There is an old experiment called the Dictator Game. In this experiment, one person is the Dictator, and one is the Recipient. The Dictator is given a pool of money, and then has the opportunity to give whatever amount they want to the Recipient. Try a mini-version of this experiment right now. Pick a random person you saw today. Let’s pretend you have $1000. How much will you give to them?
Researchers have re-run this experiment with slight changes over the last 40 years, and the results are consistent. Most people give something – but not more than they keep. On average people give up to 30%. So if you chose to give $300 to your random person, congratulations, you’re average. If you decided to split the pot 50/50, then you’re in the top 10 percent for generous givers. What’s striking, is that only a small fraction of people – less than 1 in 20 – would choose to give the recipient more than they themselves received. In other words, generosity that truly values others more than ourselves is rare. And yet that is what Christ calls us to do everyday in our community: to value others as more important than ourselves.
We see this in our passage today. We’re learning about Life in Christ by studying the book of Philippians. This is a letter written to a church that was fracturing because of a conflict between leaders. One of the main things that God wanted to communicate with this church was that Life in Christ means being united through humility. It really matters whether or not God’s people are united. It speaks volumes to non-Christians about the reality of our redemption. To somebody on the outside, unity means we take this stuff seriously. Unity isn’t natural, but it is a essential characteristic of a Christ-centred community.
That’s why Paul writes “If, then, there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.” This string of “if” statements all build off what Paul has already written in the letter. And they are all assumed to be a “yes”. Because of everything Paul has just said, they need to be one. Think the same way, have the same love, be united in Spirit, intent on one purpose. These phrases all evoke imagery of oneness. It also screams: be like God! We believe in the Trinity. That means God has one nature, but that nature is expressed through three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But these three are all perfectly united. Their decisions are perfectly aligned with each other. They all have the same purpose, which is the glory of the Father. They work in perfect unity. The Trinity is a model of what the Church is supposed to be like. This unity will bring Paul joy because it means his work wasn’t in vain.
He encourages them to think the same way, which likely means to think the same as Paul, who earlier said “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” He wants the whole community to be completely sold out on following Jesus with everything they have. They can think differently about things, but they need to stay focused on the purpose of the church which is to glorify God. He tells them to have the same love, which is likely a reference to Christ’s love, which secured him to the cross as he died for our sins. There is no room for bitterness or conflict in God’s church. There is no room for grudges among people who serve Christ. It stifles the love of the community, hampers unity, and prevents God from working in and through his people. God’s people must first and foremost be people known for their love. He tells them to be united in spirit. They share one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and it is through their own connection to the Spirit that the community will be unified. He tells them to be intent on one purpose, which is very similar to thinking the same way. Everything they do should be focused on bringing glory to Christ!
But then he warns them about what will break their unity. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.” When we are self-centred we cannot be Christ-centred. When we are pursuing what is good for us, we probably aren’t pursuing what is best for Christ. And this is what brings down churches. People trying to build their own kingdom cannot build God’s kingdom. Did you know that can follow Jesus’ teaching, but still not follow him? The Dictator Game is a good example of this. Remember, most people gave away up to 30% of their cash. To some extent, other people’s interests matter to us. But we don’t value them more than we value ourselves. Not naturally. That’s because sin has twisted our minds, and now our own interests matter more than others. So to stay united our minds need to change. We need to develop humility, which means to value the interests of others more than we value our own. Which is where Paul turns to next.
“Adopt the same mindset as that of Christ Jesus”. For us to achieve the unity that God desires for our church, we need to re-wire our brains. We need to start to think like Christ. The Greek in this verse is difficult to translate into English. Many different translations do it in a different way but they all mean essentially the same thing. Personally, I love the verb that the CSB uses, “adopt”. We need to adopt the same mindset as Christ, meaning we need to make it our own. Protect it, nurture it, bring it everywhere with us. The metaphor is potent, and is much more powerful than just saying “think like Christ”. It invites us to become like Christ, through renewing our mind. It takes a community of humble people, adopting the mindset of Christ, to be united. And this is what the mindset looks like:
“Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be exploited.”
