The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
In 1 Corinthians 4:15, Paul wrote the following: “If you were to have countless tutors, mentors, teachers in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the Gospel.” That’s how Paul saw himself and his office in relation to the churches that he established and founded, and the converts that were made in his first three missionary journeys. Paul was their spiritual father, and the converts understood they were his spiritual children, and thus they honored and respected him in that way, as their spiritual father.
Paul wanted what all good parents want for their children. He wanted them to enjoy the best of the Christian religion. He wanted them to have all the gifts and the benefits of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a good life here and there in eternity. Good fathers and good mothers know what it means to be a good parent. It doesn’t mean to be a good friend, a good buddy, a playmate, or anything else. It’s a unique office. Parents love their children. Good parents want the best for them. Good parents worry about them growing up in an increasingly sinful and increasingly evil world and culture. Good parents take joy in the lives of their children when all is going well, and are stricken by deep sadness when their lives are filled with suffering, or they’re walking down a path of a sinful lifestyle that leads to self-destructiveness.
Above all else, Christian parents want their children to hold firmly to the Word of Life, as is stated in the epistle lesson this morning, so that their children will share in the eternal joy that awaits them and all believers in the heavenly realm. As their spiritual father, Paul wanted his children to be blameless, this is verse 15, and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. He tells them that they will shine among them, among the world, like stars in the sky, as you hold firmly to the Word of Life. And then I’ll be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not labor or run in vain.
The epistle to the Philippians is often called the Epistle of Joy. In chapter 1, as I mentioned last week, Paul introduces the theme of joy, and he tells the congregation that he’s torn, he’s torn between going to his execution, if that be God’s will, and going home to be with Jesus, for that, he says, is much better, or remaining here in this world for the sake of their progress and their joy in the Christian faith. Remember last week’s sermon: the word joy, rejoice, and glad, put together, occurs 16 times in just four short chapters of the epistle.
Through the preaching and teaching of St. Paul, God had called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified some of the citizens of the city of Philippi in true Christian faith. The Holy Spirit had created a church in Philippi, a family of believers in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They had been taught by Paul himself, so they had been rightly taught, and they had held firmly to that set of doctrines, beliefs, and convictions taught by Paul for 10 years now, in his absence. Unlike so many other congregations, when Paul left, they remained faithful, while others all fell to false doctrines.
The unity of doctrine, heart, and mind created a formal principle between Paul and the Christians in Philippi, a partnership, if you will. There’s a Greek word for this partnership that’s used here. We translate it as fellowship. The Greek word is koinonia. It’s an English word. This fellowship, it means partnership. It means to participate in. It means to be joined together with. It’s a rather profound statement.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul chastises some of the Christians in Corinth for stopping off at the temples with temple prostitutes and having fellowship, participation, a part of the work of those false gods and idols. We know that word, English fellowship. It, by the way, in the biblical sense, it doesn’t mean bowling. It doesn’t mean just hanging out and eating. It doesn’t mean going out as a group. That’s a general concept of fellowship, but that’s not what koinonia actually means. It means to be invested in, to be a part of, to participate, to be partners.
It’s this fellowship that Paul is now writing about. This fellowship and partnership was a participation in the Christian faith and in the missionary work of the church, in the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church. This relationship produced in both Paul and Philippians a joy in each other and in their respective tasks, their jobs. Christian joy, as I also mentioned last week, transcends circumstance. It goes deeper than feelings of happiness or of celebration. Paul models this joy. He writes from a prison cell in Rome, yet he’s not bitter. He doesn’t complain about being imprisoned unjustly. He doesn’t sit in self-pity or depression. He doesn’t blame other people for not coming to visit him as frequently as they ought to visit. He looks to the Philippian congregations and the individual Christians, and he has true joy, because they are making progress in their understanding, faith, and support of the Gospel. That is, they’re having fellowship together. They are in fact holding firmly to the Word of Life. And that is a Christian parent’s greatest desire, that their children hold firmly to the Word of Life.
