Philippians 2:1-11
“If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
When my sons were small, a family friend several years younger than Jack and me became a strong influence in their lives—kind of an honorary uncle. Rather than lecturing the boys when he saw they needed correction, he invented a game called “Good Idea or Bad Idea?” Imagine a kid about to dump a huge container of LEGO bricks all over the living room floor or ride a scooter downhill without a helmet. Steve could halt the unwise behavior with the simple but powerful question: “Good idea or bad idea?”
I was reminded of that question when rereading our passage for today. My dog-eared study Bible begins the passage with a heading: “Imitating Christ’s Humility.” That curious heading makes it sound as if Paul is directing the recipients of his letter toward a life of make-believe. Good Idea or Bad Idea? Surely pretending to be like Jesus isn’t what we’re after.
But a closer reading shows me that Paul is more practical than the writers of headings in study Bibles. His beautiful poem that describes the humility of Jesus Christ is inspiration, but becoming humble like Jesus takes real work and lots of practice. So Paul instructs us to give up things we might otherwise cling to and take on work we might prefer to eschew.
Yes, we imitate Christ, not by pretending to have his attributes, but by doing the kinds of things he did. Jesus spent time alone with God. He prayed regularly. He studied and memorized the scriptures. He kept the Sabbath. At times he retreated to spend time in solitude; at other times he gathered with his friends in celebration. He served people rather than demanding to be served. All these things we can do, too. And in doing them, we make room for God’s Spirit to work in our hearts, bringing about the kind of humility that Jesus had.
Surely the need for people who aspire to this kind of humility has never been greater. We live in a world where everyone seems to have a strong opinion and the means to broadcast that opinion to a wide audience. People are so convinced of the rightness or wrongness of their own beliefs that they can’t imagine that folks with the opposite opinion should even be listened to, much less taken seriously. Humiliating our opponents seems to be the goal of many of us, not cultivating humility in ourselves.
Jesus demonstrated a different way, didn’t he?
I want to be like Jesus, but I can’t fake my way into Christlikeness. I can’t hack my way to humility. So my prayer this Advent is for courage and strength to set aside the many bad ideas vying for my attention and to follow the very good idea of doing the simple, everyday types of things Jesus did—so that I might be transformed into the kind of person Jesus is.