Philippians Part 3: Being Formed by the Cross

July 26, 2020 Series: Philippians

Passage: Philippians 1:19–26

Philippians 1:19–26

Yes, and I will rejoice, [19] for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, [20] as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. [21] For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. [22] If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. [23] I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. [24] But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. [25] Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, [26] so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. (ESV)

 

 

Verse 19:

Rejoicing because of being delivered through their prayers by the supply of the Spirit of Jesus. Deliverance – soteria – general deliverance seems to be focused on salvation on that day. Supply of Spirit refers to his presence, help seems to make the Spirit the object, while gramatically the Spirit is the subject of supply. God has supplied the Spirit for his deliverance, and their prayers are answered by the supply of the Spirit in Paul’s life.

 

20: Part of that salvation is that he will not be ashamed when he is faced with his impending trial – the implication of the passage – and that regardless of what happens, whether he lives or dies, Christ will be honored. Paul does not want to be ashamed of Christ. In body, in this life, he wants to honor Christ. In death, he clings to the hope of his vindication and salvation before Christ. Christ is at the center of both. Quotation of Job 13:16 – even as life is hard, he knows that his redeemer will save him.

 

21: To live is Christ, and to die is gain. For Paul, even in suffering and difficulty, Christ is everything. In life, and in death. Death gains Christ, and life is Christ. Christ is the purpose of living now, and Christ is the goal of death tomorrow. Christ, being the true human, is the missing key for who we are, and now he makes us complete by his Spirit, and his presence will satisfy the longings of our heart, providing for us joy unspeakable.

 

The presence of Christ is key to both. Christ is enough right now, even as you are sitting, apart from your work and life, to be satisfied in him. Yet life is work – Adam and Eve were created to work in the Garden of Eden. Living and acting and work are part of what it means to be human – therefore, it is not enough to just be satisfied in Christ as you are sitting here. True satisfaction in Christ leads to a life in Christ, and that is the purpose of the supply of the Spirit of Christ.

 

 

22-26 defines what he means by “To live is Christ” and “to die is gain.” Paul presents his cruciform idea of why he knows it is best to keep on living in this body – for the sake of others, for their joy and progress in the faith. The Spirit of God has not only bonded him to Christ, but in doing so, he is now bonded to these Christians as they are all in Christ. Therefore his life is to be lived for the glory of God in Christ, and for the love of neighbor in Christ – neighbor including his fellow Christians, especially in this paragraph. he is confident that his deliverance now

 

 

__________________

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Our journey through Philippians thus far has revealed this idea of “Becoming a Jesus-like, Cross-Shaped Church Family” in various ways. Paul is writing this letter to the Philippians while in jail, and in the context of the Roman Grecco world he was living in, he is writing in order that they become joyful people who are living for Jesus, which inevitably means that they are living a cross-shaped life, because Jesus’ life was cross shaped, rather than a people concerned primarily with their own status and societal rankings and possession of honor, the dominant worldveiw of the Romans.

I’m going to throw out a word for you guys, its a theological term, not sure who coined it, but it is becoming more and more used in circles of biblical studies. It is the word “cruciform.” The idea is this: it’s a combination of two words – cross and conform. To conform to the cross. The Christian life is this idea of a cruciform existence, or to put it another way, cruciformity describes the trajectory of the Christian life.

The cross stands as the center point for many things. It stands as the means by which our sins were paid for. Simultaneously, God’s love was poured out on us through the cross as God’s wrath against sin was poured out on his Son rather than us.

Jesus dying as our substitution is revealing his very person, who he is. God is love, says the Apostle John. Love has as its trajectory self-giving. The cross, then, becomes the ultimate symbol of love – Jesus laying his life down for his friends, and also his enemies.