Verses 1 and 2: “Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if you have any comfort from His love, if you have any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being in one spirit and of one mind.” See, the Word of Life, the Word of God, produces common Christian virtues, which lead to the greater virtues. This is the Word of Life. It creates love, it creates tenderness and compassion, encouragement, and a sharing of the Spirit, all of which lead and serve like-mindedness.
And did you notice that Paul mentions being of like mind, or one mind, twice? And it’s the goal of the other things. The other things lead up to the one-mindedness. Now you never see a church sign like that. Call me if you do, I want to take a picture of it. You drive by, “Join us for Sunday, we all think alike.” How often do you see that? But that, by the way, is the chief virtue of, in fact, the Word of Life. That’s why we have the Bible in the first place, so that we think like Christians. And if you think like Christians, you might likely love like Christians, believe like Christians, conduct yourself with the dignity of Christians, and the like.
Now we like those other words on church signs. We love you, join us, we’re united. We have a whole denomination called the Unity Church that has nothing to do with unity whatsoever, not in the biblical sense. When it comes to the primary articles of faith, Christians are supposed to think alike. We’re supposed to be united in Christian doctrine, in the teachings of the prophets and the apostles. We’re supposed to have a common understanding, faith. And as we will see, we’re also supposed to be united in an attitude, a mindset of humility.
Paul says that this joy will be complete in the unity of the faith held by the Philippian believers, that is, as long as they continue to hold fast to the Word of Life, to Christ, to the doctrines of Christianity. Why? Their unity will prevail. This kind of unity is supposed to mark the whole Christian Church in his day and throughout generations. And that’s how it all began, isn’t it? On Pentecost Sunday, Acts 2:44-47: “And all believers were together and had all things in common, and they would sell their property and possessions and share them with all, to the extent that anyone had need. Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.”
Paul describes this unity as the same mind, the same love, the same accord, which means agreement, and being of one mind. He had introduced the idea that this one mind, this one doctrine, was to hold the church together: “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so that whether I come and see you or I’m absent, I hear that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the Gospel.”
Modern Christians and Christian churches today have given up a long time ago on unity. We don’t hear much about those biblical imperatives about the unity of doctrine and unity of church worship services. It used to be you could go into any Lutheran church across the country, and in fact, I mean LCMS, WELS, ALC, even the LCA, the most liberal, and they were using the same basic liturgy Sunday after Sunday. Why? Because that’s how the unity of the faith actually is propagated amongst the Christians. They used to have committees that would go out and attempt to bring unity where there was disunity in doctrine. Christians, laymen and women, and pastors and scholars and church denominations, don’t even try to come to any agreements on articles of faith any longer. There’s a word for this problem, it’s called heterodoxy. It means that there isn’t an agreement in doctrine and its practice among the people, even people within the same, quote, visible fellowship. People within the church today, the church body, believe different things and teach different things about the very same doctrine.
But here in Philippians chapter 1 and 2, we’re told that progress in the faith, love, kindness, compassion, tenderness, the Spirit, all lead to the unity of mind. For what purpose? True Christian joy.
Then there are the vices that he covers, the attitudes and the behaviors that are contrary to the Christian faith and destroy Christian joy. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.” Right, we live in the me-first, me, self, I take care of myself first, and then I’ll worry about my family and my neighbors and my friends. As long as I’m healthy, I’m fine. No, you’re not, you’re sick. Jesus didn’t walk around talking about Jesus and how He was fine. He talked about sinners, serving sinners, forgiving sins, serving the neighbor, dying to self, and rising to Christ.
The Christian mindset is to model the mind and Spirit of Christ. Thus verses 5 through 8: “Have this mindset 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 made Himself nothing.” Hear that? Tell people who are so busy about being selfish and taking care of their own ambitions that Christ made Himself nothing. He didn’t worry about His own ambitions. “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.”
