Philippians 1:9-11

Earlier this spring we launched this online exploration of the book of Philippians in the expectation that we would travel together, line by line, through all 104 verses. After the first few weeks I chuckled, thinking, “At the rate we’re going this means I’ll be on staff at ZPC for at least two more years!”

God of course had other ideas. He opened a door for a new call that I didn’t see coming. While I am grateful for his incredible kindness, leaving behind this journey through Philippians is one of a hundred things I will truly miss at ZPC.

We can appreciate God’s exquisite timing, however. Next up are verses 9-11 of chapter one, which just happen to represent the essence of what Paul the pastor / apostle prayed regularly for his flock – and the very things that I am praying for you as the McDonalds step away from ZPC.

Paul wasn’t praying for the success of the Philippians’ capital fund drive, if such a thing were even possible. He wasn’t talking to God about teacher recruitment, or local missions, or faith-sharing in the public square. Instead he was pleading with God that the fundamentals would prevail in the Philippians’ spiritual lives. What fundamentals?

That your love may abound more and more. I am absolutely convinced that if this is the only thing that a local church does well, everything else that we think “ought to happen” in the kingdom of God will come about all by itself. Love is the key. Jesus said so. If we excel at love, the world will come crawling to our door and beg for the privilege of joining us.

In knowledge and depth of insight. When Jesus says, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” we tend to applaud the promise of freedom and overlook the job he has assigned to us: We must seek spiritual knowledge. We must teach our children with passion and clarity. We must master the basics.

So that you may be able to discern what is best. Spiritual discernment frequently follows the words “so that” in the Bible. Of what value is knowledge and depth of insight? We seek truth so that we will know how to live. And know how to solve problems. And make wise decisions. And download God’s plans for our future.

And may be pure and blameless. We can’t read more than a paragraph or two in the New Testament before we come to a phrase like this. Behavior always matters. It is scandalous that American churches have become self-congratulating repositories of creative Bible studies and Scripture memory contests – but so few lives are actually different because of it! To know God is to crave the kind of purity that imitates his holiness.

Filled with the fruit of righteousness. What I love about this prayer is its inherent balance. Knowledge and behavior. Depth of insight and love. Discernment and righteousness – that is, right-living that springs from right-standing with God. We learn about the things of God so that the things of God might become part and parcel of who we are. Healthy vines grow fruit. Period.

To the glory and praise of God. Not to the glory and praise of ZPC. Or any of its leaders. It’s not about our survival, our protection, or our reputation. It’s always about multiplying God’s glory.

It is my heartfelt prayer that this fruit, this knowledge, this love, and this God-glorifying way of life will be part of ZPC today, tomorrow, and every day to come. What a joy it is to pray this prayer for you, and to continue to hold you up in the future as one who has had the privilege of loving you!

The two big knocks I had against church people (back in the day before I actually discovered that Jesus was real) is that “going to church” seemed to knock the stuffing out of two of the best things in life: the brain and the heart.

Are Christians allowed to think? I remember reading a few years ago about a sign on a college campus in England advertising an upcoming Christian convocation. A skeptic had written at the bottom: Price of admission – your intellectual integrity. During most of my four decades of endeavoring to follow Christ I have searched and researched the intellectual credibility of trusting a God who cannot be seen. I am excited to declare that the evidence for the validity of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth has only become broader, deeper, and more compelling with time.

But the people I knew at church seemed to have another hang-up: Are Christians allowed to feel? OK, that’s probably not a fair question. I grew up Presbyterian. Such a thing would never enter the mind of a Pentecostal, a Quaker, an Orthodox, or a charismatic. But I grew up wondering if religious-minded people had to dull their nerve endings. Church seemed to be a place where paying attention to God required keeping it all together emotionally.

Paul shatters that illusion. In the 13 New Testament letters that are attributed to his hand, he admits to weeping, fretting, crying for joy, and throwing outright hissy fits. I love Philippians 1:8. Paul says that he “longs for” his Philippian readers. He is filled with something he calls “the affection of Jesus Christ.”

