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Letter to the Philippians: Part 1
00:30:17
Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. James Prothro, Scripture scholars at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology, dive into a powerful New Testament text: the Letter to the Philippians.
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- [00:00]
Tim Gray
Welcome to form now I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute. And Joining me is Dr. Jim Prothero who is a new professor here of Scripture at the Augustine Student. It's a joy, Jim, to have you on the faculty now teaching at the Graduate school. And we're going to talk about Philippians chapter two, the hymn to Christ. And so this is a Part verses, chapter 2 of Philippians, verses 5 through 11 is a description that Paul gives of our Lord Jesus Christ that most scholars refer to as a hymn because it looks like it goes back even before Paul perhaps maybe part of a hymn that the early Christians sang. And we're going to talk about that hymn to Jesus because it is just a treasure trove of insights into who Jesus Christ is. It's a beautiful hymn. It really just expounds upon the glory and the story of Jesus in a very short form. I mean it's amazing in these handful of verses, Paul captures the greatness and the majesty of Jesus story. And then right before that, so the verses that lead up to that, verses one through four, chapter two. Paul sets up this story as why from Paul's perspective, it's so important for the Christian community to know the story of Jesus and how it gives us the right mindset. So let's jump into this, Jim, and let's just start with the first four verses and how it sets up the hymn. Before we get into the hymn, you know, Paul talks and you can really see him exhorting the Philippians here. I mean he's saying basically, look, if so if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love and participation in the spirit, any affection or sympathy, complete my joy of being of the same mind, having the same love, being of full accord and of one mind. And he's really saying, look, if you have any charity in love or any participant in the spirit, you need to have the same mindset. And of course that's going to be important for Paul because having the same mind is very important for the Greeks. And of course Philippi. Just to kind of back up for people, Philippi is in Macedonia, which is part of modern day Greece. So they're part of that Greek culture. And in that Greek culture having the same mind is really important for their ideal of friendship. You want to talk about, start us off with that.
- [02:14]
Dr. Jim Prothero
Oh yeah. So their understanding of friendship builds on sharing the same mind and being like minded in as many ways as possible. So you and I to be friends really have to kind of think the same thing. We have to kind of be on the same side of issues, right? We have to all be thinking together, right? So I don't just sort of run off and kind of do my thing and think my thing. That wouldn't be a good way to be a friend to you, right? Even if we had a disagreement, we would work it out together as well. So this understanding of having the same mind is part and parcel of being friends, being united together, not just in the same place, but with the same sort of attitude, with the same goals and ideas.
- [03:05]
Tim Gray
And then this idea of sharing the same mindset, then he goes on and kind of brings it into the. Really the matter of the will in verse three says, so do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others as more significant than yourselves. So, okay, part of this mindset is going to be counting others as more significant than myself. That's going to be humility. But then verse four gets to the will, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. And literally, I think in the Greek, it's probably better translated as don't look and pursue your own interests, but rather pursue the interests of others. I mean, even the English translations can't quite get their mind around that radical of a selfless attitude. So the right mindset leads us to the right attitude and the right pursuit of, I'm not just pursuing my own selfish desires, but as a friend, I'm going to put your interests ahead of my interests. And here you get a glimpse of the greatness of the Greek ideal of friendship that Paul's, you know, saying, okay, this is how you have to live as Christians, is in your Christian relationship with each other, you have to live out the ideal of friendship. I mean, he's really elevating the bar, isn't he?
- [04:22]
Dr. Jim Prothero
No, that's right. And one of the things that's striking to me too is that in Paul's mind and in this understanding of friendship in Christ, my interests and your interests have to be united if we share the same mind, right? And the same goals, right. That our will can be directed toward later on. In chapter two, just to skip ahead a little bit, he talks about Timothy and he says, I'm going to send Timothy to you soon. Timothy's fabulous. He says, you know how wonderful Timothy is. And then he says, other people seek their own interests. This is chapter two, verse 21, he says, but not those of Jesus Christ. And Timothy looks after the interests of Jesus Christ. On the one hand, you might think to yourself, wait a minute, I thought he was supposed to seek these people's interests. We always kind of separate ourselves off from each other. Right. If I'm going to look after your interests, it means that I'm going to sort of martyr myself and give up every possible good, because whatever I do for you has to be really bad for me. And there can't be any sort of sharing of a good. But if Christ is at the center of what you and I are both seeking, then me seeking your interests is seeking Christ and you seeking my interest is seeking Christ and seeking Christ. We both seek and serve one another. And I think it's just this sort of beautiful unity that just crops up in what Paul says. And then also kind of underneath the way that he describes Timothy here, it's.