Thus, we can be said to be a Jesus-like, Cross-shaped people, being willing to love God and others at the expense of ourselves. This results in us as Christians an outward focus on our life. It results in us Christians looking away from us for meaning, for purpose, for motivation, for really everything, and results in us looking to have Jesus at the center of our life, loving as he loved, and living for God and others – even if life is hard – a cross shaped life. This is the story of Jesus’ life, and this is our “Master Story.” And we join Jesus and his work by joining in the work he is doing right now by the living out of this Master Story.

 

As we did last week, I want to once again read this Master Story aloud with you guys. Please grab a red bible in the back of the pew in front of you, and turn to page 1162.

 

I’m going to read until verse 4, and at verse 5, everyone join me by reading this aloud.

 

So I will begin, and join with me in verse 5:

“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

 

Now everyone join me:

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and become obedience to death – even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 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.”

 

 

Because of Jesus and because of Paul being called to participate in this new life in Christ and join in on being mark by Jesus’ Master Story, Paul came to embrace unique humility that almost seems alien. Last week we saw one result of this was a remarkable humility in Paul, when other people were trying to damage Paul’s reputation and spread gossip about him, trying to compete with him and perhaps win over people to “their side” outside of Paul’s leadership through being overly critical of Paul.

We saw how Paul’s ministry was completely marked by the preaching of Jesus, of the Good News of his life, death and resurrection. Thus, if these competitors wanted to bad mouth him and be critical of him and compete with him, they had to preach the Gospel better than Paul. Paul, because he did not have the practice of thinking about himself, but rather thinking first about Jesus, he had forgotton about himself so much that he said “I don’t care about my reputation, I’m rejoicing that the Gospel is being preached. So whether it is out of good motivation, or motivation intending to bring me harm, I’m full of joy”

 

Now let’s shift to our sermon today, because Paul continues on these theme of Jesus and the Good News, the Master Story, being everything for Paul. We are going to see another example of Paul being more concerned about Jesus and others before himself, and we are even going to see one of those “big” questions answered – why are you and I alive? Where is our very purpose to be found? How do we even define this life we live, and how do we make sense of everything around us?

Paul was faced with this question due to the chains on his wrists. He knew that two things lie before him – either death or life. How did the Gospel inform Paul’s response to this harsh reality? Yes, Paul was under a house arrest situation where he could write letter, but if this letter was written in Rome, which I think it was although its still hard to tell, I’ve stepped foot in Paul’s prison, the very place where he was chained. It was a small place with a small ceiling, the middle of it would have had a stream of the septic fluids from the prisoners above him, through gravity draining down to the ground below him, right in front of him. His food would have been scarce, although he would have enjoyed some freedom of communication with friends, and even with the writing of letters, as we see.

A trial awaited him, a trial against him concerning his testimony of Jesus and all of the civil unrest that followed him wherever he preached. Would he be released from prison to keep on ministering? Or would he die?

The Gospel had altered how Paul viewed his own life and his own existence, and we see here one of the few soliloquy's in Paul’s letters. He gets personal and shares some personal thoughts. What we see is one of the more timeless passages of Paul, getting a glimpse of how the Gospel for Paul informed his view of both life and death.

 

____

 

Definitions of life and death in our modern times are governed now by science. Science has become the final word if you want to understand not only the “how” question but the “why” question of both life and death. People are still worried about life and fear it day to day, striving for purpose, and people still fear death.

However, in an interesting turn of events, science itself seems to be recommending almost “religious” practices for humans if they are to flourish. There are many examples of this, but I want to read some excerts from an article in the Atlantic entitled: “Health Tip: Find Purpose in Life. The Growing science on how a body imbued with purpose becomes physically healthier.” The author, James Hamblin, interacted with various scientists on this subject concerning the physical health of us and how it is connected to purpose – and the results were fascinating.

 

"I think we're in an increasingly nihilistic world… where it’s not necessarily standard to aspire to “something beyond just watching the Kardashian sisters on television and seeing what they're doing." When we spoke, he cited Nietzsche offhandedly, in his warning that as God dies in our lives, as we leave our families—in other words, as we modernize—people have to start finding their own meaning and values. And Emile Durkheim, who wrote in 1897’s Suicide that as we no longer live in the same villages as our families, growing disconnected, we’d increasingly kill ourselves.

