Sermon for Pentecost 18, October 1, 2023
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. Amen.
Philippians 2:1-11 So if there is any
encouragement in Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with
the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, 2then make
my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being united in
spirit, and having one mind. 3Do
nothing out of selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility consider one
another better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look carefully not only to your own
interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Indeed, let this attitude be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus. 6Though he was
by nature God, he did not consider equality with God as a prize to be
displayed, 7but he emptied himself by taking the nature of a servant. When he was born in human likeness, and his
appearance was like that of any other man, 8he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name
that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee
will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every
tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (EHV)
Encouraged in Christ,
live in unselfish love.
Dear friends serving to
the glory of God,
The whole
message of the Bible is God’s love for us, and we see that again and again
throughout it. The chief commands are to
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind,” and “Love
your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus
further strengthened the second command by telling us, “A new commandment I
give you: Love one another. Just as I
have loved you, so also you are to love one another.” (John 13:34) In this, Jesus shows us that the Bible’s
message is not just about law. God does
not tell us to love others, either to coerce us into being good, nor as a test
to see who might be righteous. Rather,
we have the command to love “because God is love,” (1 John 4:8) and
simply put, it is through God’s love that we are connected with Him.
Here, in this letter, the subject is again this
unique, unselfish, wholehearted love that God has shown to us, and the Holy
Spirit, through Paul, urges that Encouraged in
Christ, live in unselfish love.
Paul wrote, “So if there is any
encouragement in Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with
the Spirit, if any affection and compassion.” Though it might sound conditional, Paul was
assuming his readers already grasped that all these things are already
ours. For a world of sinners, Jesus has
already lived and died to make us holy and acceptable to God. Then, by sending His Spirit into the world
through the powerful Word of God delivered through the hands and lips of called
apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers, we have been brought into fellowship
with the Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth, and adopted as His beloved children
in baptism. What greater encouragement
could we have to live in love? What
greater comfort could be ours than to know all our sins, guilt, and shame have
been covered by the blood of Christ, so that we have peace with God. Therefore, St. John testified, “We love
because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
The point Paul assumes is that we already know
this great news, so he continues, “then make my joy complete by being
like-minded, having the same love, being united in spirit, and having one
mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition
or empty conceit, but in humility consider one another better than yourselves.” Again, this is not some kind of test that
would delight Paul if we pass. He is
pointing out that Christians united with Christ Jesus receive this desire for
united love and compassion naturally.
Aah, but that’s the rub, isn’t it?
Even though we are united with Christ, and this desire to love
unselfishly comes to us through that unity with His holiness, we remain in this
sinful world and still in our naturally sinful flesh inherited from our parents,
so as long as we live, we remain a work in progress that needs the
encouragement and caring love of our Savior.
We are to have the same love which God has
showed us. This is the agape love that
you have heard pastors speak of often, I am sure. It is that totally other-focused love that
desires and does only what is best for the other person. It is the love God is. This is evident because, “He did this when
he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, so that we would be
holy and blameless in his sight. In love
he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians
1:4-5)
God didn’t create the world to have something
to brag about. He created the world to
give us a place to live, and He made us so that He could provide for us
everything we need and show us this great love that makes Him who He is. Consider how even after mankind had fallen
away from Him in sin and caused the curse of sin to corrupt His good creation,
God didn’t abandon us to the fate of death and eternal separation from
Him. Instead, with love for us, God’s
Son set aside His glory as God in order to take on human flesh and live,
suffer, and die in our place. All so
that we could be restored into that original perfect relationship with
God. Thus, we are to make ourselves
servants of all other people, considering not ourselves only, but what we can
do to bring others greater peace, and especially peace with God.
Again, this is explained in Paul’s letter: “Let
each of you look carefully not only to your own interests, but also to the
interests of others. Indeed, let this
attitude be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Though he was by nature God, he did not
consider equality with God as a prize to be displayed, but he emptied himself
by taking the nature of a servant.”
This is the life and work of the Church, not only an individual
congregation, and certainly not the work of the building, but the work of the
Body of Christ which is all believers in Jesus of all time.
It sounds so overwhelming to consider, doesn’t
it? How could we possibly ever live up
to the standard? How could we love and
faithfully serve even those who hate us, despise us, and persecute us? Yet, isn’t that exactly what Jesus has
already done for us? To the Roman
congregation, Paul wrote, “But God shows his own love for us in this: While
we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Now, most of us already do show this love to
some extent. Parents show their
unconditional love for their children in so many ways. Adult, perhaps middle-aged, children often
return this love to their parents when age and infirmity of the parents
requires it. We show unconditional love
to spouses, to neighbors, and to our communities, at least at times, but still,
we know that our selfishness often creeps in.
Personal selfishness is behind most of the heartache in the world. Therefore, on our own we could never keep the
command to love as God loves, which is why Jesus lived love on our behalf and
asks that we share His love as best we are able in our ordinary lives, striving
to do what we can as the individual parts of His body of love.
So, as we recognize that we will struggle to
love unselfishly, we continually return to Jesus. He restores and refreshes us with His
love. He emptied us of sin, disgrace,
and shame when He suffered and died in our place, and because Jesus has done
this for the whole world, we know that the whole world has the same command and
the same need. The whole world needs our
unselfish love just as we needed that from Jesus. We can take comfort in the fact that God has
given us this position through faith.
Therefore, Jesus assures us, “If the world hates you, you know that
it hated me first. If you were of the
world, the world would love its own.
However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of
it, for that very reason the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19)
Living unselfish love doesn’t always feel like
it is rewarded. Yet, because Jesus has
purchased our freedom from the condemnation destined for the world, we are
secure in His love and assured of heavenly praise. Therefore, the admonition, Encouraged in
Christ, live in unselfish love.
Though Jesus, as the Holy Son of God, did not
have any sin or guilt for which to die, He readily, willingly took on ours, so
that we could be holy with Him. Paul
wrote, “When he was born in human likeness, and his appearance was like that
of any other man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is
above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The future of the world, here meaning all those
who remain unconnected with Jesus, is a terrible fate of destruction and
eternal separation from the God who is love.
The end of days for the unbelieving world is described as one of great
terror and fear. St. John was given a
vision of that day about which he wrote, “And they kept saying to the
mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits
on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath
has come. Who is able to stand?’” (Revelation
6:16-17)
On the other hand, St. Paul wrote the message
of this letter from a prison cell, fully understanding that his life on earth was
coming to an end in a most unsavory manner.
Yet, he faced that end with joy and gladness, not because he wanted to
die, but because he knew that he would continue to live in the glories of
heaven because of Jesus. Furthermore,
nothing could bring greater joy to Paul, or to any other member of the kingdom
of heaven, than that many others would be brought into the love of God in
Christ Jesus. As Jesus declared, “I
tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who
repents.” (Luke 15:10) Knowing this,
imagine the rejoicing we will experience when we are gathered together with the
angels and all the company of heaven rejoicing for every sinner who has entered
with us by the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, we are urged to remember the love that is ours in Jesus and
exhorted, Encouraged in Christ, live in unselfish love. Amen.
To him who
loves us and has freed us from our sins by his own blood and made us a kingdom
and priests to God his Father—to him be the glory and the power forever. Amen.
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