Philippians 2:1-4 December 20, 1998
Hungry for Glory

In the summer of 1986 two ships collided in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia. Hundreds of passengers died as they were hurled into the icy waters below. News of the disaster was further darkened when an investigation revealed the cause of the accident. It wasn't a technology problem like radar malfunction or even thick fog. The cause was human stubbornness. Each captain was aware of the other ships presence nearby. Both could have steered clear, but according to news reports, neither captain wanted to give way to the other. Each was too proud to yield first. By the time they came to their senses it was too late. I'm sure neither captain thought it could ever get as serious as it did. It's amazing how a minor disagreement can fester and grow to become so major and hurt so many people.

Such arguments exist not only in the world, but conflict occurs within the church, such as the battle that brewed last spring during the Eastern Orthodox celebration of Easter in Jerusalem. Thousands of Orthodox Christians gathered around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on April 18th for the annual Ceremony of the Holy Fire, a festive climax to the celebrations of Easter. Trouble erupted when Armenian and Syrian Orthodox Christians came to blows inside the Jerusalem sanctuary. At least one person was sent to the hospital with a knife wound, while others were carried out of the church, their faces covered in blood, after violent confrontations.

In the face of conflict, we all want peace. In fact, at this time of year more than any other, we hear much about peace and desire to see conflicts concluded. Almost thirty years ago John Lennon's cry of "give peace a chance" was sung and it is still echoed today. His wife, Yoko Ono, recently erected a giant billboard in Time's Square, with that phrase etched on it.

We are surrounded with conflict in our lives as well as on the TV screen. The recent bombing of Iraq, the bickering in Congress, may generate public attention, but in our lives we see the casualties from the everyday skirmishes. The message of the angels on that first Christmas morning is still needed.

Peace was at the center of Paul's thinking when he wrote his letter to the Philippian church. Peace was needed as the church faced troubles without as well as from within. Last week we saw the necessity to conduct ourselves worthily, to live as citizens in gratitude for the gracious gift of eternal life. This is evidenced when conflict arises, when persecution comes our way. We must stand together as one against those outside the church who seek to do us harm. But in chapter 2 Paul begins with "therefore" and so narrows the focus as he examines conflict which may easily disrupt the church, disunity and friction which will destroy the church quicker than the persecution without.

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Philippians 2:1-4

Why do we have such a problem with peace? We'll start by examining the problem, offering a diagnosis of the disease which plagues each one of us. Then we'll look at the prognosis, describe how things should be. Finally, we'll see the prescription available for good health, what God offers us to rid ourselves of the disease of conflict.

Diagnosis*

Selfish Ambition

Why do we fight? Why do we go after each other? Verse 3 gives us the essence of why we fight, giving a great glimpse into each of our hearts. First comes the pattern of behavior, the second is the root, the reason, the motive of behavior.

The phrase "selfish ambition" is from the Greek word eritheia. As we saw last week, much of Paul's language reflects the importance of united citizens, standing together as an army. This word also has its origins in depicting various factions in a city. Aristotle used it to describe the self-seeking pursuit of political office by unfair means. It's ugly self promotion that steps on the necks of others to lift oneself up. It's pride intent on advancing itself. It is a term aptly applied to many in government today; we needn't think to hard to see it in Washington.

But the term is more than just fighting. One has translated it to mean "hyper-fighting." The person is dominated by rivalry. This is the person who is not fighting to live but living to fight. This is a spirit not governed by truth, reason or thought, but by prejudice.

What governs your relationship with people? You need the truth.

You can either come to understand your needs through the truth or come to understand truth through your needs. If the truth governs your needs, then you can have a decent discussion with someone. This is the path of reason. But if needs govern your understanding of truth, rather than the reverse, then you are a hyper-fighter. By definition I am right because it is me; my needs are all that matter. My group - right or wrong. Thought and reason have little to do with issue. You will take things personally. Every discussion is about you, not about an issue or truth. When we think about how this will make us look, our reputation, what others say about us, our standing - we are seeing the evidence of selfish ambition. It is hard to get our egos out of our discussions. Why is this a problem?

