The Practice of Unity

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0:01Yeah, so as Joel mentioned, we have some history, and I've said this to a couple people this morning already, but I want to make sure all of you know it's been cool just to track with this church plant, seeing some of y'all worship with us at West End over the past few months. It's cool to just see what God has done just in forming this church body and bringing you to this point, so I just say that to encourage you and to remind you that God is definitely working in your midst.

0:37And yeah, so I've been told that you're going through a sermon series on the church's core values, and last week you started talking about unity from a passage in Revelation. And so this week we're going to be looking at a passage in Philippians that speaks to the same topic, but before I get to that, I want to just read the core value from your own documents so that we're all on the same page. So this is what we say here at New Creation about unity.

1:14Through the Spirit, good start, diverse people are made into a new family by faith in Christ. Rather than by a shared human culture or characteristic, we base our fellowship on biblical truths, and in matters of Christian liberty, we humbly serve others ahead of ourselves, because unity is God's gift to us and a testimony to the world. So this week I just hope that what we get to hear from God's word in Philippians is an encouragement to all of us to pursue this gift of unity that God has given us in the gospel.

1:51So I'm going to read our passage for this morning, which comes from Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 through 11, and should be on the screen behind me, but it's also in your bulletins as well. Obviously you're free to read it if you have other ways of doing that. And then I'll pray for us and then we'll dive in. So this is God's word, Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 through 11. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

2:36Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

3:10Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at 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. Lord, we thank you for the gift that is your word. Thank you that you've given it to us, not leaving us alone to figure out how it is you've called us to live, but giving it to us as a guide, speaking to us even today, still, throughout the ages.

3:46And I pray that you'd help me to communicate your word clearly. I pray that you would open our hearts and minds to what it is you have to teach us this morning, and let the words of our, would let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. In Jesus' name, amen. So Paul, this book, Philippians, was written as a letter by the Apostle Paul to a group of Christians, a church in the city of Philippi, while Paul was in prison, as we know Paul to do from time to time.

4:19And the city of Philippi is not just any regular city in the Roman Empire. It is located in Macedonia, and it was reestablished by Caesar Augustus, I believe, as a Roman colony with Roman soldiers. And that being the case, what happened was that there was a high degree of Roman patriotism in the city of Philippi. And so you had Roman customs, Roman cultures, Roman ways of thinking, Roman ways of doing life were just held in the highest regard. So Philippi, you can think of Philippi as kind of like a Rome away from Rome, so to speak.

5:08And that being the case, this church that existed in Philippi that Paul is writing to, because they lived, they were trying to live as Christ called them to live and calls us to live, they were naturally going against the grain of what everybody else was doing. And we can read about Paul's first trip to Philippi in Acts chapter 16, and if you were to go back and read that account, you would see that Christianity clearly rubbed people the wrong way, because as Paul and his ministry partners were going about their business, that became such an irritant to the people of Philippi that they got themselves beat up and thrown in jail.

5:53And while America may not necessarily be as consistently hostile towards Christianity and towards the church, I think we've all experienced enough to know that sometimes trying to live a biblical life is not necessarily in vogue in this country. Trying to live a biblical life is not, it can sometimes have us going against, as the Philippians experienced, going against what the world expects of us or what the world thinks we should do in our lives.

6:27And so, Paul has written this letter to encourage the Philippians to persevere in their faith in the midst of hardship, but not just hardship that comes from the outside, comes from outside of the church. He also is writing to encourage the Philippians to persevere, in particular to persevere in unity, despite the hardships that can arise internally, right? Because even though we are God's people, even though we profess Christ to be our Lord and Savior, we are still susceptible to our sinful natures.

7:04We're still susceptible to make mistakes. We're still susceptible to seek our own interests above the interests of others. We're still prone to wander, like we just sang. Our tendency is still to sometimes wander away from the life that God has called us to, and sometimes that looks like being selfish and self-centered when, as Paul reminds us in this passage, to look out for the interests of others and then consider others more valuable than even ourselves.

7:36So, the question then is, what do we have to defend ourselves against the strife and the quarreling that can sometimes arise within the church? What foundation is strong enough to hold us together in the midst of our differences and across our disagreements? And the first thing that I want to draw our attention to that I feel like God is communicating to us through this passage is that unity is the mark of community that is rooted in Christ. Unity, especially looking at the way Paul talks about it, is not necessarily an optional adjective to use when describing the church.

8:21It should be inherent and it should be evident among God's people. And this passage that we're looking at this morning in Paul's train of thought actually connects back to an earlier verse in this letter that I'll read for us. It's, if you're following along, in chapter 1, verse 27, where he says to his audience, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.

