More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Philippians is the only letter that we have in the Scriptures in which Paul is not trying to correct bad teaching or rebuke bad behavior.
It may be, then, that this letter is the best New Testament picture we have of what a maturing church looks like and what maturing people do.
How deep is his affection? It is affection sourced in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
If we’re honest with ourselves, we will admit that we tend to prefer to do life with people who are similar to us.
But the gospel is not natural.
The gospel creates a new reality that deepens our understanding of the world and our place in it.
But the gospel doesn’t just transcend and transform our human institutions and divisions; it also transcends and transforms our circumstances.
Well, when you take a dominant leader like Paul and remove him from the scene, other ambitious people start filling in the gap.
From Paul’s perspective, in the light of the gospel, everything must serve the purpose of the glory of Christ, so it isn’t therefore a tragedy that Paul’s in prison being persecuted within or unjustly maligned without. No, it is a privilege.
This is not the kind of Christianity any of us end up with except through a profound experiencing of Christ’s cross applied to our lives.
For Paul, it means ascribing worth.
he means we should live in such a way that shows what we believe is of supreme worth.
in the spiritual economy of Paul, God and His gospel are most important, not Paul and his well-being.
Paul’s confession erupts from deep conviction. He’s seen that living could be nothing else but Christ. He’s seen it in his ministry over and over again.
they were all slaves in their own ways to the kind of lives men and women choose all the time, and Paul saw the moral brokenness and spiritual dysfunction of it all.
In the logic of the gospel, there are no alternatives to Christ.
Death is a homecoming for the Christian. Paul sees it as gain because he sees it as the reward for offering himself as a living sacrifice on this side of the veil.
And in the comfort and opulence of Lydia’s house, he’s saying, “It would be better to go home.”
When all of us, different kinds of people, walk together in unity for the glory of Christ, the gospel looks really big.
When we forego our own way to stand together in the spirit of Christ, we make the gospel look supremely valuable.
I think that sometimes we read the Bible and think everybody we read about is different from us.
The Christian living a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ is fearless, regardless of the situation.
Because to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Paul talks about marginalization, insults, oppression, persecution, and suffering as if they’re gifts. They are “granted” to us to further the cause of Christ, which is the goal we all strive toward together.
Fearless faith results from holding on to Christ as our treasure. Gospel courage comes from gospel preciousness. If we truly believed that our reward in heaven far surpasses all the comfort and convenience and collections of the world, we, too, would be willing to consider them all as loss.
but Philippians 2 violently goes after the heart of your faith.
The motivation of this meanness—and of course I don’t mean anger or malice, but more ferocity and fierceness—is the exaltation of the almighty God.
But it’s not the best fear to have in that moment of conversion, mainly because it cannot sustain the Christian life. We are not called by a spirit of fear into a spirit of fear but by the Spirit of grace into a spirit of love and power. This fear we ought to have of God is not so much terror as it is awe.
There is a knowing of our place.
We are saved in spite of so much!
No matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter what you’re a part of, what he says after those three words cannot be a motivating factor for Christians. Ever.
It is living as if Christ hasn’t settled the score. As if we have not already been given the victory in Christ. As if we haven’t already received the infinite riches of the eternal Christ.
Have nothing to do with it.
It’s putting on airs because we’ve put ourselves on the throne. We become the arbiter of who’s worthy and who’s not.
If you don’t think that’s hard, I don’t think you’re human.
In the end, selfish ambition and conceit come from the idolatrous belief that we are due more than we have received and that we’re worthy of more honor than we’re getting.
If I roll that out—if I roll that thought all the way out—and go beyond just the fact that right now, in this very moment, there are millions of people who are laughing, crying, at the heights of emotional joy and at the depths of emotional pain; and going further, there are people right now breathing their last breath, while at the same time someone’s giving birth to their first child, while at the same time somebody’s eating dinner, while at the same time someone’s eating breakfast … it boggles the mind. The world is big.
With mercy.
Mercy is given to the tax collector Zacchaeus. Why? Because he feared Jesus.
Indeed, even if he had a million lifetimes to do so, it wouldn’t be enough. What does he have to offer Jesus? Fear, awe, respect, worship. And God’s grace saves him. God has mercy for those who fear Him.
She really just said the same thing the church of her youth told her when she was young, just about a different style of dress.
In both cases, there is a mental and emotional reality at work beneath the words and postures. It is, fundamentally, pride.
outside of the idea of hell, there is no more terrifying idea in the Bible than God setting you free to run in the imagination of your heart.
The proud aren’t truly seeking the way of Christ because their vision is filled with the self-centered movie playing on the IMAX screen of their darkened hearts.
Once you’ve received a lot of money—whether you earned it, inherited it, or won it—it becomes very easy to believe you deserve that money.
And the reason the rich go away empty is because everything they’re trying to find fulfillment in, they weren’t meant to find fulfillment in.
When we do get what we desire, we find that the goalpost moved.
We’re chasing the wind.
This is the question: Are you using God to get something from Him? Or is God Himself the goal of your striving?
