The Shape of Christ
Philippians 2 and the goal of the Christian life
If you’re just joining us, this is the third in a series of notes about the book of Philippians, and how a careful reading recently encouraged me toward a life of healthy gratitude in a season of hardship.
Yesterday, we looked into some interesting comments by Paul, giving us a roadmap of what it looks like to be grateful and rejoice even when life is full of suffering (please read here if you missed it. Spoiler alert: the call is not to pretend like hard stuff isn’t hard). To move forward, though, we have to answer an important question–what is the goal of the Christian life?
I’ve heard many teachings on this in my 15 years walking with the Lord, and I think our hardship-laced gratitude is informed in a big way by this one question.
If our goal in walking with Christ is to “get to heaven,” we can adopt a survivalist mentality. Our coping and rejoicing in hardship comes by denying the ultimate reality of what’s hard, and looking forward to a future hope where there are "no tear dimmed eyes.”
If our goal in walking with Christ is to have a good life, using the Bible as a manual for “how to be a good person and make sure good things come your way,” then suffering comes with a moral implication… Somehow, if I’m having a hard time, I must not be doing things right.
When we looked at Philippians 1, though, neither of these sentiments finds their way into Paul’s conceptualization of the goal of the Christian life. I think the crux lands here:
“For to me, living is Christ…”
We put a pin in that verse, and thankfully Paul gives us a beautiful vision of what he means in this next chapter. For Paul, living was Christ–to be a living Christian human was to bring forth Christ in his life. To amplify God’s kingdom by welcoming the transformative love of Christ, being transformed, and then sharing out with others.
So, if living is Christ, what would that look like? Going to church a couple times a week? Counting our blessings? Making sure not to curse too much?
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and of earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11 NRSV
The shape of the love of Christ, who is the exact representation of the nature of God, is humility, emptying himself, taking a lower position than what would be deserved or assumed. The shape of the love of Christ culminates in his willingness to go to the cross–to die.
As much as I love this sentiment, it doesn’t take a long walk around my life to see how thoroughly I’ve been shaped by the values of the world far more than the nature of God and his kingdom.
The shape of the world is scarcity and fear; survival of the fittest, and each man for himself. I instruct my children to share, but bristle at the demands on my body, time, food that come in seemingly endless waves. I tell my daughter frequently, “There is enough of what we all need,” but anxiously grip what I own tighter instead of freely sharing.
I don’t share these things to incite guilt and shame, but rather to open our eyes to the awareness of our gratitude problem. It’s not that we haven’t tried hard to be grateful, and it’s not that we’ve got nothing to be grateful for. It’s simply that we are basing our gratitude oftentimes on the wrong set of values.
Whether we are aware of it or not, our bodies have been trained by the shape of the world. The advertisements we consume, the stories we love, the demands by our employers–these all start with the shape of the world, rather than the shape of God’s kingdom.
It’s in this awareness that we can start to shift our focus toward what Biblical gratitude really might look like–which I hope to share from Philippians 3 and 4 tomorrow (but in the chaos of cooking it really might be more like Friday).
For today, though, take some time to meditate on Philippians 2:5-11. Reflect, momentarily, on how your perspective is shaped more by the world than by this wisdom. What’s your bodily response to the idea of being emptied? How often do you find yourself rationing and hoarding rather than freely giving?
If it starts to get grim in that internal spirit of yours, I invite you to refer back to Philippians 1:9-11 where Paul reminds his readers that growth in Christ is a process that only finds its fulness in the day of Christ.
I’m looking forward to sharing the next bit of insight with you tomorrow. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving dear readers. I’m so very grateful for each of you that invites me to share what the Spirit lays on my heart.