- [05:55]
Tim Gray
A beautiful description of Timothy, and I'm glad you highlighted that. Not just because he's my patron name, But I love St. Timothy. But I also think that you're exactly right that what Timothy's pursuing is Christ. What Paul's pursuing is Christ's interests. And that's what makes Timothy and Paul such great collaborators and friends. And now they're giving that as a model for the Philippians to live that out themselves. That if we are to be the church, how, as members of the body of Christ and as fellow Catholics, how do we have this simpatico, this deep sense of communion? It's because we're not pursuing our own goods. And this is the difference of the world. Right. And you've kind of touched on this, that in the world, everyone has their own self interest and, you know, kind of the John Locke social contract that the United States was built on and the west is that everybody is free to pursue their own interests and we just don't. The whole idea of the social contract is don't stop me from pursuing mine, and I won't stop you from pursuing your interests. But in the Christian community, we put the interests of God first. And so Jesus will, and the Father's will becomes our will. And then that gives us a center that can unite us and that creates a community. And what Paul is suggesting to the Philippians, that, yes, the Greeks have this great ideal of friendship. You just weren't ever able to live it out. But now Jesus changes the game. He gives us the way to live out this Greek ideal of friendship and how we can have the same mindset.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah. So another, a little detail that I think goes along with this, that's impressive to me is in verse three of chapter two, right before he says, count others as more significant than yourselves. He says, do nothing out of selfish ambition. And the word for selfish ambition is related to the word for a faction or a party. This is our interest. And you and I have to be sort of totally the same, right? We got to be on the same level. And you think about how many conversations you hear where people say, well, you have this kind of economic level, so you can't share my interests. Right. Or you're down here, so you can't think in any way that. That I would think. Right? And we can't really be friends. I can be nice to you, but we can't really share any real goal or anything because our lives are too different or our wealth is too disparate or whatever.
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Tim Gray
And that's part of the Greco Roman culture at the time, Right. That Paul has to work against. Because Christianity is doing something very countercultural. Because in the Greco Roman culture, you could only be friends with people of your social status. So if you were of the wealthy or the educated, you could not have a friendship with somebody who was not well educated and somebody who was not of your social economic background. You just couldn't have that mix. And what we find with the early Christian communities, as Paul's letter to the Corinthians shows, you have the rich coming together for the agape meal with the poor, and that creates problems and tensions. But that's exactly what Paul wants to see. That Christians bring together people of different gender, ethnic, social backgrounds. That doesn't matter for Christ.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
That's right. And it's especially something that he wants them to get their head around. You mentioned that Philippi is a Greek city, and it absolutely is. It's in Greece. And they share and think a lot of Greek ideals, but it's also a specific. They call it a colony of Rome. It's like a mini Rome. They have their own forum. They have like a mini Roman government style. They don't have the old Greek way with the kind of voting assemblies and stuff. And people when they went in, certain people, if you weren't a citizen, you weren't allowed to even go into the center. If you were a citizen, you always wore your toga. There were actually laws at one point that said if you're a citizen and you don't wear your toga to show people that you're a citizen, then you can be penalized. You wore a ring, you wore something. Everybody's always trying to distinguish themselves as better. And he's about to lay the example of Jesus on him and say, hey, share this Mind, because this is how you can actually be one.
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Tim Gray
It's extraordinary. And they prided themselves on that citizenship. And he's going to come back to that at the end of chapter two of a radically disruptive citizenship that they should put primary, not their Roman citizenship, but their citizenship in heaven. But maybe we'll end, if we have time to come back to that. But let's just dive into the hymn now in verse five. Why don't you read the first verse and let's just absolutely talk about this.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
So chapter two, verse five, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped.
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Tim Gray
Yeah, let's just stop there. Yeah, that's because that word for grasp, harpagmos in the Greek is a very rare word. It's the only time we find it in the New Testament. It doesn't simply mean grasp. I mean, you know, I like what N.T. wright talks about that this word probably has the idea of exploiting someone's position for self gain. So it could be usually government officials, we would call politicians today, using their office for self gain. So harpagmus would be not just grasping for something, but actually exploiting what one already has, one's office. And so Jesus does not see equality with God, something to be exploited for his own self gain. Which fits beautifully with what Paul just.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Said right before that and I think too, holding onto one's own self gain in the eyes of others. There's a great line in Charles Dickens Christmas Carol that I love where he describes Scrooge as a clenching, grasping, covetous old sinner. And I always think of that grasping when I read this passage. Because Scrooge doesn't want to lose anything to anybody and he doesn't want to let anybody think that he's losing.
