United With Christ to Serve

Philippians 2:1-11

October 3, 1999

Heroes, we have all probably had heroes. Heroes are people who have had a special impact on our lives. One of my heroes is Tom Poole, my vocational ag teacher in high school. He gave me direction and purpose. Another is Wayne Nichol, a carpenter, and former boss. He gave me hope for the future. There are others.

Tony Campolo wrote the following about Joe in his book From Everything You’ve Heard Is Wrong.

Joe was a drunk who was miraculously converted at a Bowery mission. Prior to his conversion, he had gained the reputation of being a dirty wino for whom there was no hope, only a miserable existence in the ghetto. But following his conversion to a new life with God, everything changed. Joe became the most caring person that anyone associated with the mission had ever known. Joe spent his days and nights hanging out at the mission, doing whatever needed to be done. There was never anything that he was asked to do that he considered beneath him. Whether it was cleaning up the vomit left by some violently sick alcoholic or scrubbing toilets after careless men left the men’s room filthy, Joe did what was asked with a smile on his face and seeming gratitude for the chance to help. He could be counted on to feed feeble men who wandered off the street and into the mission, and to undress and tuck into bed men who were too out of it to take care of themselves.

One evening, when the director of the mission was delivering his evening evangelistic message to the usual crowd of still and sullen men with dropped heads, there was one man who looked up, came down the aisle to the altar, and knelt to pray, crying out for God to help him change. The repentant drunk kept shouting, “Oh God, Make me like Joe! Make me like Joe! Make me like Joe!” The director of the mission leaned over and said to the man, “Son, I think it would be better if you prayed, ‘Make me like Jesus.’” The man loooked up at the director with a quizzical expression on his face and asked, “Is he like Joe?” I guess Joe was that man’s hero. He knew Joe, and wanted to be like him. Unfortunately, Joe can’t do anything to help him with his greatest need, changing what he was.

Philippians 2:5 makes it very clear that God desires us to be like His Son. The difference between Jesus Christ and Joe is the ability to change a person. “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus,” Paul says. To have the same attitude as Christ means a necessary change of mind for all those united with Christ.

When Paul writes to the Philippian Christians, he identifies them with Christ, saying, “To the Saints in Christ Jesus.” When a person’s identity is in Christ, it means that person is saved. To be in Christ, means to believe that He is the eternal Son of God in human flesh. And to believe in this Jesus means that we possess the very righteousness of God which is in Christ. One speaker once put it this way: “We are more than an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing, or a highly developed ape who has learned to shave. We are people redeemed by the Son of the Living God.”

That redemption gives us an identity with Christ. This identity provides benefits. Paul mentions some of these: Encouragement, Comfort, Fellowship, Tenderness, Compassion. Listen again to his words. “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.”

Pride has no place in Christ. Humility marks His life. Have you ever noticed how we sometimes think meek and inauspicious character is true humility? It is not. True humility is not to think low of oneself but to think rightly and truthfully of oneself. [1]

Someone once said that pride is an ulcer floating on the sea of high blood pressure. It feeds on itself at the expense of others. Humility, on the other hand, is seeing yourself as you are, and building up others around you. Being united with Christ burns out the selfishness and conceit through repentance and forgiveness. The Old Testament and Gospel lessons help us to see our need for personal repentance. The first of Luther’s ninety-five theses states that the whole life of a Christian is to be one of repentance. I am sure Luther got that idea from the apostle Paul who says, “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 his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” You see, true humility of life is a life of faithful recognition of self and of service to others.

That is the humility Christ, the eternal Son of God, displayed when He put aside His heavenly glory, and took upon himself the flesh and blood of humanity, not to be served, as a king has a right to, but to serve his brother and sister humans. In human flesh and blood He humbled himself under God’s mighty hand “and became obedient to death—even death on a cross” St. Paul says.

Here we see the essence of love. When Jesus tells his disciples, “I am among you as one who serves,” He is not talking about servility, but the service of putting others ahead of ourselves. It is for us that Jesus is obedient. His service brings us the obedience of faith. It is for us that Jesus suffers and dies. His service brings us healing and life. It is for us that Jesus reigns at the right hand of God Almighty. His service assures us of our place with God.

How can a person who is united with Christ boast of his or her own work in the flesh? It is God, who works. Consider these words of Scripture. “May the God of peace, … equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

My dear Christian friends, everything centers in Christ. He came to make us one with the Father. He died to free us from sin, death, and the devil. He rose that we too may have a new life. It is God, in Christ, who serves us. Being united with Christ is to be united to His work. St. Paul says it this way: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Thus, we are United With Christ to Serve.

I can think of no better way to conclude our meditation than with the words of the apostle Jude. “To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forever! Amen.

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[1]Tan, Paul Lee, Encyclopedia of 7,700 Illustrations, (Garland, Texas: Bible Communications, Inc.) 1996.