Philippians – Page 2

On Thinking Like Christ, Part 5: Reversal

January 16, 2023 by Dan Olinger 2 Comments

Part 1: The Most Important Thing | Part 2: Moving to the Dump | Part 3: It Gets Worse | Part 4: And Worse

We’ve traced Paul’s description of Jesus’ humiliation in Philippians 2, all the way to “even the death of the cross” (Php 2.8). It is a deep humiliation indeed.

But the Father does not leave the Son in that abyss. With just one word, we learn that all we have seen so far is just prelude—or more precisely, it is simply the ground for an earthshaking conclusion.

“Therefore,” Paul writes (Php 2.9). “Therefore.” You can feel the atmosphere of the room crackle electric; you can all but hear the power of Paul’s voice as he speaks to his amanuensis. “Therefore, God has highly exalted him.”

Some years ago, I was walking on the beach at the Isle of Palms near Charleston, SC, when I spied an old man clambering over the boulders of a jetty as he worked his way up the beach toward me. He had on swim trunks and no shirt. As he approached I realized that I recognized him. It was Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings. At the time Hollings was a very powerful political force, in his third term in the US Senate. Just two years later he would be a candidate for president—though he got trounced in New Hampshire and then endorsed Gary Hart, who was (unsuccessfully) battling Walter Mondale for the nomination.

But what I remember about that scene was how ordinary—in fact, weak and vulnerable—the man looked. If I’d been closer when I saw him on the jetty, I probably would have run over and offered to help him.

People are like that. The most powerful of us are ordinary and weak outside of our carefully controlled public manifestation.

The man on the cross is not like that.

To begin with, he is the Son, the beloved one. His exaltation began long before He ascended to heaven, even before he rose from the dead. It springs, of course, from His person, who He is, and He has always been worthy and exalted, from eternity past. But even during His earthly ministry, in the midst of His humiliation, we see the light of His glory shining through.

We see it even before his birth, from the very first prophecy in the Bible, when God promises that “the seed of the woman” will crush the serpent’s head. We see it at his birth, when the aged prophet Simeon calls him “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Lk 2.32). We see it at his baptism, when a voice from heaven calls out, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3.17). We see it again on the holy mount, when “His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light” (Mt 17.2)—and the Voice came again (Mt 17.5).

And we see it hidden deep in his own words to Nicodemus, the great but benighted Jewish rabbi and Sanhedrist, when he says, in words dripping red, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (Jn 3.14). Here is a remarkable statement. What Nicodemus doesn’t see is that Jesus is speaking of his own death, the very death that we have described repeatedly here as his greatest humiliation. Speaking of the cross, Jesus says that He will be “lifted up.” At the very depth, as he dies the death of common criminal, bearing the sins of all mankind and being cursed while hanging on a tree, He is “lifted up.” Even his debasement is an exaltation.

In a very different context, speaking of Israel’s unbelief and the subsequent opening of the gospel to the Gentiles, Paul writes, “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?” (Ro 11.12). We can say here similarly, if the Son’s humiliation brings such glory and blessing, what will his exaltation bring?

More to come.

Part 6: Risen | Part 7: Ascended | Part 8: Enthroned | Part 9: Coming Again | Part 10: Final Thoughts

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Thinking Like Christ, Part 4: And Worse

January 12, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Most Important Thing | Part 2: Moving to the Dump | Part 3: It Gets Worse

By becoming fully human—“in the likeness of men” (Php 2.7)—God the Son experienced restrictions that seem ordinary, normal to us, but they are utterly humiliating to the Eternal and All-Powerful God. We meditated on some of those in the previous post.

But now Paul takes it down to further, unimaginable humiliation.

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Php 2.8).

It doesn’t get any worse than this.

He dies. And not at a ripe old age, surrounded by loving family who are singing him into the presence of the angels. Even that would be incomprehensible for God. He cannot die, and for him to die under the best of circumstances would still be abhorrent.