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Tim Gray
Oh, that's a great image for this.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
And here one who is in the form of God and doesn't lose being God yet is going to take on another form and isn't going to. Only he's not going to grasp at his divinity and his glory and his status in front of the eyes of mere mortals to make sure that they know what the game is.
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Tim Gray
And not only does he not exploit what he has for self gain or even keep it, but verse seven, he's going to do something very radical. So let's jump into verse seven, let's read it.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
But he emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men.
- [12:51]
Tim Gray
So I love that image of empty. Kenosis is the Greek, right? This idea of self emptying. And of course this is the mindset that's the model for us. Have this mind amongst yourselves. Paul's saying, amongst each of us, all of us in the Christian community, which was the mind of Jesus Christ, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, something to be exploited for self gain, but rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, but literally Doulos a slave, which is the lowest part of the social status in the Greco Roman world. That's pretty astonishing.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
That's right, that's right, yeah. And that he has both forms. Yeah.
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Tim Gray
Go ahead, let's continue on being born.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
So verse 8 now. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Tim Gray
So when you look at this, this is an incredible descent that Jesus is making. He starts with having equality with God, being the form of God, and then he comes down and empties himself. But then that emptying takes the human form and then the form of a slave, but then an obedience that even a slave wouldn't obey, obedience that would lead to his own death. I mean, this is just like you keep this incredible descent that you're seeing in this hymn.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Oh, that's right.
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Tim Gray
In just a few verses, Paul masterfully tells the story. Although some scholars think this may not even be Paul's original writing, it may precede Paul. So maybe we should even for a brief digression, talk about this as an ancient hymn perhaps.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Sure. So the reasons that scholars think this, sometimes with the New Testament, sometimes you hear this and it sounds kind of odd and it's like, what are they saying? Are they saying that this is sort of jumble up of text? Well, no, but a number of people have looked at this and said, this is beautiful. It's about Jesus. And it has certain features in the style that make it seem like something that somebody would repeat as a memory device kind of over and over again. They use the word who a lot. In the old translations of the Nicene Creed, you say who all the time. Right. Whose kingdom shall have no end? Who did this? The new translation we usually use he and we put a period there. But just like the Apostles Creed, it looks almost like an older version, a shorter version of that. You see kind of different language and things like that. But one of the things that it means is that when you hear somebody say either that the early Christians didn't think Jesus was divine, or they say most of them didn't think so. It was just a few kind of like talking head intellectuals like Paul or John who thought Jesus was divine. But the common man didn't think that. If this is a hymn that's being said and Paul has borrowed from it and put it in here to remind people of what they're saying normally on a Sunday, that means that everybody is saying it, not just intellectuals like Paul. It means that this is the faith of the common community already at this point in time, which is quite striking.
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Tim Gray
It really is. And I think it shows. The faith of the early Christians was what we would call high Christology. I mean, they believed Jesus was divine. And that becomes clear in the next couple verses because Paul's going to be alluding to an Old Testament prophet in a way that you wouldn't say these things about anybody but God.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Absolutely, absolutely. Shall we read them?
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Tim Gray
Yeah, go ahead. Sure.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
So I'll just read verses 9 through 11. Now, therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Yeah.
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Tim Gray
And of course, this is going to echo Isaiah 45. Right. Which is an oracle of Isaiah that starts off railing against the idols of the nations, that these idols are nothing and they're. And then it goes back into that this hymn of praise that worship should be for the Lord God of Israel and he alone.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Right.
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Tim Gray
And so it's one of the most. One of the strongest texts, I guess, of many strong texts of a monotheistic profession of faith. And so what does it mean that Paul would quote that here and tack this on about Jesus?
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah. God says in Isaiah 45, verse 22, 23, turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth. It's about his divinity and also that he's the Savior. He says, I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn from my mouth that has gone out in righteousness a word that will not return. A word, oh, my goodness to me. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And Paul or the people who wrote this hymn, if it's not Paul and Paul's borrowing it, are saying that all of that is going to happen. But the way that the Father is going to receive that glory is through people praising and giving the glory to the Son who has saved us, that the glory of God The Father is enhanced, not taken away from, not detracted, not lessened, not any of that kind of stuff. The glory of God the Father is enhanced and magnified when people look to the person, person of the Son and worship him and praise him and call him Lord and know him as our King and our Savior. And that's just beautiful. And even in the Trinity you see the non competition that Paul wants to be mirrored in the Church. Right.
