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One Faith, One Mission

Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ…standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel…in humility consider others as more important than yourselves…Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus…  Philippians 1:27-2:11


Anyone who has read anything I’ve written or has talked to me for longer than 5 minutes knows how much I love the book of Philippians.  I think it is the most important document ever written as it pertains to Christian virtue (other than the Sermon on the Mount).  Many have spoken of Philippians as a letter that calls for joy in all circumstances, but at its heart, Philippians is a letter that exalts and commands humility for the Christian and for the Church.  If you miss how Paul showcases humility, you miss the melody of the letter.  There’s plenty of wonderful harmony still, but the book loses its zing.  


I argue this with conviction because of the “Christ hymn” Paul puts at the center of the letter in Ch. 2:5-11.  The hymn is a worshipful reflection on the humility of Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing…The gospel emphasis throughout Philippians is the humility of Jesus and the command to adopt this same attitude for ourselves.  


You can’t repent without humility.  You can’t grow in godliness apart from humility.  The Church cannot be united in mind and mission unless we highly value humility.  It’s essential for the flourishing of individual Christians and communities of believers.  Without humility, there is discord and division within the Church.  Without humility, mission flounders because self-interested people don’t act courageously when contemplating evangelism and suffering on behalf of Christ.  


I’ll stop short of the claim that all of our problems would disappear if we were humble.  But I do want to contend that every issue we’re having as the people of God has elements of pride rarely being addressed as we wrestle with solutions.  Pride prevents us from listening to each other well enough to understand and enter into a productive dialogue.  And it prevents us from thinking we need to listen better (a vicious cycle).  Pride allows us to dismiss the experiences of others in critically important conversations of justice.  


Pride holds grudges.  Pride withholds forgiveness.  Pride refuses to seek forgiveness.  Pride hides sin.  Pride looks down on others.  Pride attaches conditions to love.  Pride thinks of self more highly than it ought.  Pride is self interested above all.  Pride can’t learn because pride already knows the whole story.  Pride doesn’t evangelize because it’s not gifted in sharing the gospel.  Pride doesn’t move toward others who look, think, and act differently because pride doesn’t want to feel awkward or be embarrassed.  Pride allows Christians to do just enough to feel justified without paying full cost of following Jesus.  Pride preserves life when our Lord commands we lose it.  Pride is domineering.  Pride is passive aggressive.  Pride withdraws.  Pride seeks out what it wants to hear and already believes to be true.  Pride likes to argue for argument’s sake.  Pride doesn’t care about solutions, just winning.  


We know and sing songs about our God who opposes the proud, and yet pride runs rampant in our daily lives.  It prevents us from being challenged by perspectives different than our own.  It prevents us from maintaining the Spirit-birthed unity essential to a healthy Church.  It produces a tone to our truth telling that clashes with the tone of Jesus.  Ultimately, it’s divisive and contrary to the heart and mission of God, not to mention the antithesis of Jesus of Nazareth, the One we are to emulate and exalt.  


To come full circle, this is not an attempt to simply highlight a problem.  This isn’t a critical deconstructing of Christians’ lives or a condemnation of the Church.  It’s a call to not neglect humility.  Hopefully it’s become more apparent or at least a healthy reminder to the reader that pride will destroy EVERYTHING God loves as it destroys our lives and shatters our relationships.  


If humility is an afterthought, our discipleship and the Church’s mission will struggle to mature and advance.  Humility is essential to all that we are and to all that we do as the people of God.  


A life that is worthy of the gospel of Christ is a life that pursues unity of the brethren, suffering on behalf of Jesus, interest in others above interest in self, and an attitude of servanthood just like Jesus.  Jesus’s humility is our example, but it’s also our salvation.  He humbly obeyed the Father all the way to the Cross.  His humility rescues us from sin and death.  And it must be our joy to adopt His attitude as our own.  


If the Church will pursue this kind of gospel-worthy life of humility: dependence upon God, dying to self to live to Christ, and counting others more significant than ourselves…if the Church pursues humility, her lamp will burn bright until Jesus comes.

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