambridge, England where I spent an additional year doing Biblical studies at Westminster College.

 

Every time we stepped out of the door of our flat, we were reminded that we were from somewhere else. Everything was different: boots and bonnets, pounds and pence, fish and chips, plasters and cotton wool buds. We were aware every moment that we were in a different world.

 

And we weren’t the only ones who were aware that we were from a different world. One evening before we began classes at Westminster College, they invited all the new students to gather together and meet the professors. So, I carefully dressed to blend in; I’m a student of these things. I was wearing a tweed jacket and khaki pants just like I’d seen everybody else wear around town and I walked into that room feeling self-conscious and little bit out of place but knowing that I would blend right in.

 

Well, you can imagine my surprise when, in less than three minutes, one of the professors from the school walked over, stuck out his hand, and said, “Well now, you must be our student from the States, David Henderson.”

 

As I shook his hand and introduced myself, I thought, “No, now wait a minute! I never even once opened my mouth since I walked into this room, and I dressed like everybody else in the room. How did you know?”

 

Obviously, no matter how hard I tried to act British (and just to relieve you, I didn’t use my British accent over there), everything about me gave away the fact that I was a foreigner from across the ocean.

 

When we become Christians, a similar thing happens or, at least, it is intended to happen: we are to begin to take on the character of the new realm of which we’ve become a part.

 

Following Jesus means transferring our citizenship from this world to the next: pledging an oath of allegiance to a new rule and laying aside all competing claims, we resolve to live a life of total devotion to our new King.

Jesus said in John’s gospel, “My kingdom is not of this world…my kingdom is from another place.” And when we become his followers, our homeland changes. “Now our citizenship,” as Paul says later on in the Book of Philippians, “is in heaven.” Now, we are “no longer foreigners and aliens, but we are fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.” as Paul says in Ephesians.

And where once this world was our home, now, like Abraham, we are “no more than foreigners and nomads here on earth looking forward to a country [that we] can call [our] own one day—a heavenly homeland.” Jesus’ subjects are no more part of this world than he is. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

And over time, that should begin to make a difference in us. As we spend more time in the realm, we, as followers of Jesus, should begin to take on the manners and the customs of that new world—and especially of its King.

Well, now what will that mean exactly? What will it look like for us to be citizens of one world living in another? That’s exactly the question that Paul answers in the next section of his letter to the Philippian church that we’ll be studying this morning: Philippians chapter 1 beginning in verse 27. You’ll find that on page 1827 in your pew Bible. Philippians chapter 1 verse 27. Paul leads off the section by saying this:

Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Now, there is an important word that is present in the Greek text that is hidden in the NIV translation of it. When Paul says, “Conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” he is not using his customary word to describe Christian conduct. He normally talks about walking a path or walking a certain way.

Instead, here he uses a word that comes from the Greek word for “city-state.” The word that he chooses here in his letter to the Philippians is a word that means “live as a citizen, discharge your obligations as a citizen of your realm.” The Christians in Philippi now belong to the heavenly city-state, and they are called to act as though they are its citizens.

 

It’s a concept that the Philippians will especially appreciate because of their history. You may remember in the first message that I gave on the Book of Philippians that Philippi was located on the far eastern edge of the Greek world just a few miles away from the border with Asia. The town derived its name from Phillip II, the father of Alexander the Great, when he folded the city into his expanding Greek realm in the mid 300’s B.C.

 

But after Octavius defeated Mark Antony in 31 B.C. in the plains of Philippi within sight of the city of Philippi and then Octavius went on to become Emperor Augustus, he conferred on the town the highest privilege that it could possibly receive: not only were all of its citizens made Roman citizens, but it was now (in spite of the fact that it was far away from Rome) brought in under Roman rule and law—the very same law that governed the city of Rome itself.

 

Now up to that point, even though it had been part of the Roman Empire for 150 years, Philippi—like all of the other cities in the surrounding area—had retained its Greek character. But now—after this happened—the city began to remake itself: it established a government and an economy that mirrored that of Rome. The city itself was even modeled after Rome: it was laid out on a similar pattern and it copied the style and architecture of Rome extensively.

 

This entire region was Greek: Greek customs, Greek language, Greek currency, Greek clothing, Greek laws. And here—smack dab in the middle of this Greek world eight hundred miles away from the real Rome—is this little Rome where they wore Roman clothing and they made purchases with Roman currency and they abided by Roman laws and they observed Roman holidays and they spoke Latin, the language of Rome.

