Oct 14 2008
me second
Here is a link to today’s reading:
“Me first, me first,” children call out as they run to the front of the line at the slide or at snack time. As we age we learn to be more guarded, but many of us never lose that attitude. But Jesus has a different strategy! Jesus’ strategy calls us to love completely by placing the needs of others ahead of our own. You can do this because you can trust God to take care of your own needs.
Today’s Challenge:
Who have you hurt because of your “selfish ambition”? Whose needs are you called to make a priority? How can you let God work in you to accomplish God’s good purposes (v. 13)?
Textual Reflections:
This is high level discipleship. This is not the beginners version of following Christ. This is the whole thing. I often have people ask me how they can go “deeper” in their Bible study. I love this question and the hunger that it represents, but occasionally when I am feeling sassy this answer pops in my head (but never out of my mouth), “Just go read Philippians 2 and live it out. When you have mastered that, then we’ll talk.” It doesn’t get much deeper than this text.
Paul gets things rolling with some rhetorical questions. Understanding these rhetorical questions is so important. Paul believes that all of the answer are yes. In fact he uses a particular grammatical form that can only take yes for an answer. Some translation try to accommodate this with renderings like, “if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ and you do, if …” Other render it like this, “Since you have encouragement from being united with Christ, and…” Neither of these readings are a graceful, but they get to the sense well enough. Paul is not doubting the reality of these benefits, rather he is counting on them. In fact the rest of the chapter only makes sense in light of the overwhelming reality of these benefits.
Let me give an example. If I were trying to convince my 6 year old to share his toys with a guest who was visiting, my argument might go something like this. “Didn’t I give you all those legos, and didn’t I help you build all the ships, and don’t I always fix them after they break and won’t I probably buy you more soon, and don’t you get to play with them whenever you want, and can’t you play with them as much as you want, then just do me a favor and share your legos with your friend. Let them choose first and don’t fight over the legos. Got it?”
So I lead with some questions, but we both know the answers to those questions and in fact if he were to contradict the implied answers to those questions in that situation he would have some explaining to do. But if he truly agrees with me on all those answers then I truly hope that he will understand why he should behave in this way. And in the same way, I can only imagine someone acting like this is they truly can agree with Paul’s opening litany. (As an aside, because of Paul’s opening litany we can say that this kind of behavior is the specific call of Christians. It is Christians who can say yes along with Paul and thus it is Christians who are called to live a life that puts others need first.)
The only way that I think that I would even be tempted to behave in this way is if I trusted in the work that Jesus had done for me. Not only because his example compels me, but also because it is only in light of God’s abundant care for me that I can risk putting others first in my life.
So Paul’s first point is to consider all that God has done for us in Christ and in light of that we are freed to care for others. The second is a bit different and in an odd way appeals to out self-interest. Paul argues that Christ’s voluntary self-abasement was a means for God to glorify Christ. In the same way, Paul says that when we graciously humble ourselves and do not grumble but instead humble ourselves and our agenda, that is precisely God’s opportunity to work God’s good purposes for our lives.
So because God has been gracious to you, you can be gracious to others and when you are gracious to others you put yourself in a position for God good work to be done in your life.
on the walk
-Ethan
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” Harder words may never have been spoken, it seems the biggest struggle for me is living this out, when we live in an age where “just do it” or “have it your way” are our mottos to live by, this is counter-cultural to how Jesus would have us live. Selfish ambition and vain conceit are most likely two of the biggest reasons where chuch after church continue to divide on how “best” the message of the gospel should be spread, instead of considering the message delivered by Luke this week where our main focus should be how can we love better. Which leads us into what I think is the main focus of the text which is to show us how to live like this. “…but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness……he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross!” As my wife and I struggle even now with a pressing issue concerning one of our own daughters, we struggle to model which Jesus modeled so easily. God teach us to “consider others better than ourselves” and help us to live it!
Thanks for that thought pizzakids.
This is one of the many areas where so much must be unlearned and undone before we can begin to think like Christ.
Romans 13 makes the same point.
Paul writes “Don’t be conformed to the world” and then later “do not think of yourself more highly than you ought”
That is a great text to help me realign my thinking and to remind me that I have been bent out of shape by the mindset of the world and I need to be reshaped by God as my mind is renewed.
I’m preparing to teach a workshop in the spring entitled “Who’s Taking Care of Me?” The question to be answered is “when I’m busy ministering to and taking care of others, who will take care of me and make sure that my needs are met?”
I’ve had many thoughts and ideas rolling around in my head about this, but just now does it occur to me that the real answer to that question is “Jesus!” Jesus is taking care of me. Jesus poured himself out FOR ME – as I am filled up then I pour out myself for others. Jesus fills me up again SO THAT I can pour out myself for others. I have been blessed to be a blessing, NOT so I can hoard all the blessing for myself. The best thing is, when I bless others I find out that I’m blessed all over again. It’s a crazy and wonderful circle.
One of the ways Jesus takes care of me is through his body, the church. This is a wonderful reminder of what the church is supposed to look like. If we’re all obedient to this way of living then we all look out for each other. I consider you better than me, but you consider me better than you! I put your needs first, you put my needs first. It’s a win-win.
So, why is it so difficult to consider others better than myself, to consider their needs before my own?
That’s it ragamuffin!
I think it is so hard for lots of reasons, but at least these two immediately popped in my head. One is that we have so rarely experienced reliable community that we don’t have a lot of experience functioning in environments of mutual care.
The other big one for me is a lack of trust. Because I haven’t experienced mutual community I am just afraid of what would happen if I put others needs first. I don’t trust other people enough and I don’t trust Jesus enough. But on the days that I remember what you wrote about, those are the days that I begin to live out this text.