Philippians 1:27 – 2:5 Bible Teaching

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Philippians 1.27-2.5
February 2nd 2020
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So we left off with Paul admitting in his letter to the believers at Philippi that if he was to live

1:26 That (their) rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.

And then he adds at verse 27 some directives for them, saying

27 Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;
28 And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God.
29 For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;
30 Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.

So, jump back to verse 27 where Paul now adds:

27 Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

While we use the word “conversation,” to mean verbal discourse, in the Bible it better means “our overall conduct.”

“let your conduct, as a Christian citizen of Philippi, be as one that becomes the gospel.”

Remember the setting and the times: a world where paganism and Judaism surrounded them. An age that was openly taught that Jesus was coming back to save them from their tumultuous surroundings, and where the Bride was to be pure and without spot.

So, Paul is telling them to look and play the part. This suggests that there is a way to live that is appropriate to being recipients of the Gospel.

That “way” was pretty detailed in Paul’s day – and many expressions of the faith suggest this continues to be true.

One of the commentators I read wrote:

“The rules of the gospel are to be applied to all our conduct–to our conversation, business transactions, modes of dress, style of living, entertainments, etc. There is nothing which we do, or say, or purpose, that is to be excepted from those rules.”

And so we look around and see people today and in days past establishing their view of these rules and then enforcing them on those who congregate with them.

It is my pet peeve as Jesus taught the opposite in His life. That it wasn’t the dress or what went into the body, but instead was all about the contents of the heart and the expressions of the mouth that mattered.

We know a Mormon when we see one, don’t we – at least on Sundays. We know an Amish person, we know a fundamentalist LDS – uniforms of external conformity.

The problem with them is they almost always become more important in the lives of those who embrace them than the treasures of the heart.

Because we are living in the age of fulfillment AND because we really can’t tell a believer from a none believer unless we get to know them personally, I suggest that conformity to Paul’s directive here is all personal, entirely subjective, and in the hands of God through the liberty of the individual.

If not then the believer from the band Korn is really in big trouble and faith alone has become faith AND works.

Paul adds,

“that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel”

Now that is good advice – to them then and to us! That all believers

Stand fast in one spirit
Stand fast with one mind
Striving together for the faith of the Gospel.

No matter if I am freed to come and see you or am left in chains here in Rome

Stand fast in one spirit
Stand fast with one mind
Striving together for the faith of the Gospel.

Stand fast –

Be stationary, be persistent, in one Spirit.

John the beloved wrote in 1st John 4:1
to the believers in his day

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try (test, discern, examine) the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

I am convinced that this is applicable today as it was then. There are certainly spirits orbiting around all sort of things in this world – who or what they are I have no idea, though most Christians size them up as Satan and his demons.

John adds in that chapter in 1st John something pertinent to them, saying

1st John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

And I would suppose that the same spirit is available and in operation today. Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesians 2:2

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

Does the dark spirit that moved the prince of the power of the air which leads the children of disobedience still thrive?

It seems so – somehow – perhaps it is eternal and always working in opposition to the Spirit of Truth that these believers were commanded to stand firm in. It certainly seems to abide in the world today.

Paul added in 1st Corinthians 2:12

“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”

Jesus said of this Spirit which is of God in John 14:17:

John 14:17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

I don’t want to sound too mystical but the spirit or spirits of this world, that move and motivate the children of the same, are readily apparent in many cases.

We can sense them in certain places and at certain events, in certain people and even in some of the teachings they extol.

Some are really advanced and complex and disguise themselves as light – bit it’s a light that does not warm or glorify the true and living God.

I am criticized for agreeing with the Bible with says that Satan and His demons were cast into the Lake of Fire. But by no means should this be construed to suggest that there are not dark spiritual forces at work in the world – whether they come from the beyond, the absence of God in places, or the heart of Man.

Paul tells the believers in that day to stand fast in ONE Spirit, of course meaning the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of Truth, which always manifests itself (in and through us) in love, joy, peace, gentleness, all goodness, self-control, longsuffering, patience, and truth – this is a spirit that is not of this world.

One of the tools we can use as believers to discern the spirit operating in others is what fruit does it, will it produce. What spirit is driving the teaching (as evidenced by the content of the teaching) and what is the bottom-line outcome in our lives if we were to embrace whatever is being promoted.

Through these means we test all things, we try the spirits, and hold fast to what is good remembering that “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is NOT of the Father but of this world.”

Using these tools we are able to discern or test the spirits and to Stand in the One Spirit – which is the Spirit of Truth.

One final thing – take emotions out of the assessment process. They have no intelligence and will gum up the process of vetting information and advice.

So, Paul has said:

Stand fast in one spirit

Then he tells them to also
Stand fast with one mind

Typically, when we read mind in scripture the Greek is nous, but not here – its psuche – which means, mind will and emotions.

To the Greeks the psuche was also commonly seen as the heart (or soul) of the person – what makes you you and me me.

