Philippians 3:17-4:1

Philippians 3:17-4:1 (NRSV)

¹⁷ Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. ¹⁸ For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. ¹⁹ Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. ²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. ²¹ He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.4 ¹ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

In Philippians 3:17-4:1, Paul continues with sharing his warnings against errors.[1]  ¹⁷ Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. Elsewhere in his writings he advises his readers to imitate his example (I Corinthians 4:16; 11:1, 2; II Thessalonians 3:7-9).[2] Here, however, Paul coins a word unique to the New Testament lexicon that is translated "be followers together" (KJV), "join with others in following my example" (NIV), "agree together to follow my example" (NEB) and "join in imitating me" (NRSV). In the context of his time, he was aware of a phenomenon we know today as the role of being a social influencer. The salient point here is that Paul does not suggest that they should observe only him as a moral and theological template for Christian living.  Imitation was to be a collective and supportive enterprise in which one's walk in Christ received mutual affirmation and instruction. "Join in imitating me" is an associative, collaborative suggestion and he reinforces this by his strong advice to "observe" others. This "observing" is not mere casual reflection but suggests that the Philippians are to "mark" or "set your sights on" those whose lives are worthy of emulation. 

People often describe our time as an individualistic one. We cherish our uniqueness. Some might suggest we idolize it. Books urge us toward ingenuity. Businesses are to break the mold and become an outlier. We claim to reject conformity. Originality has become a value above everything else. In their proper place, these values are important. After all, God has made each of us as bearers of the image of God. Properly understood and practiced, such a view of individuality is a wonderful gift America can offer humanity. 

Yet, we need to be clear. Complete uniqueness is not even a possibility. If we understand individuality as an isolated, self-made, standing alone individual, we have a myth. Rather, you and I are social creatures. Think of how deep imitation is part of human life. We learn to speak by imitating our parents. We learn to walk by watching our older siblings. Later in life, we create our own “unique” identity by imitating our teenage friends in high school and following our clique in college. Therefore, whom we choose as friends in our teen years is so important. It says so much about whom we are and who we want to be. Finally, we set certain people in our profession on a pedestal and mimic their movements. Whether we will admit to it or not, we imitate our spouse. Imitation, as they say is the sincerest form of flattery. 

Many of the things to which we conform to are innocent, such as a Southern drawl or the way one holds a fork. However, others have lasting ramifications. Our work ethic, our attitude toward spouse and kids, and even our church attendance are things we pick up from others. Even nasty things such as some sinful habit or a heart of discontent and cruelty can be the byproduct of bad conformity to someone around us. We are what we imitate. Each of us is a mosaic of influences resembling many people in our past and present. We conform to the image of others, and others, right now, are conforming to us. 

The crucial point here is that Paul does not ask us to be innovators but imitators. Of course, innovation is important in its proper place. Paul is making it clear that innovation in Christian confession and Christian life so easily leads to foolish and meaningless excesses and misdirection. Paul instead commends imitation as the way to go. Paul acknowledges that we are creatures of conformity. We might even make bold to say that imitation is key to the Christian life. Thus, I want to ask two questions. First, whom are you imitating? From whom are you learning what it means to live as a follower of Jesus in this messed-up world? Is it your spouse, who always is five steps ahead of you spiritually? Do you have a Christian friend whose faith feels more mature? Are you soaking up the wisdom of fellow small-group members? Are you following the pattern of a faith-filled parent? Alternatively, are you simply asking yourself at every turn, “What would Pastor do?” Here is the second question. Who is imitating you? If you have children, this one is easy to answer. However, your sphere of influence extends beyond the home. Who in your life knows that you are a Christian? Through your words, actions, and attitudes, they are gaining an understanding of Christianity and Christians.  Who is learning from you? That is a scary one to wrestle with, is it not?

Why is this so important? As we imitate the likes of Paul, as we learn from the faith and life of other followers of Christ, the result is a community of people who resemble Christ. No one whom we imitate wants the focus of our lives to be him or her. People who imitate us ought not to make us the focus of their lives. Rather, every follower of Christ wants Christ to be the center of the lives of others. One of the primary ways this happens is through imitation of one another. By imitating one another in the faith, we begin to resemble and reflect the object of our faith, Jesus Christ. For those who like big, theological words, another way to put it is that imitation is the key to our sanctification. 

Mentors have been important in my life. None of them said, “Imitate me.” Yet, I was learning what it was like to be a Christian and minister through them. My mother had a simple faith in her Lord. The church became important to her, and she helped the church become important for me as well. A Sunday school teacher loved his Lord, loved the Bible, and loved us as teens. I will always remember Earl. Pastor Joe was a passionate teacher of the Bible. He was the pastor who helped me make my first steps toward Christ. A philosophy professor at Indiana Wesleyan, Duane Thompson, not only exposed me to philosophy in a way that has inspired me, but he also showed me that Christians could be thoughtful, respectful, and open. William R. Clayton, a retired pastor, was my senior pastor for several years. Many times, I have asked myself something like, “What would Bill do in this situation?” 

