Sermon
The
Faith of the Gospel
We’re
continuing on with our series in Philippians.
This is the third in our series.
We’ll wrap-up Chapter 1.
We have an opportunity this
morning to be reminded that
Brian
was there just a few months ago; I’ve asked him to take a few minutes and tell
us a bit about what he saw.
The
Fellowship
of the Gospel.
The Furtherance of the
Gospel.
The Faith of the Gospel.
Let’s walk through these last 4
verses of Chapter 1, line by line and understand what it says.
Whatever
happens…
This whatever is a bit like a therefore…
it comes out of the context of
Paul’s suffering.
Remember Theresa’s sermon from
last Sunday… the furtherance of the Gospel takes whatever it is going to take.
Paul is now moving from his
sacrificial conduct to the conduct of those who follow him as he follows
Christ. He is essentially saying “enough about how I conduct my pursuit of this
calling… now focus on your conduct.”
It is vitally important that we
see the appropriate emphasis. As we dig into this, we’ll see that what Paul is
emphasizing here is this imperative to focus on that which is worthy of the
Gospel. We need to guard ourselves against the mistake of our conduct is what
makes us worthy… that is clearly not the meaning here. Our conduct is merely
the appropriate response, or even result of the Gospel.
The specific Greek words that
translate into “conduct yourselves” help us understand what Paul was meaning.
From these same words we get our English word “politics.”
Worthy of the Gospel of Christ,
live out your citizenship.
This would be especially
meaningful to the Philippians because they understood, and were even proud of,
their Roman citizenship.
When Paul used these words, he
was reminding the Philippians that they were citizens, not only of
Reading
on, the conduct required of these colonists of Heaven had little to do with the
presence of their spiritual father (Paul). Paul longed to see his friends… and
he anticipated hearing good reports about his friends… but his hope is that the
Philippians would aim to please their Heavenly Father.
Now about this conduct.
I
know what some of you are thinking. You know what it means to conduct
your self in a manner worthy of the Gospel. No drinking, cussing, spitting,
smoking, dancing, short skirts, fancy make-up…
Be polite, read your Bible and
pray everyday.
That’s all good… and even
reasonable… but that isn’t what Paul is talking about here. We can certainly
find those sorts of things in other places in the Bible and even Paul’s
letters… but Paul, at least here, raises our sites.
The key word in this section is
contending. In the previous section Paul leveraged political ideas, now he
moves to the language of sports teams. Here again, the Greek words used here
give us English words; in this case it gives our word “athletics.” The emphasis
isn’t on our individual conduct; it is on the conduct of the community of believers.
The marks of the conduct that
Paul is calling for from the Philippian church are three fold:
1.
In one Spirit.
2.
As one man
3.
Fearlessness
I wonder if you noticed that the
pew Bibles and maybe your own Bible leaves the “s” in Spirit lower case. Gordon
Fee’s commentary on Philippians has been a great help in my study. He makes a
strong case that it would be a mistake to understand his use of Spirit here
(pnuema) to be anything less than the third person of the Godhead, the Holy
Spirit. To reduce this to some sort of esprit de corps would import a modern
Western idea into the text. Paul never uses this phrase anywhere else in this
way… you don’t even find that sort of use in any other Greek writing of the
time. What Paul is meaning here is that the first mark conduct that is worthy
of the Gospel is that it is guided by, filled with, founded on, consumed by the
Spirit of God. He is reminding us all that what makes the church the church is
the Holy Spirit.
Second, Paul is calling for
unity. The language here is especially rich with the idea of teamwork… striving
side by side, helping one another as they pursue their calling. Christianity
has always been intended to be practiced in community… a team sport if you
will. It seems to me that every force in our world drives us to individualize
our faith… that somehow true spirituality is best practiced in isolation. Let
this remind us that this is not at all the case. We are called to be the Body
of Christ… to contribute to Christian community… we aren’t meant to go it
alone.
Finally, Paul asserts that the
third mark of conduct that is worthy of the Gospel is fearlessness. Opposition
is a given; Jesus promised it when He said “in this world you will have trouble
(tribulation), but take heart, I have overcome the world.” You will have
trouble… but remember colonists, there is no reason to fear.
Remember what Paul penned just a
few verses earlier, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” No fear. Trust in
God.
