One in Christ

[0:00] We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christchurch. This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other! use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christchurch.

[0:15] Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at Christchurcheastbay.org. Good morning.

[0:26] I'm Denise Yon. I'm a member of the San Francisco Community Group. And women reading women. Today's scripture reading is from Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 1, verses 27, through chapter 2, verse 11, as printed in your liturgy.

[0:42] Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel.

[0:59] Without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved, and that by God.

[1:10] For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

[1:21] Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if 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 one in spirit and of one mind.

[1:40] Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others.

[1:53] In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

[2:04] Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

[2:20] Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

[2:38] This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Thanks, Denise, for that scripture reading. And good morning, Christ Church. It's good to be back. I don't know if you noticed, but I wasn't here last week.

[2:49] And I heard everything went beautifully. And I really want to just give a shout out to our leaders for stepping up and allowing me and Jonathan to get away on vacation. Oh, thanks, Sharon.

[2:59] It was a really sweet time. I'm coming up today, this morning, kind of heavy hearted. A part of my trip, you know, we had planned that trip to North Carolina about six months ago, but only about less than two months ago, we had found out that the friend I'd be visiting in North Carolina, his wife, would be needing to go through chemo and struggling with cancer.

[3:23] And by the time I arrived, actually, they were already talking about palliative care. And she just passed yesterday. So I may actually fly out again this week.

[3:35] So just a heads up. But I really want to thank the leaders for stepping up and being the church. You know, this isn't a one-man, two-man show. This is the body of Christ being the church.

[3:47] And I love that we can do that as a church family. Anyway, let's pray. Let's open up the word of God and let's hear what he has to say to us this morning. Lord God, we thank you that you are not far from us, from our suffering.

[4:12] In fact, you know it deeply because of the incarnation of your son, because your son humbled himself, became a servant, took on human likeness to save us, not because he had to, but because he was glad to.

[4:36] Well, God, would you open our eyes this morning to your love, to the beauty of the gospel. Would you fill our hearts with praise and peace and adoration.

[4:55] In Jesus' name, amen. All right. So I heard Jesse crushed it last week. And I'm glad he did or else I would have given him a hard time.

[5:06] He's a good buddy of mine and we try to pray together almost monthly. And I'm so glad that you were blessed by that in Paul's letter to the Galatians. But today we're back in Philippians.

[5:17] All right. Today we're back in Philippians. And what we're stepping into today is the unmistakable heart of Paul's letter to the church in Philippi, especially here in chapter 2, verses 5 through 11.

[5:29] It quite possibly might be the heart of Christianity itself is what we're looking at today. You could say that everything else in the letter, everything else in the whole of Christianity really hovers around, frames, and flows out of this core passage.

[5:43] It's truly one of the most profound and foundational passages in all of Scripture. It's like the heartbeat of the Christian confession. And for me personally, it's deeply, deeply formative in how I understand who God is.

[5:57] And not only who God is, but how I understand what it even means to be human. So I feel a certain weight this morning preaching this text. I want to do it justice. I want us to behold, you know, the beauty of what Paul wrote about here.

[6:11] And I want us to behold the super unique beauty of really the whole of the Christian faith that's kind of encapsulated here in this passage. I just, as a heads up, we're going to be, I'm going to be speaking mostly to Christians this morning.

[6:24] But if you are here today and you're not a Christian, we're so glad that you're here and we'd love to get to know you better. How I would suggest that you listen to the sermon this morning is by asking the question, what is so unique about Christianity?

[6:39] What is so unique about the God of Christianity? And why are Christians so crazy about this guy called Jesus, who they claim to be God?

[6:50] All right? So I want to invite you into that this morning. And just to remind us of where we are in this letter, Paul's, you know, he's done his intro, his personal opening remarks, he's told them how full his heart is with affection for them.

[7:03] He's told them that he wants all God's best for them. And he said, yeah, I'm in chains. Yeah, I'm in suffering. But honestly, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And that's all I care about, serving and honoring Christ.

[7:16] This is what he said so far in chapter one. But now today's passage is where he really gets into the substance and meat of the letter. He says, yeah, I'm in chains. He says, yeah, I'm in chains. He says, yeah, I'm in chains.