Bottom line: Paul is warm. His heart is beating. He is emotional. This is not the kind of verse that gets quoted by men’s groups that go into the woods on retreat to beat drums, sleep in wigwams, and discover their inner Chuck Norris. Paul seems to be the kind of guy who might play the cello or shop at Williams-Sonoma.

What’s great, of course, is the emotional balance we see in Paul. This is the same man who wrote that he “beats his body and makes it his slave” (I Corinthians 9:27) in order to pursue Christ – that would be a metaphor for spiritual perseverance, not an actual practice. We see both toughness and tenderness in his spirit; both head and heart in his faith; both kindness and resolve in his relationships.

Everything I had always longed for, emotionally, in my spiritual life, was always there. All I had to do was open up the Bible and read the words of Paul.

Philippians 1:7

Is the Bible literally true? This is one of the great religious battleground issues of the past 200 years. Christians have gone toe to toe with skeptics regarding the essential truth and authority of Scripture. More significantly, followers of Jesus have found themselves stuck in a kind of never-ending family feud over the meaning of the word “literal.”

Paul’s warm expression of partnership with the disciples at Philippi provides an interesting test case. “Since I have you in my heart…” Does Paul mean that literally?

Of course he does – as long we understand that “literal” means “according to the author’s intention” regarding the “literature” that has been provided. Some examples may help.

“That new pastor has turned his church upside-down.” He must have some personal trainer – if we understand those words to be a physical description of the world’s most astonishing feat of ecclesiastical weight-lifting. But that’s not how we hear and understand such words. From context and experience we immediately recognize this to be a metaphor. Does that mean we aren’t taking those words literally? Actually, we are – since we are understanding and accepting the author’s original intent.

Celine Dion sang My Heart Will Go On even as the Titanic sank into the cold Atlantic. Was she implying that the complex set of cardiac muscles in Kate Winslett’s character would continue pumping blood even after the rest of her body decayed? Only in a really creepy horror movie. We all know a metaphor when we see one.

When Paul tells the Philippians that “he has them in his heart” most readers immediately grasp that the apostle is making a statement about his affections. Cardia (“heart”) in first century Greek referred not just to the life-sustaining organ beating in our chests but, as Dallas Willard puts it, “the executive center of the human life. The heart is where decisions and choices are made for the whole person.” Paul is declaring that at the very core of his being (and here we must note that “core” comes from the Latin word cor, which also means heart) he loves and appreciates his readers.

“I have you in my heart.” In what sense that does Paul mean that? He means it truthfully. In other words, he is saying what he means. And he means it literally, too. Somewhere in the mystery of the human mind / heart / spirit – whatever realities those important Bible words are meant to imply – Paul’s inner world “contains” joyful and redemptive thoughts concerning the Philippians.

You can have others in your own heart as well, even if an MRI fails to locate a gathering of Christ-followers in your left ventricle. 

Sure. I will do that. But I have no idea who Karen is. Or what words might encourage Karen.

A while back it occurred to me that it might be of value to write a Scripture reference next to my signature on the inside jacket of their book. But what Scripture would be appropriate? I remember thinking, “All the good ones have been taken!” Then I recalled that someone who had written a note to me when I was a young Christian had scrawled Philippians 1:6 at the end. I remember that I had opened my Bible and loved what I read there:

“Being confident of this, that he would began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.”

What the world needs now is hope. And Paul wastes no time in his letter to the young church at Philippi in reminding them that God, who had begun the spiritual reconstruction of their lives, was never going to quit until he was done. Whatever God starts, he finishes. That includes us.

 - We may become discouraged.

 - We may become hurt and angry because of the decisions or actions that others carry out in Jesus’ name.

 - We may feel tired and old.

We may conclude, with a sigh, “Well, I guess this was the spiritual phase of my life; now it’s time to move on to something else.”

We may become bored with church.

Or we may simply move into a business-as-usual approach to checking in with God from time to time, but life is going pretty well right now, thank you.

But God will have none of that. He will never lose his vision for what he began in us. He will never shrug, “I guess I made a mistake with this one; he’s never going to get it.” He will never run out of time, energy, love, or passion to finish what he started in each one of our hearts: to transform us into the very image of his Son Jesus.