In the Spirit, In the Community,
all with the promise of eternity with God.
Then
Paul moves to a sort of “oh by the way.”
This sort of conduct, deeply
rooted in faith, is a sign to both those inside the faith and outside
the faith. To those outside the faith, it reminds them of the futility of
merely being guided by Fate… to an ultimate destruction.
To those inside the faith, we
are reminded of salvation.
And all of it, again, is God’s
work for God’s glory.
In
these last two verses, Paul turns to a theology of suffering. Here in verse 29
we read this startling idea that suffering is a gift!
On behalf of Christ, we are
given these gifts:
1.
Grace to believe, and
2.
Grace to suffer
Isn’t this startling? Grace to
endure suffering makes all sorts of sense… but grace to receive suffering…
suffering as a gift… that is harder to understand.
That is what the text says… but
also… not or. Sometimes it seems like we Christians conduct ourselves as
if believing on Him and suffering are on some sort of continuum. That on one
side there is the victorious good life… the side of blessing where we have all
the benefit of believing. Then on the other side of the continuum is the
suffering… the side of defeat… and all we need to do is get to believing again
so we can get away from the suffering.
But that isn’t what the text
says… it says believe and also suffer.
The
Philippians saw the struggle and the suffering of Paul in their midst when he
first brought the Gospel to their city. The Gospel got Paul in trouble with
both religious leaders and civil authorities. It was the Gospel that had Paul
in chains, under arrest, in
OK…
so fast forward to us, here today.
First off, let’s realize that
this passage is Paul’s “so what” for Chapter one. It is here in these verses
that Paul moves from narrative to imperative. He moves from mere greetings and
talking about himself, to prescribing how the Philippian church ought to
conduct herself.
In
our Bibles we read this passage as four verses, punctuated into four relatively
simply sentences. But to the Greek reader this is all one long, sort of
complicated sentence. Normally, I don’t think that this sort of grammatical distinction
is all that important to us… but in this case I think it is very important. The
idea that this is all one sentence underscores that all of this hangs off of
one important idea… and that idea is the notion of living-up to the Gospel. We
have been given this great gift of the Gospel, the Good News, that Jesus came
that we might have life… that through his life, suffering, death, and
resurrection we have the promise of eternity with God. We have this new
citizenship… and now it is our goal to live-up to, or begin to live out, that
citizenship. This is Paul’s so what to the Philippian church… and to the Church
throughout the ages… to our Church.
I
also think it is good for us to consider this notion of suffering… and
specifically suffering for the sake of Christ and the Gospel.
I suppose the truth is that we
really don’t have much of a context for suffering… struggle maybe… but not so
much suffering. We may lack suffering because the modern
1.
Isn’t there so much more of the
Spirit that we should enjoy? Is the Church (both in general and specifically
our Church) so drenched in the Holy Spirit that we are an extraordinary people…
a movement fueled by the fire of the Holy Spirit?
2.
Do we contend for the faith in
unity… or do we spend more time, as the Church, arguing about our distinctives?
Are we pulling together for the Gospel or are we pulling apart over fine points
of theology?
3.
Are we strong and fearless… or
weak and fearful? Are we focused on eternity with our Heavenly Father… or do
our own insecurities or pursuit of our temporal comforts cloud our view?
The passage that we studied this
morning doesn’t spell out the nature of the suffering in detail… but it is
plain to see. What Paul was driving at was that the Philippians had conflicting
citizenship. Their new citizenship in Heaven called them to be countercultural in
the context of their Roman citizenship. Nero could no longer be Lord… Jesus was
now Lord.
The point of the passage isn’t
the suffering…
and certainly not the alleviation of suffering. The point is that suffering
would be part of the circumstances… more than that… part of the gift.
The point is that we need to
continually force our focus toward Christ as God’s ultimate paradigm for us.
Through “death on a cross” he not only “saved us,” but modeled for us God’s way
of dealing with the opposition – loving them to death.
We
need not seek suffering… suffering will come. Often times our suffering is the
result of our own self-inflicted wounds… but there are times when suffering is
a gift… from God. There are these times when we stand firm… and the world extracts
a price for our faith. It serves as a sign to those around us, it reminds us
that we are His… and in all of it we are called to Glorify God.
May we become more of a church that is marked by conduct worthy of the Gospel of Christ.