Vain Conceit

Selfish ambition is the symptom, but vain conceit is the root. We see the symptoms when there is selfishness, but what feeds our selfishness is vain conceit. The KJV's "vain glory" is a much better translation. The Greek word is kenodoxian. Doxa means "glory" - we sing the doxology, the word of glory, ascribing praise and worth to God. We say God has glory. The Greek word originally meant "an opinion." The greater the glory, the greater the opinion. When the angels sang on that first Christmas night "Glory to God in the highest," the brilliant light reflected His majesty, the shepherds' fear was understandable.

But to add kenos as a prefix changes it to mean "empty of glory." The person who is kenodoxia is empty of, starving for glory. "Glory hunger." I can't think of a better word to describe us - that we are all starved for glory; we all want to have substance, to matter.

Deep down inside our greatest fear is that we don't matter, that we are not important. The worse thing for you and me is not to be hated or opposed, not to be vilified and called bad. The worse thing is to be ignored, to not matter. The thing we fear the most is that we are unimportant, marginal, peripheral, ephemeral. Every human heart tries to manufacture glory. If we think we are ephemeral, we want to last. If we think we are marginal, want to be in the center. If we think we are small, we act big.

We get nervous to think we are going to pass away, that we are nothing. It hurts to realize that we are just footprints pressed in the snow, and that with the next dusting our mark in life will be covered; come spring it will be forgotten. So we manufacture success, love, approval.
We are starving for glory; we are driven by kenodoxia. There is a fundamental disability in our hearts; we feel cosmically small. So we must convince ourselves we matter.

Madonna, in an interview in Vogue, said: "I have an iron will. And all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I'm always struggling with that fear. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and I think I'm mediocre and uninteresting and I find a way to get myself out of that again and again. My drive in life in life is the horrible fear of being mediocre. That's always been pushing me, pushing me. Even though I've become somebody I still have to prove that I am somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will."

Her greatest fear is to be ignored, to be faceless like everybody else. That is the ultimate horror for every human. We fear that we have no glory, that we are not lasting. That fear is understandable. It is the essence of sin to be self-centered. Our response to sin then is to manufacture what we lack - to create glory for ourselves.

To be glory-hungry, to make a self-assertive stand to create glory is extremely destructive of true community life. Paul has put a probing finger on the exposed nerve of the Philippians' problem. These people thinks that they're right on every subject; they are conceited and deluded. They seek self-promotion and self-glory, and will fight to prove themselves supreme.

Right now you're probably thinking of someone who this fits, and hoping they're listening or wishing they were here. But who among us lets a single day go by in which we want just a little respect, we want our way? In our conversation we want to show our wit, in our argument we want to show the force of our logic, in our performance we want commendation.

Prognosis

Thinking with others

If our problem is selfish ambition and vain conceit, what does God want of us? What God desires is spelled out in this passage. First, we are to be on the same page with others. We are to be like-minded, literally, thinking the same thing.

How we think is a major concern of Paul's. The key to unity is to think alike. This doesn't mean that we're all clones and we all like the same things and act the same way. We are all different and we all have different likes and dislikes. It's referring to everyone having his thinking controlled by the Word of God; it means that we seek God's point of view on all of life.

Paul drives this home once more:"Have the same love."Note that he does not say "loving the same things," but possessing the same love. What drives you, what is your passion?

One in spirit - literally one-souled. Again our ambitions and goals are the same.

One in purpose, or "of one mind." This is similar to the first item, an idiom for being "intent on one objective" - God's glory, the advancement of His kingdom. Not pursuing our glory and trying to advance our kingdom.

All of this is the antithesis of selfish ambition and vain glory. Rather than our objective in life, rather than what we want - our focus is on what God desires.

I've watched with a smile when the worship team gets ready in the morning, only to find the pianist has a song in one key and the singers have it in another, when the words they have do not match what the slide says and they don't realize it until half way through the verse. There is a lack of unity. But what if each one purposefully decided to play a song in a different key and tempo, to alter the words to what they wanted? It would never work in music, and it can never work in a church.

Cornerstone's unity is strong - but maybe it's not been tested. As we face important decisions in the coming months, we must do so from a united front. When it comes to land, a building, finances, we can not think about our own agendas, but all must be focused on the common objective of how we can best glorify God. How can we do this?