What does the mind of Christ look like? Humble, sacrificial, obedient, loving, compassionate. The mind of Christ is one with His heavenly Father. John 10:30: “I and the Father are one.” There’s no division in their mind. There’s no division in their will. There’s no division in obedience. They are one. John 6:38-39: “For I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of everything that He has given to Me, I will lose nothing, but I will raise it up on the Last Day.”
Christian congregations are torn apart because members in that congregation, sometimes a few, sometimes most, sometimes all, do not have the mind of Christ. They are not Christ-minded and like-minded. They do not have a mind and spirit of humility. They are not doing the will of the heavenly Father. They’re seeking their own agendas. It is the same reason confirmands fall away from the church and from the faith and break their baptismal and confirmation vows, because they gave up on the mind of Christ.
Look at what Christ did. He, the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, came down from heaven to earth for us and for our salvation. He became one of us, our brother. He became our servant. He came to do the will of His Father, which was to save us from our sins and grant to us everlasting life. This Christ did by going to the cross for us. This is humble, sacrificial, self-giving love in the highest degree.
Paul continued: “Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the Word of Life.” It’s always conditioned, by the way, on holding fast to the Word of Life, to the Word of Christ, to Christ the Living Word. In the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, we stand out, and we shine as lights of Christ, because we hold fast to the Word of Life, because our minds are set on things above, not things below, because in fact we are like-minded with Christ.
Where do we get that mind of Christ? Well, it’s not our own. We don’t bring our carnal minds into conformity with His divine mind. It’s not from inside ourselves. Our mind comes with our new nature, which is given to us in the Word and Sacrament ministry of Christ. Our mind by nature is turned in on itself. It can’t help but be selfish. It conforms to the thinking of this evil age. It looks out for itself, and very often doesn’t do that very well. Our sinful mind is dead toward the things of God.
The mind of Christ is found and given, though, to those who have been baptized and grafted into Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul declares, “We have the mind of Christ,” enlightened by the Spirit and taught in the written Word of God, the Bible. We have the mind of Christ. Romans: “Do not be conformed to the thinking or the image of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and right.” We’ve been baptized into Christ, Holy Baptism. We’ve been given the gift of the Spirit. We have the mind of Christ. We just often elect not to use it.
The mind of Christ gives us new impulses, new desires, a new way of looking at ourselves and of God, a new way of seeing and thinking and interacting with the sinful world around us. Verses 12 and 13: “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose.” In other words, our good works are produced by God’s prior work of baptizing us, washing us clean, and giving us the mind of Christ. That’s what it means to work out your salvation.
I call Christians’ good works the products and byproducts of the Gospel. The first product of the Gospel: repentance, that is, sorrow over sin and trust in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins. Then that plays out in our daily life as we engage the mind of Christ and serve our neighbors. We shine forth with the mind of Christ as we hold fast to the Word of Life, to the written, spoken, and fleshly Word of God.
Holding fast to the Word means that we’re in regular church services, where the Word of Life is freely spoken, preached, and taught, in the liturgy, in the sacraments, and even in Bible class on occasion. It means being in the Word throughout the week, daily devotions, meditations on God’s Word, and then applying it in our daily lives and interactions with others. This is how we are of the same mind, the mind of Christ, nurtured and demonstrated in our lives. And it produces great and loving congregations who, even in the absence of St. Paul, still abide by the teachings of the apostles and the prophets.
What was true of the Christians in Philippi is true of you. The source and ongoing power for having the mind of Christ is found in no other than Christ Himself. What our Lord has done for us in humbling Himself and going to the cross for our salvation is the cause of our joy, our hope, our love, our kindness, our compassion, and our like-mindedness.
Therefore Paul says, “God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.” You have a glorious mind, it’s Christ’s. And when we fall and fail, the forgiveness of sins prevails. You are Christlike, of one mind with Him. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.