Philippians 1:1-11
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
6 being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.
8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Last week as we went through verses 1 and two there was something incredibly important that we didn’t take a look at and that is this phrase, “In Christ Jesus”.
This is a phrase that is used over 90 times in the New Testament! And, it is important! Let me give you a few examples.
Often when we think of “in Christ” we think of faith in Christ which is an action born out of the grace of God calling us to Himself and enabling us to respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit such as is seen in
Galatians 3:26 where it says,
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus …”
But this act of faith in Christ Jesus actually moves us spiritually into Christ Jesus! We become a part of His body here on earth! And, this is much more than just some kind of metaphorical mumbo jumbo; it is a radical transformation!
2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Ephesians 1:13
“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.”
But what does this mean to be “in Christ”?
Those of us who have had and used film cameras know what a negative is. In the negative of a black and white photo all of the black areas of the photo appear white and all of the white areas of the photo appear black.
For instance, this is a black and white photo of our handsome grandson, Levi.
And, this is a black and white negative of the same picture.
The reason I’m explaining this is because the following illustration is could be perceived in a negative way and yet I hope it reveals the truth of what it means to be “in Christ”.
Illustration:
Who is this (PPT image of the Frankenstein monster)
How was the Frankenstein monster made?
In the 1931 film, Frankenstein, a young medical student took parts from dead bodies, assembled them into a body and strapped the body to a gurney which was raised to a hole in the ceiling of the lab during a thunderstorm. The lightening was channeled through some sort of equipment which “jump started” the body and it came to life.
In this story the monster is now up and moving around. The arms and legs, hands and feet, torso and head which all had previously belonged to other people are now unified into one body.
All of these parts, with the exception of the head, used to belong to other people and naturally they responded to the desires of the head to which they belonged at that time.
When the arms were attached to the original body the desires of that person originated in their brain which sent electrical signals down the spinal column which branched off into the arm and caused the appropriate muscles to contract giving the desired movement. But now, that arm is attached to a new body with a new head and it therefore reacts according to the desires emanating from the new head. Why? Because the arm is now “in” the new body! And, that is true of the other body parts; both arms and legs, both hands and feet and the torso are now “in” the new body.
From birth we were spiritually dead body parts. We are not able to function at all in a manner pleasing to God. Instead we responded to spiritual “nerve” impulses from our physical desires, the enticements of the world and the evil one himself.
As it says in 1 John 2:16,
“Everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world.”
But if we are now “in Christ” a radical transformation has taken place! We who were dead have now been picked up and integrated into the body of Christ, the Church! And, I almost hesitate to use that phrase, the Church, because we have such a limited sense of what it truly is. Such a distorted image of what Christ intended it to be and what it truly could be if all of us who profess to be “in Christ” truly were “in Christ!”
And, this whole truth of being “in Christ” is inextricably linked to be a “slave of Christ Jesus.” They are inseparable. The Church, the body of Christ, is not disabled.
In the normal, healthy, fully functional human body, if a desire to pull a weed from the garden is formulated in the mind and the brain sends an impulse to the hand to pull the weed from the garden and the hand does not think about it, it just does it. The hand in the normal, healthy, fully function body never says, “No, I don’t want to do that.” Because the hand is the slave or servant to the brain.
In the same way, when we are truly “in Christ” we will never, ever, ever set our will in opposition to the will of the Lord. Never! That would be sin. That would be an action of defiance which would displease our Lord and Master. IF He truly IS our Lord and Master.
Now, let’s take a look at verses 3-5
“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
Let’s look specifically at that phrase, “because of your partnership.”
That’s an amazing phrase! Can a body which is functioning well that is controlled by a perfect mind be anything other than a wonderful partnership?
Christ is our perfect mind. We as His servants should be completely conformed to His will. And when we are completely conformed to His perfect will all aspects the church, the body of Christ, will be harmonious, productive and filled with God’s grace.
As it says in Romans 12:5
“… so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
But, this is not so when we pursue our own goals and agendas apart from the will of God. When we seek to attain our own goals and desires instead of the desires of Christ we will have discord instead of harmony, we will have destruction instead of productivity, we will have disgrace to the name and cause of Christ instead of influencing the world by being conduits of His amazing Grace.
When we put our own goals and desires ahead of the will of the Lord in the church we end up with what the world would call an autoimmune disease.
An autoimmune disorder is a condition that occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissue. In this case one part of the body attacks and destroys other parts of the body.
This can happen in churches and when it does it usually destroys the church and the witness of the church.
Our society has an autoimmune disease. This autoimmune disease was embraced by our society in 1973 and this past week 500 people died from this autoimmune disease every day. In fact since 1973 over 54,000,000 people have died from this 100% preventable, society endorsed autoimmune disease. That autoimmune disease is called abortion. Our society, when seen as an body, allows and even applauds one member hiring a “health care professional” to terminate the life of a defenseless unborn person.
This past Tuesday was the 40th anniversary of the tragedy known as Roe-vs-Wade where this societal autoimmune disease of abortion was legalized and endorsed by the supreme court of the United States of America.
I bring this up to once again draw attention to this national holocaust and hopefully to draw us all into fervent, urgent prayer on behalf of the unprotected unborn infants of our nation.
Of course, when we think of conflict within the church and compare it to a national tragedy we would more likely think of the American Civil War, where one faction rises up to destroy the other group. But do you realize that all of the deaths suffered by the United States in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Korean Conflict and the war in Vietnam all combined would be equivalent to one year of abortions? And that total is down significantly from the highest year of 1.6 million abortions!
We, as Americans, must weep for the unborn and pray for the unborn that the Lord will protect them from us!
However, as dark and dismal and disturbing as this is and how it greatly illustrates the spiritual death that results from conflict within the church, even more glorious on the other end of the spectrum is the harvest of souls that can be reaped when the followers of Christ follow His will and abandon their own desires and preferences.
So, now we’ve seen how when we are “in Christ” we function as a healthy, normal body. A body which Christ can use to accomplish His purposes in the salvation of lost souls to the glory of God the Father. We’ve also seen that disobeying God and following our own will instead of His will brings an autoimmune disease into the church and eventually into society where one faction attacks the other group with an intent to destroy.
Life in Christ is so much better!
Life in Christ is SO MUCH BETTER!
Look at these phrases from the first verses of Philippians …
Well, I might just as well go on and reread verses 3-11
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
6 being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.
8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
That is how the body of Christ should look when we are “in Christ!”
We don’t need to worry about “unity” - “in Christ” unity will happen naturally
We don’t need to concern ourselves with “brotherly love” - brotherly love is a natural outflow of being “in Christ”
When we are “in Christ”, I mean really, truly in Christ unity and love will be a natural result of our submission to Him as the Head of the body!
When we are truly “slaves of Christ Jesus” and following His will for us He will resolve our conflicts for He won’t be giving us conflicting orders!
And, we will naturally be wishing for and praying for Grace and peace to all of our Brothers and all of our Sisters in Christ Jesus from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
And what a witness that will be to the world that Jesus came to save!
So, let’s surrender to Jesus and commit to being “in Christ” with all of our hearts and souls and minds. Amen? Amen!
