Upside-Down Glory
READ THE WORD
> Philippians 1:27–2:11 (ESV)
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> 27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. 1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of man, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
LISTEN TO THE WORD
* Stand Firm Together (1:27-30) — Paul commands believers to live worthy of the gospel by standing united in one spirit and one mind, striving side by side for the faith without fear of opposition.
* Unity Through Humility (2:1-4) — Christians are called to complete joy by thinking the same thing, having the same love, doing nothing from selfish ambition, and looking to the interests of others above their own.
* The Mind of Christ (2:5-8) — The ultimate example of humility is Jesus, who did not grasp His equality with God but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant and becoming obedient to death on a cross.
* Christ’s Exaltation (2:9-11) — Because of His humiliation, God highly exalted Jesus and gave Him the name above every name, so that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
* Practical Application — The sermon confronts church conflict directly, calling believers to address relational disunity, esteem others highly, and be willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel.
REFLECT ON THE WORD
THE POWER OF UNITED WITNESS
Paul uses military imagery to describe the Christian life—soldiers in a phalanx, shields interlocking, moving as one. This isn’t mere cooperation; it’s a call to think the same things, to be united in doctrine and love. When the church stands together in one spirit, persecution and opposition actually strengthen rather than weaken the body. Our unity isn’t just beneficial—it’s a sign to the world of both their destruction and our salvation. The world doesn’t need to see Christians who roughly agree; they need to see believers so united in Christ that no weapon formed against them can prosper.
HUMILITY MEANS THINKING MORE OF OTHERS, NOT LESS OF YOURSELF
We often misunderstand humility as self-degradation, as if calling ourselves trash somehow honors God. But Paul doesn’t command us to think poorly of ourselves—he commands us to think highly of others. True humility requires an honest assessment of the gifts God has given you, coupled with a disposition that esteems the gifts He’s given others even more highly. This isn’t about denying your strengths or calling yourself incompetent. It’s about looking at your brother or sister and saying, “I’m so grateful God blessed them with that ability,” even when—or especially when—it surpasses your own.
CHRIST’S HUMILIATION WAS HIS ENTIRE HUMAN LIFE
The incarnation wasn’t just about the cross. From the moment of conception, the eternal Son of God began His humiliation. He experienced the compression of birth, the skinned knees of childhood, the sleepless nights, the loss of friends, the rejection by His own family. He learned obedience through what He suffered. Every moment of His earthly life was part of His humble service to the Father and to us. This means our suffering for Christ isn’t limited to dramatic persecution—it includes the daily grind, the chronic pain, the financial stress, the relational friction. All of it, when borne for Christ’s sake, is granted to us as a gift and counts us worthy of the gospel.
YOU ARE CHRIST’S REWARD
We often think about what we receive from salvation—forgiveness, eternal life, adoption as sons and daughters. But have you considered that you are Jesus’ reward for His suffering? God works all things together so that we might be conformed to the image of Christ, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Our salvation is for Jesus. And here’s the stunning truth: the reward He receives—us—He shares with each of us. The saints across time and space, from Zimbabwe to Singapore to this very room, are both His inheritance and ours. We labor together, suffer together, and will rejoice together as co-heirs with Christ.
DO THE WORD
MAKE IT RIGHT WITH YOUR “SYNTYCHE” THIS WEEK.
If someone came to mind when you read this sermon—someone with whom you have unresolved conflict or broken fellowship—do not wait. Leave your offering at the altar and go to them. This isn’t optional for followers of Christ. The disunity between believers gives victory to the enemy and obscures the gospel from the watching world. Whether the conflict is with someone in your church, your family, or your workplace, take the initiative this week to pursue reconciliation. Confess where you’ve been wrong, extend forgiveness where you’ve been wronged, and commit to thinking the same thing and having the same love. If you truly believe there is encouragement in Christ, comfort from love, and participation in the Spirit, then you must act on that belief by restoring broken fellowship.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Wes Hebert: The apostle Paul writes this, only let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel and not frightened in anything by your opponents.
This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God, for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. Engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation, but in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not only to look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 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 a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:01] WELCOME AND PRAYER
[00:02:01] Tony Arsenal: Good morning everyone. Morning. Morning. Thank you again for welcoming me into your pulpit. This place looks like a Hallmark movie when it snows. Have you guys ever noticed that I’m sitting here looking out the window, the snow’s drifting down. I’m just waiting for the music to swell and for the rugged young man from the city to come in or some silliness like that.
Uh. Thank you Wes for that, uh, introduction. I’m convinced Wes gave me a reasonable size text today simply ’cause he was sick of my jokes about the length of the text he’s assigning me. So if you’ll, uh, pray with me, we’re gonna ask God to open the scriptures to us and we’ll get started. Father, thank you so much for, um, this chance to come and join with these saints and fellowship in your Holy Spirit.
Pray today that you would give us humility first and foremost as we approach your word. This is a dense text and it’s very important in the life of the church and therefore in our life. So I pray that you would give me the words and that you would illuminate the scriptures to our eyes and to our hearts, and we pray in Christ powerful name.
Amen.
[00:03:05] WHY THIS TEXT MATTERS
[00:03:05] Tony Arsenal: You know, I’m, uh, I’m a theologian by training with a dash of church history in there. So when Wes. Sent out the list of, uh, passages that he need coverage for. Um, you know, when he was welcoming his new baby, I jumped at this text. Christology is kind of my wheelhouse. I don’t know if, if you remember, but most of the time when I’ve been preaching I find my way back to the theology of the incarnation.
Uh, and so I was excited to come to this text and God often has different plans than we do, and so we’re not gonna be as theologically dense as you might expect. Um, I’m sure that there will be plenty of opportunities as you go through the rest of Philippians to call back to this and to investigate that.
But God really centered me on the practical elements of this text today. So I’m gonna just read through the text a little at a time and work my way through it and just talk about what it is that Paul is actually commanding us and calling us to here verses uh, 20 or verses one through 26 of chapter one really serve as kind of the introduction.
