Joy in Humility

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Pat Damiani

Thornydale Family Church

Philippians - Joy for the Journey • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago • Presented 4 years ago • 34:07

Philippians 2:1–11

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NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

A mother was making breakfast for her two little boys—Kevin and Ryan. The boys starting arguing over who was going to get the first pancake, and so their mom saw this as the perfect opportunity for a moral lesson.

“Now boys, hold on a minute. Let me tell you: If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’”

The two children sat silent for a moment. Then the five year-old, Kevin, turned to his younger brother and said, “Okay, Ryan, you be Jesus!”

Tension

Today’s message is titled “Joy in Humility”. I am the least qualified person ever to preach a message with that title. By God’s grace, I am, at best, a proud man who is pursuing humility.

The truth is that none of us have achieved complete humility in our lives. Have you ever heard someone stand up and say “I am proud to announce today that I have achieved humility.” or “Now that I have become completely humble I’m going to share with you the seven steps you can take to be humble like me.” ?

Perhaps you’ve heard the story about the church that presented one of its members a medal for being the most humble person in their church. They had to take it away the following week when he wore it.

I understand that sometimes some of you tune out a message from the very beginning because you think it’s not really applicable or relevant for you. But today I can say unequivocally that if you think you don’t need to pay attention to this message, you are exactly the person who needs to hear it most.

In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the topic of humility is the defining issue for the church in our culture in this age. The impact of the church in our culture is going to largely rise and fall based on how well we apply the passage that we’ll look at this morning.

Truth

This morning we are going to study the passage that is at the heart of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi. It is a passage that is so important for our faith, that I am firmly convinced that if this was the only passage of Scripture we had, it would be enough for us to know how to live out the gospel in our day-to-day lives.

We’ll begin with a quick look at the overall structure of the passage.

[Chart of structure]

I’m actually going to begin with the last section of the passage and then come back to the first part. I think you may already be able to see why I’m going to take that approach.

Many believe that in Philippians 2:5-11, Paul is quoting from an early church hymn. I actually wrote a paper on that in seminary, and while there isn’t really enough evidence to prove whether Paul is quoting from another work or this is a hymn that he composed himself, there is no doubt this is consistent with the kinds of hymns that would have been used in the early church.

Philippians 2:5–11 ESV

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Verse 5 serves as the pivot that connects the first four verses of the chapter, which we will get to in a bit, and the last six verses of the passage. This is a command in which Paul lets his readers know that the only way that they are going to be able to carry out his instructions in the first part of this chapter is to have the same mind as Jesus. And then in verses 6-8, he is going to describe the actions that Jesus took that revealed his mindset, the one that we are to have also.

Since the next section is so crucial, we’re going to look at it phrase by phrase. There is almost no way to translate most of this into English in a way that captures the richness and deep truths we find in the underlying Greek, so we’re going to dig a little deeper into some Greek vocabulary and grammar than we would normally.

…who, though he was in the form of God...

The verb “was” is actually a present tense participle that describes the essence of a person’s nature and which does not change.

In English, the word “form” usually refers to the outward shape or appearance. But the underlying Greek word describes the outward display of the inward nature.

So Paul is stressing here the eternal preexistence of Jesus as God. Whatever it is that makes God God, Jesus has always possessed that same essence. So whatever you can say about God, you can say about Jesus. Or to put it more simply:

Jesus has always been, is now, and forever will be 100% God.

…did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped...

Considering that Jesus is equal with God, as we just saw, this is an amazing statement. Jesus did not consider His position of equality with God a treasure to be clutched and held onto at all costs. This is really the essence of everything Paul is writing about the humility of Jesus. Even though as God He had the right to hang on to the glory of heaven, he willingly laid aside all His rights. No one had to beg Him or convince Him to do that.

…but emptied himself, by taking on the form of a servant...

This is certainly the most difficult phrase to deal with in this entire passage. There are some who claim that this means that Jesus emptied Himself of His deity. Without going into all the details, the underlying Greek grammar here is clear that the act of emptying Himself consists of taking on the form of a servant. So for Jesus, emptying Himself did not mean that He emptied Himself by subtracting anything, but rather that He did that by adding something - the form of a servant.

The word translated “servant” is the Greek word to describe a bondservant - someone who served his master to the disregard of his own interests and who submitted his will to that of his master.

Jesus did not cease for one moment to be God. He did voluntarily limit His use of certain divine attributes while on the earth and with a couple exceptions, He allowed His glory to be veiled.

