Philippians 1:27-2:11. So What’s Your Motivation?

There’s a funny old commercial for Sprite you can find on YouTube.  Some commercials you ignore, and some stick with you.  “Where’s the beef?” was brilliant.  Everyone who ever saw it remembers it.  Since I study communication, I love to watch commercials, at least new ones.  On the Sprite commercial, it has three young, tough-looking Black guys who are supposedly playing a rough game of basketball.  The commercial is supposedly for a sports drink, called Turboboost or something silly like that.  So the three tough guys are standing, talking to the camera, and the one in the middle holds out the can, but the director of the supposed commercial stops him, “Cut—you’ve got the can upside down, dummy.”  The can-holder breaks into a rage, using a British accent, “I played Hamlet at Cambridge!”  The second actor says, “Once again, you caused me to lose MY concentration!”  And the third says, “Excuse me, what’s my motivation?”  Then the screen says, “Image is nothing, thirst is everything.  Drink Sprite.” 

Of course the commercial is making fun of pretentious actor types, and it is very funny.  But I think of that question a lot—What’s my motivation?  Because that is everything for the Christian life.  We can look really good on the outside—like those actors looked like tough street gang types—but what’s really going on inside?

The key phrase in this lesson is “Let this mind be in you.”  It contains the beautiful hymn passage knows as the kenosis, a word which means emptying, because Paul is describing what Christ did to achieve our salvation—he emptied himself.  Of what?  How?  Why?  And what is the result?  Those are the key questions in this passage.

A principle I would like you to leave with is this:  All doctrine has practical application.  All practical application has a doctrinal basis.  There is no such thing in the Bible as distinction between theory and practice.  Our practice is not to be based on pragmatism (for results), selfishness, popularity, charismatic leaders,  ease, convenience, or expediency.  It is to be based on the doctrinal truths of the character of God, the example of Christ, and the message of the cross and gospel. 

This passage has seven “be’s.” 

1:27a:  Let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. What might that mean?  If you keep the gospel in the box of just being the historical truth of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, you might miss some of the meaning here.  That is the gospel, but that’s not all the gospel means.  The gospel of the kingdom, Christ’s rule because of his death, burial, and resurrection is the bigger picture.  How would our conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ?  What would that look like?  Perhaps the rest of the passage defines that.

1:27b: Be consistent—“whether I come to you or am absent from you….”

1:27c:  Be steadfast, firm.

1:28:  Be brave.  The fact that the Philippians’ persecutor do so is a sign that they are lost (what perdition means) and a sign that the Philippians are found.

2:1-2:  Be unified.  Why?

            The trinity is a unity.  Yet as we see, in a sense Jesus, the Son, is asked to do something really “big” to achieve the goal of salvation.  So the basis of unification is a mutual humility, so

2:3-ff.  Be humble.  Paul can point to no other example of chosen humility (not forced, not social, not genetic) than Christ’s.  Humility that is not chosen at some level is not humility.  We are not natural humble.  The Sunday School literature defines humility as knowing your strength and weaknesses as human beings.  I think that’s a good definition for humans—that is, having a realistic and thankful assessment of who you are—but it doesn’t apply to Christ.  

This is considered one of the great Christological passages in Scripture.  It bears long and repeated study.  In graduate school I went to a retreat where that was all we studied, and I memorized the passage.  Maybe it worked—I think it gave me a deeper understanding of the cross.  However, I don’t consider myself humble.  I know how proud and self-seeking I can be.  I know how little I don’t want to be inconvenienced or challenged.  I know how much I like to show off my little bit of knowledge.  It makes me feel powerful to know stuff other people don’t, and makes me feel insignificant to feel ignorant.  A person can look humble on the outside and be very proud on the inside.  So it goes back to “what’s my motivation?”  a question only the person can answer honestly.  As I said last week, the gospel requires total self-honesty.   I think that is the main reason it is rejected. 

So, the key is “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus …. “  Paul is writing this hymn to teach them doctrinal truth and that doctrinal truth should guide their practice.  What is the doctrinal truth here?

The doctrinal truth is who Jesus truly is and what he truly did.  There can be no mistakes about that.  The word kenosis means emptying.  But of what?  Not his deity, but his display of his deity, the full use of all the divine attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.  He was in a body and had physical limitations.  “Being in the form of God, he did not consider his deity something to be held on to, stolen, grasped at, or something that he would lose, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant …..”

Sometimes bondservant is translated slave, but that is not completely it.  In the Old Testament a person became a slave because of debt.  Every seven years the debtors who were slaves were supposed to be made free, but a person could choose to remain a bondservant.  So, it’s a matter of choice—the person was in bondage, was made free legally, but chose to continue in service.  I believe that is the picture here, not slavery like we think of it.

“ … and coming in the likeness of man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death (and not just any death), the excruciatingly death of the cross.”

But as Paul Harvey says, there’s the “rest of the story.”  Verses 9-11.  Therefore God also has highly exalted him.”  Is this more exaltation than he had before, or a return to the exaltation he had before, or a different kind of exaltation he had before?  I would have to go with the second and third—he is now exalted as both Lord and Savior.  He has been given the (not a) name which is above every name (LORD), with the purpose being that at some future time (will) every knee will bow to him, either by choice and gladly or by force and in terror. 

So, Jesus, not necessarily "Love" wins.

So, to wrap up:  Be …….;  Let …..   And then the rest of it will take care of itself.  Focus on the motivation, so you aren’t phony like the guys in the Sprite commercial.