[7:27] Okay? So we're going to dive right in. Turn with me to verse 27. Okay? And I'm going to need you, I'll just, heads up, the beginning of the sermon's pretty dry. Okay? And I'm glad Chelsea's not here because she would give me an extra hard time for that.

[7:38] But it's going to be a little bit dry because we're going to get a little bit technical. We're really trying to pay close attention to what Paul is saying here. Okay? So verse 27, let's look at that. So here in verse 27, what we find is the very first commandment.

[7:53] The very first imperative that Paul gives in this entire letter. This is the first time he actually commands them to do something. And what he commands them is this. Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

[8:07] And let's stop there for a second. Okay? Now in the Greek, where it says whatever happens, that's actually just one word. And the word there simply can be literally translated only or alone.

[8:18] So what Paul is basically saying is this alone I command you. This is my one and only major command to you, church and Philippi. Concern yourselves with only this. And then where it says conduct yourselves in a manner worthy.

[8:32] That's actually also just one word in the Greek. It's the word polytuomai. Polytuomai. And if that sounds to you like the word politics, you're absolutely right.

[8:44] Because see, when Paul is saying polytuomai, he's not just saying conduct yourselves in a worthy manner. More literally what that means is be a citizen of. Okay? So what he is saying, if you put those together, is this.

[8:57] Only this, be a citizen of the gospel of Christ. That's his first and primary command to the church in Philippi. This alone, be a citizen of the gospel of Christ.

[9:08] Now, if you're wondering what this means, we're going to unpack it. But before we do that, Paul goes first. Instead of explaining what it means, he'd rather explain to us what it looks like. Okay?

[9:18] So according to Paul, what it looks like is found in the rest of verse 27. He says, So the picture that Paul is painting for citizens of the gospel is a picture of oneness.

[9:43] A picture of unity. That's the key word for today. Unity. That's the picture he's trying to paint. A picture of standing together in the unity of the Holy Spirit and of striving together in unity of their faith.

[9:56] And it's a unity that's a fearless unity. It says in verse 28, See, Paul is writing to them from prison, in chains, again.

[10:20] And as verse 30 indicates, now some of his fellow Christians in Philippi are also following in his footsteps, finding themselves in chains and facing opposition themselves. And what he wants them to commit to in all of this hardship is their citizenship in the gospel.

[10:34] Their shared unity with Paul, with Paul's chains, and with each other as they all face opposition together. And ultimately, their shared unity in Christ. Their unity as a suffering people who are trying to be with Christ, for Christ, and like Christ.

[10:47] Paul is saying, Stand firm in this Holy Spirit-filled, Holy Spirit-honoring confession. Strive together for continued unity in this counter-cultural faith. And do not be afraid, even in the face of opposition.

[11:00] For by pursuing this kind of fearless unity, Paul says, You are bearing witness to the world that in the end, God and his people will ultimately win. Will ultimately be saved, as opposed to God's opponents and enemies who will face destruction.

[11:14] Paul pleads with them on the basis of their own experiences with the triune God and what he's done in their lives. He pleads with them to be united. That's what he wants for this church in Philippi. Look at chapter 2. He's saying, If you have at all tasted the encouragement of being united with Christ, if you've at all known the comfort of being loved by your Father in heaven, and if you've at all enjoyed the fellowship and belonging of the Holy Spirit, and surely you have, right?

[12:01] Surely you've been moved by God toward tenderness and compassion. If that has at all been your experience as a Christian, he says, Then unite together as citizens of Christ, being like-minded, having the same love, and being one in the Spirit and of one mind.

[12:17] Okay? Now at this point, let me pause and thank you for staying with me. Okay? I know I started off very exegetical, paying super close attention, doing some heavy lifting together around Paul's logic and his language, but let me bring it home now and show you why this is so deeply relevant for us.

[12:33] You see, what Paul is doing here is profound contextual theology. What he's doing here is, you could consider it as counter-catechesis.

[12:44] He's confronting the cultural waters that this church in Philippi is swimming in every single day. See, these Christians in Philippi lived in a world that was constantly preaching to them, Look at the unity Rome has achieved.