Front matter of the letter. Um, if, if this was an essay, this would be kind of the, uh, sort of the progam or the clearing of your throat before you start to speak. He introduces himself. The Philippians are, he’s well known to the Philippians. He was there when the church was founded. He’s well loved by the Philippians.
There wasn’t a lot of conflict around the beginning of his ministry. Um, and there wasn’t a lot of the other kinds of challenges that we’ve seen in other, uh, early church centers. There wasn’t rampant heresy or false teaching like we see in Colossians. There wasn’t the same judaizing tendencies like we see in Galatians.
Um, and, and the letter of Ephesians is a little different, but even there, there was some specific issues going on, uh, that we don’t quite see here.
[00:04:54] PHILIPPI AND CHURCH TENSIONS
[00:04:54] Tony Arsenal: What we do see here in Philippians is the beginning of a church schism, and I’ll explain that and justify that in a little bit here. But verse 27 through 30 serves as his thesis statement.
So once he’s kind of opened up the topic, he’s introduced himself. He started to, um, sort of talk about how he, he loves the church in Philippi, how he’s thankful for them, particularly for the work that they’ve done for the fellowship and their support in the gospel. He moves on in verse 27 and 30 to sort of give them marching orders.
And I use that specifically because as this title of this series, the Citizen Soldier Series, um, highlights. Paul uses a lot of military language here. There’s a lot of reasons for that. I’m sure that that’s been covered in the other introductory sermons. But Philippi was a, an, an outpost colony. So the, the life of a soldier and the life of a special citizen was near and dear to their hearts.
And so he uses language that calls to mind this sort of military context that even those in Philippi that weren’t soldiers would’ve been familiar with, they would’ve been familiar with watching soldiers train. They would’ve seen them in the streets. They either would be soldiers or would be related to soldiers.
So they would be familiar with the equipment they used and the battle tactics and defensive tactics they used. Now, as I said, there’s a lot of reasons that people put forward why this letter may have been written, and I think there’s a very good argument to be made to believe that the occasion of this letter is to address a church conflict between two prominent women in the congregation.
We get into the specifics in a little bit here, but this conflict, it seems, was causing the Philippians to drift away from the good progress that Paul had seen when he helped found the church and towards a divisive spirit that was drying away from the gospel.
[00:06:46] MODERN MINISTRY RIVALRIES
[00:06:46] Tony Arsenal: So even in the introductory remarks, he’s, he talks about how there are those who preach the gospel out of sort of selfish ambition or contentiousness.
There’s a sense that there were those who are preaching the gospel almost to get at, under someone else’s skin. Um, we see this sometimes in our day. If you think about the high profile ministries, the podcasts, the, the Parachurch Ministries you might be familiar with, there is often a sort of an edge of competitiveness, right?
How many more clicks can I get to my blog? How many more reposts or likes can I get on my podcast? How many underlying digs can I get at the guy who has basically the exact same ministry down the street as me? And what’s really stunning is that Paul says, even that is great, as long as the gospel’s being preached, you can consider yourselves co-laborers in the gospel.
Even that guy down the road or that lady across the street who’s just doing what she’s doing to get at you. If she’s preaching the gospel, then she’s still on your side. And I don’t think that’s a perspective we have very often, we might look at that and go, yeah, I’m glad that the gospel is being preached, but that person out there is kind of my enemy.
They’re on the other side of this thing. This kind of conflict, this kind of divisiveness, not only does it draw away from the gospel, it, it draws people’s attention away from the gospel. If you talk to those in the world who have line of sight to the sort of broader reformed Calvinistic world that most of us live in, what they’ll tell you is that they see a bunch of people who are petty and bickering, and they won’t tell you that they see much of the gospel.
That breaks my heart and it breaks my heart because I’m part of that problem at times. There are lots of times that I have to hit Unsend on an email if I catch it in time, or I have to send an apology email really quick if I don’t. This conflict that was starting in Philippi was distracting the believers there from presenting a united front against the actual opposition that was facing them.
[00:08:55] SUFFERING AND PHILIPPIANS 4 13
[00:08:55] Tony Arsenal: Paul has a lot to say about suffering in Philippians and affliction. He has a lot to say about bearing up under the pressures of this world, right? One of the most famous memory verses right, Philippians four 13. I could do all things through crisis strengthens me. We often hear that quoted by singers and football players.
I haven’t been following the Olympics, but it would not surprise me if someone at the Olympics this year has. Attributed their victory to the fact that they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them. And there’s a certain level of truth to that, right? Christ empowers us for every work he calls us to, and there is no real distinction between sacred vocation and secular vocation.
That person who does a wicked awesome back flip on the ice and doesn’t break their neck and gives glory to God, is called to that and is empowered to that by Christ. But that verse in Philippians is not about giving us strength to do the perfect bobsled run or to nail the presentation at work. That verse is about bearing up under suffering when someone is about to put your wife and children to death in front of your eyes.
That verse is about when your livelihood is taken, because you will not. Pinch a bit of incense into a fire and say, Caesar is Lord.
So we must as Christians, even though we’re not facing those same trials in our context right now, and there are many who I think are a little bit alarmist that would say we will be facing those in the immediate future. And I don’t, I don’t think that’s where the American culture is at. But we certainly face trials and temptations.
We certainly face real pressures to conform to the patterns of this world rather, rather than to the pattern of Christ that is the real enemy that Paul is encouraging and commanding the Philippians and therefore us to stand against. And we cannot do that if we don’t have a united front.
[00:11:13] ONE SPIRIT ONE MIND
[00:11:13] Tony Arsenal: In verse 27, Paul commands the Philippians to live this life in light of the gospel.
He says, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This command entails standing firm in one spirit with one mind. Now we think of this phrase, one mind, and we we read something similar to like be on the same page or roughly agree with each other. Most of the time, the language is so much stronger than that.
