Part 1: This Has Happened Before | Part 2: Confidence | Part 3: Selflessness | Part 4: Perspective

As Paul nears the end of his epistle to the Philippian church, what we might call a meditation on the habits of a healthy mind in troubled times, he turns from character qualities to the content of thought.  We might say that he pivots from how to think to what to think.

He starts by telling a couple of church members to stop quarreling (Php 4.2). That sounds fairly mundane, but I think it’s something of a key to the rest of the chapter. These are people who have served God in the past, and apparently together. Now they have a disagreement about something. He tells them to cut it out.

And that means that they don’t have to be fighting; they are not driven to their stances by circumstances. They can decide what to think, and they can decide to get along.

You see, we’re not obligated to think about, let alone agree with, any old thought that pops into our heads. We can direct our minds. We can take charge of our thoughts.

These days we’ve had several decades of passivity, watching a screen and letting our minds be pulled here and there as the content creator wished. (Marshall McLuhan warned us about that way back in 1964—when this now-old guy was much too young to understand what he was talking about.) Mental passivity is an unbiblical way of living; as viceregents and stewards of this planet, we ought to be directing our thoughts, choosing how we think, not just reacting—usually merely emotionally—to our circumstances.

Paul spends the rest of the epistle specifying what we should be thinking about.

We ought to rejoice (Php 4.4)

That means that we ought to be focusing, in the midst of troubled times, on what is worth rejoicing over. We ought to be prioritizing our circumstances so that those that bring joy—legitimately—are valued more than those that frustrate us, cause us fear, or drive us to despair.

I have a lot to be thankful for. So do you. Dwell on those things, and revel in the joy they bring.

We ought to be at peace (Php 4.6-7)

… rather than full of anxiety, that is, about the challenges that face us. Why? Because there is a God in heaven, who hears our prayers and is moved to respond to them in ways that are unfailingly for our long-term benefit. Commit the darkness around you to your powerful and loving heavenly Father, and walk confidently through the darkness with your hand in his.

I’ll confess to being more than a little perplexed—and irritated, frankly—at the number of my spiritual brethren whose public words predominantly communicate fear and frustration and rage against the machine. Is there no God in heaven? Does he not skillfully and certainly direct in the affairs of people and nations? Are we not his people? Why, then, the rage? Why the frustration? Why the fear?

We ought to be mentally focused (Php 4.8)

… on the good, the true, the edifying. That means not filling our heads with the words of angry people, people who are constantly muckraking, spouting theories with no basis in fact, grasping daily for ratings, another listener or another click. We can and should direct our thoughts elsewhere.

We ought to be satisfied (Php 4.10ff)

… with what God has given us—our possessions, our relationships, our station in life, our circumstances. Satisfied knowing that whether we live in relative poverty or relative wealth, our Father supplies all our needs, wisely, benevolently, lovingly, perfectly. Children of the heavenly Father, after all, do indeed safely in his bosom gather.

Mine are days here as a stranger,
Pilgrim on a narrow way;
One with Christ I will encounter
Harm and hatred for His name.
But mine is armour for this battle
Strong enough to last the war;
And He has said He will deliver
Safely to the golden shore.

Come rejoice now, O my soul,
For His love is my reward—
Fear is gone and hope is sure;
Christ is mine forevermore!

Jonny Robinson and Rich Thompson

Photo by André Ventura on Unsplash

Part 1: This Has Happened Before | Part 2: Confidence | Part 3: Selflessness

As Paul navigated the troubled times in which God called him to minister, he paused in Philippians 3 to reflect on where he was aiming—and to contrast that with the direction his life had been aimed before. He marveled at the way God had changed his perspective.