[12:57] Look at the peace Rome has secured. Look at the greatness and glory of our empire. And remember, Philippi was a proud, proud Roman colony full of veterans, loyal Roman citizens who enjoyed the privileges and protections and the peace of the Pax Romana.

[13:15] This was a city essentially being discipled by the Roman Empire that was preaching to them every single day, Be encouraged, be comforted, and be united in peaceful communion because Caesar is Lord.

[13:27] But Paul, from prison, is commending to them a radically alternative citizenship, a dangerous citizenship, even a treasonous alternative.

[13:40] He's calling them to shift their primary citizenship, to shift their boast, to shift their ultimate hope and joy and loyalty and source of unity away from Rome and onto Christ.

[13:51] From Caesar is Lord to Jesus is Lord. And that's why his first, his very first command here is only this, be citizens of the gospel of Christ.

[14:03] Now, why does that matter to any of us? Because in many ways, we're not so different from the Philippians. We too are swimming in cultural waters that preach rival versions of unity to all of us.

[14:17] Political parties promising, if only everyone voted like us, then we'd have peace. Corporations preaching, if you buy and consume and have this certain lifestyle with our products, then and only then will you truly belong and feel secure and feel united with the rest of society.

[14:32] Or even within our families or our schools, as long as everyone agrees on our set of values, then we'll have unity. Just like in Paul's day, we're all being sold a million paths to unity, and yet we find that we are all still starving for unity, aren't we?

[14:49] Whether elephant or donkey, conservative or liberal, religious or secular, nationalist or globalist, Christian, Muslim, agnostic or atheist, we all actually want a world where we all get along. We all want peace, stability, harmony.

[15:03] Everyone longs for unity, but now if everyone in the world longs for unity, then why are we still so deeply divided? Well, I think the political analyst, Yuval Levin, he gets it right when he writes, The sense that what's holding us back is our disunity, is one sentiment that now does seem to cut across party lines.

[15:24] Yet unity itself can be a divisive notion. Americans yearning for solidarity don't always mean the same thing by it, except in as much as they all mean they would like to see less disagreement with their own views and priorities.

[15:37] In fact, the question of just what ought to bring Americans together now underlies a lot of discord in our politics. In other words, our problem isn't that no one wants unity, it's that we can't agree on what our unity should be based on.

[15:53] And so we end up swinging back and forth, right, oscillating between two broken extremes. On one side, we've tried to create unity by enforcing uniformity, by imposing narrow, biased and often unjust and arbitrary standards that silence dissent and crush difference.

[16:09] You have strongmen, dictators, tyrants, bulldozing their way toward order, right? And then on the other side, we've tried to create unity by embracing a kind of relativistic tolerance where every viewpoint is supposedly equal, but that too eventually collapses under its own weight because even tolerance has its limits, and when those limits are crossed, it turns into its own form of intolerant canceling and manipulative coercion itself.

[16:35] You have online mobs, social media outrage, cancel culture, all highlighting the fragility and the naivete of love as mere tolerance. So we just continue to fight.

[16:46] We continue to struggle with disunity. Why? Because ultimately, we have competing visions of what is ultimate, competing visions of what is honorable, competing visions of what it means to be truly human and of what an honorable human life ought to look like.

[17:02] See, Paul knew this. He anticipated this. Paul knew that the Pax Romana wasn't a true peace. He knew that while it may have lasted pretty long and while it may have indeed benefited a whole lot of people, it wouldn't last forever.

[17:15] And it also crushed a whole lot of other people in the name of order and peace and unity. And so when Paul exhorts this church in Philippi to be citizens of the gospel, united together with Christ, he's ultimately offering them, he's ultimately offering all of us who are still struggling with unity today, he's offering the world a more worthy citizenship, an actually pure unity, a nobler vision of what is truly honorable.

[17:44] He commends to us citizenship without superiority, unity without coercion, humility without compromise, and a life of servanthood without degradation.

[17:57] And he does this by pointing us to Jesus. And in doing so shows us the most ideal picture of who God is and the most ideal picture of what it means to be human at the same time.

[18:14] And this is the beauty of our passage. This right here, this is the secret sauce of Christianity. This is what makes our faith like literally sing, okay? So let's go to verse 3 and see how Paul suggests we arrive at unity as countercultural citizens of the gospel.

