With Humility of Mind, Philippians, 2:3-4
Philippians 2:3-4 · Vern Peterman · Jun 15, 2003
Philippians (2003), No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262256218122

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Step through this with me here. This is Caesarea Philippi. This is not the same as Philippi. This Caesarea Philippi is on the coast, and you'll find it in the New Testament listed as just Caesarea. This is where Paul was in prison initially in Acts 25 and through chapter 26.

Something else that's interesting though, this is also the place where Philip the deacon lived, and this is also the place where the Gentiles, remember Cornelius, Acts chapter 10, this is also the place where the Gentiles first were brought into the church. So it's a significant place. So here's Paul, but what is he doing here?

This is a place where there's 3,000 Roman soldiers, he gets to trade taking turns being chained up to one of them until he gets shipped off. He finally gets shipped off and of course the account goes through chapters 27 and part of 28 of the book of Acts. And it even includes the shipwreck, which this map makes note of. And that's always the sort of thing you like to have on a boat trip, right? Anyway, so here he's getting there.

He ends up at this place mentioned in Acts 28.13, the port of Puteoli. And this is where he finally came in there right near Rome, done with his travels on the ship. There's the Appian Way. There's a couple different shots of it. So he and others that were with him traveled up this road from the port up into Rome.

So now here's Paul and he's stationed in Rome. In Rome there's a whole garrison of these guards, right? And so here he is chained up to these guards and now Paul is getting word Okay, things are going great in terms of Philippi supporting him in his ministry, but there's also some issues there, and he wants to deal with those issues. So here he's sitting down, Timothy is with him, they're writing together, and my guess is, you can imagine Paul, he has spent the better part of a few years by now being chained up to a guard, the Praetorian guard. Here's this Praetorian guard, not necessarily cooperative with his writing process, so I imagine that it was helpful to have Timothy along.

Now, given that perspective and thinking, here's Paul, he's trying to communicate to them, alright, this church apparently is having some problem with division. How do I communicate with that church about how they need to address this issue? That's what he's thinking through. And he's begun with, remember we talked about the striving together, and he began with that theme. But he's also kind of digging into the nuts and bolts of, here's what's underneath some of the division that's in your church. And that's what we're looking at now. That's what he's proceeding with. So let's take a look at this, Philippians 2, 3, and 4.

He writes, Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Here is the pattern. Actually, the pattern in this passage is simple. It's this, and you have a similar layout on your handout there. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, and then there's this contrasting word, but With humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves."

Then he moves on into verse 4 there, "...do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also the interests of others." See that? There's just a simple four-part structure there, and it's a part one and part two divided with a but, a contrast in each case.

We'll take a closer look at what exactly that means, of course. Okay, key words. And key words just start jumping out. And frankly, as I start looking at this, about Tuesday or Thursday each week, I'm thinking, man, I've got to wait until Sunday to talk about this? This is phenomenal stuff. Let's take a look here.

One thing he talks about is selfishness, strife in the King James. We've seen this before when we were in chapter 1, verse 16. Same word. Aristeon means selfish position. Selfish position. So what's he telling them there? As we covered last time when we looked at this word, and so we're just kind of coming to remembrance here, it means to work for hire.

It was kind of the idea. It was applied to people who would, like right here in the middle of the forum here in Philippi, as you see in front of you, they would stand in the middle and just kind of wait and wait for somebody to hire them. And somebody who needed a day laborer would come to the forum, right there in the middle where you see, and they would Say, okay, you come work for me and they make whatever arrangements they want with them. But that kind of worker who just kind of went to one place and went for another was thought of as being, and they would use this word, self-seeking, self-centered in their approach to things. And so yes, they would do their work, but their motivation was kind of suspect. You know, they're working there for me and the next day they're working for a competitor.

Here's another word that jumps out. I looked at this one and thought, oh, this is a phenomenal word. This is a great one. Empty conceit. Now, it's two words in English, but it's one word in the Greek. The King James has vain glory. The Greek, kenodoxia, it's kenos and doxa. Empty glory. How's that for a neat word? Empty glory. Okay? It's not real glory. It's empty glory.

