The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
As you are all now well aware, Paul wrote his epistle to the Philippians from prison in Rome, in the shadow of his own possible execution. In chapter 1, he wrote about the fellowship that they had, the partnership that they had in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as he carried out his various missionary journeys. In chapter two, he wrote about the joy that we have in Christ when we together share the mind of Christ, the thinking of Christ. Last week, in chapter 3, he expressed joy, the joy that comes in knowing, that is, in believing in, trusting in, Jesus Christ and His crucifixion and resurrection.
This morning we now consider the last chapter, chapter four, where Paul brings together all the things that he has previously said in a summarized fashion, and conveys the benefits of daily Christian life, the benefits of knowing, of understanding Jesus the Christ, all of which he summarizes in just this nice brief phrase: “Rejoice in the Lord always.”
Now notice the pattern: joy, the mind of Christ, knowing Christ, and joy. It’s a function. And in the middle, what holds this joy together, what makes it possible to rejoice, is to understand and to know the mind of Christ, to actually possess it. And in written form, in this case, the written Word of God, as a gift of the Holy Spirit. A person knows who the Lord Jesus Christ is, that is, trusts in Him, and who makes use of the mind of Christ, that is, thinks in a manner that reflects Christian doctrine, the teachings of Jesus, is a person who can in fact rejoice, no matter what circumstance may befall him or her in this life.
The problem is, of course, that we don’t make use of the mind of Christ, so we don’t really experience the full joy and rejoicing that we have in Christ. Whether our first reaction to bad circumstances runs along the lines of anger and frustration, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and other negative and ungrateful thoughts, as we endure circumstances that are not quite so easy and favorable to us, instead of rejoicing in the Lord always and in all circumstance, as Paul will soon summarize, we have the exact opposite reaction. We mumble and complain when things don’t go our way, when we’re mistreated by our definitions and the like.
That’s because, you see, there’s a running battle in the mind of the Christian. There’s always been, but especially in our day and age, a battle for both the heart, which most people think of as emotions, which actually follow the mind, I mean knowing intellectual truths, and also feeling the effects of various things, all reside in the mind. So the mind is the key to understanding how this joy through all circumstances comes about.
This battle for the mind is a momentous battle, although it’s fought on a very, very small battlefield. It’s about six inches wide. It’s between your ears. And the battle has been raging in the mind of human beings ever since that moment Adam and Eve elected to listen to the voice, to set their minds on what the serpent, the devil, had said to them. In that moment, we know who won that first battle. He’s been winning a lot of battles ever since, and continues to win victories over the lives of the unfaithful and the unbelievers today.
The battle continues to this very moment, there, sitting in the pew. The battle continues to rage. The new nature, the Christian nature, the one that has been given and created in you in the water and Word, the Word and Sacrament ministry of Jesus Christ, where you’ve been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God in spoken and understood form as well as written form, and the gift of a new nature. The devil and the world and your own sinful nature, though, are working very hard to take your mind captive to the philosophies, religion, and morality of the day.
Today most self-described Christians are listening to the wrong voices, and they’re believing the wrong things, yet they still consider themselves to be Christians, and faithful ones at that. Your mind, and thus your heart, are the target of these three enemies: the devil, the world, and your old sinful self. And their goal is really clear: is to destroy your faith, your love, your hope, and your joy in Christ Jesus, your Lord and Savior.
Most self-described Christians have surrendered the battlefield of the mind a very long time ago. They’ve become parrots, parroting what they hear from the opinion makers of the day. They parrot the latest talking points in the approved vocabulary issued from the high priests of political correctness, of progressivism, of wokeism, and still think themselves as churchgoing good Christians, though they’ve embraced every form of non-Christian philosophy and thinking one can have.
It’s truly about, Paul speaks of it throughout all of his epistles, basically not just here in Philippians, but Ephesians 6:11 and 12: “Put the full armor of God on, so that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and against powers, against world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.” Or again, in 1 Timothy, “Fight the good fight of faith, take hold of eternal life to which you were called, and for which you made confession in the presence of many witnesses.” Virtually in every epistle, we’re told we’re supposed to be fighting, we’re supposed to be thinking, we’re supposed to be using the mind of Christ.
The truth is, in the battle for the mind, we lose a great many of those battles, though, because by old sinful nature we simply are inclined to believe and to conform to the expectations of both the devil and the world. Where the Word of God is absent, there trouble will ensue.
