The Case for Joy: Philippians 1:27 - 2:2 • James Sutton

Good morning. Our passage for this morning is Philippians 1:27 through 2:2. This is God's word.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. So that whether I come and see you or I am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. Engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. — Philippians 1:27–2:2

This is God's word. Well, I'm excited to preach this passage this morning. This passage introduces another section in the book of Philippians. Paul has been talking about his mindset and essentially how he views life as an opportunity to live for Christ. He sees his dying, his death as his gain. And he goes back and forth about which is better, and he finally concludes that it's better for him to remain for the sake of the Philippians. And now he's going to address them. He's going to say, hey, now here's how I want you to live. And he begins with this sentence: only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Understanding "Worthy of the Gospel"

By way of introduction this morning, I want to spend just a few minutes talking about what that phrase means. That's not a phrase that's uncommon for Paul. In fact, if you look in Ephesians and Colossians, you'll see similar phrases where he exhorts believers to live in a manner worthy of the gospel. At first blush, it can seem like because of our understanding of the English word worthy that what he's saying is that we have to somehow retroactively earn the gospel.

Let me illustrate that misunderstanding with this illustration. One of my favorite movies is Saving Private Ryan. I love that movie. It has one of the most cinematic tear-jerking moments of all time, which is at the end of the film. You'll recall the unit has come in, they've saved Private Ryan. Captain John Miller is there on the bridge dying, and he calls Private Ryan over to him and looks up at him and says, "James, earn this. Earn this." And then he dies. The shot is right on Matt Damon's face, and you see him age. Suddenly Private Ryan is no longer standing on the bridge, but he's standing at the grave of Captain John Miller, the man who had sacrificed himself for him. And heartbreakingly, he's talking to the grave and he's saying, "I've tried to do the best that I can. I've got my family here with me. I hope that as I've lived my life that at least in your eyes, it seems like enough."

Then his wife walks up and he turns to his wife and heartbreakingly—and I can't watch the scene without weeping—he looks at his wife and he says, "Tell me I'm a good man. Tell me I'm a good man." And she does, and essentially the film ends. The idea is that Private Ryan has lived his entire life with this ethic of "I've gotta live up to the sacrifice that these men made to save my life."

Well, in looking at this sentence, "Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ," it can echo that scene. It could seem like Paul is saying, "Hey, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross on your behalf. Now it's time for you to live up to that." How could you do that? How could you live a life worthy of the gospel in that sense? That is not at all what Paul means. That's the good news. It's not at all what he means. That is not even close to what he means. In fact, he means the exact opposite.

That understanding of that phrase would lead you to think that your call as a Christian is to make the most of yourself. You have to somehow make so much of yourself that somewhere up in heaven—as Jesus is looking down and seeing all of the good things that you're doing—he kind of nudges his Father or the Spirit and says, "Man, I'm glad I saved that guy. Look at all the stuff he's doing." That would never happen. And Paul is so abundantly clear in his other teachings that we can never earn the gospel. The gospel is a free gift. It's given to us as sinners that are totally undeserving—past, present, and future in this life. We don't deserve the gospel. We can't earn it. That is not what he means here.

Instead, the English word worthy kind of gives us that sense, but the Greek term here has overtones of citizenship. Essentially, maybe I can illustrate it this way. You know what a miser is.

A miser is someone who has incredible wealth, but they don't live like it at all. They're frugal and cheap. They're not generous. They hoard. In fact, many misers throughout history have lived their entire lives without anyone knowing that they had the kind of wealth that they had.

Our citizenship, because of the gospel, is in heaven. We are wealthy beyond all imagination. We have everything because we have Jesus. What Paul is saying is that we should live like it. We who are citizens of heaven should live as though we are citizens of heaven. We should live as though we are a part of the kingdom of God, as though we have everything.

As he fleshes that out through this passage, that becomes more and more clear. And the end result is not that we make more of ourselves, but instead in our life, we make more of the gospel.

The Outline: Three Marks of a Worthy Life

So here's our outline for this morning. A worthy life is one that stands firm in the faith. A worthy life is fearless in the face of opposition. And a worthy life is one that is unified to other believers.

A Worthy Life Stands Firm in the Faith

Let's take a look at that first point. A worthy life is one that stands firm in the faith. See that in verse 27, the second half.