Here's the next part. Part of what Paul had to get across with these people is that they needed to understand humility. That is not something that the culture would teach them. In both the Greek and the Roman cultures, it was considered less than good to be humble. It was considered to be abnormal or weak. Therefore he was trying to get across something to them that the culture did not in the least bit reinforce. The culture did not support this idea at all.

One example I might give was this. It was important. Remember when we studied slaves some weeks, actually months back? It was important to maintain a good public image to people. One of the ways in which people who are well off would do that is they would free slaves to show their generosity.

It got to be so bad, too many slaves freed at once because people would free slaves to show their generosity, that they actually passed laws limiting the number of slaves you could set free at once. You couldn't do that. Why? Because it would cause all sorts of social disruption. So they passed these regulations. This is a New Testament word. If we look through all kinds of Greek literature, you only find it in Paul's writings.

He uses a similar word in Galatians 5.26, and here's how it shows up. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. So this word boastful, kynodoxos, you can of course see the similarity in the words.

Contrast that with what's in 2 Corinthians 3.18. Remember, this is empty glory that he talked about here.

Here in this passage, 2 Corinthians 3.18, look how he uses that word.

But we all, with unveiled faith, beholding as an emir the glory of the Lord, there's that word doxa again, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. This is not empty glory, is it? This is empty glory. This is not. So there's a contrast, a sharp contrast. Alright, here's another one that comes out.

The word but. The Greek is ala. It means in sharp contrast, quite the opposite. Now the reason I make that point, there are other Greek words that are used for kind of minor changes and turns in the writing. For example, if I'm saying I'm going to go to Anglewood, but instead I think I'll go over to Lakewood.

Now, that's not a sharp contrast, is it? It's a slight change. This word was used for sharp contrast. Here's an instance where it shows up here, because you see those standing up. Do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but sharp contrast, with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. He's making a sharp contrast. It's not this, but it's definitely the very opposite over this other direction. So that's why the justification for this pattern. He puts this in place here and is trying to get them to see it is definitely not this, but in sharp contrast it is instead this other thing.

And here's a Bible interpretation key because you're going to see this word crop up in different places. Things that are characteristic of the sin nature will sometimes be contrasted in the New Testament with the characteristics of the life of Christ and the believer. And so you'll see this show up in numerous places in Scripture. Here's an example, Ephesians 4, 29, 5, 15, and on. Basically, the last part of the book of Ephesians.

What does he do? He has told them what is their position in Christ, In the last half, what is he coming across with? He's coming across with contrast. He says, this is not consistent with your position in Christ. So instead, this behavior is consistent. So he's not just simply coming at them with a list, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that. But he's instead showing them, this is the flesh, this is the life of Christ.

And sharp contrast in each case. A pattern of contrast to the last half of the book of Ephesians. Alright, now, another key word. I saw this one, I just went berserk. Humility of mind. King James, lowliness of mind, okay? Tapeno frosune, okay? Now, that's not something you say every day when you get up in the morning, so let's go through it. Tapeno, okay, and fren, basically is the basis of freneo. We've talked about that and we're going to talk about it some more. Tapino had some interesting uses.

As you look through documents of the New Testament times, one of the places where they find that word used is describing the Nile River when it was at a low point. Low. Get the idea? Low. Now, in construction, they would use it with the idea of cutting the top off a mountain.

So, this is the word that he chooses to describe to them, humility. humility and One of the examples that we show here on the left-hand side. This is the river Okay, the Genghis River right there in Philippi and they would have understood low river, right? On the right side. This is the Acropolis the mountain right above The city of Philippi and what would they do in those days? They would cut the top of the mountain off. So the people in Philippi would know exactly what this word meant Okay, it fit them beautifully Now, this is, I think, the key point here. This word is describing to the Philippians, who do not have a good sense of what humility is about, or even the value of it, is describing humility to them in terms they would understand. Below river, okay? Cutting the mountain off the top. In one sense, isn't that what the Lord does with us? He has to cut the mountain off the top. That's his picture of humility. He uses those powerful words to convey the idea. Then, this word at the end is part of the family of words that's in the phronail family. You'll see it listed on your handout, and here it's a more complex word.