8:59So, what Paul is saying there then is that unity, being unified in the body, being unified in love, in one spirit, unified in service, is a requirement, is a criteria of living worthy to the gospel that we have been given. It is, like I said, not an optional or subjective thing. Being unified, unity being an evidence of God's presence among us should be something that not only we experience, but that, as you say in your core values, and even in Paul's, or in God's words, is a testimony, it's a witness of God, God's presence among us to the world.

9:48And so, in the beginning of this passage, Paul starts out with a list of adjectives, or a list of qualities that we should experience. And at first glance, it seems like Paul is sort of questioning whether or not these things are evident among the Philippians. But what I think he's actually doing is trying to provoke them to reflect on what they know to be true in the gospel, to reflect on the reality of being encouraged by being unified with Christ in faith by the Spirit, the comfort that they experience from God's love.

10:27And one of those qualities in particular, I think, is worth our time of meditating on this morning, is this phrase that Paul uses, the participation in the Spirit. And so, depending on your translation, that can also seem like Paul is referring to the fellowship that we have with each other in the Spirit, which is certainly true and certainly a thing that we do experience as we sit here this morning. But I think he's also getting at the reality that we all participate as believers in Christ in the same Spirit.

11:03And if that is the case, then loving one another selflessly and serving one another selflessly is warranted. The fact that we share in one Spirit, part of the same body and worship the same Christ means that the natural follow-through of that reality is to love and serve one another rather than what is so easy to do and what is sometimes tempting to do in belittling each other, insulting one another, being fake towards one another. And basically, Paul's opening in this passage can serve to us to reflect on these realities.

11:52If this is true of us, which it should be if we call Christ our Lord and Savior, if this is true of us, then how can I hate my brother or sister? How can I continue in disrespecting even people outside of the church, but how much more inside of the church that we share this faith with, right? I think in the Apostle John's first letter where he says, Anyone who claims to love God but hates his brother walks in darkness, and those that love their brother walk in the light.

12:30So Paul, in his own words in the Spirit, is encouraging us to walk in that light, to recognize the fact that we all participate in the same Spirit, and that being the case, ought to love and serve one another regardless of our differences. Because Christ has brought us together through his life and work in giving us the same Spirit. And as I said, the unity that we experience that serves as evidence to the world and to ourselves of God's presence among us serves also in a way of how we bear God's image in the world.

13:12When Jesus was preparing to be arrested on the night that he was betrayed, he spent time with his disciples praying, essentially praying over them in John chapter 17. And during that prayer, Jesus says these words about the disciples. This is John chapter 17, verses 22 through 23. He says, The glory that you have given me, speaking of God the Father, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them, speaking of the disciples, that they may be one, even as we are one.

13:55I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me, and love them, even as you loved me. So what Jesus is saying there is that the unity that he experiences within the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, is the same unity that the church is gifted through his life and work. So this unity that we are called to pursue, this unity that Paul is writing about to the Philippians, that they needed and we still desperately need today, is not just a nice-sounding quality that we should all aspire to pursue and experience, but this is the part of being image bearers of God in the world and to one another.

14:44And that should add weight to this core value when we talk about it, when we think about it, right? This isn't just a flippant thing that sounds nice, that looks good, but this is a gospel reality, this unity that we speak of. And as Paul goes on, he says, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. And I want to encourage us this morning and remind us this morning to not hear what Paul isn't saying.

15:22What he's not saying is that being the same, being unified, is not equivalent to uniformity, right? We are not in the church called to look the same, think the same, act the same, love the same things, sing the same songs, and whatever other examples that come to your mind. But what Paul is saying when he is encouraging us to have one mind, the sort of connotation that that carries is thinking towards the same goal. And a great metaphor that the Bible gives us for that reality comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 12, another letter that Paul has written, where Paul uses the metaphor of the body to speak of the church.

16:13And he talks about the different gifts that exist within the body and how each member of the body is valuable because of what God works in and through them as a part of his church. And he acknowledges the reality that different people can serve in different ways and carry different gifts that they can use ultimately to the glory of God the Father, which is that goal that Paul, I think, is encouraging the Philippians in us today to have in mind. The goal that he's referring to when he says to have one mind, and even that he lands this passage with in verse 11, in every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

17:00All of the work that God has given the church to do ultimately serves to glorify him as the King of King and the Lord of Lords. So when we think about unity and we think about pursuing unity, what we are not trying to do is to become uniform. We're not trying to become the exact same person. I can't get this image out of my mind of this old movie called I, Robot, Robot with Will Smith, and there's just this factory warehouse full of all of these robots that look the same, speak at the same time.