So that whether I come to you or I'm absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one mind, one spirit, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. — Philippians 1:27

We've been stuck at home, and I've been doing a lot of distance learning. I've spent a lot of time with kids. So my thinking may be a little bit childish this morning, but when I hear that phrase "stand firm," I think of the children's song about the wise and foolish builders. You know the song? It's based on Matthew chapter 7. It goes like this:

The wise man builds his house upon the rock. The wise man builds his house upon the rock. The wise man builds his house upon the rock, and the rains came tumbling down. The rains came down, and the floods came up. Rains came down, floods came up. Rains came down, floods came up. But the house on the rock stood firm.

You know the rest of the song. That's the fun part.

Foolish man builds his house upon the sand. Foolish man builds his house upon the sand. Foolish man builds his house upon the sand, and the rains came tumbling down. Rains come down, the floods come up. Rains come down, floods come up. Rains come down, the floods come up, and the house on the sand goes splat.

That's my kid's favorite part of that song. But it's not the foolish man's favorite part of that song. The splat is not worthy of the gospel. Building your house upon the sinking sand of what the world has to offer is not worthy. It's miserly. It's not taking advantage of the riches that you have in Christ. We don't build houses on sand. We build houses on the rock. We have the firm foundation of Christ, and we want to stand on it. We should stand on it.

Living worthy of the gospel means that we plant ourselves on that, and we dig our roots in deep to that.

The Challenge: When the Rains Come Down

But here's the challenge. I think oftentimes when the rains come down and the floods come up, we want to run to anything but that solid rock. We want to run to whatever it is that we can find. Oftentimes, I think we run to all kinds of different idols.

My favorite idol is comfort. When this pandemic came in, all I wanted to do was watch Netflix. I wanted to escape in all kinds of different ways, ways that would produce my comfort. I didn't want to have to deal with it. I didn't certainly want to turn to Christ and recognize my own lack of sufficiency. That's another thing that we like to run from the rock on. We want to run to our own self-sufficiency. Like, we can do this.

When this whole thing dropped, everybody in this church was trying to do everything. We were trying to figure out all the different things that we could do. The staff came up with about a million different things to do, and we realized somewhere about two weeks into it, really the only thing that we need to do is we need to stand firm.

Do you see how a right understanding of what worthy living looks like affects that? If we have that wrong understanding, we're trying to do all the things. We're trying to be firm on in and of ourselves. We're trying to build ourselves up. But if we have that right understanding of what worthiness looks like, then essentially, we're just depending more upon Christ.

CDK, I want to ask you this morning. How are you depending? How are you standing firm on the foundation of Christ that you have? How are you taking time to rest and rejoice in the firm foundation that you have in Jesus Christ? You need to be doing that regularly, especially now.

And I want to encourage you too that this is not something that you do by yourself. A lot of times people think, okay, I'm supposed to stand firm on the foundation of Christ.

That means more quiet times, more study time in the word. It definitely means that. I hope you're doing that. More prayer time. I hope you're doing that. But it's not something that you necessarily do alone. There are lots of ways that we have to encourage one another with the foundation that we have in Christ. Community groups are still meeting. Have you reached out to those in your community group and allowed them to encourage you with the firm foundation that you have in Christ? Our senior pastor is doing daily devotionals. Have you tuned into those? Our elders are meeting three times a week to pray. Have you joined us for any of those?

There's lots of ways that we as a church can dig our foundation deeper into the solid rock of Christ, how we can stand firm, how we can live our lives as worthy followers of Christ, worthy of the gospel in this time.

There's an illustration that was shared with me recently. Redwoods are really tall trees with really shallow roots. Their roots only go five to six feet deep. Do you know how they survive storms? It's because their roots, even though they're only five or six feet deep, they spread out and they interlock, and they're in groves. So essentially, five to six feet below the surface of a redwood tree is a whole interlocking network of root structure. They're depending upon the roots of other trees, and collectively, they all stand up.

Jesus Christ has not only given us a firm foundation, but he's also given us each other to encourage one another and to point each other to the firm foundation that we have in Christ and to interlock with each other combined with him in unity.

Living Fearlessly

Let's look at our second point. The second point is that we, who are living lives worthy of the gospel, live fearlessly.

Not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God. — Philippians 1:28

Remember the right and wrong understanding. Fearlessness is not something that we do in order to earn the gospel. I am not fearless so that Jesus will be up in heaven saying, "Man, I'm glad I saved that guy. He's earned it." I am fearless because of the gospel. I am fearless because of what the gospel gives me.

Remember, citizens of heaven are invincible. Remember Romans 8? We studied Romans not that long ago here in this church. We who are in Christ have nothing to fear because what can separate us from the love of Christ? Can heights or depths or angels or demons or powers or principalities? Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? No. Nothing can. We are invincible. That's what it means to be a citizen of heaven. Paul is saying we need to live like it.