Paul doesn’t just say, be at harmony with one another or don’t fight too much. He says, think the same thing. Have one mind and one spirit. Now, commentators go crazy about whether this is a reference to the Holy Spirit or whether this is. A more common reference to just being in United Spirit. At the end of the day, that difference is a difference without a, a distinction, without a difference, right?
If we as Christians are united in one spirit, lowercase s, then that means we are necessarily united in the Holy Spirit, unless we’re all united in some other spirit, which we’ll leave for a different day. And if we’re united in the Holy Spirit, then we should and ought to all be united in one lowercase spirit.
And he says, we ought to strive side by side for the faith of the gospel.
[00:12:43] PHALANX UNITY PICTURE
[00:12:43] Tony Arsenal: Again, this is military language. We don’t think of military the same way that the Philippians would’ve. Right. We often think of soldiers, we think of the movies, we think of people in, you know, in perches with guns or, um, you know, carrying AK 40 sevens.
That kind of warfare Actually. It’s not good for you to be standing side by side right in, in a shooting arms race with high powered assault rifle weapons. Too many soldiers right next to each other is a killing field, not a strong defense In the first century, and really anytime before you have modern riflery, standing side by side was the only way to survive.
I’m sure we’ve all seen some sort of movie with soldiers from a bygone era. Think of like the Greeks, the Spartans, or the Romans. We have the concept of a phalanx, which was a military unit. It was a formation where men would have large shields, usually long enough to cover most of their body. And they would actually lock next to each other so their shields would overlap and done right.
This would create an almost impenetrable barrier because the shields would interlace with each other in a way that when you push on them, it actually reinforces the pressure. So just pushing against the shields would not necessarily break the phalanx. This could be even bolstered further. They would sometimes put shields on top to prevent from artillery fire.
The picture is of this phalanx who moves as one and therefore are greater than the sum of their parts. That is what Paul is calling us to. That’s what Paul’s commanding us to. To move with such a united front, to think the same things, to live in the same spirit such that no enemy formed against us, no weapon formed against us can prosper, and in fact, the pressure of the enemy simply makes.
Our defense is stronger.
[00:14:48] UNITY AS A SIGN
[00:14:48] Tony Arsenal: He continues in verse 28. If the Philippians can stand firm in this one spirit in this way, then they have no need to be afraid of any of the opposition facing them. The unity of Christians in spite of persecution in trials is actually a sign to those who oppose the church that they will be destroyed, not only as the church is saved, but through the very salvation of the church.
Have you ever thought about that? Our salvation, both as individual Christians and also as the church as a whole, corporately, it actually brings about the destruction of our enemies in the last day, when Christ makes all things right, he’s not just taking the saints to heaven and then putting all of the wicked off in some other place.
He descends with the voice of an archangel. He slaughters all of his enemies, and through that destruction of his enemies, he saves those who are his. This sign to the wicked is also the sign for our salvation. And this sign is not just a sign, it’s a sign from God. That’s some heavy stuff. I, I don’t think that we like to, and I don’t think we should like to, but I don’t think, we like to think about the fact that the wicked, those who are apart from Christ will and should perish.
There are those out there who are God’s enemies, who do wicked and evil things, and although we should never rejoice at the death of the evil at once, we should recognize that there is justice and goodness when the wicked pay for their crimes. You know, there’s, there’s, uh, it, I don’t even need to pick an example.
You can all think of an example in the news from the last two weeks, three weeks, six months, whatever it is, of someone who’s committed a totally heinous, awful, terrible crime involving children probably. And when they finally get caught by the police and put behind bars, we don’t just breathe a sigh of relief.
There’s something good inside of us that says that is the right thing. And when the justice system gets it right and that person is punished, we should rejoice that justice has been done, even as we lament the fact that God’s image bearer has been destroyed.
[00:17:30] SUFFERING AS A GIFT
[00:17:30] Tony Arsenal: Now paradoxically, the way the church knows that this is true is that Christ has granted us to suffer. We all suffer on a daily basis to varying degrees, whether it’s chronic pain, the loss of a loved one, bills, we can’t pay real persecution, which again happens whether it is seeing the wickedness of the world, that’s not just something that happens to us, right?
We, we reflected on, um, Romans eight in the call to worship. It’s not just that God looks at all the things that are happening and figures out a way to make them work together. God works those things together. He causes those things to be in order that we might be conformed to the image of his beloved son.
So this suffering is not just suffering for suffering’s sake, it’s suffering for Christ’s. And we can be encouraged because this is the universal struggle for all of the faithful. You can look to your left or your right in this room and see someone who is and will suffer for the gospel of Jesus Christ, each to their own calling and each to their own measure by the wisdom of God.
But everyone in this room has and will suffer to some extent for the calling and the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is not a sign that our faith is weak or that somehow God has abandoned us. It’s precisely the opposite. We should be honored that God has counted us worthy to suffer for the sake of the gospel.
Now this feels at first, uh, and it is like an insurmountable goal. It’s something we simply cannot do under our own. And so Paul continues, he elaborates exactly how the Philippians can fulfill this command.
[00:19:43] PAULS IF THEN TRAP
[00:19:43] Tony Arsenal: He starts with a single long sentence in Greek. One of the things that just infuriates, uh, first year Greek students, uh, and I’m not much better than a first Greek student, is that there are often these long sentences.
I think when I was studying Greek in college, which is way longer ago than I like to admit, there was one spot we found where the article of a word was like 15 words away from the word that it referred to. So that would be like, we might say something like the running down the street dog. It’s a weird way to say it, but I think we all understand what we’re talking about.
I’m saying the dog that was running down the street, I might say the running down the street dog as opposed to the standing in the middle of the street dog. Now picture 15 words between that, that’s a, that’s a real thing that exists in the New Testament somewhere. This sentence though is extremely potent rhetorically.
