Yesterday we talked a little bit about how life can seem so complicated. And of all the areas that get complicated in our lives, relationships seem to always top the chart.
In fact, think of all the close relationships in your life and try to name one, just one, that has never had a single complication. Never a hurt feeling or misspoken word, never a misunderstanding or assumption that caused confusion. I know I can’t name a single one. And yet, God made us relational beings and He is a relational God. We were created for relationship, and how we relate to those around us is the greatest indicator of how our relationship with God is really doing. Are your earthly relationships a wreck? Drama around every corner? Chances are that something’s probably out of whack in your walk with God too, right?
Interestingly, Paul knew that no matter how lofty is our ambition to live for Christ, there are still some sticky relational dynamics here on earth. In fact, part of the reason he writes this letter is to name a few names and exhort some ladies to just get along! Euodia and Syntyche (4:2) had a little squabble, apparently. We don’t know what it was about, but it seems that catfights are nothing new. Even with the best of intentions, we are all fallen beings and find that relational difficulties are part of life.
Philippians 2 offers what I think may be the best discourse on how to navigate relationships. Once again, he seeks to take what can be complicated, and make it very simple. They key?
Humility.
That’s it. He writes,
“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of god, did not count equality with god a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:3-8).
So much to say about humility. Last year I had the joy of teaching this passage to the women’s Bible study, so I’d like to share a few thoughts from that session:
V. 3 We’ve all heard that saying that humility isn’t thinking less of yourself it’s thinking of yourself less. Interestingly—I think this passage and all of scripture teaches that it’s not one or the other but both. Humility is forgetting about yourself, AND having a modest opinion of yourself. “Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit.” Let’s look at each of these clauses:
Rivalry or conceit: Rivalry is competition. How many in here are competitive by nature? Listen to what CS Lewis says about this: “Pride is essentially competitive – is competitive by its very nature – Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer; or cleverer; or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.”
This is a serious warning for women. Men tend to be outwardly competitive—in sports and games and such. But women can be inwardly competitive, which I believe is twice as deadly. Love and competition are mutually exclusive, they cannot exist together: “Love seeks not its own.”
And the way to quit competing is to quit comparing. Ladies this is a VICE if there ever was one. We do it! We compare our bodies, our clothes, our education, our jobs. We size everything and everyone up by how they compare to US. That is comparing which is competing. YUCK. I very vividly remember a moment in college when I was sitting in class next to this girl who was GORGEOUS (Miss Oregon) and also happened to be my friend and roommate. And I remember sitting there in Shakespeare class and thinking about how her thighs were so much skinnier than mine. And of course we laugh at that because it’s ridiculous but we do the same thing in more sophisticated ways now (and not so sophisticated ways!). When we do this we are proving that our confidence is based on pride: On the contrary, later in chapter 3 Paul says “We… worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”
Instead: “Count others more significant than yourself.” Isn’t it funny that Paul uses the word “count”. It’s like he knows we’re playing the competition game. He knows we’re inwardly counting up the score. And he says, no matter what the evidence says, COUNT others as better than yourself. Quit evaluating, quit keeping score, just decide once and for all that you will quit the race, quit the competition, and just esteem others as better than yourself. You can’t lose a race you aren’t running! And you cannot humiliate the person who humbles himself. (Shawna at the girls’ retreat story)
Tozer says this: P 112 “Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer an affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet we are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against us, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before us…”
Humility frees us from the race. Murray says “true humility comes when, in light of God, we have seen ourselves to be nothing, have consented to part with and cast away self—to let God be all. The soul that has done this and can say, “So have I lost myself in finding You,” no longer compares itself with others. It has forever given up every thought of self in God’s presence…The humble person feels no jealousy or envy. He can praise God when others are preferred and blessed before him. He can bear to hear others praised and himself forgotten.” He is freed from himself.
This is why I’d say that humility is the most freeing quality of life. In fact it isn’t just one virtue along with others, but is the root of all other virtues. It is the root of all godliness. Just like the quote that Chris read last week, pride is the complete anti-God state of mind. Therefore humility is the path, the only path to godliness, Christ-likeness. It is the PATH to unity, to love. It isthe path to Christ, the path to maturity. It is the only way to save a marriage, the only way to be a good friend. It is the only way to truly love. Humility is the root of all other virtues.
v. 4 read So here’s where I struggle. How do I get humble? I feel like I can sit around all day and think “she’s better than me she’s better than me she’s better than me.” And that doesn’t help anything. So even when we think that everyone else is more significant or better than us, yes I might get a modest opinion of myself, which is a start, but that’s only half the battle because now maybe I’m not conceited but I’m totally self-focused. I’m not conceited but I’m depressed! And just to level with you I think I have lived much of my Christian life in this place. Remember we said humility is BOTH thinking less of yourself and thinking of yourself less? Sometimes perhaps we’ve done the “think less of yourself part” but we haven’t done the “think of yourself less” part. I was only HALFWAY understanding humility. It’s like I’ve read verse 3 over and over and over and decided that if I just crawl a little lower than everyone else I’ll be free and I don’t feel free I just feel worthless. But verse 4 gives us the how-to. This is the PURSUIT. This is where I get excited because it gives me something to do. I’m a doer! Pursue the interests of others.
Isn’t this even what Paul is modeling for us? If I were sitting in a prison cell my letter would probably sound like this: “I am cold, alone, forgotten, hungry, and miserable, AND now I hear that you sill petty people are bickering. Grow up you sissies! I’m miserable here can’t you see. Can you please get busyand petition or something to get me free?” No, he chooses to take his eyes off himself and his circumstances and turns to the good and interests of others. That is freedom. This is how we think about ourselves less. Then, little by little, we begin to lose ourselves, we begin to taste freedom.
