“Your attitude determines your altitude.” It’s a pithy catch phrase, but this passage provides a particularly challenging directive right along these lines. It’s one of the most difficult commands in scripture, because it is about how we think, not just what we say and do. Our attitude must be like Christ’s, because as Christians we are “little Christs”.
Verses 1 to 3 are a great map of what a healthy church looks like, and a great prayer for parents to pray over their children. We are to unify, as churches, families, married couples, on knowing Christ and making him known.
This is counter cultural – our culture tells us that we should live for our own truth, to center ourselves, our opinions, our preferences. But we are called to humility. As CS Lewis wrote, “humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” We are to put others first and to see others as more important. As Jesus said in Mark 9, “if anyone would be first, he must be last and be the servant of all.” Peter writes in 1 Peter 5, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Is we manage this humility, unify around the service of Christ, and live together with charity and affection, the outcomes would be amazing. Very few people struggle with too much humility – some are more ostentatious about their humility, but that is so frequently a firm of pride.
We live in a very divisive time, and so many areas are polarized. It’s getting harder and harder for pastors in particular. But we are called as churches to be a place of unity and grace.
This is, ultimately, an impossible passage, because salvation is impossible apart from the miraculous work of God. But that’s exactly what we are offered and exactly what we should always be striving for. And a church that is unified in Christ is unstoppable.
– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, June 21, 2020