The NRSV suggests two sections to this chapter: “Breaking with the Past” (Php 3.1-11) and “Pressing toward the Goal” (Php 3.12-4.1). Paul begins by looking back at what he valued Before Christ—complete devotion to the Law, climbing the ranks of those who held themselves up as examples of committed and devout followers of Moses:

• He was circumcised 8 days after birth, as the Law required—in other words, he was born into Judaism, not a later convert. He had devoted his entire life to keeping the Law.
• He’s of the stock of Israel—both his parents are Jewish.
• He’s of the tribe of Benjamin—one of only two tribes descended from Israel’s favorite wife, the tribe of Israel’s first king (for whom Paul is named), the tribe where the capital and Temple were, the only tribe that remained with Judah during the rebellion of the northern tribes under Jeroboam, the tribe of whom Moses said in his final blessing, “May the beloved of the Lord dwell in security by him, who shields him all the day, and he dwells between his shoulders” (Dt 33.12).
• He’s a “Hebrew”—he speaks the mother tongue as his heart language.
• He’s a Pharisee, the sect devoted to the strictest obedience to the Law, tithing even his herbs and spices (Mt 23.23). Josephus, a Jewish contemporary of Paul, described the Pharisees as men “who valued themselves highly upon the exact skill they had in the law of their fathers, and made men believe they were highly favored by God” (Antiquities 17.2.4) and “who are esteemed most skillful in the exact explication of their laws” (War 2.8.14), and he notes that “the cities gave great attestations to them on account of their entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their discourses also” (Antiquities 18.1.3).
• He persecuted the Christian “heretics” with incomparable zeal.
• He stood “blameless” before the Law—an impressive claim, considering the breadth of the Law’s demands.

But now, having met the very Jesus whom he was persecuting, he views all of that former obsession, all of that former glory, as just trash (Php 3.8); the word can refer to garbage or even to excrement, as the KJV renders it. What he had held so close he now finds not merely worthless, but repugnant, malodorous, reprehensible.

Get it out of here; it’s stinking up the place.

Talk about a change of perspective.

So what does he value now? Where is his focus? To what goal are his energy and effort directed?

Christ.

• Knowing him (Php 3.8).
• Being united with him (Php 3.9).
• Replacing his own righteousness with Christ’s (Php 3.9).
• Suffering with him (Php 3.10).
• Dying with him (Php 3.10).
• Rising with him (Php 3.11).
• Winning with him (Php 3.14).

Paul closes the chapter by contrasting this new perspective with that of the world.

• They prioritize their appetites (Php 3.19).
• They “set their minds on earthly things” (Php 3.19).

Paul, in stark contrast, understands that his “citizenship is in heaven” (Php 3.20).

His Philippian readers knew precisely what he was talking about. Nearly a century before, in 31 BC, Octavian had defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. He had rewarded his soldiers by giving them land near Rome. He then rewarded the owners of that land, who were now displaced, by moving them to Philippi and designating that city a Roman “colony” (Ac 16.12) with extensive privileges, including exemption from some taxation and the full benefits of Roman law as if they were still in Italy.

The Philippians knew what a privilege citizenship was. And they knew what it was to be a citizen of a faraway place that was truly home.

And so are we.

We are God’s servants here, stewards of what he has entrusted us with, but this world is not our home, and our eyes are elsewhere. Anything we can achieve here is essentially worthless unless it affects what is waiting us at home.

And anything that draws our hearts away from home, or interferes with our commission to take others home with us, has to go.

We don’t live for Philippi, even though we live there for now.

Part 5: Focus

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Part 1: This Has Happened Before | Part 2: Confidence

In troubled times, “looking out for Number One” is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Just as a threefold cord is not easily broken, so we as believers benefit by facing the certain troubles as a unified body, looking out for and supporting one another. Troubled times are the worst times to be fragmented or to go it alone.

Paul pleads with the Philippian believers to be

of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others (Php 2.2-4 NASB).

This verb “to be of [a] mind” occurs 10 times in this brief letter (Php 1.7; 2.2 [2x], 5; 3.15 [2x], 19; 4.2, 10 [2x]); it’s a major theme. How we think, how we set our attitude, has everything to do with how we fare in this world.

The kind of mind Paul describes here goes against our instincts. When we have problems, we’re inclined to give attention to them, not to the needs of others. But that’s illogical, even if natural. If we concentrate on our own problems, there’s just one person trying to take care of them—and that one person is limited in his creativity and strength. But if he takes that limited strength and creativity and applies it to the problems of others—many others—they will all benefit. And as they reciprocate and turn their attention to helping him with his troubles, he gets the input of exponentially more creativity and strength than he could ever have applied to his concerns by himself.

Paul spends the rest of this chapter giving examples—and he begins with the greatest of all. Christ himself provides the supreme example of selflessness by not clinging to his divine privileges, but adding to his person a genuinely human nature, living among us, and even dying in our place—and dying the most cruel and ignominious death ever conceived.