The other places, it's all variations of the verb phronail. and it has the idea to think. There are other words that he uses in the book of Philippians, and you'll notice this word phileo comes out at least once in each, excuse me, phroneo comes out at least once in each chapter. He also uses similar words here, sukos, which is often translated soul, and doceo, which means to think, and noema, is also a word that's frequently translated mind. That's where you have where Paul writes to the church of Corinth and says you have the mind of Christ. He uses that word. He uses all three of those words here in the book of Philippians as well along the same theme. Here's another one.

Regard one another. Regard one another. In the King James, each esteem other. Hegeomai alelon is the word pair. Hegeomai relates to judgment, estimation, or appraisal. We have a somewhat unusual word in English that's based on this hegemony and is typically thought of in terms of royalty and a domain of royalty.

The other part is all alone, and that's one another, each other. The idea is that what's going on should be mutual and inclusive. Mutual and inclusive. It goes back and forth, and everybody is involved with it. That's the idea. We could take a real tangent point here and look at all the places in the New Testament where we see this word crop up. The one another's. Love one another. Forgive one another. I'll leave that to you. But the idea is that this is a consistent message in scripture, and this is no exception.

Now, more important, the King James there has better than, and the Greek hupereko. It's another compound word. Hupere, you may be more familiar with that. We use the term hyper. It means over or above. And echo, well, that's not having to do with our word echo. But anyway, the idea is above hold or hold above. Consider another held above is the word that he uses. Held above. Another word that comes out there is look out or look on in King James where the two words are kind of separated a little bit.

The Greek is skapos. That is, as you would guess, where we get our English word scope. And it's the idea that you're looking out. You notice with even just to take the analogy of the telescope, we don't just take a telescope and just sort of wildly swing it about or swing it randomly. We swing it deliberately and we look at specific things, don't we?

That word that he uses here is a present active participle, so what that's telling us His believers are to be actively in the process of looking out for the interests of other saints. How about that? In the process of looking out for other saints. Something else to look at here in terms of versions.

King James has here, look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. And there's an emphasis there that doesn't come out on some of the other translations. And I think if you think this through, part of what Paul is saying, this isn't just for some of you. It isn't some of you look out for other people. It isn't some of you look out for a few others. It's all of you look out for all. And there's an emphasis there that comes out in that translation. You have it in the inner linear also in your handout.

Now there's something I think that's valuable for us to take a look at. The Greek text here, when you look at these two verses, doesn't actually say, do nothing or let nothing be done. I know that's the way a lot of our translations come across, but I think there's something we need to think through. You remember before, and you have on your handout, that list of places where that word phreneo comes out? And it's a word that Paul intentionally weaves throughout the book. That's one thing we note.

The other thing is that the verses before and immediately after this particular pair of verses, and once right in the verses, refer to Phrenael. That's the context both within the passage and before and after. So what I would suggest to you, since the Greek doesn't really say do nothing, when we look at this here, We've got this focus on mind or thinking, and we look at the verses here, the flow from 1 and 2 into 3 and 4 in the Greek text is actually smooth. It's not broken up into a different sentence.

So based on that, I think what Paul is really putting the focus on here is not doing, but thinking. Not doing, but thinking. Thinking nothing. Thinking nothing. Because that's the thought that he has begun with, that's the thought that's in the middle of the verse, that's the thought that's in the next verse that comes out. So that's the action that he is focusing on in the context. Before, in the middle of the passage, and afterwards. Thinking nothing. What's he looking at?

As you look at this thinking idea, this word phreno, Just to bring us back to a point of reminder here, this word freneo is not just intellectual thought. It also involves the emotions and the will and the conscience. So it's a much larger idea than just the intellectual things that we happen to think. It's the whole scope of our thought and attitude.

That's what he's focusing on. He's zeroing in on the big picture, not just trying to come up with a little tightly defined list of don't do this and don't do that. This isn't a point of legalism. He's trying to get them to address their whole mindset, their perspective, isn't he?

Now, with that, let's take a look here. We've got verses 1 and 2. And what I want to do is read this to get some context, because in truth the Greek just flows from 1 and 2 directly into 3. It's designed to be looked at as one thought. So the passage we looked at last week is this, Philippians 2, 1 and 2. Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if there is any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. That's the beginning context. From there, as Paul writes, he flows immediately into this, and this you all have on the back of your hand out there on side two.