It takes the form of what’s called a first ca, a first class conditional. And a first class conditional might sound really technical, but I think we all understand it. This is an if then statement where the if of the statement is obviously true. So when I’m talking to you, if I might say, if you can hear my voice right, there’s that classic joke.
If you can hear my voice clap once. If you can’t clap twice. Well, it’s a nonsense thing to say. If you can’t, there you go. It’s a nonsense thing to say. If you can’t hear my voice, clap twice. That’s because if you can hear my voice is a first class conditional. If you hear it, of course you can hear my voice.
This is such a strong rhetorical move that it traps the Philippians and traps us if we’re genuine spirit-filled believers into propelling ourselves forward to, to fulfilling this call. The force of this conditional is to ask a series of five questions that cannot be possibly answered no by the genuine believer.
He says, is there any comfort in Christ? Of course there is. Is there any comfort in love? Of course there is. Is there any participation in the spirit? Of course there is. Is there any affection? Of course there is. And is there any sympathy? Of course there is. Even amidst this brewing conflict in the Church of Philippi, Paul anticipates that no one in the congregation could answer no to these questions.
That’s pretty powerful. The answer, the obvious and necessary answer to these questions is A, is a resounding yes. He then leads to spring the trap with the then part of the statement. He says then, then it’s not really in the text, but he, it’s, it’s implied there. Then complete my joy by thinking the same thing, having the same love being of one spirit and mind.
Now I had a Hebrew professor in college who used to say, difference means difference. And so hermeneutical Bible interpretation, um, catchphrase that has stuck with me and it means if there’s some, something is in the text, there’s a reason for it, right? We often shoot off emails without thinking, right? I send a text message to my wife, I don’t even realize I sent it.
I tell her that I’m gonna pick up like, I dunno, frozen popcorn at the, at the store because I’m not thinking when I’m texting. It is so easy for us to shoot off a written message that it’s just second nature. That was not the way it was in the ancient world. Right. Paul had to sit down. He had to dip something in ink.
He had to roll out the scroll he was making. He had to do this. It took hours. There was hundreds and hundreds of hours in training. Paul, as he became older, he probably had arthritis in his fingers. It was physically painful to write. So even if we take the Holy Spirit’s inspiration out of the equation, just for the sake of argument here, people chose their words very carefully.
They didn’t repeat things for unnecessary reasons.
[00:23:52] ONE MIND MEANS DOCTRINE
[00:23:52] Tony Arsenal: So when Paul here lists these four things that he wants the Philippians to do to complete his joy, there’s one of them repeated. So we ought to sit up and take notice of that. He says, complete my joy by thinking the same thing, having the same love being of one spirit, and mind that thinking part, that thinking the same thing, being united in thought probably.
Here we should think doctrine. Being united in doctrine is so important that not only does he bring it up in the first part in 27 through 30, he repeats it again here twice in the same sentence. Verse clause. This is so important that it actually creates this recurring theme throughout the book of Philippians that will come back again and again and again.
And this is actually a very common theme throughout the whole New Testament, that Christian believers should be of one mind. They should be of the same thought. They should think the same things. They should confess the same doctrine.
We miss it if we don’t read it carefully. But this think the same thing and be of one mind again, is directly related to this conflict between these two women.
[00:25:14] EUODIA AND SYNTYCHE
[00:25:14] Tony Arsenal: At the end of Philippians, if you have your Bible in your hand, just turn over for me real quick to Philippians four. I’m gonna steal a little bit of thunder from Wess or whoever ends up preaching that read, um, read with me just Philippians four, two through three.
It says, I entreat you, OIA, and entreat. These are the two women that, that we’re talking about to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also true companion help these women who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers whose names are in the book of life.
That phrase agree in the Lord is actually the same phrase as be of one mind. Now, I’m never gonna be that guy who tells you that you have to learn Greek to be able to appreciate or understand the New Testament. That’s that’s some sort of weird new age nonsense and I don’t want anything to do with that.
But it is an absolute fact that a little bit of Greek knowledge will help you understand the new t. Being able to see some of these parallels, which would’ve been obvious and immediate to the original audience, helps us to understand this. Paul is not just saying, you guys should be on the same page. Yoa and Tiki should be on the same page and stop fighting.
He’s saying, think the same thing, agree in the Lord. And then notice, he says, I ask you help these women who have labored side by side with me. Isn’t that exactly what he was commanding the Philippians to do to labor in the gospel strive side by side together? What he points out here is that what he is asking you, OIA and Tiki to do is one.
And the same with what he’s commanding the Philippians to do that is to be united, to present a united fight, united front, and to strive together side by side. He’s calling the entire church, and especially these two women back to where they were. They were striving together, they were agreeing in the Lord together.
They were fighting side by side against the oppression and the persecution that was out there. They were no longer preaching the gospel outta selfish ambition. They were preaching it out of a love for Christ and a desire to see each other saved and encouraged. He’s calling them back to that. Now, I won’t ask for, uh, a show of hands here, but put yourself in Euodia position here.
Is there a syn key that comes to mind? The punchline of that is that means you’re euodia, right? If there’s a syn key out there that you are thinking of, that means that you are that person’s yia. We’ll talk about what to do about that in a little bit here, but just sit with that for a minute. I think all of us either now or at some point in our life, have had a conflict with someone that is probably not unimportant.
Conflicts are real. There’s a reason that God gives us divine scripture that tells us exactly how to process and exactly how to handle conflict and sin within the body of Christ. So they’re not, it’s not trivial, it’s not unreal, but it should not be a barrier to the unity and fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
He goes on and he gives us some specific guidance on how to accomplish this and what this looks like.
[00:28:42] HUMILITY OVER SELFISHNESS
[00:28:42] Tony Arsenal: In verse two, uh, verse chapter two, verse three, he says, address your motives and your perspectives. Are you trying to make your own name? Great.
Do you care if your name is in the bulletin or if someone recognizes the hard work you’re doing at the church when you lead a Bible study at work or you. I dunno, help an old lady across the street. Are you doing that because somebody is gonna give you recognition for it. Are you acting in a way that puts your own needs above the cause of Christ or above the needs of your brothers and sisters?