Human beings are inherent imitators. The question is not if your life will resemble someone else. Rather, whose life you resemble. I have seen youth have good parents to imitate. Instead, they choose another crowd, a crowd that leads them away from God and the church. I do not blame the crowd, for they have chosen whom to imitate.

Mentors have been important in my life. What they did do was show me what following Jesus meant. I appreciate so much the many teachers of the faith I have had, for I am the sort that has many questions. However, I also value those who showed a way. These persons did not hold themselves as moral or theological examples. Rather, their lives reflected the truth that Christian life was about orienting one’s life toward God in Christ. They became mentors, not holding themselves up as a standard, but in holding up Christ in word and deed as they knew how to do and as best as they understood. 

I consider myself fortunate, for the church is far from a perfect place. People who call themselves Christians and attain leadership in the church sometimes behave in hurtful ways. People can abuse positions of authority they receive, whether as bishops, superintendents, pastors, teachers in class, administrative leaders, and so on. Christians can treat each other so dreadfully. The church feels the tension between what it now is as a human community, and what God intends it to be in the future. God moves the church toward increasing friendship with Christ and therefore to the embrace the cross of Jesus. The mentors I have had in my life have consistently pointed me toward Christ. I hope my life can offer that same gift to others.

¹⁸ For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Paul thus juxtaposes those who embrace the cross as friends, and those who by their lives and their witness turn away from the cross as enemies. Paul focuses his sharpest words on those who have chosen one of these wrong roads. These "enemies" may also have been Jewish-Christians Gnostics - and the fact that Paul specifies they are "enemies of the cross of Christ," and not just, as Paul's own teachings, may indicate this is the group in question.  As Gnostics, these would-be Christians reject any notion that physical matter could have goodness or worth.  Because the cross of Christ represents the physical, bodily death of Jesus, Gnostic wisdom would reject the concept that such a material death could benefit our inner, spiritual being. ¹⁹ Their end is destruction; Paul refers to an eschatological moment of divine judgment that awaits all those who stand as "enemies of the cross." Paul continues with identifying their problem.  Their god is the belly, the Bacchanalian desire, a warning of libertinism of the Epicurean and hedonist stripe. It could refer to issues of food purity such as those that Paul addresses in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 10. Their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. The tone is not so much hostile as regretful. These who were apostles are now apostate, those who were friends are now enemies. Paul now returns to those who are friends of the cross. The tone is Christocentric and eschatologically hopeful.²⁰ 

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the great Russian poet, has a wonderful phrase in one of his poems: "Not a cross--it's crosslessness we carry ..."[3] The poet is right. Our problem is not so much the fact of the cross, as our fear of the cross. We try so hard to be safe in our Christian walk that we make ourselves dangerous. We try so hard to have things go exactly right that we make them go wrong. I invite you to reflect with me for a few moments about what being a friend of the cross might mean today. 

One of the crosses that I hope we bear is the tension between the values of the culture and the call of Christian discipleship.  The church is to be in the world, but not of the world.   The church need not worry about whether to be in the world. There is no other place for the church to be than here.        I think that sometimes we Christians in North America got to thinking that because we lived in a democracy, because we were relatively free, we had no real problem with the government. The surrounding political and economic order was our friend. To some degree, that is true.  We have wonderful material benefits in this country that make all of us “rich” by the standards in which much of the world lives.  We have freedom to worship and to serve God.  In general, I trust that we are grateful for our land. Yet, our greatest tragedies occurred because the church was all too willing to serve the world, instead of being different from it. 

Yet, despite the influence of the church on the formation on America, I increasingly hear many of us American Christians saying that something is amiss in our land. Are we willing to bear that cross? Many people have tried to live by the values of this culture; it has led to emptiness.  People may not be that obvious, but they will say something like this: "My life is like a soap opera" or "My house resembles the Mir Space Station." Others refer to their normal communities as "just another little Peyton Place." A sign outside a long-established dry cleaner says, "38 years on the same spot." Many people are more bored than they are suffering. When people stand in line at the grocery store and hint, “My house is a mess," they may be telling us something more than a housekeeping detail. They may be trying to see if we can know their suffering.  Do we want to bear that cross?  If we open our lives to them with grace and love, we shall. 

Yevtushenko said that the problem of crosslessness comes from our being stiff and unbending. "We bend so miserably ..." It is our habit to be crossless. We are almost adapted to crosslessness. We are allergic to the cross. We can learn to look at the world as transformed by the cross of Jesus Christ. When we think that strong is best, we can consider weak. When we think that big is best, we can consider small. When we imagine power as best, we can consider the powerless.  These are the routes to heaven. Paul invites us there and we get there by the cross.