17:36And the only, I think the only good parallel for the church in that is that they all have the same goal. And the same goal that we should be unified over is to glorify God, but not to become carbon copies of one another. I found this quote helpful when I was reflecting on this passage. One commentator said that the way to the union of Christendom, that is the church, the way to the union of Christendom does not lie through committee rooms, though there is a task of formulation to be done there.

18:09It lies through personal union with the Lord, so deep and real as to be comparable with his union with the Father. So again, the unity that Paul is encouraging the Philippians to reflect on and to meditate on and to pursue, the same unity that we are called to experience and pursue today doesn't come from our efforts necessarily. It comes from each and every one of us being unified with Christ by faith and in the same spirit and therefore being part of the same body.

18:46But Paul also gives us a warning of something that will indeed threaten this unity that the gospel brings to us. He says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit. And so the way that Paul positions that warning is a flag to us, a signal to us that, excuse me, selfish ambition is in direct opposition to unity. That one of the many things probably that threatens unity today in the church and throughout the global church is selfish ambition. And we, you know, we see that plenty of times throughout the Bible.

19:37One in particular comes to mind with Jesus in that Judas, you know, the disciple who betrayed him, once he was offered that money to turn Jesus in, that wasn't going to anyone but himself. And while obviously Jesus' sacrifice serves to our benefit, Judas is a shining example of what it looks like to live into your selfish ambition. And in living into our selfish ambition, what we do inherently is belittle each other. We look at each other as not being as important as us.

20:24And at worst, we look at each other as means to an end, whatever that end is that serves our ultimate goals. I experienced, or I experienced this in myself, in my marriage. I'm an only child. And growing up, my parents did try to make sure that I did not grow up to be a spoiled, entirely self-centered person. And I think if you talk to a lot of people that knew me growing up and in college, they would describe me as relatively not selfish. And so I went into marriage thinking that, oh yeah, like being selfless, not putting myself first, probably won't be that hard.

21:07And I learned very quickly and very often early on that that was not true of me. There are plenty of stories that Abby and I can think of that show that it is my natural bent to think of myself first and put myself before anybody else. And so when we read this passage of not doing anything, of Paul's warning to not live into our selfish ambition, I want to encourage us and remind us that while it is easier said than done and while it is sometimes easier at different seasons of life than others, that is where our sinful hearts lie naturally.

21:56Like our natural disposition as sinners is to look out for ourselves and is to serve ourselves above anyone else. And there is a reason that the prophet Jeremiah describes the heart as being desperately sick above all things. And I want to encourage us to not be fooled by ourselves as I have been to think that we are somehow not as prone to wander as the song we just sang says. We are not as prone to sin, but that we need Jesus because we are prone to sin and because we are prone to live by our selfish ambitions.

22:35So that then begs the question, what is our solution to avoiding our selfish ambition? What defense, as I said earlier, do we have against living into our selfish desires and centering our hearts on ourselves rather than God and one another? And I think that this is where Paul's example of the life of Christ comes into play because another thing I want to try to leave us with this morning is that the foundation of this unity that we are given in the gospel is found in the humility of Christ.

23:16I love the way that Paul describes it. A lot of commentators say that verses 5 through 11 are a hymn that some people would have known at the time this was written. But he says, Have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant. And so Paul calls us to this not because this sounds nice, not because it sounds pretty, but because this is the way that Jesus lived.

23:52This was the pattern of Jesus' life. And even Jesus himself tells his disciples in one of the accounts of the gospels that the servant is not greater than the master. Right? And if we call ourselves, if we are called to give our bodies, to give our members as servants of righteousness, as Paul puts it in Romans 6, rather than slaves to sin, then we cannot expect to live differently, a different pattern of life than Jesus, our master and Lord and Savior.

24:28Because as Jesus himself said, as I just said, the servant is not greater than the master. And I think even in the gospel of John, as he's washing his disciples' feet, he tells them, As I have done for you, do for one another. Right? So this is not a call to try to, it's not simply just a call to try to live differently. This is a call to model the life of our Savior to one another and to the world. And the interesting thing about unity is that it's not actually a foreign experience in human life.

25:03We find unity over very many different things, whether it's unity over a sports team that you love, unity over your favorite dish at Thanksgiving, unity over your favorite music artist, unity over your favorite school, unity over where you even go to school. There are so many different kinds of things that we actually have in common with one another and that we can unify over. But as human history has shown, none of those things have been strong enough and secure enough and sturdy enough or stable enough to actually give us a lasting life.