This is the, I think this is the gut check. Do you have a sober self-esteem that not only assesses yourself honestly and accurately, but esteems others more than yourself? I think we have this tendency to look at humility as though it’s just making myself as much like a worm as I possibly can be. Right?
We think that if I can just make myself just like trash, then somehow that that honors God.
It’s interesting to me here that Paul doesn’t say. That humility is about thinking less of yourself. Humility is about thinking more of others, right? If I did not have an honest, sober assessment of myself, my background, my training, my ability to speak in public, my ability to stand for 45 minutes or however long it is, if I didn’t have an honest assessment of that myself, and I was only ever saying like, I’m a terrible speaker, I’m a terrible person, I don’t study well, I’m not very smart, whatever it might be, then Wes would’ve had to find someone else to preach today.
And if that person did that about themselves, then West wouldn’t have anybody to preach. And if West did that about himself, you guys wouldn’t have a pastor. And if you all did that about yourselves, there wouldn’t be a church here. God is not calling us to think of ourselves as trash. He made us in his image.
He’s called us for his glory. He’s empowered us by His Holy Spirit and we insult him. When we don’t acknowledge the gifts that he’s given us, but what he is commanding us to do is to see the giftings in other people and to esteem those as higher than our own. Now, when I read, uh, another, and I don’t do this perfectly, I’m not, I’m not the exemplar here, but when I read another blog article or a podcast or a really great sermon, I would be lying to you if I didn’t ever go.
I wish I had thought of that, right? But for the most part, by God’s grace and by the sanctifying powers Holy Spirit, I can just go, man, I’m so glad that God blessed that person with the ability to teach that, right? Wes is an excellent preacher. I don’t know if you guys know how blessed you are to have Wes as a preacher.
He is one of the finest preachers that I, I know personally, I am edified every time I listen to one of Wes’ sermons. Right When I have lunch with Wes at the hospital and we just talk about theology and he gets into all of the minutiae of New Testament studies and the Greek and all the stuff that I love, but I’m not very good at.
It’s edifying to me, are you looking in this room or at other congregations in the upper valley or in the country or in the world, and saying, I’m so thankful that God has blessed that person with that ability, even though he hasn’t blessed me, or maybe even, especially he has blessed me, but he’s blessed that person more.
[00:32:28] LOOKING TO OTHERS INTERESTS
[00:32:28] Tony Arsenal: That is the picture of humility that Paul is calling us to here, and then he moves on in verse four to answer What does answering those questions look like in practice? Right? We can think great thoughts about someone else, but what does it look like specifically? He says, we should care about the needs of our fellow Christians.
Particularly those in our own local congregation. Right? Look with me at verse four, he says, let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. It doesn’t say to disregard your own interests. Isn’t that interesting?
[00:33:13] NEEDS AND GIVING
[00:33:13] Tony Arsenal: Just like we’re not to think of ourselves as trash.
That’s not humility. Taking care of others doesn’t mean neglecting yourself. It is. Okay. We are all in this terrible, crazy economy. Again, I, I remarked a couple times ago, I think last time I was here preaching out of Ecclesiastes. It’s, it’s really great to be a guest preacher because you don’t have to worry about the weird awkwardness of talking about money with the congregation.
Right. It’s okay for you to say, I gotta take care of my own needs before I contribute above and beyond my normal offering. Right. It’s important for you to contribute to financially, to the life of the church. God calls us to that. It’s not, it’s not optional, it’s not, uh, it’s not something that was done away with in the New Testament.
God calls us to that in a different way, perhaps than the Old Covenant, but he still calls us to it. But there are always times where we have the opportunity to give above and beyond what God may be demanding or requiring of us. And it’s okay for you to say, Hmm, I would love to sponsor that kid through Compassion International.
But right now, I’ve got bills to pay. It’s even better to say, I would love to sponsor that kid through Compassion International. But you know what? So, so-and-so in my congregation is having a tough time paying their own bills. I’m gonna put that money there. That’s even better. God does not call us to neglect ourselves in the service of others, at least not here.
Whether he does elsewhere in the Bible, let someone else make the argument for, but here he is saying, don’t look not only to your own needs, which implies you look to your own needs. But to others as well.
[00:34:48] DOING GOOD WISELY
[00:34:48] Tony Arsenal: Paul T, just something similar in Galatians six, he says, uh, in verse nine, let us not grow weary of doing good for induced season.
We will reap if we do not give up. So then as we have opportunity, right? As you’re able, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are the household of faith. When Paul says, when Paul says, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others, he’s not saying to the interest of everyone out there in the whole wide world.
Now, if you were Elon Musk and you could give every person on the planet a billion dollars, this sounds like made up math, but I promise you it’s real. You could give everyone on the planet a billion dollars and still be like a multiple hundred billionaire. Okay? Maybe if you’re that person, then I would say you need to look to the needs of everyone else on the entire planet.
I’m not actually saying that ’cause I also know that’s not how money works, but. None of us is in that position, right? None of us has sufficient capital to just take care of every need for every person we see around us. But we might have sufficient capital to take care of a need of someone in this room that could take the form of bringing someone a meal, offering them a ride to work, paying for a repair on their car, whatever it is.
I’ll let the Holy Spirit bring other examples to your mind.
[00:36:20] WHY INCARNATION MATTERS
[00:36:20] Tony Arsenal: And then we get to what I think, and this is my temp temptation in this passage, but what I think is the, the meatiest part of this passage and my experience, part of my preaching preparation is to listen to sermons from other preachers that I trust on the passages. And the first thing I noticed is most places don’t combine these passages, which.
Okay. Every preacher makes a decision. Um, I probably would not have combined these passages if this was not what was on the preaching schedule. But what I did notice is that when these passages are combined, that first part usually gets ignored a bit, and it turns into, and again, there’s nothing wrong with this, it turns into a doctrinal se, uh, sermon or seminar about the incarnation.