He dies young, in the prime of his life. He dies a criminal, convicted of things he has never done. I say “things”—plural—because the religious establishment changes the charge as they deem it necessary to the circumstance. Before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, the charge is blasphemy (Mt 26.65), because that’s the surest path to the death penalty from that body. But because the Romans have removed the Sanhedrin’s authority for capital punishment (Jn 18.31), they need to get a Roman judgment, and they know the Romans won’t care a fig about blasphemy, so they change the charge to sedition (Jn 19.12)—though even before the Romans they admit that the real reason is his claim to be the Son of God (Jn 19.7).

Whatever it takes.

There were lots of ways to execute a criminal in those days. None of them were as peaceful or nonviolent as taking too many sleeping pills. There’s stoning, and there’s beheading, which, if done expertly, is relatively painless—or so it appears. But God the Son is sent off to be crucified.

Crucifixion was intentionally designed to kill the victim as slowly and painfully as possible. I won’t go into details—you can find them in a few seconds on the internet—but put simply, there was not, and there never has been, a more painful way to die.

And that was the way he died.

Humiliation.

But there’s something else to be said.

I used the word victim a few lines up. It’s important to note that Jesus was no victim.

He said, “No one takes [my life] from me. I lay it down by myself” (Jn 10.18). As he stood before Pilate, who said “Don’t you know that I have authority to crucify you?!” (Jn 19.10), he responded, “You have no authority over me, except what has been given you from above” (Jn 19.11).

He had set his face like flint to go to Jerusalem (Is 50.7); he had said repeatedly that he “must” go to Jerusalem, and be rejected by the elders, and suffer, and be treated with contempt (Mt 16.21; Mk 8.31, 9.12).

And when it was time, when he knew that everything had been accomplished (Jn 19.28), when he had pronounced it “Finished!” (Jn 19.30), he mentally and volitionally reached inside himself, picked up his spirit, and delivered it over to his Father (Jn 19.30).

In a very real sense, he did not die from crucifixion; he died by an act of his will.

When the soldiers came to break his legs so that he would die before the onset of the Sabbath, they found that he was already dead. People usually lasted much longer—often several days, if there wasn’t a Sabbath to bring a merciful death.

So at his lowest—at the deepest valley of his humiliation—he was still calling the shots.

He was in charge the whole time.

Even the pagan centurion saw it (Mk 15.39).

Jesus obeys the Father, to the most extreme outcome—but without ever relinquishing his divine authority.

Now, we have none of that authority, except what the Son has delegated to his people (Mk 13.34; Jn 1.12; 1Co 8.9; He 13.10). But Paul tells us to have the mind that he had (Php 2.5).

If the Son can walk that path, which was infinitely deep, certainly we can trace the comparatively gentle slope of laying down what rights and privileges we have for the sake of the gospel.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Thinking Like Christ, Part 3: It Gets Worse

January 9, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Most Important Thing | Part 2: Moving to the Dump

So now Christ has left the “ivory palaces” and moved to the dump. Let’s talk more specifically about what that was like.

Paul describes this change as taking on “the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men” (Php 2.7). That word form, by the way, is the same Greek word as form in the previous verse; you may recall from the previous post that Greek scholar J.B. Lightfoot defined it as “that which is intrinsic and essential to a thing.”

That means that he became just as much a servant as he was God before the incarnation. He became a human being, with all of the limitations that human beings have—with the one exception, as the author of Hebrews tells us, of being “without sin” (He 4.15).

So, to start with, he became embodied; he lived “here.” And “hereness” is not something he had known before, being spirit, and being omnipresent. Now, this is puzzling to us, because we’re not good at wrapping our finite minds around the concept of infinity. I said in the previous post that Jesus remained fully God throughout his incarnation—and that means, logically, that he retained all the attributes of God, which would include omnipresence. How does that work after he assumes a human body?

I dunno.

I’ve written before of the heaven-shaking nature of the (verbally, anyway) simple statement that God became man. How does Jesus experience omnipresence when he’s in a body that his disciples, who are pretty much always with him, can see is right there? Does he move with super speed? That’s not omnipresence. Does he just not go anywhere outside his body for 33 years? Well, “going” isn’t omnipresence either. Is he present bodily in Palestine, and everywhere else spiritually?

I dunno.

There’s a verse that seems to imply that his presence is not limited to his body. At one point he speaks of himself to Nicodemus as “the Son of man, who is in heaven” (Jn 3.13; note the present tense). But as it happens, there’s a significant question as to whether that final phrase is in the original text, so the case isn’t closed.