Thinking about others

Humility is often in short supply. Ted Turner, who is not the poster child for modesty, has said: "If I had a little bit of humility, I'd be perfect." But such hubris is not just a product of our age. To Paul's audience, both Greek and Roman, humility was a characteristic of a slave.

Humility is a uniquely Christian virtue, which stood in utter contradiction to the values of the ancient world, which considered humility a shortcoming. Paul's roots are in the Old Testament and in Christ. In the Old Testament the term indicates lowliness in the sense of being created by God. The truly humble show themselves so by resting their case with God rather than trusting their own strength and schemes.

This humility is the means by which we can work in unison and the antithesis of selfish ambition and vain conceit. The pride of vain glory is cured by attitude of humility.

In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis calls pride the great sin, saying, "There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else. Pride is spiritual cancer, it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense. If anyone would like to acquire humility I can I think tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a big step too. At least nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."

What is humility?

It is when we are most severe on our own faults and charitable in our judgments of others, when we quickly see our defects, but overlook and make favorable allowances for defects in others. When we know our imperfections, our unworthiness more than that of others, then we begin to consider others better.

To "consider others better" means to hold them up, to think them supreme. This could be translated "thinking of others as superior to yourself." Unity is destroyed where self-esteem prevails, rather than a higher esteem for others.

This is not a false modesty or abject servility that only sickens those around or garners greater attention from those indebted to you. It is a proper estimation of who you are, your stance before your Creator. True humility is not self-focused, but rather, as defined in verse 4, looks not to one's own concerns but to those of others.

Concern for others should be the hallmark of our lives. Looking after the concerns for others is not meant that we should have our noses in everyone else's business. But more often we think it polite to ignore others when they hurt, to glance the other way when there is a need. The reason often is that we think our busy schedules prevail over all others, our comfort takes precedence, our interests must rule.

So I am to consider others better than myself; my motives must never have a hint of self promotion, hunger for glory. How can I ever do this? As I see my shortcomings, and still defending them, I then can see the prescription which will make the remedy work.

Prescription

Paul's starting point is where we now conclude. He calls us to consider the truth of what God has done for us. What the NIV gives as conditional statements in verse 1 are in fact certainties. The sentence is best translated "since you have encouragement." Here we find the answer to our deepest problems of selfishness; here we find how we can be united and serve with humility.

Notice where Paul directs their attention. Our union with Christ gives us encouragement. The term here is paraklesis - as one who comes along side us, directs us, encourages us to press on. Our position being "in Christ" is not just a theological statement, but also a reality which will move us to action.

We have comfort from God's love. This word is often associated with encouragement, referring to the alleviation of suffering and misery. Our union in Christ offers us strength to pursue. His love gives us the reassurance that He is there for us. He who did not spare His son, but sent Him to die in our place - what more must God do to get our attention that He cares for us?

We are made partners with God and each other through the work of the Holy Spirit. How can we live selfishly when the Holy Spirit joins us together? How can we seek our own glory, our own status when we are made partners with the God of the universe?

From that we can see the root and fruit of God's grace at work in us: tenderness and compassion. The word for tenderness refers to the inner source of emotions. We are the recipients of God's tenderness to us as seen in the compassion shown to us, as we who deserve Hell have received His name imprinted on our hearts. We are now His.

The answer of how this can be ours is seen in the passage as it unfolds. The grasping for glory that you and I so often do, the desire to make something of ourselves, before God and others, was dealt with by Christ, when He emptied Himself, made Himself nothing.

Jesus Christ embraced your worst nightmare. That which you most fear, Jesus Christ walked right into. What we celebrate at Christmas with the incarnation is what frightens us the most. He shed His glorious throne for a cattle trough: He left heaven to be born to a peasant girl. He was rejected not only by His creation, but by His own Father as well. His death on the Cross is the means by which we can receive the glory we so desperately desire. It is in our union with Him that we find our unity with one another.

Nothing but the Cross can make a man esteem another better than himself. Nothing but the Cross of Christ can give us the spirit of humility. We need to see this truth. It is only when the love of God spills into our hearts that we will be able to love and have this tenderness and compassion towards others. It is only when we see ourselves as sinners in need of God's grace, only when we trust another dying in our place, does the root of our desire for our own glory fade so that we can serve each other in humility.

*Much of this comes from a sermon by Timothy Keller, Redeemer Pres. 6/25/95