But Paul’s purpose here is not to teach Christology for Christology sake. Now, now here what I’m saying, it’s not that he’s not teaching Christology. It’s not that he’s not making a comment on the nature of the incarnation, and it’s not even that we can’t pull this portion out and use it as a base text to develop our theology of the incarnation.
Of course we can and should and must do that. But the reason he’s teaching on the incarnation here is to show the Philippians. What it looks like to have a sober self-esteem of yourself, to esteem others is higher than yourself, and not to look only to your own needs, but to look to the needs of other.
And he says, how we do that is we have the mind of Christ, and we look to his example.
I’m gonna read this, this portion again just so it’s fresh in our mind. Starting in verse five, he says, 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, a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing. By taking the form of servant, being born in the likeness of men and becoming found and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.
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 the Father.
Dramatic pause. Now, Paul isn’t doing this again, not to just teach Christology, but to show us an example of how to follow, who to follow and how to do this task.
[00:38:54] TWO VIEWS OF HUMILITY
[00:38:54] Tony Arsenal: Now, there are two main ways to understand this passage. Neither of them are unorthodox. I’m not making a strong argument in favor of one or the other.
Both of them have pitfalls. We have to have appropriate guardrails, but neither one of them falls outside of appropriate Christian thought. The first is to look at the incarnation as as what we might call an accommodated act of humility. And what I mean by that is when we talk about God. As God, we talk about the Son as respecting his divine nature.
We can never talk about that in direct language. Everything we say about God is in the form of analogy because God is simple, meaning he’s not composed of parts. And at even just a base language, our language is made of parts. I have to string words together to describe an a being who is not strung together.
So no matter what I say about God, it’s, it’s an a combination. John Calvin speaks of it like when a mother or a nurse made Lisps and cos and who’s in Oz in the face of a baby. That’s God speaking to us. That’s the accommodated language. So the first way to look at this is to say the language of God humiliating himself in the incarnation.
The humbleness of God in eternity past is an accommodation to our senses and to our way of thinking. Speaking of God as being humble. In eternity past is a nonsensical statement. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like talking about a circle with four sides or a triangle with no corners. It just, it’s, it’s a logical incoherency.
And so what we would see here is an example, what we might say of from the greater to the lesser. We have this great example of the supreme humiliation and this accommodated humbleness that we see in God, the Son, prior to the incarnation of taking the form of a servant, of becoming man. And so we are to emulate that act of humility and that act of self emptying in a way that’s appropriate to our own natures.
The main strength of this view is that it’s baked into it that we can’t actually, ww JD, we can’t actually do what Jesus would do ’cause He’s God trying to do what Jesus do, especially when we’re thinking about Jesus according to His divinity, is a crushing burden that none of us could actually accomplish.
Right. What would Jesus do? He would take on a second nature and die on the cross for the sake of humanity. On behalf of our sentence. None of us can even think about what that means for us to do that. I think one of the weaknesses of this is that it actually robs the force of this passage in that Paul is presenting it as a pattern for us actually to follow.
That brings us to the second view, which I think is the more, uh, a reasonable view. But again, both are well within boundaries of Orthodox. I’m in read from you a, a question and answer from the Westminster Shorter catechism. I used to feel like I had to preface what that was, but y’all are going through the Westminster Confession in Sunday School, so I think I can skip that preface there.
It says, question 27 says, wherein did Christ humiliation consist. The answer is, Christ’s humiliation consisted in his being born in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God and the cursed death of the cross in being buried, continuing under the power of death.
For a time. Now, of those six things, which one of those happened in eternity past none of them. That’s not to say there aren’t those in the reformed Calvinistic Presbyterian tradition that would hold that form of view, but when we think technically about the humiliation of the son, his estate of humiliation, it’s referring to things that happen to the incarnate son or as the incarnate son.
This view does not attempt to apply the creaturely category of humility to the son, according to his divinity, but tells us instead to look to the incarnate Christ as our pattern and example. I don’t have the verse off the top of my head, but there’s a verse I think in Hebrews where it actually talks about Christ as the trailblazer, right?
He forges the path that we are to follow. Now, if we ever think we’re following that path under our own power, because he pa, you know, he forged it for us as an exalted creature. That’s a whole different kind of error. But he did forge a path for us. He goes to prepare a place for us. All that language has to do with him establishing a pattern of life, empowering us by the Holy Spirit to live in that and to walk in that way.
Paul will go on later and talk about how it is God who wills and works in us, that we might do his will. The first view looks at verse six as something God does, the Son does in eternity passed, relinquishing his claim to divine dignity and the incarnation taking place in verse seven, when he takes on a human nature, the second view.
Looks at verse six and verse seven, already having the incarnate Christ in view.
[00:44:20] INCARNATE SERVANT LIFE
[00:44:20] Tony Arsenal: So when it says here that he was, uh, though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. It’s saying that having already been incarnated, having already been found in the form of man, he humbled himself.
He did not count equality with God, even though he was God, something to be grasped or appealed to, right? Christ isn’t Superman pretending to take a tackle in football. He’s really weak. He’s really human. He’s really frail at times, he was really able to be killed and he really died. He did not count equality with God, something to be grasped, even though he was in the form of God, insofar as he remained fully God.
As he was also fully man,
it means that taking the form of a servant does not exclusively mean taking on a human nature, but also the entire life and disposition of the son as a servant. It’s not just that he became man and then lived a normal life. He became man and became a servant to all the son of man did not come to serve or to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom.
This line of thinking then continues in verse eight, and it says, having been found or being found in human form, he continues to become obedient, even to the point of death, even death on a cross,
his humiliation, his life of service, his passive obedience. But the theologians called passive obedience, which is the suffering elements of his human life, doesn’t just start during passion week. That’s where we get the word passion, right? The passive obedience is the suffering of Christ. It starts in the moment of his conception, the second he takes on a human nature.