If you’ve been around the church long enough you start to take this truth for granted. But this was a shocking view for a Jew like Paul, or even the Gentiles in Philippi. Paul firmly believed that Jesus was God. Not a son of the gods, like other popular legends of his day. He was God. Don’t get tripped up by his use of “form”. For a monotheistic like Paul, the “form” of God is God himself. Theologically, this is called the pre-existence of Christ. The Son existed, long before Jesus was born. He has always existed. He’s God, with all the privileges and power that entails.
“Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death – even to death on a cross.”
This is what humility looked like for Jesus. This is what it took to unify us with God again. There is a lot of theological debate around what the “emptying” of Christ means. Some people say it was self-imposed limitation, like the mind that conceived the Universe was now constrained by flesh and blood; or a being who was everywhere at once was now restricted to where his feet could carry him. Others say this is a reference to the sacrifices that were offered in the temple, and to empty himself means to be a drink offering poured out on our behalf. Either way, we can be confident that it doesn’t mean he ceased to be God. But he did become human. And more than human, he became a servant, actually, a slave.
Unlike the Greek gods, who came to Earth to satisfy their own desires, Jesus came to serve us. This kind of humility is completely foreign among other religions, even today. Jesus put our interests ahead of his own to the point of dying, even dying on the cross. For the Philippians, a good death was a death on the battlefield. A valiant death advanced the interests of Rome. An unimaginable death was a death on the cross. That meant you were an enemy of the state, a traitor. But Jesus willingly willingly took on the pain and shame that was rightfully ours, to unite us with God once more.
“For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow – in heaven and on earth, and under the earth – and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Turns out that Jesus’ shameful death was not shameful in the slightest. Not only did it crush sin and death in one blow, but it also proved that Jesus was not just a man, he was God himself. What name is above every name? When you read the Old Testament you will sometimes see the word LORD with capital letters. Translators put that there anytime Yahweh appears in the Bible. That is God’s personal name. But thousands of years ago the people of the Bible stopped saying it, out of respect for the name. When they were reading out loud and they came to his name, they would instead say Adonai, which means Lord. But God gave that name to Jesus, to show that he is both God and human. Jesus did not cease to be God when he came to earth, and he didn’t cease to be human when he rose from the dead. He is both God and human.
All of this happened because he chose to put our interests ahead of his own. And now we are called to do the same thing. There are countless opportunities for you to do this in your daily life. And those will be highly specific to each of us. So I want to share a few ways we can do this as a community here at Hope Hills.
First, for our church to be relevant, we need to be united. And to be united, we need to be humble. And we can’t be humble until we know the interests of others. And you can’t know someone’s interests until you know them. So look around the gym. How many of these people have you seen outside of these four walls? Sundays are a great time to meet people, but really, they aren’t a great time to connect. You need to make time for others outside of the Sunday service. So here is your first challenge. Make time this month to get together with someone from our church, outside of the Sunday service. If you have a hard time meeting people in the church, then our Connection Groups are perfect for you. These weekly gatherings help people connect outside of Sunday, so that we can be the people that God intended.
Second, we are starting a new prayer initiative this Fall. It’s called the Season of Prayer. Throughout the Fall, everybody who signs up will take at least one week to focus on praying for our church, others in the church, and the community we are trying to serve. When it’s your week, you will have a notebook where you can record prayer requests, write out prayers, share scriptures that inspire you, or impressions or pictures that you receive from God. You can write or draw. During your week you commit to doing this daily. Then when your week is up, you will pass the notebook on to the next person in the schedule. When you hand it off, you will pray for them, as they now take on the burden of praying for our community. There is no time commitment. You can prayer for as long or as little as your able. Just pray. The notebook will have prompts you can use to journal, or if you’re already comfortable journalling in prayer then go with that. It doesn’t matter how well you write; only that you share your heart with others. I would love to meet with you when it’s your turn if you’re unsure of how to use the notebook. You can sign up by scanning the QR code behind me, or by following the link I send out this week. I’ll make it easy for you sign up throughout the Fall. This is one way we can all be united in praying for others and earnestly seeking God to move in their lives, and the lives of our church.
Behavioural science tells us that by nature, you care a little bit about the interests of others. And for most people that little bit is sufficient. But not God. He desires better for you, better for our church, and better for our neighbourhoods. He showed us this when he himself became a man, and humbled himself by being obedient, even to death on a cross. He put our interests ahead of his own. Now we’re called to do the same.