[18:31] Verse 3 says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. So first Paul tells us what not to do. Unity will never come out of contentious, selfish ambition or vain conceit.

[18:43] And by the way, the word here for vain conceit is also a single word in the Greek, kenodoxia, okay? Kenodoxia, which comes from kenos is empty, and doxa, which is glory. And basically it's this idea that being empty of our true and original glory because of sin, we try to fill ourselves with false and empty glories chasing after honor and status and recognition to make up for what's missing inside.

[19:07] But Paul's like, no, no. Verse 3, rather in humility, value others above yourselves. Don't pursue your own glory and value. Humble yourself and value others above yourself, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others.

[19:23] What Paul commends to gospel citizens for the sake of unity is humility and deference and an interest in others that supersedes our own self-interest. Now, I think you don't have to be Christian to agree with this, right?

[19:37] I think for most of us, this all sounds, you know, fine and dandy and quite commonsensical because, you know, of course, it's hard for any of us really, especially us enlightened Western people to disagree that, of course, more humility, more unselfishness would definitely help us move toward unity, right?

[19:57] But what's unique about what Paul is doing here is not just saying, try to be nicer, try to be less selfish, try to be less vain and conceited, try to care about others more than yourself.

[20:07] No, Paul knows that these mere suggestions toward kindness and selflessness will never make much of a difference on their own. The key for Paul, and this is what the secular West has abandoned, is that the reason we all value selflessness and humility and love and sacrifice in the first place is because of the person of Jesus Christ, because of the story of Jesus Christ.

[20:33] And it's only when we are united with Him that that kind of fruit will ever begin to abound in the world. Paul writes in verse 5, in your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.

[20:46] He brings us back to our union with Christ and not mere moralism, okay? And then from verses 6 through 11, we have this stunning work of early church doctrine.

[20:56] Most commentators think it's a song written either by someone in the early church, maybe multiple people, maybe by Paul, maybe others, but nonetheless, it's often called the Christ hymn, okay?

[21:07] This is the Christ hymn from verse 6 through 11, written no more than 30 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it's a hymn that Paul is either writing himself or referring to in order to communicate a bunch of core Christian truths all at the same time.

[21:23] And the first truth is this, that Jesus of Nazareth was from all eternity, verse 6, in very nature God. This is what Christians have always believed about Jesus of Nazareth.

[21:38] And yet, though being in very nature God, we've also believed that he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Now, some of you have, might recall other translations.

[21:51] Other translations say he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, right? Or it means like to violently and selfishly snatch and seize for his own personal self-interest.

[22:01] Think of that child who maybe invites another kid from school over for a play date. And they're playing and the invited kid reaches over for one of the toys and the host kid says, no, snatches it, mine, right?

[22:16] And honestly, that child is not wrong. That child is not wrong. I mean, I won't let my girls do that. They won't get away with that. But that child is not wrong. It is his toy.

[22:26] And in a sense, he has a right not to give it up. He has a right to insist that it is his alone to enjoy. But this is not what we see in the Son of God who is something far better than a toy.

[22:41] He is in very nature God. He did not act this way. He did not turn the stone in the desert to bread. He did not call legions of angels to rescue him from the cross.

[22:52] He did not use his divinity for his own advantage. But rather, verse 7, he made himself nothing. Or some translations say he emptied himself. And this doesn't mean that when the Son of God became human, he stopped being God or he emptied himself of his divinity.

[23:08] But actually, it says he emptied himself by adding to himself. Subtraction by addition. Verse 7, by taking on the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness.

[23:18] He put on humanity so that he was at the same time in one person, 100% God and 100% human. How does that work?

[23:29] We don't know, but we say yes, Lord, because that's what the Scriptures teach. And again, not just any kind of human though, a servant. You could even translate this, a slave. In the person of Jesus, God himself, the creator of the universe, the holy I am, who I am, the one in whom all things hold together, the one and only God took upon himself the lowest possible human status in the ancient world.

[23:52] Think of that image of Jesus with a towel around his waist, washing his disciples' stinky feet. Remember his words to his feuding disciples. You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority over them.