We need to live like it because fearlessness is an omen. It is a sign to the world that what we believe in is true. It's essentially saying to the world, "Hey. Fear is your thing. We don't have that in our country. That's not something that's a part of where we're from." Our fearlessness in the face of our opponents, Christians, it convicts and condemns the world and calls them to a greater repentance and turning to Christ.

John Wesley once said this:

Give me 100 men who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen. They alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven upon the earth.

I love that quote because it's such a great picture of what Christians can do when they live out of all the benefits that we have in the gospel.

But let's pause for a minute. Just like sometimes we run from the firm foundation of Christ, oftentimes we as believers are fearful. We're afraid. Remember too that this fearlessness doesn't just convict and condemn the world. It also convinces and confirms us of the truth of what we believe in. Remember those redwoods. Remember that interlocking root system. As we take heart, as we depend upon Christ and we see each of us living out of the benefits of the gospel, it encourages us to do that collectively together.

Being Unified

And that brings me to my third point, and I'm really going to camp here. The third point is being unified. A life worthy of the gospel is one that is in unity. It's really all over this passage.

One spirit, one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. — Philippians 1:27

Engaged in the same conflict as you saw that I had. — Philippians 1:30

And Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2:

Same mind, same love, full accord, one mind. — Philippians 2:1-2

It's just interwoven all throughout this passage. This concept that Christian lives lived in a way that is worthy of the gospel are totally enmeshed together, totally unified. And remember, our right understanding versus our wrong understanding.

You could totally take that with a wrong understanding of what it looks like to live a life worthy of the gospel, and you could make that into an imperative that makes you have to earn it. I have to be unified with all these people. I'm gonna be so unified with all these people that Jesus is gonna be up in heaven going, man, glad I saved James Sutton. Man, he's just the glue guy who's holding the entire church together. That's wrong. That's not what Paul's saying.

He's saying that in fact, Jesus Christ has made us one. That is the reality. We are one in Jesus Christ. That is done, finished, completed. And our citizenship in heaven is one unified, reflecting the holy trinity itself. Unified with each other and unified with Christ. We are one mind, one spirit, one faith, one baptism, one everything in Jesus. That's what we have. So now live out of that—that's what Paul's saying. Live out of that reality.

And verse 27, I think, is helpful in that it gives us three perspectives to that unity. It talks about spirit, mind, and action. One spirit, one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.

The Orchestra Illustration

To help illustrate these different perspectives on what our unity looks like, what it looks like to live out of this wonderful unity that we have in the gospel, I wanna use the illustration of an orchestra. Think about an orchestra. It's one, but it's got many parts. It's something that creates beautiful music. It's something that's amazing, really, when you think about it. If you've ever heard a really great orchestra play, it's the kind of thing that'll bring tears to your eyes.

When he talks about the unity of the spirit, I want you to think about the conductor. What would an orchestra be like without the conductor? There would be no one to guide the orchestra. There would be no rhythm. There would be no direction. The spirit is for the church the guide, the one who sets the beat for the work of the church. It is such a blessing that we have this one holy spirit who guides and directs us.

Why is that a blessing? Well, here's why. It's because each of our little individual parts—we don't necessarily have a clear sense of how they fit together. And in fact, we probably couldn't fit them together in and of ourselves. And oftentimes, as we're going through our lives, we don't really know how it fits. We have to trust that the conductor, that the spirit is combining all of our parts together and using them in such a way that's gonna come together and fit to bring glory to Christ. That's what unity in the spirit looks like. And that's such a blessing. It's such a blessing that it's not up to us, that you don't have to figure out how to fit all of the different pieces throughout all of time and all of space of the church into one kind of holistic whole that makes sense and is beautiful. The spirit's doing that. You can rest in that. So follow the spirit.

Second thing, unity of the mind. One spirit with one mind. The mind—the unity of the mind is like the music. He's saying essentially, I want you to have the same mind as me. That's the flow of this. Remember, he's talked about:

For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain — Philippians 1:21

And he's gonna move into starting in verse two, five—he's gonna start talking about us having the same mind as Christ. He's gonna give the Philippians two more examples, Timothy and Epaphroditus, of what it looks like to have the same mind as Christ.

What is the same mind of Christ? Well, we're gonna get a whole sermon on this next week. But Christ is one who emptied himself, became a servant, humbled himself to death on the cross, and was exalted by God. That's the music that we're called to play. That's the music that Paul was playing. It's essentially the music of love. Christ's sacrifice—that's how we define love. This is how we know what love is:

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us — Romans 5:8

Paul, even though it would be gain for him to be with Christ, decides ultimately, "Hey, I'm gonna stick with you guys because for me, I wanna be a part of playing the song of Jesus Christ. I wanna serve you guys. I wanna pour myself out. I wanna empty myself for you." Timothy, Epaphroditus, all of the saints—all of them have had a part in this song.