I definitely don’t sign that many autographs. But when I do, I always write Philippians 1:6 alongside. It’s such an encouragement for “Karen,” for you, and for me.

Remembering is no small subject in the Bible. After considerable thrashing about the meaning of life, the author of Ecclesiastes boldly prescribes, “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth” (12:1). The hopeful thief being crucified next to Jesus whispers, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).

One of the blessings of belonging to Jesus is that God will “remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). Does that mean there is such a thing as divine amnesia? Of course not. God perfectly recollects everything that has ever happened. But in this context remembering means bringing something vividly to mind with an aim to take appropriate action. What makes grace so amazing is that while God knows everything there is to be known about our sin, he refuses to remember it. He will not chase us down and punish us for our wrongdoings.

So how does Paul remember to remember the people at Philippi – the original recipients of this letter? We honestly don’t know. We do know that he “faced daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28). Paul was a shepherd who ached for the welfare of multiple congregations. Perhaps the Philippians were such an integral part of his prayer life that he found himself remembering their concerns every day.

Remembering is more than just a cerebral exercise. God has given us five senses that are uniquely configured to help us bring the past into the present. Research has demonstrated that eyesight is at the top of the sensory / memory pyramid. We remember as much as 80% of what we see. A touch can bring back memories both sweet and painful. With regard to hearing, Mary Sue and I have recently been listening to a station that plays nothing but hit singles from the 60s and 70s. We are stunned at how often a single musical riff transports us back to a middle school sock hop or a rainy day at camp. Tastes are also able to bring the past to life. Just sampling a particular combination of spices can be like a time machine that puts me back in my mother’s kitchen.

Smell, however, appears to be the most powerful agent of memory. I once heard a speaker describe his experience of trying to retrieve an errant golf ball. As he felt along the perimeter of a hedge, he suddenly began to weep. “Why is this happening to me?” he asked himself. Then he realized that he heard an old lawn mower – almost an antique – being pushed on the other side of the hedge. He could smell the peculiarly sweet mixture of lubricants and gasoline, an aroma that transported him back to his childhood. His late father used to push a mower just like that one. The power of memory overwhelmed him even before he had the chance to analyze it.

Think what happens every time we share the Lord’s Supper. Jesus says, “Remember me.” All five senses come into play. There is the taste and smell of bread and wine; the sight of others who represent the Body of Christ on earth; the sound of Scripture being read and music being played; and the touch of taking the bread and the cup into our own hands. The more we receive communion the more Jesus imprints memories of his grace, his love, and his presence onto our hearts.

Perhaps the most powerful part of Paul’s sentence is that he thanks God for the Philippians every time he remembers them. We may remember others with regret. Or with amazement. Or with a feeling of self-righteousness and judgment. Or with anger. Or perhaps with no emotion at all. Paul allows his memories of the Philippians to drive him, immediately, to thankfulness – a spiritual discipline that we all can practice every day.

Philippians 1:2

People who follow Jesus live in constant peril of taking everything in this verse for granted. That includes God’s gifts of grace and peace, the Lordship of Christ, and God’s own identity as Father. We’re so used to calling God Father that we overlook the fact that, as far as we know, no Jew ever used such a familiar name for God…until Jesus did so.

The Old Testament brims with names and titles for God. But Father is not one of them. When the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1), his model conversation with God (which we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer) begins with the stunning word “Father.”

This is a theological watershed like no other. Prior to Jesus, God was generally understood to be holy, exalted, high and lifted up, and emotionally inaccessible. With Jesus, God is holy, exalted, high and lifted up, and tenderly available to all who would turn to him. Jesus unhesitatingly called him Abba (the Aramaic word for “Poppy” or “Daddy”) and invited us to do the same: The Lord’s Prayer doesn’t begin, “My Father,” although that would be entirely correct theologically, but “Our Father” – an extraordinary invitation into the circle of love that began with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit even before creation.