To continue with this analogy, freedom comes when we lay down this burden of self. And while we’ve sort of identified that burden as pride, Tozer says that there are 3 forms of this that we are freed from when we pursue humility.
First, we are freed from pride: We’ve already talked a lot about pride, but here are two more thoughts:
CS Lewis said this: The pleasure of pride is like the pleasure of scratching. If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. As long as we have the itch of self-regard we shall want the pleasure of self-approval; but the happiest moments are those when we forget our precious selves and have neither but have everything else (God, our fellow humans, animals, the garden and sky) instead.
Humility, then is getting so engrossed in serving God and others, looking out for their interests, that we lose our precious selves. And we find that we gain everything else in return.
Here’s one last interesting thought about pride, from John Piper: Because I think perhaps we can trick ourselves into thinking we’re not prideful, but check this out: Pride manifests itself in two ways: boasting, and self-pity. Check this out:
“[Boasting and Self-Pity] are manifestations of pride. Boasting is the response of pride to success. Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering. Boasting says, “I deserve admiration because I have achieved so much.” Self-pity says, “I deserve admiration because I have sacrificed so much.” Boasting is the voice of pride in the heart of the strong. Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak. Boasting sounds self-sufficient. Self-pity sounds self-sacrificing. The reason self-pity does not look like pride is that it appears to be needy. But the need arises from a wounded ego and the desire of the self-pitying is not really for others to see them as helpless, but heroes. The need self-pity feels does not come from a sense of unworthiness, but from a sense of unrecognized worthiness. It is the response of unapplauded pride.”
When we’re freed from pride, we’re freed from boasting and self-pity, we quit thinking of ourselves, and are freed from that itch of self-regard that we must constantly work to get scratched. We’re freed to pursue others.
Second burden, we’re freed from is Pretense: This is the idea of “putting your best foot forward.” This is an obsession with what impression we are making. I think this is a killer for women. (wanting to stand on the left side in pictures so my scar doesn’t show!) We constantly strive to look our best for others. We tell stories in a certain light to make ourselves look good—here’s one I recently realized I was doing: (bargain bragging!). We respond to “how are you doing” in a certain way, highlighting hardships or exaggerating how fatigued we are by our service for Christ. I took a personality quiz once and scored high in “favorable image projection”. Ouch. That’s a polite way of saying pretense. And unfortunately this is so common to the way we live that we don’t even think of it as sin.
The third burden we’re freed from is Artificiality: This is similar to the hypocrisy that we studied last week. Tozer says this: Most people live in secret fear that some day they will be careless and by chance an enemy or friend will be allowed to peep into their poor, empty souls. So they are never relaxed. Bright people are tense and alert in fear that they may be trapped into saying something common or stupid… Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus’ feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are will be everything, what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other than we are.”
Now here’s the tricky part. We refer to those things as burdens, right? But I would suggest that we actually use those burdens to hide. How many of you have actually used your children to “hide”? (explain) Because when we’re not secure in God’s love for us (v. 1) we’re insecure. And when we’re insecure we turn inward and become focused on ourselves in pride and self-seeking, and we put up walls of pride, pretense, and artificiality because we somewhere deep down believe that same lie that was whispered to us in the garden—God doesn’t really love us. But when we embrace God’s love, step out bravely and confidently in humility toward others, laying down these burdens, then we are vulnerable. Humility and vulnerability go hand in hand. And it is my opinion that vulnerability is one of the most beautiful qualities in life. Women are by nature vulnerable beings, Scripture says (1 Peter 3). And true vulnerability does not imply weakness, just as humility does not imply weakness. On the contrary, Christ displayed the most humble, vulnerable life ever to walk the earth, and he was and is the God of the universe. And the secret to understanding what true humility looks like is to watch the greatest example. Let’s look briefly at this example: vv 5-8.
V 5-8: Have this mind: The battle is in the mind, ladies. To grow in humility we must train our minds, to turn away from self and to have the mind of Christ. This is totally contrary to our human nature, which always tends toward self. Spiritual entropy.
Form of God. This word “morphe” in the Greek means he was God in the very essence of His nature. Jesus Christ is God. Confusing verse but basically though He was God, as he walked this earth as a man He didn’t grasp after divinity, he didn’t seek after displaying God-hood, but instead,
Made himself nothing, Remember “count” in verse 3—a conscious choice. Christ MADE himself nothing, the form of a servant. And in human form –“ and this word is different than in v. 5 this is “schema” which means fashion or outward manifestation. God, Jesus Christ was in essence and nature God, but in outward manifestation man.
Humbled himself, to the point of death, even death on the cross. The highest being lowered to the lowest low—death. The God of the universe, hanging naked on a cross, with people spitting in his face. He chose that. You cannot humiliate the man who humbles himself. God gives us the greatest example, so that no matter how talented, rich, successful, accomplished you are or become, and no matter how low God challenges you to stoop, He’s always made a greater jump. For the God of the universe to come to earth to die on a cross so that murderers, rapists, pedophiles, could be forgiven and set free, so I could be set free. That is humility.
And here’s what’s cool about this example: This proves to us that it is not sin that humbles us. We don’t get humble by sinning. The perfect example of humility was the sinless lamb of God. It is not sin that humbles us most, but grace. It is a beautiful ongoing cycle—we humble ourselves and he gives grace (1 Peter 5), grace humbles us then as we’re humble God gives more grace. That is freedom! Freedom to quit performing, to quit measuring ourselves by each other, to quit fearing rejection and criticism, to quit centering our worlds around ourselves. Freedom to love, to risk, to step out in faith, to serve. There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear. I pray that we would we brave enough to humble ourselves before each other, to be united in love, to be vulnerable.