 

And this town was passionate in its allegiance to all things Roman including the Roman emperor. In the ruins of the city, archeologists have found a large number of inscriptions of devotion to the Roman emperors as well as ruins of imperial temples: places where the citizens would have gone to actually worship the emperors.

 

Now around the time that Paul arrived at Philippi, the Roman emperors were beginning to allow themselves to be honored as divine beings, and soon they came even to insist that they would be referred to as “Savior” and “Lord.” Everywhere you went in a Roman city—in the theater, in the stadium, in the marketplace—praise would be lifted up to the divine Caesar, the Lord to whom ultimate allegiance is due.

 

So when Paul and his companions walked into the city of Philippi, they stepped out of the realm of Greece and into the realm of Rome. And when a few weeks later, they walked out of the city of Philippi, they left behind them a thriving, small Christian church that was made up of men and women who had stepped out from under the lordship of Caesar and in under the Lordship of Jesus Christ transferring from one realm to another.

 

So what is the distinguishing mark of a citizen of the kingdom of heaven? Not clothing or custom, not language or currency. According to Paul, what should set us apart—the mark of our citizenship, that which should distinguish us from citizens of other realms—is the way our hearts and minds are knit together in a single love, a single faith, and a single purpose.

 

Paul says in chapter 1 verse 27: “Live as a citizen of heaven, discharge faithfully your duties as a citizen of heaven, in a manner that is worthy of the gospel of Christ.”

 

And then he goes on to spell out exactly what that will mean in the rest of verse 27 and in the verses that follow:

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, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel, without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you.

 

“Stand firm in one spirit:” in other words, live out your life together with one common purpose, with the same orientation of the will, going the same direction as all of you seek together the same thing.

 

This past summer I had the chance to go with the senior-highers on the Colorado Challenge and I had a great time. Part of that adventure was rafting down the Arkansas River (which is what you call it before it crosses the state line and they call it the Ar-KANSAS).

 

There were six of us in the raft with our guide, and the first thing we did when we got out onto the water was to practice paddling together. The guide called out a command—“Forward two” or “back one”—and we all leaned out over the sides of our raft, and we all at the same time dug our paddles into the water, and then we all pulled together—all at the same time, all in the same direction—allowing us on the rest of the trip to avoid huge boulders that threatened to capsize us, and to allow ourselves to be placed in that portion of the river where we had the greatest ride together.

 

And then one time, just before we entered a rapid, the guide yelled, “Right side back paddle hard, left side forward hard!” Well, you can guess what happened then. In a matter of seconds, we were spinning around out of control as we went into this rapid because we were paddling entirely at cross-purposes with one another and we careened through the rapids like a top.

 

“No,” says Paul, “work as a team, contending as one man for the faith.” The Greek word that lies behind this word “contend,” in fact, is a combination of the word “together” and the word “athlete.” When do athletes get together? When they play as a team. Work as a team striving toward the same goal; set aside your individual ambition and work as one with your teammates. Literally, this expression “as one man” means “with one soul”—viewing things so much in the same way, being motivated so much by the same things that you act as one. This is a traditional expression in Greek that expresses the idea of unanimity: of being of one mind, having the same convictions.

 

It’s the same expression that’s used in Acts 4:32 when it says that, “All the believers were one in heart and soul.”

 

What will set us apart as citizens of the kingdom of heaven? Our unity of heart and purpose.

 

On that same Colorado Adventure I led a hike to the top of one of the peaks in the Front Range at midnight with our flashlights off. The senior-highers thought I was crazy when I first asked them to turn off their lights, right? And now your parents think I was crazy for asking you to turn off your flashlights.

 

But then I paired everybody up. We all lined up in a line and we stayed together as a group and whenever we got to a difficult spot, I had the pair that was out in front of the line stop and turn around and help the next ones up. They would get up past that first pair and they would stop and turn around and help the next ones coming through and so on with the next pair and the next pair until everybody was being helped up—handed from hand to hand—through the most difficult sections of the climb.

 

Nobody raced ahead; nobody was thinking just about himself; nobody was thinking about getting to the top before everybody else was, and when we got to the top, everybody in the group commented about how surprised they were at how refreshed they felt and how much easier the hike had been when they did it at night without lights and weighed down by sleeping bags than when they had done it during the day because they did it together with one common purpose.