I mean, Luther even expresses this in a quote I’m about to read in the Large Catechism, the instruction manual for adults. He writes: “Let me tell you, even though you know the Word perfectly and have already mastered everything, still you are daily under the dominion of the devil, who either day or night never relaxes his efforts to steal upon you unaware and to kindle in your heart unbelief and wicked thoughts against all these commandments. Therefore you must continually keep the Word in your heart and on your lips and in your ears. For where the heart stands idle and the Word is not heard, the devil breaks in and does his damage before we even realize it. On the other hand, when we seriously ponder the Word, hear it, and put it to use, such is its power that it never departs without fruit. It always awakens a new understanding, new pleasure, a new spirit of devotion, and it constantly cleanses the heart and its meditations. For these words are not idle or dead, but they are effective and living.”
If you aren’t using the Word of God, if you aren’t thinking like you’re supposed to be thinking, then you’re losing the battle. When the mind is possessed by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, joy and rejoicing in all circumstance is the natural outcome, a fruit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This rejoicing and gentle spirit is the result of the Gospel and the doctrines of the Christian faith, rightly taught and rightly understood and rightly held in both the mind and in the heart.
Chapter two, remember, having the mind of Christ. Chapter three, knowing Christ. Knowing Christ produces good fruit, which springs forth from good thinking. And what is this fruit? Verse eight: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,” or other translations, “beautiful,” “whatever is commendable, if there is anything excellent, and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
St. Paul is instructing Christians to direct their mind to certain kinds of things, namely good things, the things that are good for the heart and soul and mind. These are the things that ought to preoccupy the Christian: things of beauty and dignity and truth, all very rare and none highly esteemed in our culture today.
Paul is talking about true virtues, and not subjective ones in this case. Things of beauty and dignity and truth, objectively beautiful, objectively truthful, right. Not true in the subjective sense. In other words, to make it a little, maybe perhaps over, oversimplistic: beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Rather, beauty is built in to God’s creation and to human nature prior to the fall. These things are beautiful in themselves, regardless of what one’s opinion might be. They are gifts from God. And our children ought to be trained and taught in the good, the beautiful, and the virtuous things of human life, because they are beneficial to us. They are gifts from God. And just as importantly, they are beneficial to our neighbors.
Conversely, Paul is also telling us not to become enthralled with whatever is false, whatever is dishonorable, whatever is wrong, whatever is impure, whatever is grotesque, whatever is condemnable, and whatever is of poor quality and deserving criticism. These are the things that we are to avoid. We live in a world with a culture that celebrates the base, the grotesque, the impure, and the wrong, and we ought not to contribute to it. That’s Paul’s message. That’s a benefit of the Gospel. And you can’t be enthralled with the bad things and evil things of life and have rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Implied in chapter 4 is the idea that in fact Christians can fall away, they can be led astray. So Paul expects Christians to do what he tells us to do for our survival and edification. He directs our thinking toward the more excellent things in life. You have to be born of the water and the Spirit, the water and the Word, and in so doing your mind is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and your gift is the words of Christ Himself. Thus in the waters of baptism, you become a new creation, so something quite different than the rest of the world. And thus our thinking ought to mirror the thinking and doing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And the truth is, even pastors don’t do such a good job in the battleground between the two ears these days. We daily sin much, in thought, that is, in the mind, in word, the originator, the mind, and indeed the originator of the action. We are by nature sinful, and we’re products of a sinful culture too. So we need God’s forgiveness for wrong thinking as much as we need God’s forgiveness for our moral and religious failings, sins.
The good news is that among the sins for which Christ died on the cross, the sins of an unclean mind are included. On that cross, Jesus Christ’s holiness was poured out on our behalf in the washing of regeneration that makes us clean in body, soul, and mind. There is no part of you that Christ has not redeemed. There is no part of you that He has left unredeemed. Christians were first called disciples, students. We’ve lost that in the church in these last few centuries. There is not one sin that is left unforgiven, including the sins of the mind. You are a new person in Christ and are constantly being renewed by the Gospel, the Word and the Sacrament ministry of the church.
Again, one of my favorite verses: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). By the renewal of your mind. God wants to reorient your thinking away from worldly categories and logic to His divine Word and what His Word says, and the framework and worldview that His Word provides.
Now listen to me on the next point. The more you think like Christ, the less sense you will make to your family, friends, neighbors, and country. The more you think like Christ, the more of a stranger and a pilgrim you become in this world. If you’re comfortable here, there’s a problem.