At any rate, the Son is now “placed”; he is located “here” or “there.” It appears to me that that’s a significant restriction. Even as he heals the sick, calms the storm, and raises the dead, He works from within a prison that He has constructed for Himself.

Second, he experiences, as Shakespeare put it in the mouth of Hamlet, “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” If he doesn’t eat, he gets hungry (Lk 4.2); if he doesn’t drink, he gets thirsty (Jn 19.28); and if he’s active, he gets tired.

Arriving at the community well in Samaria, he’s too exhausted to draw enough water for a personal drink, so he has to wait for someone to come along—in the hottest part of the day, when people didn’t go out to draw water, and traffic there would be sparse (Jn 4.6). When the boat he’s in enters a storm so violent that the professional fishermen among his disciples believe they’re doomed, he’s sound asleep in the bottom of the boat (Mt 8.24). Have you ever been tired enough to sleep through something like that?

Theologian Millard Erickson compares the incarnation to a three-legged race. The racers have three legs instead of two, but that doesn’t make them faster; it slows them down. When the Son added to his divine nature a human one, he ran, so to speak, more slowly. He who had never experienced difficulty at all found everything more difficult.

In his prayer to the Father the night before his death, Jesus refers to “the glory that I had with you before” (Jn 17.5).

“I had.” Past tense. That’s poignant. He was remembering the way it “used to be.” The everlasting, unchangeable God speaks of “used to be.”

This is a humiliation.

But Paul is not done yet.

Next time.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Thinking Like Christ, Part 2: Moving to the Dump

January 5, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1: The Most Important Thing

I have an exciting offer for you. I’m going to give you an opportunity to live at the dump. You’ll have your very own personal mound of trash, with all the rags you can wear and all the garbage you can eat. You’ll have lots of little companions—rats and cockroaches, mostly—to spend the night with. And best of all, you’ll be freed from the pesky necessities of bathing and brushing your teeth.

How many would like to take me up on this offer?

Hmm. Don’t see any takers.

I thought so. Surely no one would do such a thing.

But someone has. For you.

In our passage in Philippians 2, Paul writes that Jesus “emptied himself” and joined the human race. Have you thought about how great a step that was?

The passage begins (Php 2.6) by noting that the Son gave up a long, comfortable life.

That last sentence is an intentional understatement. His life was infinitely long, and it was infinitely beyond comfortable.

He existed in the form of God.

Now, that English has an unhealthy, even heretical implication. It sounds like he looked like God, but he wasn’t.

That’s most definitely not what Paul was saying, first, because the Greek in which he was writing doesn’t carry that implication, and second, because Paul is not an absent-minded sort of person who’s going to contradict both himself—

In Him [Christ, v 8] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form (Co 2.9)

And the Apostle John—

The Word was God (Jn 1.1).

No, Paul is saying is that Jesus was in the same “shape” (morphe) as God—that is, he was just like him. New Testament scholar J.B. Lightfoot wrote on this passage that morphe is “that which is intrinsic and essential to a thing.”

Jesus didn’t “resemble” God; he was God.

Next Paul tells us that Jesus, incredibly, counted his heavenly abode and divine status as not “a thing to be grasped”—that is, not something he had to hold onto for dear life.

Picture a purse snatcher trying to seize a woman’s purse. This woman is a fighter; she hangs on. (A friend of mine did that once. I wasn’t surprised when she described her instinctive response.) This guy is not going to get my purse.

Jesus was so essentially God, so comfortable with his standing as God, that he didn’t need to be defensive; he didn’t need to hang onto it. He was fine with letting it go.

Now, that’s dangerous talk; I need to specify what I mean. I do not mean that he gave up his deity; he was still fully God for every minute he walked the earth. I do mean that it cost him something to join us here; he left “ivory palaces” (Ps 45.8) and perfect shalom (Is 6.1-3) to take up residence in a place that was anything but comfortable.

How uncomfortable?

Well, how uncomfortable would you be living in a garbage dump?

Does it bother you when you see sin all around you? How intensely do you suppose that sight discomfited the perfect Son of God, the one whose conscience, unlike yours and mine, was never hardened by the slightest sin?