There is nothing static about the cross of Jesus Christ; it is dynamic, flowing, and continual; it moves us between states of sacred suffering to gracious gladness, between creative wandering and functional stasis, between participative community and energizing solitude.

The anxiety about suffering makes us suffer more than we need--whereas, the befriending of the cross, and its insecurity and our imperfection, is precisely the highway to heaven. Too often, we live life by the wrong directions. The cross is "the permission and commandment to enter difficulty with hope" as Canadian theologian Douglas Hall puts it. Cross-friendly Christians do not try to avoid suffering but befriend it. The cross is not our enemy. Imitating the cross means living, non-anxiously, from the depth of here and now. 

The cross of Christ means many things to me.  We must always reckon with the silence of God amid suffering. God has chosen to enter our world of suffering, bear our sin, experience our punishment for our sin, and promise eventual victory over sin and death in the resurrection. This means God has not chosen to wipe away this world, which includes the tears of our suffering. God has chosen to embrace our world suffering, inviting humanity to participate in divine life. If we do so, we can be part of a movement that involves our participation in the provisional representation of the new humanity in Christ. Instead of already wiping away every tear, God has chosen to embrace the tears our suffering cause. God has taken the risk to become part of our lives.  We do not need to keep the cross at a distance. In fact, we need to cherish the cross. 

In 1934, Karl Barth wrote "The Barmen Declaration," the Confessing Church's attempt to see things clearly. 

Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.

            We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation.[4]

 

Note the exclusive (not the inclusive) nature of this declaration, its determination not first to do right but to hear right, again to assert the rather (is there a better word?) imperial, political claims of the lordship of Christ. "The Barmen Declaration" stands in marked contrast to a church willing to adjust its claims to those of Caesar in service to the world.

I invite you to reflect with me about how the church can be a community of the cross. I will do so with a view of the church in America as activist, conversionist, and confessing.[5] I am not prepared to suggest that this way of viewing the church in America is accurate. Rather, it might be a helpful model for reflecting upon the matters before us. 

The activist church is more concerned with the building of a better society than with the reformation of the church. Through the humanization of social structures, the activist church glorifies God. It calls on its members to see God at work behind the movements for social change so that Christians will join in movements for justice wherever they find them. It hopes to be on the right side of history, believing it has the key for reading the direction of history or underwriting the progressive forces of history. The difficulty, as we noted earlier, is that the activist church lacks the theological insight to judge history for itself. Its politics becomes a sort of religiously glorified liberalism. On the other hand, the conversionist church argues that no amount of tinkering with the structures of society will counter the effects of human sin. The promises of secular optimism are therefore false because they attempt to bypass the biblical call to admit personal guilt and to experience reconciliation to God and neighbor. The sphere of political action for the conversionist church shifts from without to within, from society to the individual soul. Because this church works only for inward change, it has no alternative social ethic or social structure of its own to offer the world. It accepts the existing social order as a fact, which leads to a form of political conservativism. 

The confessing church is not a synthesis of the other two approaches, a helpful middle ground. Rather, the confessing church is a radical alternative. Rejecting both the individualism of the conversionists and the secularism of the activists and their common equation of what works with what is faithful, the confessing church finds its main political task to lie, not in the personal transformation of individual hearts or the modification of society, but in the congregation's determination to worship Christ in all things. The confessing church seeks the visible church, a place, clearly visible to the world, in which people are faithful to their promises, love their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness, and thereby testify to the amazing community-creating power of God. The confessing church has no interest in withdrawing from the world; it is not surprised when its witness evokes hostility from the world. The confessing church moves from the activist church's acceptance of the culture with a few qualifications, to rejection of the culture with a few exceptions. The confessing church can participate in secular movements against war, against hunger, and against other forms of inhumanity, but it sees this as part of its necessary proclamatory action. This church knows that its most credible form of witness (and the most "effective" thing it can do for the world) is the actual creation of a living, breathing, visible community of faith. The confessing church will be a church of the cross. 

As Jesus demonstrated, the world, for all its beauty, is hostile to the truth. Witness without compromise will lead to worldly hostility. The cross is not a sign of the church's quiet, suffering submission to the powers-that-be, but the church's revolutionary participation in the victory of Christ over those powers. The cross is not a symbol of general human suffering and oppression. Rather, the cross is a sign of what happens when one takes God's account of reality more seriously than Caesar's, when one obeys the demands of one's heavenly citizenship more than the demands of the modern nation state. The cross stands as God's (and our) eternal no to the powers of death, as well as to God's eternal yes to humanity, God's remarkable determination not to leave us to our own devices. The overriding political task of the church is to be the community of the cross. 