When the incarnate son of God was two cells in the womb of Mary, isn’t that an argument for Pearl life,
even when he was being born, right? I don’t remember being born. None of us do. It’s probably good ’cause I imagine it’s probably pretty painful, right? I remember when our first child was born, we, we took kind of the standard parenting classes at the Women’s Health Resource Center, and they describe how the physical act of being born actually squeezes a baby so much that it triggers changes in their vasculature that make them start breathing.
It actually like closes gates in their veins that trigger breathing versus breathing. That one isn’t that amazing, and two, that sounds like it hurts. Christ did that and he did that for us. He didn’t just die on the cross for us. He skinned his knees for us as a child, right? Theologians vary whether he got sick, but he probably got a cold for us, right?
He had sleepless nights for us. He watched his friends die for us. He suffered persecution, not just from the religious leaders, but his own brothers and his mother who thought he was crazy, and he did that for us. The humility of Christ as the incarnate God man is not just a theme for Paul or in Philippians.
[00:48:04] HEBREWS ON OBEDIENCE
[00:48:04] Tony Arsenal: We have a few minutes left, so turn briefly over to me to he, for me to Hebrews five.
I wouldn’t, uh, I won’t get into it too much, but it’s important for us to acknowledge that there are some competing theologies in our orbits about what it means to be the son and humility and humbleness. And that first interpretation is, I think, risky because it does apply creaturely categories to God absent his human nature.
And Hebrews, uh, the author of Hebrews, we’ll just call him not Paul, uh, has none of that. Like half the congregation laugh, the other half is ready to stone me. Um. Starting, uh, in chapter five, verse seven, it says, in the days of his flesh rates were squarely grounded in the Incar incarnation. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered a prayer and supplication with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death.
And he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. He learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect. He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obeyed him, obey him, being designated by God, a high priest after the order of Malak.
This line of thinking is, is sort of the culmination of a line of thinking. In Hebrews, he starts, uh, in two nine. He says, we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone because God the Son, as the incarnate God man, humbled himself and was obedient to all of the suffering and miseries of this life and even death on a cross, God is exalted him and granted him the highest name, and he’s given him the salvation of all of his people as a blessing,
our status as sons and daughters of God as. Those who belong to Jesus Christ, we are his reward. Think about that. We often think about Christ’s reward being granted to us, which is true. Christ has given all of the blessings that Adam would’ve would’ve obtained if he had been, uh, successful in his probation.
And he communicates that to us. He gives that to us as co inheritors of the gospel. But we are Christ’s great reward, right? That passage in Romans again, isn’t it just like the Holy Spirit to start the sermon out, start the service out here with a meditation on a verse that I didn’t even prepare that ties in perfectly.
God works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his command so that. We might be conformed to the image of Christ, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Our salvation is for Jesus. We get a lot out of it, right? Don’t ever, don’t ever think that.
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be satisfied in our salvation or rejoice, but it’s not for us. It’s for Jesus, us, and listen to this brothers and sisters because this is where the passage goes next. That very same reward that Christ gets, that he gets us, that he gets each one of us in this room, that he gets the saints at Providence Presbyterian, who are worshiping alongside us in different location that he gets the saints in Zimbabwe or China or Singapore, or Australia, who are worshiping at different times today, but alongside of us, the Saints from a hundred years ago and the a hundred years in the future, who are worshiping alongside of us.
We get them too. They are his reward and he shares that reward with each of us
for the sake of time, I’m gonna gonna sort of pass on the last part of this passage. Christ has made King, he redeems his people. He protects us from persecution, but this brings us back to our application.
[00:52:49] MAKE PEACE TODAY
[00:52:49] Tony Arsenal: Think back, who’s your syn key? Who’s your euodia?
If you have someone in mind, and I think most of us probably have someone in mind, we probably are trying really hard not to have someone in mind, but it’s kind of like when someone says, don’t think of a pink elephant. What are you doing about it? What are you waiting for in a congregation this size? In a church that’s been here as long as it has with a congregation that has been as stable as my understanding this congregation has been.
As far as members and turnover, someone in this room probably has their tiki in this room. Maybe you tiki’s in your family. Maybe you saw TKI at Christmas and you’re glad that it’s not that time of year anymore, and you won’t have to do it again until Thanksgiving. Make it right today. The other benefit of being a guest preacher is I can be a little bolder than I might otherwise be if I was the pastor of the church.
This is not an optional thing. Loved ones. We don’t have the option to remain at odds with our co-laborers. Soldiers in a company who fight each other get killed, probably not by each other. Sometimes.
Make it right today. Jesus. Um, I don’t know if it’s classified as a parable or not, but Jesus says, if you are at odds with your brother, if you know that someone has something against you, leave your offering before you get to the altar and go make it right. He prioritizes making it right with someone you know, not someone that you have something against.
Someone you know has something against you. He prioritizes public worship or he prioritizes making that right over public worship. If we take that seriously, what that means, and this is probably the strongest statement you’re gonna hear from me in that time that I’m here, might be the last time I’m here.
I guess that means that if you have a syn key in your life and you don’t take care of it this week, and you come back next week, that you are sitting against the God of the universe, I’ll see myself out. Right? Some heavy stuff. There are real enemies out there, right? There are people out there that want to destroy the church.
I know I said that I don’t think that we’re gonna be like being led off to the slaughter anytime soon, and I think that’s true, but there are forces in this world who would close down this church today if they had the possibility to, this is a beautiful piece of property. I’m sure there’s any number of people who would love to tear this place down and put up a development and would just make bank with the housing crisis in our area.
When you let your petty squabbles get in the way of true Christian unity and fellowship, you let them win. Maybe not today, but eventually
[00:55:53] UNITY IN PRACTICE
[00:55:53] Tony Arsenal: I’ll close here with the same set of questions and then a few specific outcomes here. Is there any comfort, any encouragement in Christ here? Of course there is. Is there any comfort from love? I know there is. Is there any participation in the spirit? Yes, there is. And is there any affection or sympathy?