About the closest parallel I can think of in our culture today would be former President Jimmy Carter. Regardless of what you think about him politically, you have to admire his humility. After serving as President for four years. Carter gave up many of the perks that come with being a former president and he has devoted much of his life since then to building homes for Habitat for Humanity. In fact, last October, just a day after falling in his home and getting stitches, he was back building homes in Nashville. He has laid aside his rights as a former President and willingly submitted himself to the leadership of Habitat for Humanity in order to serve the needs of others.

We could summarize this idea of Jesus emptying Himself like this:

While remaining 100% God, Jesus became 100% man.

The incarnation did not change the person or the divine attributes of Jesus. It just added to it a complete human nature.

…being born in the likeness of men.

The word translated “likeness” refers to that which is made like something else, not just in outward appearance, but in substance. In other words, Jesus was not just God disguised to look like a man. He was like an ordinary man in every way. Contrary to what many artists have depicted, He did not walk around with a halo around His head. If you just saw Him on the street, nothing about Him would cause Him to stand out. He voluntarily took on all the limitations of being human and refused to use the power that He possessed as God for His own personal comfort or benefit.

Think about it, the King of the Universe voluntarily became a servant with no rights for our sake. He was born in a borrowed stable, had to borrow a boat to preach from, had to borrow a donkey to ride into Jerusalem, had to borrow a room where He can observe the Passover with His disciples and was buried in a borrowed grave.

And being found in human form...

The word “form” is a different Greek word than the one translated “form” in the two previous places we have seen it in this passage. This word primarily describes the outward appearance. The idea here is that as Jesus grew as a man, his outward appearance changed just like any other man. He did not look the same as an adult as he did as a baby lying in a manger. This is just one more way that we can be sure that Jesus is 100% man.

...he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The verb “humbled” means “to humiliate”, “to make small”, “to bow down” or “to weaken”. The Greeks despised anyone who was considered to be humble and exalted in the glory of man. And our Western culture has largely adopted a similar view of humility, which is often seen as weakness or even considered shameful.

In 1996, William Bennett wrote a book titled The Book of Virtues which contained stories to illustrate ten different Biblical character traits like compassion, responsibility, loyalty and faith. You know which virtue was not included? You guessed it - humility.

But Jesus turned what was considered a negative virtue into a positive one. And notice here that nobody else had to humble Jesus because He humbled Himself. And the greatest illustration of that humility was dying on the cross.

I think we often forget what crucifixion was like in the first century. We’ve sanitized the cross and made it into jewelry and decorated our homes and sanctuaries with it. But it was a punishment so barbaric that the Romans reserved it for only the very worst criminals. Jesus did not benefit at all from suffering that kind of death. He had every right not to go through with it. But in utter and complete humility He willingly did that for us.

We could sum up this Christ Hymn like this:

Jesus was the most humble person whoever lived and He committed the most humble act in the history of the world

And, as we see in verses 9-11, because Jesus was willing to humble himself like that, God has highly exalted him. And one day, every single person who ever lived is going to do the same thing.

Before we go back to the first part of our passage, let’s take one more look at the structure of the passage.

As you can see, what Paul writes in verses 1-4 is dependent on what he writes in the Christ Hymn in verses 5-11. So now that we understand better what it means to humble oneself after looking at the example of Jesus, we are ready to see what that is to look like in our lives.

Philippians 2:1–4 ESV

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.

While we don’t have time to devote as much time to the details of this section as we did to the last part of the passage, I do want you to note that there are a number of key words that tie these sections together:

mind (v. 2)/mind (v. 5)

count (v. 3)/count (v. 6)

humility (v. 3)/humbled (v. 8)

The connection between the hymn in the last section of this passage and the instructions that Paul gives to the church in the first section help us to develop today’s main idea:

True joy comes from having the mind of Christ that puts others first

We see this clearly at the beginning of verse 2:

...complete my joy by being of the same mind...

As we saw earlier, the “same mind” that Paul wants all his readers to have is the mind of Christ, the one that caused Him to humble himself and become a human servant and die on the cross for our sake.

You’ll notice that Paul is primarily focusing on the joy that comes from unity within the body of Christ. And that unity is clearly a function of how well the members of the body of Christ pursue the mind of Christ and demonstrate the kind of humility that puts the interests of others ahead of our own.

Sadly, the COVID crisis has revealed that the church probably isn’t doing a great job of pursuing the mind of Christ like this. Almost every church I know of has experienced at least some conflict over the correct way for our churches to respond. And that has caused division within the body and has also damaged our witness to our world. And that breaks my heart.

As I said earlier, by God’s grace I am a proud person who is at best pursuing the kind of humility that we have learned about today. So I don’t pretend to be able to tell you exactly how to develop that kind of humility. But what I can do is to share with you some of the things I see in this passage that will help all of us to at least pursue the mind of Christ, even though we won’t ever get there completely here on this earth.