In verse three, he begins with this thought, thinking nothing which springs from the fleshly mind set on selfish ambition, or empty glory. Your perspective and your set of values should have no place. The selfish ambition or the empty glory, no place.

But in extreme contrast, there's that word Allah, but in extreme contrast, with a humble self-estimation, holding the needs of one another within the body of Christ as more important than the needs of your own selves. Now isn't that amazing? Holding the needs of others in the body of Christ above your own. Each one of you not having a perspective of mind that is looking out for your own personal interests at the exclusion of others, But in extreme contrast, each one of you having a perspective that looks out for the interests of others in the body of Christ.

See, that's the thought that he's continuing there. That's the flow of thought that he's laying out to them. Here are these believers in Philippi. They do not think that humility is a good thing. That's their culture, okay? So he's trying to get it across to them, no, you need to understand something.

Your culture has been teaching you this, but based on the life of Christ, you need to value this instead. You need to have a different assessment of things than what you have had before. The Greek and Roman mindset, which had been developed obviously out of the world and the flesh, the Greek and Roman mindset was telling them to look out for your own interests and make sure that you have a good public image. That's what counts.

And he's telling them instead, no, look out for the interests of others in the body of Christ as first priority. First priority. And instead of having a good public image and trying to pursue that, he's basically cut the top off the mountain. Cut the top off the mountain. Bring yourself low, because that's the character of the life of Christ. That's what he's conveying to them. This is a picture that we've shown the last few weeks, ever since we covered Philippians 127. And I think, you know, Paul started off this whole subject with this, didn't he?

And what I'd like us to take note of, you see these shields? Okay, here's each individual soldier, but notice though each individual soldier is protected. The protection between them is interactive. Did you notice that? Here's the soldiers in the front, and they are holding the shields in front of them, providing some protection.

Who's holding the shields that are on top? The one behind is holding the shields on top. The one behind is holding the shields on top, and that is protecting not only the fellow who is holding it, but the one in front. The guys holding the shields out in front are not only protecting themselves, but the one behind.

See that? Look at the ones on the side. Those guys are also holding a shield off to the side and protecting the whole group from the side attack. You look at it and he drew upon this image, drew upon this picture in their thinking to get them to understand, you know what? My involvement in this whole thing impacts everybody else. Everyone else is impacted by the way this works.

And as it turned out, the Roman soldiers would often go into battles substantially outnumbered. Go in with this arrangement and defeat the enemy soundly. Because the enemy couldn't get through. Why? Because they were striving together. The interactive defense that they each held was powerful.

And what does Paul do in the last chapter of Ephesians? He talks about each soldier and the shield of faith and holding it up to stop the flaming arrows. What's happening is when we look in this context, my position as a believer is joint with another believer's position in Christ. Me standing in my position as a believer and living out of that position helps protect other believers. How about that? In that sense, we are interdependently dependent upon the Lord. Not just independently dependent, but interdependently dependent upon the Lord for the life that we have between each other, for the spiritual stance and position that we have. So if I look at Paul, Paul is, as we get into the next section here, What's he going to do?

This trying to get them to understand that humility is a good thing and not a bad thing is a big chore. It's a challenge, isn't it? The whole culture is telling them humility is bad. Humility is weak. I don't want humility. And he's trying to convey to them, oh no, there's something you need to understand.

And so what's he going to do? The next thing he's going to address, he's going to give the example of Christ. And He's also going to show them in that example that it's not just, here's the example, follow it. But in Christ's example, He bought our position. In Christ's example, He bought our position.

We're going to see that next as we proceed into the next passage. Let's pray. Lord, we give You thanks. As we look at this passage, we see such marvelous things. And Lord, in our lives we know our position is fixed and our position is something we can stand upon and it's untouchable. But we also know that in our condition there are places where we need to have our mountain cut off. There are places where we need to be brought low. And we know that the very life of Christ in us, Lord, is what will bring that about.

And so we thank you for the things that conform us to the image of your dear son. We thank you for those things that cuts the top off our mountain. We thank you for those things that brings us low. And Lord, we also thank you that in that process, your very intent for us as a local portion of Christ's body is that we live out in life what these soldiers together portray. and as we stand together in our position and thereby protecting one another. We give you thanks for that. In Jesus' name, Amen.