But don’t despair, because as we are connected and calm, we see increases in purpose. Elizabeth Blackburn, a professor in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at University of California, San Francisco, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her work relating psychological stress to physical aging…. She… found that the meditators had an increased sense of purpose in life. “It was the purpose, not the meditation itself,” Strecher explained... To his interpretation of the study, meditation was a mediator that created greater purpose; and then it was the sense of purpose that [essentially contributed to increased bodily health]

So, one approach, potentially, is meditation,” Strecher said. Specifically, in this case, Blackburn used something called loving-kindness meditation. The name probably isn't helping anyone overcome their aversion to new-age therapies, but it's pretty straightforward: You bring in a person who you dislike, and you start expressing love and kindness to them. In Strecher’s estimation, “It's a very difficult thing to do.”

[He was interviewing Victor Stretcher, professor of health at the University of Michigan. Stretcher had been doing this work on bodily health and its connection to us finding purpose, and he wrote a book called “On Purpose.” He explains the background of the book:]

 

The book is partially a personal story, related to the loss of his 19-year-old daughter Julia, who had been one of the first heart transplant recipients. When she died four years ago, Strecher lost his own sense of purpose in life. “The only way I could regain it was to think beyond myself,” he said, “beyond my grief; get over my own ego.”

 

So now science is recommending some sort of meditation practices – quiet moments for the mind to stop. Also, science is recommending loving-kindness therapy where we practice loving others, especially those we perceive to be our enemies. Lastly, this professor realized that his own grief and his ego – himself – was the primarily roadblock to finding purpose.

 

I want to argue that in a way, science is confirming what we see Paul preaching in this text. You and I need purpose. It’s a part of what it means to be human. We’ve seen the destructive force of living only for self, and I believe our world today is becoming more and more exhausted by it. We see protests in our streets calling for us to learn how to love others, regardless of our differences, learning how to put behind us the things that have so sharply divided us. So many are becoming sick of this “us vs. them” mentality, and know that it is not bringing purpose to our lives but only divisiveness, exhaustion, anger and fear.

However, there is a missing element to this all: it is Christ. Even if it is becoming more scientifically correct to say that loving your enemies is good for you, I still ask – for you? You, still being the end goal? Then, in somewhat contradictory terms, the same professor knows that we need to find a way to get beyond ourselves, and learn to love others even more than ourselves – but then does not others become the center? What happens when those people let you down? I’ve let myself down often, and other people have left me down often.

The answer does not end with you, and does not end with others – there a love we need that rises before them both, and places everything in correct order. It’s the missing key from this conversation – and we need to explore it today if we are to truly find the purpose that you and I continually seek. Let’s look at this text:

 

Yes, and I will rejoice, [19] for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, [20] as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

 

Paul is in jail, yet he is rejoicing, because he knows many people are praying for him. Almost all of our english translations here will use the word “help” is the subject, making the the Spirit the object of that subject (yea we’re back in 10th grade grammer this morning). Usually this happens in translation when a literal translation into english gets goofy and difficult, but unfortunately sometimes meaning can get cloudy in process, hence the importance of learning the original languages. The reverse order is actually correct – that the subject is really the Spirit, and the word behind “help” is the object. A literal interpretation, then would read:

“I know that through your prayers and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus this will turn out for my deliverance.” The Spirit is our helper, but here he is described in deep connection with the Christian. We are supplied with the Spirit. Like a soldier given proper clothing and needs for battle, you and I are supplied with the Spirit of Jesus himself who applies all the prayer given for us, and is actively living in us now. We are in Christ by his Spirit, and we are supplied by his Spirit. In this way he is our Helper.

Paul knows that all of this is occurring for the purpose of being delivered. Now, it is easy to immediately think “well Paul is obviously talking about his nasty prison sentence and the suffering he is undergoing. So he knows that his deliverance from prison is nigh through their prayers and the supply of the Spirit.”