I’m confident that there is, therefore make my joy, make wes’ joy, make all of our joy complete by thinking the same thing, having the same love being of one spirit and being of one mind. This means doctrinal unity. We are quick to say major in the majors and minor in the minors, and there’s a, a valid truth to that.
We don’t want to let our minor doctrinal differences become the petty squabble, but we should also work towards agreement in all things. I guarantee you that someone in this room has a different view of the millennial kingdom than you do, and that’s okay. But at the end of the day, you think your view is true and their view is not.
You think your view represents the Bible and their view does not. So it is not only okay, but it is a good thing for us to work to winsomely persuade those who we think are wrong, to read the Bible in a way that we think is right and it drives us forward in unity when we can do that side by side.
Laboring for the gospel, it means practical unity. What are you working towards as a church? What are you working towards as an individual? What are you working for? Don’t settle for general, albeit commendable commitments to love God and love others. Those are good things, but they don’t really mean anything without some shoe leather on the ground.
What are you working for and what are you working towards and are you all working towards? And for the same thing, is there a unified vision for this church? Of what it means when someone drives up and says, I’m starving. My kids don’t have any formula, and I need some money to go to the store. Do you all agree on exactly how that should be handled?
Maybe the agreement is to place that in the hands of the deacons and to trust them to do that, and that’s great and good and commendable. I actually think that’s the way most churches should operate. But are you all in agreement that that’s the way it should work? Are all your deacons on the same page about how that situation would be handled?
Do the elders and the pastor agree? I, I don’t have an answer. Those are rhetorical questions, but it’s something to think through. This means relational unity.
[00:58:49] SOBER SELF ESTEEM
[00:58:49] Tony Arsenal: Do you have a proper sober self-esteem when you look at yourself in the mirror spiritually, do you see yourself as you really are? Now I think the instinct in, and don’t take this wrong, but the revivalism of our region particularly and, and evangelicalism in the 20th century did a lot of good, but it did a lot of damage.
I listened to a lot of contemporary Christian music when I was a teenager coming to faith in the late nineties and early two thousands, and there is a preoccupation during that timeframe of, of a lack of assurance and looking at how a lot of those Christian rock stars have flamed out. That probably was a good thing that they were preoccupied with assurance and maybe they weren’t preoccupied enough.
But I think of like DC talk, what if I stumble? What if I fall? What if I slip and I make fools of us all hear me on this loved ones? You are probably far more spiritually equipped and moving towards sanctification than you realize.
One of my favorite questions in the Western Catechism is what is sanctification? And not just because it’s such a hard question, but it’s such a simple answer. Sanctification is the work of God whereby he restores us in the image of God in the whole man. That’s a paraphrase. I need to work on my memory work a little bit, but sanctification is not something we do and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
You don’t make yourself holy any more than you made yourself righteous and any more than you’re gonna raise yourself from the dead. God is the one who makes you holy. And just as I said, when we think for ourselves as trash, we insult the maker who made us. When we refuse to acknowledge the progress that the Holy Spirit is making in our lives because of some misguided perception that we need to bash on our own spiritual progress, we don’t do God any favors.
There may be some of you who are looking at yourselves and thinking you are way better than you are. But in my experience with with Christians these days, it’s just not really what the problem is. Most of the time, God is for you. He loves you. He’s sanctifying you. It’s okay to say, man, praise God for the progress he’s made in my life.
Yeah, I’ve got a long ways to go. I’ve not reached perfection. Paul’s gonna address that too later. But praise God for the progress. But even in that, do you esteem esteem others more highly than yourself? Do you tend towards, or do you lean towards the needs of others? Or do you lean towards the needs of yourself at the expense of the needs of others?
Do you lean towards the expense of others at your own expense? None of those things are great.
[01:01:39] SUFFERING AND PRAYER
[01:01:39] Tony Arsenal: And lastly, this means sacrifice. Are you willing to suffer for the gospel and for the good of others?
Are you willing to make the hard decisions and to take the hard stands?
I will, I’ll, I’ll just put this out here. Wes and I both work at the hospital. Joel, who also comes and, and shares the pulpit once in a while. Also works at the hospital. I won’t speak for Wes, but I’ll speak for myself. There is a constant voice in the back of my head when I’m preaching or preparing a sermon that says, if the wrong person at the hospital heard me say this, I could lose my job.
I can see Wes nodding.
We all have those situations in our life where if we say the truth, it could cost us. Is that something you’re ready for? You better be ’cause it’s coming. It’s gonna happen. Maybe it’s the adult child who wants to do something that you cannot tolerate without saying something. Maybe it’s the teenage child who, uh, refuses to listen to you and you.
Have to exercise your parental role out in discipline. Maybe it’s the spouse who won’t, uh, think carefully about how you spend your money.
Whatever it is, there’s going to come a time where speaking the truth is going to hurt if, when that time comes, not if, when that time comes, when the suffering comes for you. It’s okay to be upset. It’s okay to have a little bit of fear and a little bit of trepidation, but we can be encouraged. Do you remember why?
’cause we don’t suffer for suffering’s sake. We suffer for Christ’s sake, and God counts us worthy to suffer for the gospel. And this suffering is granted to us as a sign of the destruction of our enemies and the salvation of our souls. Let’s pray.
Father, you are God. You are the one who plans our salvation, the one who has covenanted with your son and your spirit, and eternity past to redeem a people, to give those people to the Son who would become flesh for us and for our salvation. And when Grammy granted us as his reward, that we might share in his blessing and his fellowship, that by your and his spirit, we might be made sons and daughters of God, so that the spirit of adoption might dwell within us.
Lord, bolster us in our sufferings. Help us to bear up under persecution. Help us to be ready for when it counts and when it costs, most of all. Help us to glorify you to enjoy you pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