- [18:51]
Tim Gray
That's so beautiful. That brings it, I think full circle, that the Father's not jealous of the Son, but rather is glorified when the Son is glorified and in fact even that term that Jesus Christ, I mean the confession of Lord Kurios for the Jews in the Old Testament, that would be, I mean, that's Yahweh, that's God, that's the God of Israel. And so to confess that Jesus is Lord is not just simply that he's got supremacy or that he's really powerful or that he's the Messiah. I mean, this is a confession of divinity, isn't it?
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Absolutely.
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Tim Gray
And I love how you take that back to then the community where he's challenging them to be selfless and to seek each other's interests and to have this mindset. And so the mindset of Christ is the mindset that we find reflected in the Trinity, right?
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah. And to round the Trinity out, we have to borrow from somewhere else. But so God the Father is going to receive glory by people calling the Son Lord Jesus, Lord. And First Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 1 to 3. Paul says no one can say Jesus is Lord. The same phrase, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
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Tim Gray
Oh, that's beautiful.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
So all three working together for the glory of the triune God and everyone in the church as well, working together to seek honor for one another, to count each other as more significant than yourselves. I mean, verse three sounds beautiful, but think about doing it on a Tuesday. Count others as more significant than yourselves. I mean, how many times do you go like, well, you're important, but I have this other thing to do now. Maybe that thing is for the sake of others and it's for the sake of Christ. And so it's still good and you should still do it instead of do the other thing. But on the other hand, that's a stark verse.
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Tim Gray
I mean it really is arresting to us. That means when I go to get my coffee, am I treating the barista as more important than myself? The person that I run into on the light Rail do I treat them as more important than myself? I mean, that's a radically different version than what we would normally think of or naturally think of or that the world thinks of.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Where I struggle with it is when I have a complaint or something that's gone wrong. Like if I have to call my credit card company because something's gone wrong, or my phone company because something's broken, or my Internet company and some major part of my life is disrupted because the Bluetooth won't work, or some small thing, we call them first world problems, but some small thing in the grand scheme of things. And then I really struggle when I'm on the phone with a person who doesn't know the problem, doesn't know me, and probably has a really hard day with a lot of people calling to complain. And it's really easy for me to treat because the reason you call with a problem is because it's my problem and it's important, so fix it. But I always have to remind myself, or maybe say a little prayer even before I do it, to say, God help me, to value and be kind to the person on the other end of the phone. Because my initial instinct is to be like, well, I'm important and fix my problem because what have you done?
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Tim Gray
It's so easy for people in the service industry to treat them as servants, whether it's our waiter or our waitress at the restaurant. Well, their job is to serve me, so they should be taking care of me. I get frustrated if they don't come right away or if they don't bring the water right away. But to really put this into practice as Paul is challenging the early Christians and you can see why Christianity stood out from the pagan Roman society, because the people who are with Paul here, mentored by people like Timothy, who start living this, they get noticed. I mean, like really. I mean, you could see, you could see a dramatic change in the way people lived because they put this into practice. I really believe this. This chapter two of Philippians is one of the most important passages in the Bible for giving us the formula for how to live out the Christian life. You know, how to have. And that to live out the Christian life takes a mindset. So let's just get to this idea because people don't think. People think, well, you know, if I'm going to be a good Christian, it's about the heart, Jim. It's all about the heart. Well, Paul here is saying that we have to have a mindset if we're going to enact and Bring the heart to the right place. What would you say about those who don't think we, you know, undervalue the idea of a mindset, a mentality?
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Oh, good gracious. I'd say a lot. In brief, I'd say. I mean, I just. I'd. Well, I talk about my wife because I love my wife dearly, just with a full heart. She's wonderful, and I am drawn to her emotionally and all of that kind of stuff. But if I don't know that, if I don't register in my brain that she's had a rough day or that Tuesday is the day that this happens, or that she is. Has a real aversion to a sink full of dishes, I'm gonna love her really poorly. Knowing things about a person not only allows you to appreciate them more, but even more than that gives you, like, a plan of action. And one of the other passages where you get mindset language, it's one of my favorites, is In Romans, chapter 8, verses 5 through 7. And there Paul says, if you have the spirit of God, then you'll have the. He says, mindset of the spirit. And if you follow after the flesh, then you'll develop the mindset of the flesh. You don't really have to develop it because you're kind of born with it. So. Right.