[24:06] It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant. And whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

[24:21] As a human, verse 8 says, God incarnate, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death. And even the worst kind of death, even death on a cross.

[24:32] And man, this is wild. Let us not become overly familiar with this beautiful ancient truth that God became human, that he became a slave.

[24:45] He became a dead human slave, even a crucified dead human slave. God in Christ didn't consider that too beneath him. So how then shall we live?

[24:59] Do you see what Paul is doing? You know, so many people, I was just on the phone yesterday with someone who identified as a Christian, but to her the essence of Christianity was just being nice and being accepting and to her the core teaching was love your neighbors.

[25:12] That's what Jesus taught. But no, that cannot be. That cannot be the first and ultimate principle of Christianity. That command alone will do almost nothing in our devastatingly broken world.

[25:22] No, the world doesn't need a moralistic suggestion that we need to love more. The world needs a God who will show us what real, healing, world-transforming love truly is and a God who can do it.

[25:38] A God whose initial act of love will empower and inspire all other loves. And don't you see that that is what we have in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

[25:51] God become man and not just man but crucified slave. What Paul is doing here, what Paul is revealing about how unity and peace will be accomplished and achieved amongst the citizens of the gospel of Christ is the ultimate truth about who God is.

[26:10] And that picture is one and the same in Jesus Christ. You see, in this passage, it isn't just some proof text from the Bible proving that Jesus is God. No, it's far more than that.

[26:22] The message here is not simply that Jesus is God but that God is Jesus even as a human slave bleeding to death on a cross in a trash heap outside of Jerusalem.

[26:37] You know, we tend to think of God-likeness as domination, as being untouchable, unstoppable, invincible. I used to play this video game in college called Dota and when you managed to stay alive, which was very hard for me, but once in a while and you went on a killing spree, you would hear the video game say, God-like.

[27:01] And it was so satisfying. I also remember a time playing basketball with the youth. I think it was Luther George. He would not miss. And Eli Gilbert goes, He's a God!

[27:14] He's a God! And it wasn't wrong at all to think of God this way, as all-powerful, as undefeatable, as someone who never misses.

[27:27] But the beauty of Christianity and the good news of Jesus is that our God, He is so much more. He's so much more than that.

[27:40] Like, our God is that. Yes, He is able. He's able to crush His enemies. And yet, also, He's a God who is willing to be crushed in the place of His enemies.

[27:53] in our place when we were His enemies ourselves. And that's a crucial truth here as well.

[28:04] In all the disunity we suffer and lament, it's because of our sin. Our sin, our selfish ambition, our pursuing empty, futile glory. From the beginning, we gave up our original glory and we've been starved for glory ever since.

[28:16] Adam and Eve and we with them, in unity with them. According to our selfish ambition, we thought that we could be more like God than we already were. And still today, we think that we can be everywhere.

[28:29] We think we could be omnipresent with our planes and with our internet connections and streaming devices. We think we can be omnipotent, just speak things into Siri or chat TPT and boom, there it is. And we think we can be omniscient.

[28:40] We think we can be all-knowing with more accessible facts and data at our fingertips than at any other time in human history. And we, like Adam and Eve, pursue more and more closer and closer proximity to such power and presence and proficiency because we are seeking our own glory rather than the glory of God.

[28:58] That is the essence of sin. That is the essence of sin. But thanks be to God that, as John Stott famously wrote, while the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

[29:19] man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be, but God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be on a cross.

[29:36] See, this is the stuff that will change the world. This is what makes Christianity and particularly the God of Christianity unlike any other.

[29:48] This is the only path to unity, peace, and order. God, the ultimate reality, the I am, who voluntarily entered creation, humbled himself, and served us unto death on a cross.

[30:03] It's the most important truth that has changed and will ultimately transform the world and our sinful, stony hearts. The historian Tom Holland in this book Dominion many of us read a few years ago, he isn't even a Christian and yet he notices this as well and he writes, to be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered.

[30:29] This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been, the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe that serves to explain more surely than anything else the sheer strangeness of Christianity.