Stand with one of these, Paul says. But what is that one heart, soul, or mind that believers are to stand united with? Scripture makes it plain: The Mind of Christ.

Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians 1:10 Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

So they were to be unified with this mind – which we will get to in a minute. But first, to have the mind of Christ is not the same thing as the Mind of God – and this is an important distinction.

We will talk in a minute about the “mind of the Christ” but the mind of the LORD GOD YHWH? None know that.

Paul confirms this in 1st Corinthians 2:16 when, borrowing from Isaiah 40:13 says
“For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”

They are two distinct minds IN THAT the Mind of Christ speaks to the mind of a human being who is God with us, but the mind of the LORD GOD is not human and has no such thoughts as a man.

The form of speech that this is written in is called the interrogative form and is as strong mode as any that denies (LISTEN) that any one . . . has ever . . . known . . . the mind of the Lord.

The argument of Paul here is that “No one can understand God. No one can fully comprehend his full plans, his feelings, his views, his designs. No one knows his nature, his truth in its entirely, or his disposition at any given time.

Last Sunday we all got news that a prominent American sports figure, and his 13-year old daughter, and her teammate and her parents, and three other people, were all killed when the helicopter they were in crashed.

Nobody, when it comes to the intentions of the living God, can say why He didn’t save them. Nobody – in the positive or the negative can explain why them then.

Soren Kierkegaard, a father of modern existentialism and absurdism, and whose influence greatly influenced Martin Heidegger and John Paul Sartre, Karl Barth and Emil Brunner – so he was without any stretch of the imagination a thinker.

To understand him, it’s important to understand how he understood God, who he described as a completely transcendent and therefore there is “an infinite qualitative difference” that separates God from his creations call human beings.

And while Kierkegaard did believe that God became incarnate he didn’t feel that the incarnation did all that much to bridge the gap between the ways of YHWH and us – something that both Isaiah and Paul seem to openly admit.

As a result of this gap between Him and us, Kierkegaard called this gap “absurdism,” which is at the heart of his unique definition of faith.

For Kierkegaard, faith isn’t a way of knowing or an act of trust in God’s goodness and love for us. Instead, faith is a belief and trust in the “strength of the absurd” and by “absurd,” he means that which contradicts human reason.

This takes us well beyond the notion that our ability to reason can only take us so far but is really a call to try and abandon all reason we use when trying to understand a God who cannot be understood. It just can’t be done.

And with this mindset Kierkegaard produced what he called, “the leap of faith.” Jumping out, as it were, into the hands of a God who’s ways we cannot comprehend – at all – and trusting that no matter what happens, we will not KNOW the reason why – and place our faith in that principle.

Unfortunately, in Kierkegaard trying to help believers and others see that we cannot know the mind of God and to attempt to (in any way) is an absurdity, secular thinkers (like Heidegger and Sartre) stripped away the Christian language from his views and what was left was a radical individualism where action, (like faith), was tragically divorced from reason (meaning knowledge). In this, knowing became the domain of science alone and spiritual immaterial supernatural explanations for knowing spiritual things died a quick death.

This reaction was extreme because Kierkegaard did NOT say we could NOT know things about God nor did he say that we could not know how to live through the “Mind of Christ” only that it is absurd to think we can KNOW the mind and heart and will and ways of God – at all.

And the reality is – we cannot – but unfortunately religionists often make the mistake of thinking that we can, (or that they can) and then they proceed to assign God’s love or His anger or His disposition to events and circumstances.

In this way, religionists are no different than superstitious backwooded people groups who believe a woodpecker in the yard and dusk means a windfall of money in the morning.

No, infinite God is not knowable by finite man except of His attributes or traits – how He uses them remains a mystery.
He is infinite and unknowable, and all we have left, as Kierkegaard made clear, is the personal choice to trust in this fact rather than to try to overcome the absurdity of events as they happen.

To me, at least, as a hu-man, it makes no sense for a loving God to take a successful man who is traveling with one of his four daughters to a basketball game, along with all of the others (who were doing the same) and let the helicopter they were in fall out of the sky and kill them all.

In my mind, that helicopter should have fallen out of the sky some 20 minutes earlier on skid row and killed as many of the suffering homeless as a means to put them out of their misery but not letting anyone die on the craft.

Some might suggest that the copter crashed as a means to punish the wordly ways or affluence of Kobe, and others as a means to show the world that He, God, is in charge, or this or that, or or or . . .

This is what Kierkegaard said is absurd – and it is, because not one of us KNOWS the mind of God. And He doesn’t really tell us what it is, does he.

In this age we would do well to adopt Kierkegaard’s insights on absurdity and just trust that whatever His plans and purposes are, we are going to accept them.

That’s real faith.

However, we can, as believers, know the mind of Christ.

Interestingly, the next chapter will open us up to exactly what this mind is as Paul will say there:

Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Bottom line, at the end of the day, the mind of Christ – even though we don’t want to hear it – was, and is, to suffer.