No. Paul doesn’t mention anything here about being delivered from prison. Rather, he goes into the topic of life and death. He knows that there are two things in front of him: life, and death. In his state in prison awaiting trial, and even in the probability of sickness and disease in prison, these two realities are a little more front and center for Paul right now. Paul, right now, is looking for purpose in his suffering, and we will see, he goes to one source to describe what he has found.

He has purpose in life and death, but he still knows that he must face both. He doesn’t want to be ashamed as he stands before the tribunal. If the verdict is death for him because of his Gospel preaching, he doesn’t want to detract from Christ and be ashamed. He wants to stand strong – to be delivered from life unto death by still confessing the name of Jesus. Or, if he continues to life, he wants to not be ashamed of how he is living. He wants to be delivered now in life to a life finding purpose and meaning in no other than Jesus Christ.

Both are a call to courage, because both for Paul will be difficult. But in these two ways, he knows that he will be delivered, whether in life or in death.

Notice that Paul isn’t praying to be delivered from his current sufferings, but rather he prays for the courage to face either life or death with Jesus still at the center of his life. You see, his purpose is not contingent on a suffering free, chain-free life. No, his purpose is found in Christ and in Christ alone. His purpose for breath and life and dying is found in Christ, and Christ alone. If it means life and hardship here, he prays for courage. If it means martyrdom or death, he prays for courage. He does not pray for comfort, for release, and for the chains to be released.

This is another astonishing thing, is it not? It immediately exposes our propped up world of comfort, where there is a pill for every ache and pain, and machines and medications that can prop up our existence to be as comfortable and as long as possible, with technology continually aiming at making life more convenient and easier, and our expectations always in the direction of comfort and convenience and suffering free.

Our reaction to Covid has shown this. Previous generations knew suffering so much more than you and I. Imagine for a moment that you were born in 1900. When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs two years. Fifty million people die from it in those two years.

When you're 29, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.

When you're 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish.

On and on we can go. Only in recent times has death become something not front and center. Only in recent times has suffering come to be not common place, and this affects our purpose for living. We are a generation that does not know how to suffer well.

Often times, God does not want to relieve us of suffering. Rather, he wants to grow us through suffering. Often times God does not want you to be comfortable, but rather learn how through hardship and difficulty what it truly means to look at Jesus for hope, strength and joy – the one who lived a life full of sorrows, the one who was deeply acquainted with grief. Life is a fire of purification, and the Spirit is here to bring us through, reminding us that not only Jesus lived through his suffering and survived temptation and lived perhaps the most joyful and abundant life any human being could have lived – but he was risen from the dead, showing that our present state of suffering WILL NOT BE FOREVER.

 

Paul continues to explain what he means:

 

[21] For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

 

Paul applied a rhetorical device in the original greek, Christos being Christ, and kredos being gain. To live is Christ. Period. Where is our purpose found? Christ. Why are we breathing right now? Christ.

Well what about death? Death is only a gain, because it means that we get to be with Christ. So whether you are alive, Christ, or whether you are facing death, it’s even better – it’s a gain.

You see, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Nothing in this life pulls us away from this statement. As all of humanity is searching for meaning, and as this recognition that an outword focused, non-selfish, non-egotistical and loving way of living provides purpose for us, one thing is still missing:

We are missing Christ. We are missing him. We can only truly love in him. We can only face suffering and hardship in him. We can only face death and even profit in death through him. He is the goal of it all, he always has been, and he always will be. And there is no greater joy than knowing Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul sees his life and his world in nothing else other than Jesus Christ.

As we saw last week and as we will see again on the back end of this sermon, this turns Paul truly outward. A life consumed with Jesus will in moments of strength provide us with a reaction that isn’t concerned about ourselves, but rather for others. Yet again, Paul does just that:

 

[22] If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. [23] I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. [24] But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. [25] Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, [26] so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. (ESV)