Application

HOW TO PURSUE THE MIND OF CHRIST

Admit my pride

I think I can make a pretty good case that pride is really the root cause of all of our sin. It was pride that caused Satan to rebel against God and take one third of the angels with him. And it was pride that led Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit because they thought it would make them equal to God.

Every single one of us is a sinner and at the heart of our sin is pride. And until we are honest with ourselves and admit that, we will never be able to pursue the mind of Christ.

Don’t think less of myself, think of myself less

Many of you probably recognize that I’ve borrowed this principle from a quote that is often attributed to C.S. Lewis, but which actually comes from another unknown source:

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

Too often, we try to make humility all about us. We don’t want to be seen as prideful, so we deflect compliments or credit others without really being genuine. But while we’re making all that effort to appear humble, we’re actually being quite prideful because we’re thinking about how we look to others or how this is going to help me get what I want from someone else. Even being introverted or shy is often just a form of pride because it is the result of being overly concerned about what other people are going to think about me.

Refuse to focus on my rights

Since it seems we’ve talked about this a lot recently I won’t belabor the point. Suffice it to say that Jesus gave up all His rights and if we’re going to have His mind, we have to follow that example.

Although I am grateful to live in a country where I have important rights, as we saw last week, our primary citizenship is in the kingdom of God, and in that kingdom I am to willingly to give up my rights for the good of others. Although I have been making this challenge for several weeks now, I have yet for anyone to be able to show me even one place in the Bible where we are instructed to claim our rights.

Do what is good for others

Again this is a principle that seems to have come up frequently so far in Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi. And it really doesn’t need much explanation.

One of the positive things that has come out of the COVID crisis is that it has really revealed the hearts of people and drawn a clear distinction between those who are looking to do good for others and those who are only concerned about themselves. I am reminded here of what Fred Rogers’ mother told him when he got scared as a child:

Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

I’d even go a step further than that and say we need to “be the helpers”. That is going to look different for all of us.

For some of us, it might be as simple as wearing a mask when we’re out in public. I have yet to run across even one person who enjoys wearing a mask. But I’m sure grateful for all of you who are willingly doing that out of concern for others.

At the other end of the spectrum are the health care professionals who are risking their health every day for the good of others. We have several of those people with us today and I just want to acknowledge and thank you for what you’re doing.

And probably somewhere in the middle is one of my basketball referee colleagues who has been getting food donations from local restaurants and individuals and delivering meals to those who are on the front line of the battle.

This week I came across a quote from French philosopher Jean Paul Sarte that seems to be relevant here:

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

One of the reasons that humility promotes unity in the body of Christ and in our world in general is that the more people there are helping others, the less there are to stir up division and trouble.

Continually look to Jesus

I’ve left this principle for last because it is without a doubt the most important. While all the other principles we have discussed so far are important, on this earth we can only apply them imperfectly. Ultimately only Jesus can both exemplify and enable our humility. That is why I spent the majority of our time today focusing on the humility of Jesus.

None of us have the ability in our own strength to imitate His humility. It is only by continually looking to Jesus and being empowered by His Holy Spirit that we can even make any progress when it comes to developing that kind of humility. It is only when we see Jesus as He truly is that we recognize just how pervasive our own pride is and then begin to deal with it day-by-day with His help that we can make any progress at all.

Action

Because I took some time off this last week, I actually finished this message over a week ago. But I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. In fact, my main concern when I finished it was that I would get it mixed up with last week’s message because it was so fresh in my mind. So I’m going to ask all of you to join me in doing something that I think could be a life-changing experience for many of us.

This week, would you take some time each day to read out loud the Christ hymn found in verses 5-11? You can probably do that in under a minute, but slow down and take some time to think about and meditate on what you are reading. You can do that by yourself, but I encourage you to try doing that with your spouse or your family, too.

I’m pretty sure that if we take some time to focus on the humility of Jesus each day like that, it is going to impact the way we love God and love others.

Inspiration

True joy comes from having the mind of Christ that puts others first

As we close, I want you to imagine what your marriage would look life if both of you put the needs of the other person ahead of your own self interest. Certainly if more couples did that the divorce rate would plummet.

I want you to imagine how your workplace could be transformed if you worked with humility and put the interests of your boss and your fellow employees ahead of your own. Over time that might become a place where people looked forward to going to work.

For you kids, I want you to think about your school and how much better it would be if you were more concerned about what was good for your teachers and your fellow students than about your own desires. That would certainly eliminate a lot of conflict.

I want you to think about what our church would look like if it was full of people who were humble and always put others first. That would be a church that would be unified and which would be making a difference for the kingdom of God.