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Tim Gray
Just indulge it.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
But the thing is, we always think about mindset there. Even the translations translate that passage as, like, mindset, like, kind of like particular set of thoughts. Or maybe you don't drift around in the clouds or whatever.
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Tim Gray
Or sometimes it's attitude.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Right, right, attitude. But in Greek, that's actually a phrase that they use in war all the time. To have the mind of somebody is to be on their side because you're thinking like them. That means that you share their goals and their strategies and you. All of these other kinds of things. Right. And if I'm going to have the mindset of Christ, what should my goals be? Not just my kind of, like, emotive kind of feelings. And that I can sort of do my dance all day long, which I love to do. This is the one. I don't know if you've seen it, but. Sorry, but the mind is part of that.
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Tim Gray
Well, and that goes back to what you're saying is it's the Greek ideal of friendship, Right? That if I have the same mindset, this is a friend that I'm in supatico. This is somebody that I'm close with. And for the Greeks, the key to happiness for them was friendship. Friendship was the. Was the key to the path to achieve happiness. And it's something that even though the Greeks couldn't realize that ideal which Paul thinks now we can in Christ by taking on the mindset of Christ and imitating his kenosis of giving up our own pursuit of our own rights, our own privileges, our own selfish gratification and pursuing the good of the other. But even apart from that, this idea of that we can share this mindset that can really create friendship, that we can live out this Greek ideal of friendship now. And that's what we see with the early Christians. They're living out a deep sense of friendship, sharing the same mindset. And there's a unity there that the church needs today. We lack in a lot of places in the church this kind of deep sense of unity and communio. And that community really comes from a shared mindset, doesn't it?
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Yeah. And when we lack it, it cheapens so much. In Romans, chapter 12 and some other places in his letters, Paul talks about unhypocritical love. They usually translate it as genuine. And we think about hypocrisy, you know, whatever. But the word hypocrisy is about play acting. That's what it means if you're a hypocrite. You were an actor on stage. And when we don't actually share real interests in love and this mindset, we know we ought to be loving. And so we put on a show of it and we put on outrage a lot of times today in the name of love for somebody else or whatever else it might be, or praise. But people can see that it's empty.
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Tim Gray
Well, this is what I love about hymn here that Paul gives us in this letter because he says, have this mind which was in Christ Jesus. In other words, if he said have these emotions, well, I can't just put on emotions unless I'm a hypocrite. I'm acting, right? I can't just put on a certain feeling or attitude or emotion, but I can't take on a mindset. And the mindset of Jesus Christ was to do the will of the Father. And it's like, okay, I'm going to do the will of the Father because I love the Father and I'm going to choose to love the Father. Well, you and I can do that. We can choose to do the will of the Father. And that gives us a mindset, and that is genuine, that's sincere, and that becomes a powerful formula for holiness. Right? And, you know, I just want to, in a Couple minutes. One of the things that Paul's building on here. And we're going to talk more about Philippians. Hopefully, Jim, we'll do some more sessions on Philippians as it goes through the liturgical reading. We have a Bible study on Formed on Philippians. And in chapter one of Philippians, we talk about Paul uses the language of partnership Koinonia with the Philippians, that he is in this partnership with them. And that's a beautiful image that really relates to this idea of friendship and then mindset. It's really Paul is developing things here. So we're kind of jumping ahead when we jump to chapter two. But I invite you, you can get this Bible study and the videos of Philippians on Formed. So you can find the Bible study on Philippians unformed for free. So I want to recommend that to all of you who are watching if you want to go deeper into Paul's letter and deeper into the hymn. There's a lot of aspects here that we didn't get time to dive into. But really, you know, our culture right now, which is suffering from such division and partisanship and partisan ambition, you know, ignoring and not caring about the interests of others, but only our own self interest. Paul gives us the formula here of taking on the mindset of Jesus Christ. And that can build communal, it can build unity, it can build love. And that's what we Christians are called to be in the world, the salt and light of the world. And read this hymn. It's important in the liturgy right now. We'll see on the Sunday liturgy. But read this hymn and just pray with it and may you be enriched. And I want to just thank everybody who is on our mission circle. You are in partnership with us. You're in Koinonia with us. And we're grateful for your support for our mission, which allows us to have these studies and these Bible studies. And we're grateful to you. And may the Lord bless and keep you all. Take care.
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Dr. Jim Prothero
Amen.