And in fact, in verse 29, when Paul starts talking about:

For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake — Philippians 1:29

He's saying, "Hey, engage in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. You have a part in the song. You get to play the song. You get to engage in suffering for the sake of Christ."

Now, that's a weird thing.

It's a weird thing to hear somebody say, hey, you get not only to believe in Jesus, but you also get to suffer for his sake. Oftentimes, we tend to think about faith and salvation as the gift. And the suffering is kind of the string attached to the gift. That's not how Paul saw it. He saw it as all gifts. Not only do I get to believe in Jesus Christ who played the greatest love song, but now also I get to add my voice to that song. I get to suffer as a sign of my love for Jesus. It's an opportunity. It's a limited time opportunity where I get to participate in the song of my savior.

So our suffering, our following after and having the mind of Christ, the same mind as Paul as we live our lives, that's the song. That's the unity of mind that we have. And then there's also a unity of action. Striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.

Philippians 1:27

I love this quote by J. A. Motyer. He said: "The church which is experiencing unity must be a church without passengers. Is there unity where there is the tacit or spoken attitude, 'I agree with you, but I will not do anything for you'? Acquiescence is not unity. Consent is not cooperation. Approval is not partnership."

Our unity isn't just a unity of spirit and mind. It's a unity of action. It's something that we do together. And if you think about that orchestra illustration, not only do we have the music, not only do we have the conductor, but we also get to play it. We get to play it.

So here's my question, CTK: Are you playing the song? Are you keeping in beat with the conductor, and are you engaging in singing the marvelous song that Jesus Christ sang when he came to Earth and suffered and died for us because you're invited to participate. This music isn't just something that was done in the past. It's something you get to do. It's something you get to be a part of. I hope that you will look at ways that you can do that. There are so many different ways.

But I think so often we are just satisfied with knowing the music and knowing that there is a conductor. We want to be audience members. We don't want to be on the stage, but we're called to perform. And what a blessing that is. That's what worthy living of the gospel looks like.

Ways to Participate in the Gospel

There are several different ways that you could do this. One way you could do this is you can encourage your neighbors right now. This world is ripe for opportunities for you to perform this song. You can serve them. You can love them. You can pour yourselves out for them. But there are so many different ways in which you can serve and love those around you, ways that you can care for them.

If you want to join with our church, you can join our efforts in caring for those impacted by this situation by donating food or money. You can send a note of encouragement. You can start encouraging those in your household. There are so many different ways for you to participate in this song. Don't sit in the audience. Get up on the stage and perform.

The Finished Work of Christ

In order to conclude, I just want to say: Jesus' dying words weren't "earn this." His dying words were, "it is finished." In him, you have everything, CTK. You don't have to earn the gospel, but you do get to treasure it. I hope you'll treasure it. Your firm foundation, your invincibility, your unity with all the saints, that is for eternity. Live like it. Live like it's yours.

I want to come back just briefly as I'm closing to verse 27. There's a section of this that's never really stood out to me the way that it stands out to me right now. And that's the second part of verse 27.

Whether I come and see you or I am absent — Philippians 1:27

Never before has that stood out to me because I don't think I could relate to the apostle Paul quite as much as I can right now. He's in prison. He's unable to come to the church at Philippi. They're suffering in persecution. I'm standing in an empty sanctuary preaching. I can't come and see you. We're not able to worship together.

And yet notice how the reality of Paul's distance from these saints of the early church doesn't impact the reality of their unity. The reality of our unity in Jesus Christ, the reality of all that we have in him is not impacted by time or space. We can say that we are one with the apostle Paul, and we are one with each other.

My hope, CTK, is that even as we are spread out, even as we are on lockdown, we might hear about the marvelous work that God is doing through each of us. A couple weeks ago, we celebrated Easter. And at the end of the sunrise service, we got this real treat in that Danny put together this multitracke song of "In Christ Alone." Do you remember that?

It's the one where Vanessa Etheridge was singing and her kids started climbing all over her. It was just like that—the best thing. That's a picture of what our unity looks like right now.

Even though we're alone, even when we record stuff like that separately, the Spirit orchestrates it, puts it together into a beautiful song, giving glory to Christ.

My hope and prayer, CTK, is that you would participate in the song. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.