Because I’ve written elsewhere on this passage, I won’t develop it at length here. But Christ is certainly the ultimate example of selfless service in troubled times. And as we are “in him” (Php 3.9), we are certain to be empowered by him to live as he did (Php 2.13).

There are three more examples that fill out the chapter.

Paul encourages the Philippians to imitate him (Php 2.17-18). This is not an apostle holding himself up as some great one—that would make nonsense of the entire chapter—but a man who has learned to serve, and who counts all his earlier achievements, which are considerable (Php 3.4-6), as rubbish, in order to win Christ and be found in him (Php 3.7-8), inviting his friends to join him in this delightful and joyous exercise. “Come on in!” he shouts, “The water’s fine!”

Another example is Timothy. Amidst a school of fish “looking out for Number One” (Php 2.21), Timothy swims upstream; he “will genuinely be concerned with your welfare” (Php 2.20). When Timothy arrives, the church will do well to follow his example.

But in the meantime, Paul is sending Epaphroditus (Php 2.25). Everything we know about this man is in this verse and one more later in the epistle (Php 4.18). It’s intriguing that he’s named for the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite; his name literally means “On Aphrodite,” a term that gamblers would use as a wish for luck. From that pagan background he came to Christ and is probably a leader in the church at Philippi, who has come to Rome to serve Paul for an extended time and is now returning, carrying this letter.

Selfless service. Rapt attention to what others need, at the expense of your own assets.

This is how you deal with troubled times.

Part 4: Perspective | Part 5: Focus

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Part 1: This Has Happened Before

As we noted in the previous post, Paul writes his letter to the Philippian church from house arrest in Rome, probably toward the end of the two years he was confined there. And that two-year period follows another two-year stint in confinement in Caesarea, all on the same false charge.

Four years. Four years of sitting and waiting for justice—punctuated by a shipwreck in the middle.

How’s your day going?

We would expect Paul to do some complaining in this letter—life’s not fair; what’s going to happen to me now; nobody loves me; so this is the thanks I get. “Scary!”

Nope.

Right out of the gate Paul exudes confidence.

• He offers “grace” (the Greek greeting) and “peace” (the Jewish greeting) to this little church, followed immediately by a word of thanksgiving (Php 1.2-3).
• He tells them he prays for them with “joy” (Php 1.4) because they are sharing in his experiences—as will become clear later, with financial as well as other support (Php 4.18). Turns out it’s simply not true that “nobody loves me.”
• He’s confident that God will finish the work he has started (Php 1.6).

Ah. There, my friend, is the basis of his confidence in troubled and trying times.

There is a God in heaven, and he is sovereignly and certainly working his plan.

• Paul’s “trouble with the law” has advanced his calling, the spread of the gospel (Php 1.12). You see, he hasn’t just been sitting around for four years wishing he could be on the road founding churches. At least for the two years of Roman house arrest, he’s been tended by Roman guards, probably in 6-hour shifts, perhaps even chained to them. Four soldiers a day, a captive audience. Chained or not, they can’t leave; Paul is their military post. And apparently, some of them have listened to what their prisoner said; the “whole imperial guard” (Php 1.13) knows that he’s a prisoner for the cause of Christ. And they’re not just gossiping about the interesting prisoner; later in the same letter Paul sends greetings from “saints … of Caesar’s household” (Php 4.22). Caesar’s staff, his guard, maybe even his family include believers. It’s not likely Paul could have accomplished that by traipsing around the empire planting churches.
• Fellow believers, Paul says, are emboldened by his example and are speaking the word without fear (Php 1.14). Scores, perhaps hundreds, of believers are more than making up for the loss of Paul’s public voice. Where there was one voice, there is now a throng. The word goes forth with more volume, more power, than it had while Paul was free.
• Some people are even spreading the word in an attempt to supplant the now absent authority of the apostle (Php 1.15-17). Paul, not jealous for his personal position, simply rejoices that the word is going forth (Php 1.18).
• Paul thinks it’s likely that he’s going to win his appeal and gain release to preach again (Php 1.19). (I’m pretty sure he’s right—there’s good indication in the Pastoral Epistles that Paul engaged in travels not recorded in Acts, and there’s a very strong early-church tradition that he went to Spain.)
• But whether he wins or loses his case, Christ is exalted, and that’s been the real goal all along (Php 1.20).

