Experience has probably taught you why it’s unwise to grocery shop while you’re hungry. Your stomach will steer your purchases and convince you to fill your grocery cart with unnecessary items that were not on your list. When that happens, you’re far more likely to end up busting the grocery budget! Not only that, but if you happen to be doing the shopping according to a list that your spouse put together, sometimes we end up neglecting to grab a number of items on the list! Being so focused on satisfying a grumbling stomach leads to forgetting to fully carry out what we set out to do in the first place: bring home all the grocery items on the list. Hunger compels the starving shopper to focus on satisfying self.
If only the desire to satisfy self was limited to the grocery store on occasion! But we know better. The whole world view of our culture is to look at everything through a selfish lens. We have sold ourselves on the lie that tolerating anything and permitting everything is the absolute most loving thing one can do for his fellow man. While we celebrate such “progress” on the surface, framed as genuine concern for the welfare of others, what really drives such thinking is complete and utter selfishness.
Letting anything and everything go for others is really all about me. If I refuse to judge or condemn something in someone else – no matter how absurd or outlandish it may be – then I have just paved the way for me to serve myself in any way imaginable, fully expecting that others won’t condemn me just as I have chosen not to condemn them. We all mind our own business, and we call it tolerance for the greater good when in reality it is merely permission for me to serve myself.
It might sound like I am just ragging on our culture. It might sound like one of those “the world is really awful, but we Christians are really good, so be careful out there good Christians” messages. But it isn’t. It isn’t because you know better. We aren’t so naive as to pretend we want nothing of that sort of world, but know that our sinful selfish nature delights in being a part of such a self-serving world! From that first self-serving bite of fruit in Eden, our self-serving nature has been at war with the saint inside each of us, and that self-serving nature has gotten sneakier and sneakier at slipping his own self-serving purposes in here and there! So the world is only the problem as much as I am a part of the world – ripe with the same self-seeking desires.
Paul addressed it in the verses just before the ones in our Philippians Reading this morning. He wrote, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (2:3-4).
Considering the number of letters Paul authored in the New Testament, it’s fascinating that we find these words in his letter to the Philippians, referred to as the letter of joy due to the significant references to joy or rejoicing throughout the letter. It turns our idea of joy on its head, as our warped minds tend to think that joy is tied to getting what we want. But if that’s the case, then why would Paul stress the importance of seeking the interests of others and not self? If joy is found in service to self, then in this letter more than any other, we’d expect Paul to be writing, “Do whatever makes you happy. Life is too short. Don’t worry about other people who drag down your dreams and desires. Look out for number one and ignore the haters.” But in this letter of joy, Paul encourages the exact opposite! Don’t serve yourself; serve others. Then you’ll find joy!
So what follows in the verses from Philippians is no shock at all, for it falls in line beautifully with what the writer to the Hebrews wrote about Jesus, who “for the joy set before him [he] endured the cross” (12:2). Joy drove Jesus to die, but that joy did not stem from self-serving motives at all; rather, his joy was tied directly to serving the interests of others, and that path collided at the cross. So his joy didn’t come from somehow circumventing the cross in service to self, but in enduring the cross in the best interest of you and me and every last sinner.
That was the ultimate expression of humility, which is what Paul described so magnificently in the verses of our text this morning: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-8).
What a breath of fresh air we see in Jesus! Paul encouraged us to do something radical, something that we’ve never seen nor been able to carry out when he wrote that we are to put the kibosh on selfish ambition and look to the interests of others. This is an entirely foreign concept to us, so we would have no idea what it looks like – were it not for Jesus Christ, who literally demonstrated humility perfectly for us!
That theme of humility was certainly evident from the Savior whose entire life and ministry were about serving other people. That humility was reflected in his humble entrance into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey to fulfill Scripture. That humility would be highlighted later that same week on the day we call Good Friday, when the very One who created life would sacrifice his own – for the interest of others. Never will we behold a greater example of humility, not only because Jesus was willing to sink to the lowest depths of death by crucifixion – the innocent dying a criminal’s death for a world of criminals who actually deserved it! But what makes his humility so exemplary was knowing the heights of heaven from which he came to stoop so low to such a death!