 

That sort of unity of spirit and purpose, Paul goes on to say in verses 28 to 30, is compelling evidence to the unbelieving world that God, in fact, is at work in you. You can see the proof of it in the way that you love each other and care for each other and are of one mind. Paul then at the start of chapter 2 returns again to this primary mark of citizenship in the kingdom of heaven—this unity, this oneness of spirit and purpose—and unfolds it some more.

 

First he starts off at the beginning of chapter 2 with a conditional, if-then sentence:

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete….

 

Now you may have heard these words before, but it may not have been immediately obvious what they were getting at, so let me rephrase them in a way that I think may get at the heart of what they were meant to convey, and it may not have been immediately obvious what they are getting at, so let me rephrase them in a way that I think may get at the heart of what they were meant to convey:

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ.

That is, if Christ has called you to himself which, of course, he has.

 

if you have any comfort from his love.

That is, if God the Father has dealt with you graciously which, of course, he has.

 

if you have any fellowship with the Spirit.

That is, if you have been on the receiving end of the work of the Spirit which, of course, you have.

 

if you have any tenderness and compassion.

That is, if you are at all attentive to God’s work of grace in you, which, of course, you are.

 

then make my joy complete [How? Here we come to the heart of the passage] by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

 

Being like-minded doesn’t mean thinking identically. Paul has in mind something far deeper than unthinking unanimity. He is trying to describe a unity of bedrock conviction that is unfamiliar to this world: holding the same beliefs, having the same intentions, being marked by a common direction and conviction, sharing a unity of thought and will.

 

When Paul says, “having the same love,” he holds out a picture of something far richer than mere formal unity. Paul envisions a community of believers that is marked by the same self-sacrificial, self-giving love that drove Jesus to come to the earth and then to go to the cross. In a thousand daily imitations of the incarnation and the crucifixion, we are willing to let our love for one another lead us to care for one another deeply and to sacrifice for one another joyfully.

 

And then when he says, “being one in spirit and in purpose,” Paul is describing a unity of intention that is far greater than mere static organizational structure. “One-souled,” sum-psuchoi, means being united in spirit, striving with one mind toward a single goal, all paddling together in the same direction at the same time for one another’s benefit.

 

What does it look like to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven? Like that.

And now Paul sets up a contrast: “these things,” he says, “will be characteristic of those of you whose citizenship is in the kingdom of heaven. But now let me remind you that the mark of citizenship of the world in which you live is completely different, but you no longer belong to that realm: in that realm, in that Greco-Roman world where it’s every man for himself, where the individual is what matters most”

 

Paul calls us to something different. He says, “Do nothing out of the selfish ambition or vain conceit that used to characterize you and continues to characterize the world around you.”

 

The phrase selfish ambition comes from the word for “one who works for pay.”

It refers to a mercenary spirit (you’re in it for what you will get out of it)—that arrogant orientation of self-seeking, insisting that things go our way, that we get what we want—that inevitably causes factions and divisions wherever it shows up in the body of Christ.

 

And vain conceit is pretentiousness, conceit, empty pride and vanity. It was a common Greco-Roman phrase that means someone who thinks more highly of himself than he should.

 

A couple of weeks ago God gave me a profound picture of potentially how costly selfish ambition and vain conceit can be in the body of Christ. I was sitting on my little platform in the ravine behind our house having my quiet time, when I heard over my right shoulder a loud and persistent squawking. I looked up and there about fifteen feet away was a red-bellied woodpecker: black and white checked back, a sort of blushed tan front, a bright vivid red mark high up on its back on the back of its neck. It wasn’t looking for anything; it wasn’t foraging. It was just perched there on the side of the tree squawking. And then I figured out why.

 

Because fifteen feet on this side of me suddenly showed up another red-bellied woodpecker and they began to have a conversation that was rather heated. This one said, “Mine. This is my territory. This is what I want. I insist that you leave. Things around here need to go the way that I want them to go.” And the other one said, “Not so. This is my territory. I’m movin’ in. I’m thinkin’ about myself. I’m not thinkin’ about you.”