[30:53] All are heirs to the same revolution, a revolution that has at its molten heart the image of a God dead on a cross. As Paul writes in verse 45, therefore, therefore, after he mentioned Christ becoming a servant, Christ being obedient to death on a cross, therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

[31:19] At the name of Jesus every name should bow. The highest name, Yahweh, belongs to Jesus in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Yahweh, that Jesus Christ is Lord, not in opposition to the Father, but to the glory of the Father.

[31:37] Paul here is echoing Isaiah chapter 45 here where Isaiah prophesied and all the faithful Jewish people of old hoped for the day when every knee would bow and every tongue swear allegiance to their God, Yahweh, alone.

[31:50] And Paul is saying here, yo, that's Jesus. The crucified slave is Yahweh and his Trinitarian glory is not at all diminished by his self-emptying love, but in fact, it is magnified all the more.

[32:07] And if I could just close with a final point reminding you that the incarnation of Jesus described here isn't just a picture of who God is, but it's also at the very same time a picture of what it means to be human in the most beautiful, the most honorable possible way.

[32:25] You know, throughout history, there have been so many counterfeit models of who is worthy to be called a Lord, who is worthy to have people bow the knee, who is worthy to have a high and noble name, and it's always had to do with power and strength and force and wealth and beauty and cunning and intelligence and all sorts of other meritorious factors.

[32:46] But in Christ, in Christ, we find that the most perfect way to be human is not by merit, not by self-exaltation, but through humbling oneself, emptying oneself, making oneself a servant even unto death.

[33:04] And this probably sounds crazy, probably sounds terrible to most of us, and many of us are suffering under terrible injustices and afflictions and terrible scarcity. But what I believe this is saying to us, what I believe Jesus shows us here is the good news that when we humble ourselves and when we face suffering and hardship and scarcity even near to death, if we are united with Christ, we cannot lose, we can only win.

[33:34] Our stories are never beyond redemption and the endings of our stories will one day surely end like His in honor and glory beyond anything we could have imagined. And this is how the gospel inspires and empowers our self-denying, self-giving, Christ-like unity as citizens of the gospel and as witnesses to the watching world.

[33:57] This is how we are free to live differently than everyone else in the world who is striving and grasping and sweating to make their bread. We don't have to grasp. We don't have to seize in Christ.

[34:08] We see the perfect model of being human. He humbled Himself and then God exalted Him and that's a picture of the gospel. The gospel says we can humble ourselves because we trust that God will exalt us.

[34:22] We don't have to exalt ourselves but we can trust that we will share in the glory and in the imperishable inheritance of the beloved Son of God, the resurrected King of the universe. So because of Christ, because of Christ, we know that to be human is not having to spend the rest of our lives anxiously protecting our own names, protecting our resumes, protecting our wealth, our comfort, our boundaries.

[34:45] No. If Jesus did not consider the comfort and status of heaven something to be grasped, why should we feel the need to grasp at this or that, at this salary, at this lifestyle, at this status?

[34:58] What if instead we approached every good thing in our life simply as a gift from God not to be hoarded but to be stewarded and shared in the name of Jesus or time or talent or treasure or maybe for some of us it's not so much the challenge of what do I need to give up and share for the sake of others but how can I empty myself by adding adding servanthood to my life as Jesus did addition by subtraction by addition what might God be calling me what might God be calling us today to pick up and add what particular mission might God be calling me to give my life to but either way whether it's emptying ourselves by giving or emptying ourselves by taking up service if we are united with Christ by faith if we believe in the beauty of the Christ hymn we can rest assured that our God who emptied himself for us is the same God who will one day exalt us with himself forever and that's the good news of Christianity the uniquely good news of Christianity will you pray with me

[36:13] O Lord make this Christ hymn the hymn of our hearts the habit of our hands as we go out in the name of Jesus not grasping but giving not striving but serving out of your abundant love for this world O God make us more like Jesus help us to enjoy our union and communion with the one who is in very nature God who loved us to death on a cross and make the world a different place because of the way that we commune with and adore and seek to live out the spirit presence of Christ in the world do that Lord in us in Christ's church in your church O God for the glory of your name and for the good of the nations we pray in Jesus' name

[37:15] Amen Amen Thank you.