When we consider the words of Paul here in Philippians 2, 6-11, can you imagine how very real the temptation must have been for Jesus to flip these verses upside down? He surely could have exalted himself first as he entered Jerusalem. He could have demanded on Palm Sunday that every knee bow and every tongue confess him as Lord and Savior. He would have had every right to humble the crowds and exalt himself first and only after that die a death of humility.
After all, that’s so often how our acts of humility are carried out, aren’t they? Sure, we’ll clean this or wash that, we’ll carry out this or that act of service, but not without making sure that at least someone else knows about it. How ironic is it that we want to be exalted even for our humility?!? Our pride demands that we are noticed, and it will grab hold of anything it can get its hands on to exalt self – even humility!
How often when we are engaged in conversation are we simply listening long enough to make sure the topic of conversation comes back to us and something we’ve done or someone we’ve known? And even on the other end of the spectrum, when we claim that we don’t want to be acknowledged, we make sure that others know that we don’t want to be acknowledged – so our pride is satisfied by knowing that others know we don’t want to be known! What great and amazing humility we have! Ah, quite the opposite: what damning pride lurks in each of us, which explains why humility and the interests of others are so unnatural for us!
So be comforted that the One individual who walked this planet and actually had every right to exalt himself chose to do exactly the opposite. His perfectly obedient humility could satisfy our Holy Father in a way that our pride-filled humility never could! Jesus both perfected humility for us and paid for our lack of it, for our sinful pride, for our propensity to care about ourselves far more than anyone else. It was as if Jesus not only perfectly obeyed the speed limit every time he drove, but he also paid for every one of our speeding tickets (and just to point out how natural our pride is, how many of you just filled up with pride inside because you’ve never gotten a speeding ticket?).
So let me be clear. During Holy Week, on Palm Sunday, your Savior’s perfect humility attained for you before God what your pride never could. The price paid on the cross was the price paid for your pride. God doesn’t see us for what we are on our own, but rather through faith in Jesus he sees what his Son was for us. We are free. Pride has been forgiven. Humble obedience has been offered up and accepted by the Father through the Son.
Now we are free to go back to Paul’s encouragement that preceded these powerful verses. We can revisit his encouragement and as forgiven saints, no longer condemned for pride, and strive to show it. We can find genuine joy in seeking to carry out what Paul calls us to: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (2:3-4). We can prick the balloon of pride as often as we need to and deflate ourselves, not hoping to earn something by it, but because we’ve already received everything through Jesus – forgiveness, salvation, eternal life, and freedom from bondage to our pride.
And the more we empty ourselves of ourselves, the more room there is for Jesus to fill us up. And the more filled up with Jesus we are, the more natural it becomes to set aside selfish ambition. The more realistic it is to value others above ourselves. The easier it becomes to look to the interests of others. When we have deflated ourselves and come back down to earth, we see the cross from a different perspective – not a high altitude view looking down on it, but up close and personal, looking up to it, so that more of Jesus fills my frame of view and I see the cross as not just one event for a lot of people, but THE event necessary for me.
Notice how small something looks from an airplane. That’s how Jesus looks to us when pride is allowed to reside inside. But on the ground, things are much larger. As the pride is let out, we come back down to earth and see things differently. I can make out more clearly not just a Saviour, but my Savior. This shifts our view from “Yes, he’s the Savior of all, and me, too,” to “Yes, he’s my Savior first and foremost, but also the Savior for all.”
This leads to evangelism so that we can address the foremost need others have. After all, the second half of these verses will be true – all will know who he is. Let us use this week, this time that we have on earth, to do all we can so that others confess him by faith rather than by force on the last day, when even unbelievers will experience the regret of knowing they rejected the Savior.
If you shop while you’re hungry, your stomach will steer your purchases and you might ignore the list. So eat first, so that your own self-interest doesn’t get in the way. When you are full, then you can focus on the list. When we are filled up with Jesus, then we can focus on the other stuff. Fill up with as much Jesus as you can during Holy Week and Easter season and always, and be ready to find the true joy that will follow.