 

That was about as long as the conversation lasted, and suddenly this red-bellied woodpecker flew straight at this one, locked claws with it in the air, and the two of them began to have this fluttering, feather-flying sort of spat between the two of them. They’re squawking as they’re flying, and then—to my even greater amazement—as I’m looking at these two birds just right in front of me, suddenly I see movement right behind the two of them. And there I see the three-foot wide wingspan of a Cooper’s hawk swooping down out of a tree—its yellow, beady eyes that I could see—flying straight at these two in their squabble and straight at me right behind their squabble!

 

At the last minute these two red-bellied woodpeckers saw the danger that they had put themselves in from their silly fighting and they skittered off in different directions. At that point the hawk was committed on his trajectory and he thought I was a tree. At the last moment and probably six feet away from me, he banked up right in front of me and then swooped on down into the ravine: the perfect picture of the way that we make ourselves vulnerable to the attacks of the evil one when we get caught up in petty squabbles and selfish in-fighting over territory in the body of Christ.

 

Paul says, “Thinking of yourself first, thinking of yourself as best: there is no place among followers of Christ for those things, none. Have nothing to do with them. Those are the habits of the heart of the citizens of this world, not of those whose hearts belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Paul goes on:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit of the sort that used to characterize you as a citizen of this world, but instead in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

 

Here is the source, ultimately, of our unity in the body of Christ: humility, a lowliness, a humble regard for others, not elevating ourselves and our needs but lowering those things so that we can be attentive to the needs of those around us.

 

Again the clash of kingdoms becomes evident in this passage because humility—this very word—was a derogatory term for Greeks and Romans. It meant servility and weakness and shameful lowliness.

 

But this very same word is the word that is prized among all other words as being the greatest quality of character among those who are the followers of Christ. In fact, it’s one of the only two terms that Jesus uses to describe himself in all of his ministry and all of the gospels; the other is the word gentle. And humble in spirit.

 

Paul says that we are to look to the interests of others. This isn’t a passive word that means from time to time glance over and see if anybody is around you. This is a very, very intensely active expression. It means keeping an eye out on them like a mother might for a child—looking out for them, fixing your attention on them, taking interest in them.

 

And in Roman culture, a person was always treated according to his or her social standing. Those who were more important were given more attention. But Paul says, “Consider all others better.” The word here means without exception, without condition, without importance, without calculating how it is that you might benefit from what that other person has to bring, but freely.

 

And now Paul wraps up this section by saying, “Now, that is what it means for us to be citizens in the kingdom of heaven. Do you want to know what that looks like? Do you want to know what it would like to live a life that is described by that quality of humility and other-centeredness? Let me provide it for you.”

 

He says, establishing the paradigm—the pattern of life—for these citizens of the new realm. He says:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped [something to be seized, something to be held onto and insisted upon], but [instead he poured himself out] he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and he became obedient to death—even death on a cross!

 

A king who is a servant who is a slave.

 

Now think of how God made His mark on this world Think about the servant nature of God’s visitation from heaven.

 

Christ’s being God was not a matter for him of selfish ambition, of grasping and seizing, of imposing and overpowering, of thinking about himself, using his strength and position and power to his own advantage, but just the opposite: putting us first, serving us, looking to our interests rather than to his, pouring himself out for us.

 

Earlier this week I went on a field trip to the Kentland meteorite impact site. My hunch is that not many of you know about this. Right in our backyard—40 miles northwest of here just outside the town of Kentland—is a site where roughly 90 million years ago a meteorite collided with the earth. Now some of you have seen pictures or perhaps have visited the crater in Arizona just outside Flagstaff. It’s four fifths of a mile across, 570 feet deep; they think a meteorite perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, 60,000 pounds, traveling 45,000 miles an hour smashed into the earth at that point to create that kind of a crater.

 

The crater outside of Kentland when it was formed was ten times larger than that impact crater in Arizona! Ten times larger!

 

When that meteorite struck perhaps as large as a mile across, it was vaporized instantly because of the impact. It would have thrown clouds of debris up into the earth’s atmosphere that would have circled the entire atmosphere before falling again. And when it hit, it created this crazy upheaval of the limestone that lies where the impact site is, throwing everything up into crazy, fractured patterns and creating something called shattercones.

 

Shattercones happen when impact is so great on solid rock that it actually compresses the rock that’s already formed and is already solid in a sort of chevron shape like cascading waterfall patterns.

 

And the center of the site about two miles across up in Kentland which is now an active quarry has shattercones all through it because of the impact.