When I was a college-age kid and just beginning my studies in religion and philosophy under my local pastor, my local pastor told me to stop expecting unbelievers to act like believers. He said they are two different minds, therefore they’re of two different worldviews, therefore they belong to two different worlds. They don’t, and they can’t, think and speak like Christians. That’s why you’re frustrated when you talk to unbelievers, because they don’t have the mind of Christ. They can’t see what you see. They don’t hear what you hear. They’re blind, right? And there’s a parable or two about that, isn’t there?
Romans 12:2 tells you about the renewal of your mind. Here in Philippians, Paul puts meat on what it means to live according to a new mind. Look at Paul, who was once Saul, and what he heard and what he saw in the Christian faith was worthy of persecution and execution. But Paul the Christian, with a new mind, looked on life and the whole world differently. So he tells us what it means to be a Christian in our thinking.
“Whatever is true,” he says. The Greek word here is alethes. It means whatever is unconcealed, whatever is true in fact. Not my personal truth, not my subjective truth, but what is true in fact. What is worthy of credit, what is genuine and real. That’s what that word means. All of those things, we are to look to those things that correspond to reality, that is, facts matter, that are the genuine article, the real deal, like a pure, clear diamond of the highest quality, or pure gold of the highest quality. Contrary to modern philosophy, truth exists, and truth is knowable. That’s how God made the world. In God’s economy, we don’t get to make up our own detached realities. We are not to think on things that are false and fraudulent or artificial, or narratives, because they make us feel good and morally superior to someone else.
Next he says that we’re to think about whatever is honorable. Direct your mind so that it dwells on those things that aren’t disrespectful or shameful, but rather honorable, good and right in themselves. Whatever is just or righteous in God’s sight. We’re also supposed to think on and meditate on those things that line up with God’s judgments of right and wrong, of crooked or straight.
Next, whatever is pure, that is, whatever is unpolluted, hasn’t been tainted, filthy by sin, think of those things. Whatever is lovely or beautiful, those are the things that are supposed to adorn our homes and our lives and our churches and our public spaces, the things that elevate, not the opposite. Whatever is commendable, that is, of good report, of spoken well of, those things. And Paul adds, if there is anything excellent, anything worthy of praise, Christians are supposed to be participants in those such things. There’s a lot of good things to think about. There’s things of virtue in them, things to be praised and not condemned.
Reading over the list of chapter 4, some might think that the excerpts sound a lot like Greek philosophers. That’s what they taught me in my seminary, they said Paul plagiarized the list from the Greeks, that there’s nothing uniquely Christian about this list whatsoever. Some Greeks often wrote about and rattled off lists of qualities and virtues that people should live by. Their list does sound a lot like the one that Paul gives. Some wrote treatises with titles like “In Praise of Virtue” or “In Praise of Excellence.” But there’s a big difference about what Paul wrote and what they wrote. When you start getting into the meat of the details, they live in two different worlds, though they seem to praise the very same virtues.
You see, the list of Paul’s is also a list of the attributes of the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is all those things. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He said He was the only true good One that ever lived. He is the perfect, our beautiful Savior, the pearl of great price. While the pagan Greek philosophers might recognize certain truths in wisdom, while they might in fact admire good behavior and the beautiful in human nature, while the Greek philosophers could see it’s better to fill the mind with high and admirable thoughts rather than base and ignoble thoughts, the difference is that the Greek pagans didn’t know the One in whom all those virtues were embodied, the Christ. They couldn’t say with the prophet Isaiah this morning, “This is the Lord for whom we have waited. Let’s rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”
Each of those philosophers that wrote about virtue, each of them thought they in fact could be saved by good deeds and good works done by corrupt human beings. This truth, that in fact our Lord embodies all the virtues and truths written about in chapter 4, are in Christ. There’s no good work apart from faith in Christ. Paul already said that, remember? He said all of his works were nothing but rubbish, manure, dung. The Greeks did not have the knowledge, the faith, the joy, or the mind of Christ. But you do.
Of the Greeks, Paul wrote, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct him?” But of you he wrote, “But we Christians, we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). It is in Christ that we have forgiveness of sins for all of our failures in thought, mind, word. The sins of wrongheadedness need to be treated the same way as all other sins. We confess our sin and repent of those, the sins committed in thought.
But it is true, in the waters of Holy Baptism, you were made one of God’s children. Christ’s attributes were imputed to you, placed upon you. You are in Christ. You have the mind and righteousness of Christ. Just as He was, you are now in the sight of God, and you will be in fact, in truth, in the life of the world to come. You are in God’s sight just as true, just as honorable, just as pure, just as just, just as beautiful, just as commendable as Christ Himself, for you have been born of Him. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.