Does it bother you when you’re rejected by people you care about? How much did it bother Jesus when he came to his own, and his own rejected him (Jn 1.11)? when a disciple of three years betrayed him with a kiss? when his own brothers didn’t believe in him (Jn 7.5)?

If sin is a stench in God’s nostrils, how repulsive was the human condition to Jesus every single day of his earthly life?

Next time we’ll look at the pain of the incarnation in a little more depth.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On Thinking Like Christ, Part 1: The Most Important Thing

January 2, 2023 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Here we are at another New Year. And as is the routine, we’re thinking about resolutions, bettering ourselves. And that task has us thinking about priorities: what’s most important? What’s the best use of our limited time and resources?

It’s good to do this kind of thinking.

For Christians, the Most Important Thing is to be on God’s side, to be devoted to his plan(s) for us. And that involves a lot of things.

But most especially it involves God’s work of sanctifying us, making us to be more like His Son.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren (Ro 8.29).

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (2Co 3.18).

In the process called sanctification, God is changing us, over time, to be more like his Son.

That ought to be our Most Important Thing.

New Year or not.

In light of that, I’d like to spend a few posts meditating on that classic Christological passage in Philippians 2:

⁵Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. ⁸Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Php 2.5-11).

The passage begins by telling us—that’s who Paul is addressing—that we ought to be thinking the way Jesus is thinking here. And that thought pattern, as we shall see, ought to be surprising, given who he is.

The paragraph has a very clear two-part structure. Verses 5 through 8 describe the way Jesus thought, and how he acted as a result. We can call that his humbling, or his humility, or perhaps his humiliation.

The rest of the passage, verses 9 through 11, describes the Father’s action in response to Jesus’ humble way of thinking: his exaltation.

It’s worth noting at the outset that Jesus did not humble himself in order to be exalted; he was already exalted, as verse 6 makes clear. He humbled himself, first, in obedience to the Father’s plan, and second, to rescue those he loved as his creatures in his image. The exaltation unavoidably followed.

So when Paul tells us that we ought to think like Jesus, he’s not saying that we should be all about the exaltation; the command is focused on verses 5 through 8.

We’ll spend several posts considering this passage. Perhaps these thoughts can inform and animate your resolutions, whatever they may be.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Just One Thing …, Part 2

April 1, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

[Sidebar: Yes, I know it’s April Fool’s Day. No, I’m not participating. I don’t think it’s funny to lie to my friends. Seriously.]

In the previous post we noted Paul’s terse description of his mental state throughout a distraction-laden life: “one thing!” (Php 3.13).

We ended that post with a simple question: “How does he do it?”

He tells us in the passage—

[On the one hand] forgetting what lies behind and [on the other hand] reaching forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Php 3.13-14).

I’ve cited the NASB 95 here and added the bracketed material to emphasize the polarity in Paul’s mind; he is completely abandoning one approach and completely committing himself to a different one. (Yep, that’s in the Greek.)

Forgetting the Past

Paul puts out of his mind what lies behind.

We need to note something key here: he’s in charge of his thinking; his mind is his servant, not his master.

You know, you can decide what and how you think. You can choose, by God’s grace, to think differently (Ro 12.2). It’s been suggested that what you think about when you’re not busy tells you what you care most about. Do you like what that says about you? If not, why not direct your mind elsewhere?

What he puts out of his mind is what lies behind.

What’s that?

It could be his previous success among his peers, his earthly accomplishments, as listed in Php 3.4-6. “Forgetting” those things might mean simply that he doesn’t value them anymore (Php 3.7-8). His priorities and values have shifted.
It could be the ministry difficulties and distractions that he’s talked about elsewhere (2Co 11). “Whatever comes my way in this walk toward Christlikeness, I’m going to work through it.”
It could be his own godly efforts, which so far haven’t brought him to final success (Php 3.12-13).

We all can waste a lot of time and effort focusing

on past failures—which, for the regenerate, are forgiven and forgotten by God
or on past successes—which smacks of pride and works-based approval
or on the pain of the struggle—which implies that the goal is not worth the pain

But those things are indeed insignificant, comparatively speaking.