Dwight Edwards, who is a pastor in Texas, recalls the time that he and his family attended a social event sponsored by their church. As they walked into the crowded gymnasium, Edwards’ youngest son, who was about four years old, was holding on to his dad’s pant leg. By the time they had made their way through the crowd, however, he had somehow taken hold of another man’s pant leg without knowing it. Edwards tells what happened next:

“I watched for a moment as my son stood there looking around, clutching confidently. Soon I went closer, got down on one knee, looked him in the eyes, and asked how he was doing. He stared back with great surprise, shot a glance upward to see whom he was holding on to, then quickly let go and ran to me. Whoops, wrong dad!”

Why is regular worship and Bible study such a big deal? It’s because we so easily take hold of the wrong spiritual father. We grab hold of an idea about the Lord and don’t realize how far we’ve drifted from the God who is really there – the one who is the Father of Jesus and the Daddy we so desperately need – until an experience, or a crisis, or an illuminating passage of Scripture jolts us back to reality. When Paul writes, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father,” he is saying something worth remembering every hour of every day: God is nearby. God is tender. God is ready to listen. He is our Abba.

Without question the hardest word for modern minds to grasp in this text is “saints.” To whom exactly is Paul addressing this letter? The word “saint” has had a bit of a convoluted history. In the early centuries of the Christian era it came to represent a woman or a man of exceptional spiritual maturity. Then, in the Catholic tradition, “saint” became the word to designate a deceased Christian of such purity and virtue that he or she could actually intercede for struggling Christians here on earth. If you have a Catholic background you undoubtedly remember praying to certain saints regarding particular concerns. Did it ever cross your mind that the Bible might address you as a saint – especially while you were still here on Earth?

The saints in Philippi were ordinary followers of Jesus. They were rank and file disciples. The literal translation of the original Greek for this word is “holy one.” On the pages of the Bible, holiness is closely connected with the idea of separation. Someone who follows Jesus is therefore one who is separate, or set apart, from the world with regard to priorities, thinking, and behavior.

So look around on any given Sunday: You are in the company of saints. If you have received Christ as Savior and Lord then you are one of God’s set-apart ones. But of course this begs a question: Do you really think the people who are singing off-key in the row behind you, or gabbing mindlessly in the gathering space, or fighting for the last space in the parking lot are saintly? How could God possibly trust the success of his kingdom enterprise to us?

Author and theologian Eugene Peterson writes, “Anyone who joins a church expecting to be part of a happy and harmonious gathering of put-together people sooner or later is in for serious disappointment.” That is a colossal understatement. In the Bible, all saints are sinners. Nothing has changed in 2,000 years. When Peterson was a pastor he said he often preferred the company of people outside the church. But Jesus makes it clear that we cannot walk away from the strange crowd that the Lord has gathered here and in every other congregation

Remembering his days in the pulpit, Peterson writes, “One woman gave me hope – she brought a stenographic notebook with her every Sunday and wrote down in shorthand everything I said. At least one person was paying attention. Then I learned that she was getting ready to leave her husband and was using the hour of worship to practice her shorthand so she could get a self-supporting job.”

We have seen an alarming national trend in church participation – actually, non-participation – during the past decade. More and more self-professed followers of Jesus have decided that they are done with church. As many as 25% of American Christians are unchurched – by choice. They are weary of the pettiness, the quarrels over theological trivia, the gossip, the hypocrisy, and the scandalous failures of church leaders. They have decided that “just Jesus and me” is far more palatable than trying to grow spiritually in the presence of so many rank sinners.

I’m not blind to the outrageous problems, the spiritual immaturity, and the downright silliness of a lot that happens in the local church. ZPC is no exception. But we can’t throw the local church under the bus. Why can’t I walk away from the sinners that surround me wherever I go in church? It’s because God tells me in his Word that I Am Not Myself by Myself. It pleases God to accomplish my spiritual transformation by means of other broken people – through their partnership, their prayers, and even their most grievous failures.

I don’t pretend to understand this. But I do know that Jesus still calls the local church “his body.” If he insists that I am a saint because I trust in him – and if he makes it clear that groups of such incomplete saints are the chief way he wants to change the world – I find myself coming back to these opening words in Philippians with renewed hope that his business really is all about him. And not in the end about you and me. That’s a great thing to remember this Easter.