25:44And the reason that Jesus is a better foundation for unity, the reason that Jesus is a better foundation for life is because he succeeds where we fail. Where Paul says that he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. The word grasped is actually the same kind of action, action, the same word that is used to describe what Eve does with the fruit of, from the forbidden tree in Genesis chapter 3 where it says, I didn't write it down. No, I did.

26:22But so when the, this is Genesis chapter 3 verse 6. So when the woman, that is Eve, saw the tree, it was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was there with her and he ate. And in that situation, when the serpent is tempting Adam and Eve, he says to them that the fruit will make them like God. And then Paul here says that Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

26:56So where Adam and Eve failed and thereby letting sin into the world, into all humanity, Jesus rejects the serpent's temptation. Jesus passes the test where we fail it. And because of that, we are able, by being united to him by the spirit in faith, we are also able to resist the devil's temptations in our lives, one of them being our selfish ambitions. And this is why Jesus also to his disciples encourages them to die to themselves. In John chapter 12, he says that unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a seed.

27:41But if it falls to the ground and dies, it bears much fruit. So we experience the fruit of Jesus' death because he resisted where Adam and Eve failed. Because he did not grasp after power the way that Adam and Eve did, we now have a chance at eternal life through unity with him. And that's why we sing songs that speak of this. There's a song in particular that I'm sure people in here know that I grew up singing on Christ the solid rock. And one of the lines in the song says, I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but only in Lord Jesus' name.

28:18I think that's really helpful for me because it articulates how there are so many other things that we can unify over. There are so many other things that seem sweet to us, that seem like they will give us life, that we chase after, and sometimes in that chasing live into our selfish ambitions, but that ultimately don't give us life. And as the song says, and as Paul's encouraging us in, instead we need to look to Jesus because he is the only real sturdy and stable and solid foundation for the unity that the gospel gives to us in the unity that really so many of us seek and want to experience in our lives and with one another.

29:07And so it is in this humiliation of Jesus when he emptied himself, when he took the form of a servant that actually sets us free. And the irony of trying to live in the same humility, trying to walk in the same humility that Jesus modeled for us, as Paul reminds us here, is that that actually sets us free from feeling like we have to live by our selfish ambition. When we rest in the work that Jesus has done for us, when we look at the way that he gave of himself, but also when we look at the way that God exalted him, because in Jesus' resurrection, he was vindicated, he was justified, and as Paul says, exalted highly.

29:52And the language there means that he is exalted to the highest place. There's no one above Jesus. There is no one of greater authority. There's no one more worthy of our praise and of our attention and of our love. And when we see that, when we see what God has done for Jesus in his humiliation and the way that he was exalted, the way that he was raised up, when we rest in him, when we trust in his work and are unified to him in faith by the Spirit, we can rest in knowing that as we live to serve one another, to look out for others' interests above our own, when we consider others more valuable than us, we can rest in knowing that we don't have to chase after what we want.

30:41We don't have to be the ones that secure our lives, because just as God vindicated and raised Jesus up from the dead, he will do that very same thing for us in the final day, and we will then live with him in eternal life and eternal peace. And so Paul gives us this reminder because in the pattern of Jesus' life, so too when we are unified with him, we will also experience that same humiliation and exaltation. Though we are called to live as servants to Jesus and to one another in this life, that is not the end-all, be-all.

31:22And while people will look at that and think, man, these people are doormats, these people are soft, these people are so meek, I want nothing to do with them, we can trust that in living and participating in the Spirit, participating in the pattern of Jesus' life, we can trust that God will secure our lives. We can trust that God is our ultimate satisfaction, because as I'm sure a lot of us have experienced, the selfish ambition that we tend to live into does not ultimately give us the life that we seek.

31:58So as we prepare to come to the table this morning, I just want to encourage us and remind us that just as Jesus and the Father are one, we are called to be one with Jesus, and so we are to be one body with one mind towards God's glory. As we prepare to share the Lord's Supper, let us remember that the life and work of Jesus sets us free to live as servants, and not feel like we have to secure our deepest dreams and desires, because God does that for us in Jesus himself.

32:32So let's pray. Father, we're grateful that this unity is a gift, we're grateful that you have secured this unity in the life and work of Jesus, and we're grateful that he is a foundation that is stronger than any other, so I pray that you would help us to look to him, help us to rest in him, and as the passage says, consider one another more significant than ourselves. In Jesus' name, amen.