Since God’s plan will be accomplished, and since the “worst” that can happen—death—is actually victory, what’s the reason for things to be “Scary!”?

But things look so … dark. We might face opposition, or deprivation, or suffering, or persecution.

Indeed. On the day Christ commissioned Saul as apostle to the Gentiles, he told him he would suffer. He told Ananias, the believer who healed Saul of his heaven-sent blindness,

“Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Ac 9.15-16).

And Saul, now Paul the apostle, tells the believers in the little church at Philippi that this is the common fate—no, the “privilege”—of all believers (Php 1.29). Persecution means you’re confronting successfully the lostness of the world and contrasting it with the grace and hope that is in Christ. It means you’re doing it right.

Confidence. Not fear.

Go, in this thy might.

Part 3: Selflessness | Part 4: Perspective | Part 5: Focus

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One common human characteristic is to think that whatever you’re facing is new. One benefit of being an old codger like me is that 66 years is long enough to realize that that just ain’t so. Even within a single lifetime, history tends to run in cycles—I’ve written about that before—and Solomon has famously told us that there’s nothing new under the sun (Ec 1.9).

What the church is facing these days is not new or even unusual; in fact, it’s pretty tame by historical standards. The American church in particular has had an extraordinary run of good times, of perhaps unprecedented opportunity to “lead a quiet and peaceable life” (1Ti 2.2) for literally centuries. While anything could happen, even the most pessimistic and nightmarish predictions that I hear from the prophets of doom don’t come close to what the church experienced in its first two centuries, or during the Inquisition, or even under Communist rule in the last century.

In the first century, even before Emperor Nero went cuckoo for cocoa puffs and blamed the fire in Rome on the Christians, there was violent opposition to the practitioners of The Way. Preaching the resurrection of Messiah—or anything else about him—was ruled illegal within a few days of its occurrence (Ac 4.18). Within a year or so the first preacher was violently killed by a mob (Ac 7.54-60), with the approval of the local government (Ac 8.1; 26.10). A decade later the first apostle was executed by Judea’s puppet “king,” Herod Agrippa I (Ac 12.1-2). And a little more than a decade after that, Paul returns to Jerusalem only to be attacked by a mob—in the very Temple precincts!—under the demonstrably false charge that he had brought a Gentile into the Court of the Women (Ac 21.27ff). He is jailed for more than two years, even though the Roman arresting officer believes him innocent (Ac 23.29), just on the off chance that the governor can squeeze a bribe out of him (Ac 24.26). To thwart an assassination conspiracy, Paul appeals to Caesar, gaining safe passage to Rome, where he waits under house arrest for another two years (Ac 28.30).

Keep in mind that Paul has been commissioned by the risen and ascended Christ himself as the apostle (“sent one”) to the Gentiles, a task that requires a lot of traveling around and talking to people, as Acts 13-21 make abundantly clear. Spending four years in jail for something you didn’t do—indeed, for a charge that every official along the way has pronounced unfounded (e.g. Ac 25.13-20)—puts a pretty significant crimp in your life’s calling.

Toward the end of those two years renting a house in Rome, waiting for his appeal to be heard, Paul writes a letter to the first church he founded in Europe, the one at Philippi, over in Macedonia (northern Greece). He wants to thank them for a generous gift they’d sent him (Php 4.15ff) and explain what’s been happening with one of their members, Epaphroditus, who’s been with him in Rome for some time (Php 2.25).

In the letter he takes the opportunity to catch them up on events in Rome, and to encourage them to stay faithful to Christ even though times are tough.

As I’ve been studying this epistle lately, it has occurred to me that its major points form a pretty good list of how we should react to troubled times—how we should think, how we should respond, how we should proceed.

It’s also occurred to me that hardly any Christians I know—at least, the ones I know who are making the most noise—are putting the list to work. Maybe it would do us all good to run the list through our heads and do a little introspection and self-evaluation.

Can’t hurt, right?

We’ll get started in the next post.

Part 2: Confidence | Part 3: Selflessness | Part 4: Perspective | Part 5: Focus

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