 

So I went up there and the owners of the private property graciously allowed me to go poke around through the rocks and I wanted to share [holds up rock]—Big surprise!—I wanted to share this. Can you see the structure of that? This is a part—a small part—of a shattercone that was created when this meteorite struck up in Kentland.

 

Jesus coming to earth could have looked just like that.

 

There is not evidence now of that impact. The glaciers have wiped out the site. But the impact jarred the entire planet.

 

When God came from heaven to earth, He could have slammed into the side of His creation with the full force of His power and His position. He could have insisted that He be at the center. He could have insisted that all others serve Him. He could have insisted that His needs be met: that His needs were preeminent.

 

Instead, He came as a tiny bundle of human flesh—maybe six or seven pounds—wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid gently in a manger. No impact at all. And yet an impact that has shaken the entire world: the ultimate picture of humility and of concern for the interests of others—a baby who came that he might grow to be a man that he might lay down his life on the cross.

 

This is the example that we are called to follow according to Paul: to follow the pattern of the king of the realm.

 

I’d like to take just a moment before we round the bend into the final section of this passage to just have us consider how this relates to us in the body of Christ here at Covenant.

 

Two questions that I’ve been pressed to think about as I’ve looked at this passage:

One is in my personal interactions: is it about me or is it about the other person? God by His Spirit has convicted me recently—even before coming to this passage—in the last several weeks that there have been several different times when I’ve had conversations with some of you where you have very graciously come and asked me how I was doing and told me that your were praying for me and I received that with great joy and with gratitude, and then I went on my way. And I didn’t take the time to stop and say, “Well, wait a minute. Tell me how you’re doing. How could I pray for you? Thank you for your care for me. What’s a way that I could encourage you?” How easily I slip back into thinking that everybody is in my life for my benefit. We all do that. I’d love to ask us to pray together that God would turn us out from ourselves anew and allow us to look not to our own interests, but to the interests of others and to consider others better than ourselves.

           

The other thing I’ve been challenged by in this is asking the question, “What is my impact on the body of Christ? Does it have a unifying effect or a dividing effect? What is the wake that I leave behind me? Do I create factions and divisions, or is the effect of my participation in the body of Christ a unifying one? The same question that God through this passage puts before every one of us as we come on a Sunday, as we’re involved in various ministry areas, as we participate in the life of the body.

 

So I’d love to have us just take a moment right now to just put these two things before the Lord: to ask these questions and then ask the Lord to allow us to look like Jesus in these areas.

 

Let’s just pray for a moment.

 

Lord, is it about me or is it about the other person? And, Lord, is the

impact that I have a unifying one or a dividing one? May it be the case of

us, Lord, that we would do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in

humility we would consider one another better than ourselves, that we would be

like-minded having the same love and being one in spirit and in purpose.

We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

 

One final thought with this passage. Paul is seeking to describe a paradox that is beyond our grasping when he tells us that the King of the Realm is one who came and died and at the very same time the King of the Realm is alive. The King of the Realm at the very same time is one who stepped down from the throne and took on the role of a servant and at the very same time is the one who remains on the throne always and forever, all things working together to accomplish his holy purposes in human history: ever and always King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

 

And Paul, after reminding them of the pattern of Jesus’ life, reminds them of the hope that is theirs and ours in Jesus Christ: that it is true that in these last days Paul writing from prison in a fallen world to others who are persecuted—both persecuted for their faith and at odds with the surrounding world because of their allegiance to Christ—that there will be a day when the veil will be pulled back and all will see what is true: that Jesus is above every other one who would make a claim to the throne, who would demand our allegiance, who would compete with him for our hearts and our minds. There will come a day when the whole of the created order will pay homage to him exalted over all others.

 

In the passage that I’m about to read it describes every knee bowing. That’s a picture of coming before the emperor before whom every single individual would bow to his knee acknowledging the supreme lordship of that person before him. “And every tongue confess” is an expression of openly, publicly declaring the truth of something.

 

There will be a day when all will acknowledge his Lordship—not all in glad acknowledgement, but all will acknowledge his Lordship: the good and the bad, the living and the dead, believers and unbelievers, angels and demons all acknowledging his sovereign rule over all of creation.

 

In a land that says the lord is Caesar, Paul says, “No. The Lord is Jesus. The Lord is Jesus. The Lord is Jesus. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, something to be seized, something to be held onto but emptied himself, made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every other name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

 

Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord.

 

Say that with me. Jesus Christ is Lord.