Eyes on the Prize

By contrast—“on the other hand”—Paul throws himself completely forward, into the harness, straining every muscle, focusing every thought on reaching the goal.

I press toward the mark.

His word press is the same word he used back in verse 6 of his zeal for persecuting the church. Luke says of those days that Paul (then called Saul),

breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, ²and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem (Ac 9.1-2).

Yikes.

With that kind of total commitment, he presses now toward the goal of knowing and obeying the one who set his face like flint (Is 50.7) to accomplish his own mission.

¹⁵All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things (Php 3.15 NIV).

Turns out this isn’t just for Paul, the super-saint. This is how all of us should think, how we all should live.

Do I?

How many hours a day do I spend on the distractions? even on the trivial?

Oh, I’m not discounting the need to take care of earthly business, or even the need for rest and recreation—that’s good stewardship. I’m not painting with a broad brush all our time on TV or social media—I use the latter to stay in touch with quite a few people.

But what have I done today to reach the existential goal—the one that is supposed to define my life and be the purpose of my existence?

But one. One thing.

Press forward.

Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash

Just One Thing …, Part 1

March 29, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Since the New Year I’ve been engaged in a personal study of Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians. Back in January I posted a brief series about the theme of “thinking” in the epistle, and since then I’ve been noticing a lot of other things as well. My attention was captured a while back by Paul’s words in chapter 3—

¹²Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. ¹³Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; ¹⁶however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

There’s a lot to think about here, something I think is worth spending a post or two on.

Our culture is psychically frazzled. Our thoughts are every which way, now here, now there. There’s The Outrage of the Day, which I’ve noted before. There’s the eager reporting of Bad News, likely driven more by the desire for clicks than the public’s right to know. There’s our own personal schedule pressure, which even during the lockdown phase of a pandemic is surprisingly demanding—not everybody has spent the last months bingeing on Netflix, and a great many people are hanging on by a thread. There’s worry about people who are sick, and about the loved ones of those who have died.

So many pressures—some legitimate distractions, of course, and others not so much.

Paul lived similarly. There were certainly distractions. His theological opponents were following him around the Empire, countermanding his teaching and trying to steal his sheep. His churches had problems—some, like Corinth, more than others, but even Philippi, home of his biggest fans (Php 4.14-16), had its squabbles that were apparently sufficiently significant to require apostolic intervention (Php 4.2). The demands of those churches required Paul’s daily care (2Co 11.28). And of course there are the minor issues of robbers, beatings, imprisonments, hunger, cold, and oh, the occasional shipwreck (2Co 11.23ff).

Distractions, indeed.

But in the midst of all that, Paul had a character quality that propelled his effectiveness.

He was single-minded.

He was like the police dog who, in the chaos of sirens, gunfire, and shouted commands, goes after the target with single focus, intent on the mission to the successful end.

One thing I do.

Most of the English translations supply the clause “I do” in an attempt to clarify the meaning—and there’s nothing wrong with that. But Paul doesn’t write those words; he’s writing a short, clipped sentence fragment, more of a grunt than a statement—

But one.

The word “thing” is strongly implied by the neuter gender of “one,” but even that word isn’t technically there. The KJV adds the demonstrative “this,” but that’s not there either.

But one.

Grunt. Squint. Focus. Bow. Strain. Pull.

One thing.

How do you suppose he can maintain that focus in the midst of all the interruptions, the violence, the threats, the crises?

I suppose it’s because the mission, and the goal to which it points, is infinitely more important to him than anything else in the picture.

What’s the goal? He expresses it several ways in this passage—

“knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Php 3.8; cf Php 3.10)
“be[ing] found in Him” (Php 3.9)
“attain[ing] to the resurrection from the dead” (Php 3.11)
“the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Php 3.14)

How good am I at keeping my eyes on the prize? How likely am I not to be distracted by dangerous things—or even trivial ones?

In verse 13 Paul tells us how he does that. We’ll take a look there next time.

Part 2

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On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 5: Focus

February 4, 2021 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

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

On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 4: Perspective

February 1, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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

Photo by André Ventura on Unsplash

On Healthy Minds in Troubled Times, Part 3: Selflessness

January 28, 2021 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

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

Photo by André Ventura on Unsplash