Welcome to the first installment of This Week in the Word, a new pastoral column that offers a secondary option of digging into God’s Word. It will take us – week by week and verse by verse – through a single book of the Bible.

Our plan is to explore together the book of Philippians. Why Philippians? It is perhaps the happiest book in the Bible. Paul writes with a spirit of joy, and the deeper we go into this letter the harder it is not to get caught up in the apostle’s contagious hope and confidence.

I often hear people say, “If only we could be like the early Church.” Really? Have you read the New Testament letters that are addressed to the first generation of Christ-followers? The earliest Christians were a mess. They had fights at their “love feasts” right after sharing communion. They broke into cliques. They gravitated to their favorite pastors and teachers and said, “I’m one of Peter’s converts.” “Oh yeah? Well, I was saved by Paul himself.” They ended up in the wrong beds. They quarreled about theological trivia. They listened to whatever hot, new evangelist had shown up in town and promptly changed what they believed about Jesus.

In other words, they were just like us.

Philippians is the one letter addressed to a real first century congregation that breathes a different atmosphere. It exudes joy. Is this because the believers there had gotten their collective acts together? Hardly. In fact, we will encounter an all-too-typical church squabble at the beginning of chapter three. Is it because Paul was writing from the veranda of a Club Med seaside estate? Paul in fact was in prison. So what accounts for the happy spirit of this letter? The best clues come in chapter four, where Paul rejoices not only in the goodness and provision of God – no matter what might be happening – but in the practical partnership he was enjoying with the Philippian church.

As Paul puts it in 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord always! Let me say that one more time: Rejoice!” That was a good word for the early church. And it is a very good word for every one of us.

Philippians begins with a simple and unadorned line of greeting: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus.” All too often we’re tempted to run over the top of such words so we can quickly get to the “good parts” of the letter. But the word “servant” is one of the good parts of Philippians. Paul and his ministry partner Timothy could have identified themselves in any number of ways. They could have used titles or offered testimonies. “This letter is from Paul – you know, the Paul who was supernaturally recruited by God on the road to Damascus and is now God’s primary instrument to bring the Mediterranean world to Christ.” But Paul calls himself doulos (which is Greek for servant or slave – words that were virtually indistinguishable in the ancient world). Why would he do this?

Perhaps it’s because doulos, from the very beginning of the New Testament, is the identity of those who have truly given themselves to God. Mary the mother of Jesus said to the angel Gabriel, “I am the Lord’s doulos” (Luke 1:38). Jesus himself publicly took the role of a servant at the Last Supper and commanded his disciples to do the same.

John 13:1-17 tells the account of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. I’ve always been struck by what John 13 doesn’t say. Verse three reads, “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God.” Knowing these things, what does Jesus choose to do? Here are some of the things John might have recorded:

• He stood up and delivered an incredibly moving sermon.
• He drafted a strategic plan to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth.
• He blew away all of his Father’s enemies with a campaign of spiritual shock and awe.
• He launched a building campaign to erect the Crystal Temple.
• He said, “Now that you know who I am, I expect a great deal more respect and love from every one of you.”

But Jesus said or did none of those things. Instead, knowing exactly who he was and what the Father had called him to do, ”he took off his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist” (John 13:4). Is such a picture even conceivable in any other religion? It is with sadness that we must admit we only rarely see this example lived out today amongst those who represent Jesus. John 13 compels us to address this question: If I really knew everything there was to know about spiritual things, and was invested with all heavenly power and authority, what would I do with such privileges?

Here’s how God himself answered that question: He humbled himself. He served. He undertook the lowest of all menial tasks – the one reserved for the doulos at the bottom of the household pecking order – and hand-washed the muck and manure off the feet of his friends, including the one who would betray him…this at a time when the bottom of the foot was considered the dirtiest part of the body.

Paul launches Philippians by making one thing absolutely clear: He is not writing as a pastoral authority or theological expert or someone with insight information because of his special relationship with Christ. He is a servant or doulos of the Messiah. He leads with humility. We should do the same.