However, our citizenship (πολίτευμα, or member of a Greek city-state) is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, (the only occasion in Paul of this word, referring to participation in the glory of the new life manifested already in Christ[6]) the Lord Jesus Christ. The mission was to extend the life of heaven to the place where they lived. The philosopher Spinoza was genuinely concerned that people should learn to view life “sub-specie aeternitatis,” or “Under the aspect of eternity.” He shares the concern of Paul at this point. Thus, Paul is already linking expectation of the return of Christ with the idea of the heavenly polis from which Christ would come. Such an eschatological fellowship of Christians can take fully adequate shape in no this-worldly political order.[7] The point seems to be that the returning Christ will deliver believers from the wrath to come.[8] The rest of the Bible confirms this hope. Throughout the Scriptures, God dwells with people in a garden, a tabernacle, and a temple. God dwells with us in person in Christ who is “Emmanuel, God with us” (Matthew 1:23). The last scene in Revelation is of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, bringing heaven and earth together once and for all (Revelation 21:1-4). That is when the promise we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer becomes a reality. Our home is where God is, and God chooses to come and make a home with us forever. Our true citizenship is in God’s coming rule, and our mission is to extend the life of that rule on earth until the King arrives to take over. 

Citizenship is about where you live, about the values, commitments, loyalties, and allegiances that make you who you are. When you cross some international border and hand the customs officer your passport, you are revealing where you live, where you make your home, where you have come from and to where you shall return. To be a Christian here, today, is to live in that awkward situation of living and working here, yet having your real citizenship elsewhere. That makes all the difference in how you act and react to situations in this land that is not really your land.

²¹ He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. The resurrection of Jesus is the prototype of what God will do for us. God will give us new bodies not subject to death and decay but bodies that conform to the glory of the body of the resurrected Christ. Paul is referring to his notion of the transformation of the old “I” into the new.[9] The returning Christ conforms our bodies to the body of his glory, which is the central content of the saving event of Christ coming again.[10]Paul stresses that the saving work of Christ is transforming. They stand, therefore, in relation to the world as indeed the Roman colony of Philippi stood in relation to Rome: an outpost in the empire, but with full rights of citizenship, an important privilege for inhabitants of the far-flung Roman imperium. Philippi is not Rome, and the world is not Home. The Christian, therefore, stands in what Barth calls an antithesis, "in the Now that is not yet the 'One day,' in the 'Here' that is not yet the 'Beyond.' It is from this "beyond" or heaven that the Savior is expected to come as ruler of a cosmic hegemony, who will "transform the body of our humiliation," thus preparing us for a life in the heavenly realm of which we are already citizens. God will do so by the power that enables God to make all things subject to the divine will and purpose. The event of reconciliation has the goal of overcoming the breach that sin brought into our fellowship with God and at our own perfecting. This eschatological future has dawned already in Jesus Christ, even if under the concealment of the cross. Yet, it is present as our transforming into the image of Christ, the new human.[11] As the battle goes on in the present, we live with the hope and confidence that it will conclude by the power of God at the return of Christ.[12] We participate in the glory of God through Christ.[13] Christianity is an embodied faith, not merely a spiritual one. It is not about heavenly bliss but about the renewal of all creation, and if that is the case, it means that our whole orientation is different. We do not treat the earth as a throwaway, temporary reality, but as God’s temple and the place where God chooses to dwell. We do not treat our bodies as temporary shelters for the Spirit, but as the grounded reality of our creation in the image of God. We do not treat death as a kind of escape from the physical realm, but we look for the resurrection of the body and the renewal of our whole selves. ^4:1 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, Paul indicates his deep affection, whom I love and long for, as with homesickness, my joy and crown, the victory wreath placed on the winner of an athletic competition, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. Paul writes this letter from prison, forcibly kept far away from those who offered him a spiritual home.

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[1] Philippians 3:1b-4:3, if one accepts the idea of multiple letters combined into one as the canonical text, this is letter C. 

[2] 1 Thessalonians 1:6

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord

II Thessalonians 3:9

… in order to give you and example to imitate.

1 Corinthians 4:16

I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me.

I Corinthians 11:1

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

Philippians 4:9

keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

[3] (The Collected Poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, [Premourning Press, 66]).

[4] (In The Church's Confession Under Hitler, Arthur Cochrane, trans. [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962], p. 239.)

[5]   John Howard Yoder ("A People in the World: Theological Interpretation," in The Concept of the Believer's Church, James Leo Garrett Jr., ed. [Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1969], pp. 252-283) gives us some helpful categories for thinking through this matter of the church in relationship to its surrounding culture.

[6] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 402.

[7] Pannenberg Systematic Theology Volume 3, 480.

[8] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 613.

[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 224.

[10] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 626.

[11] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 369.

[12] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 605.

[13] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 625.