Embracing Truth, Humility, and Weakness in Faith

We are always laboring to maintain that balance where we, on the one hand, avoid a kind of approach to grace that leads to lawlessness, and we avoid…try to avoid an approach to holiness that leads to legalism. And Paul has made clear we have to get the gospel clear to make progress in holiness, but now he talks about holiness. He talks about what God's people ought to look like. [00:02:13]

But holding fast to the word of life, holding fast to the gospel should lead to us being people who are lights in a dark world. Jesus is the light of the world, but He also calls us to be lights in the world. And our lives should have a quality of difference. A quality of, he says here, "innocence and blamelessness." [00:03:30]

Paul has said in Philippians 1:27, "The life that you should live is a life worthy of the gospel." That's really alarming to me. What a demand that is! Of all the imperatives in the Scripture, of all the calls to holiness, of all the particularities that we find in Scripture, to be told you have to live a life worthy of the gospel, worthy of being called a Christian, worthy of having that kind of identification. [00:05:44]

And one of the first things that Paul says here in Philippians is we should all have one mind. We should all have one mind. And that's a serious call, isn't it? It's a serious challenge. That means we should be united. We should be agreed. We should be working side by side. We should have a common conviction, a common spirit. [00:06:40]

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Here's Paul's articulation of the great Christian virtue, or one of the great Christian virtues. Preachers, you know, end up with a whole series of greatest virtues. You can have only one greatest virtue. But great virtues, love leading to humility, love leading to humility. [00:09:14]

And here in Philippians 2, of course, he offers to us the great model. Philippians 2 verse 5, "Have this mind among yourselves," that one mind, that same mind, that loving mind, that humble mind, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who," see, here's the model, Jesus is the model, "who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." [00:13:21]

And what Paul is really doing here, then, is saying to us if Jesus was so filled with love, if Jesus was so humbled, if Jesus was so self-giving, giving His divinity, in a sense, giving His humanity, giving His life. If you are His, how can you not have that mind in you? You see, Paul didn't set out primarily to teach us about the incarnation. He set out primarily to teach us to love. [00:19:40]

Paul says, "Look at those who really are living the Christian life, following the example of Christ, and let them be examples to you." And we see that in Paul, don't we? He had to live humbly. He had to live facing his own weakness. Weakness is not something characteristically we want to think about or pursue, but Paul wrote about that, didn't he, very powerfully in a number of places. [00:23:04]

But he said, "To keep me from being conceited, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." [00:24:46]

And Mary Slessor noted that there was lots of discussion and very little action. And Mary Slessor said, "Well, I think the thing to do is to go in there and talk to them." And the men all said, "No, that's too dangerous." So Mary Slessor said, "It is dangerous. I'll go." And she went alone. And maybe, in the kind providence of God, precisely because she was nonthreatening as a short, little Scottish woman, she made a huge impact. [00:29:36]

He said, "We who hold to this confession offer our backs to the stripes, our tongues to the knives, our mouths to the gags, and our whole bodies to the fire, well knowing that those who follow Christ must take their cross and deny themselves." And those words were not just theoretical for him. They were his life, and that's how he died. He was about forty-five when he died. [00:36:43]

And that highly exalted Christ will one day return to embrace those who have embraced weakness and highly exalt them. That's our hope. That's our confidence. That's our trust. That's how we look to the future. The immediate future may be bleak, but in the bleakness of the immediate future, God will be accomplishing His purpose, and His grace will be sufficient for us, and His power will accomplish its purpose. [00:40:03]