But made himself of no reputation (painful to the flesh), and took upon him the form of a servant (painful to the flesh), and was made in the likeness of men (painful to Him): And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself,(painful to the flesh) and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.(painful to the flesh)

To be of one mind, which Paul stated, for them to stand firm in the “mind of Christ,” was another way to say, suffer for His cause.

This suffering comes in and through a number of ways in the Christian life and walk.

Paul wrote in Romans 7:25

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

To serve the Law of God is to love all others, all the time, in whatever manner the spirit leads, with knowledge and discernment, and that is synonymous with suffering.

Peter wrote in 1st Peter 4:1

“Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin;”

And in the first chapter of Peter verse 13 Peter wrote to the Saints in that day:

“Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”

This all makes sense when we consider the next verse here in Philippians where Paul says

“And in nothing terrified by your adversaries . . .”

Because suffering with the mind of Christ let them know there was purpose in it and nothing could happen to them that YHWH would not allow.

This is why Paul also wrote to the believers in Thessalonians and said

2nd Th 2:2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.

The last thing that Paul commended the believers to do in this verse was telling them as they stood fast in ONE Spirit and with One Mind (which was the mind of Christ) that they would continue

“Striving together for the faith of the Gospel.”

Laboring together, wrestling together, for the “faith of the Gospel,” an interesting turn of phrase.

Notice the unity described in each line:

ONE SPIRIT, ONE MIND, WRESTING TOGETHER.

The unity demanded of the early apostolic church cannot be denied = the bride must be together for all sorts of obvious reasons – and the togetherness could have included what they ate and wore and did.

But today that unity is best defined by our agape love as we have proven over the past 2000 years it certainly will not be in doctrine or practice – not should we expect it to be.

So, Paul adds (verse 28):

28 And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: (don’t let them frighten you with their threats or alienation, and he adds) which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God.

The believers then had a preponderance of the community against them – as we said, Jews, Pagans, and in the end the Roman armies.

It seems, from passages like this and others, that the believers at Philippi were suffering persecution, thought it is not stated nor a reason given.

But Paul tells them not to be terrified by anything their adversaries or opponents sent their way.

“Do not be alarmed at anything which they can do. Maintain your Christian integrity, notwithstanding all the opposition which they can make. They will, in the end, certainly be destroyed, and you will be saved.”

Paul adds that the actions of these adversaries “was to them” (the adversaries) “an evident token of perdition.”

What does that mean? The word is Apolia and it means a number of things in scriputure but the most concise meaning is loss or ruin, though many think it means death and total destruction.

All Paul seems to be saying is that their poor treatment of you is evidence that they will suffer loss, ruin, death and or destruction.

But then he adds that their treatment or ways would be to them:

“of salvation, and that of God.

In other words it would be a proof of their own salvation,” because it would show that they were the friends of the Redeemer and that in the poor treatment they received they had the assurance that they would be saved.

Because Paul spoke first of these things being proof of their salvation when he adds the line, “and that of God,” I think we can read this as a proof that God has and will continue to step in on their behalf and be present with them.

And then in the next line we get some more validation that to have the mind is Christ is synonymous with suffering as Paul adds

29 For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;

For to you Christians, it is given “IN THE BEHALF of Christ . . .”

“In the cause of Christ or perhaps with the view to honor Christ or even these things are brought to you in consequence of your being Christians . . . to . . .

Not only to believe on him

That is the first step – believing on and in Him and all that he said, did and represented to the world,

“But to also suffer for his sake.”

We of course read know this was part of the Apostles call, that they were to suffer for His sake and cause as Acts 5:41 tells us that Peter and others

“departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.”

According to scripture, suffering for God (in the Old Testament) and suffering for Christ in the New, was a privilege.

Perhaps this is because the student is not above the master and if we are to resemble Him in our lives and walk, we are to resemble and perhaps unite with him in

trials;
in doing good in the face of receiving evil.
In not being of this world.
In rejection
In pain
In being misunderstood
In being considered anti-God when we are only for God
And of course, in dying to our will and embracing His.

And then Paul adds:

30 Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.

The word for conflict that Paul uses here is the same “agony” in warfare that he experienced or were experiencing was the same, “which ye saw in me,” which seems to mean when he was in Philippi and resisted the multitude and was thrown in prison, (which we read about in Acts 16:1-40).

Also Paul adds that these believers now “hear to be in him” new suffering that were occurring in Rome as he was a prisoner there.

And this leads us to the next chapter where Paul writes:

1 If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies,
2 Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So, lets quickly just talk about this first verse of the second chapter which now says, jumping off from where he finished in our chapter 1

2:1 If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, 2 Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

This is like a wrap up of what he has already told them, a rephrasing of this, like he adds “so,” or an “in other words,”

If there be therefore any consolation (parakalsis – solace or peace) in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, 2 Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

I think we will start off with this verse – and the rest next week.

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