See Jesus Better

Okay, so my goal for today in this talk is twofold. I have two goals, and the first goal is that we may see Jesus better, because a lot of us have expectations and we think we know who Jesus is, but I want us to see him as he really is more. And I fully believe, and this is my second goal, if we see Jesus clearly and truly as he is, we're going to become more like him, and that's going to have massive ramifications in our life. Because everyone likes Jesus. There's no one who's like, oh Jesus, he was a bad guy.

No, Jesus was an awesome guy, and I think that we look around our world and we see lots of problems, but if we thought, if everyone in the world was like Jesus, we probably wouldn't have all the problems. And so this morning's message is that we might see Jesus more, and love him more, and therefore become more like him. And it's pretty radical and countercultural and challenging, but thankfully we're not in it alone. There's God's Spirit, and there's Jesus who's gone before us. And so we're going to do that by just really looking closely at one passage of Scripture, and it's going to come from Philippians chapter 2.

So before we read that passage, I'm going to give you some context. So the Bible is 66 small books compiled into one book, and Philippians is a book that was written not long after Jesus died and was buried and rose again by an early church leader named Paul. Paul had persecuted the church. He became a Christian, surprised to everyone, and then he started going around telling everyone about how Jesus had changed his life and starting churches. And so he started this church in Philippi.

It was a city in the ancient Roman world, and he was imprisoned there for the sake of the gospel, for proclaiming this message. And then later he got out of prison, and he's in prison again, probably in Rome. They don't actually know exactly where he was because he was in prison a lot of times. And so the most logical thing is that he's in prison in Rome when he wrote the letter of Philippi, or wrote the letter to Philippi, called the letter of Philippians, which is what we're going to be reading this morning. And so this letter was written while he's in jail, and he says actually at the opening that he's not sure whether or not he's going to get released from jail or executed.

It could really go either way. And he's not certain, which lends a lot of weight to his words. If I'm writing you a letter and I think, you know, I'm on death row, not really sure how this is going to go, I hope that you treasure my letter and you know that's my last words and it's important. And so that's what Paul is doing. So it's not only is it what the whole church for all of history has said, this is actually God's word, but it's one of his last chances potentially to speak.

And so he's trying to say, these are the things I really want you to know, because I'm not going to be around for forever to tell you these things. So let's read the passage. It's Philippians 2, 1 through 11. I think it's going to be on the screen, one verse at a time, and I'm going to read it out of this Bible right here. So he says, so if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation 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 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 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 God the Father, the word of the Lord. So that's pretty dense, but really awesome.

It's a powerful, powerful passage. So at the beginning, you have these sort of like long sentences with some commands. That's typical Paul. That's how this guy wrote. And then in the second half, it sounds like Paul just starts talking about Jesus, and he gets carried away.

He's like, whoa, you really went off on this tangent because you're just talking about how great Jesus is, and you get so distracted by that. Some people call that the hymn of Christ because he's just, it's this beautiful little poem thing that he wrote about how Jesus is and what he has done and what the results will be and are of what Jesus has done. So, I said it's a little bit deep. So we're going to just start at the very beginning. And if you guys want to put it on the screen, you can.

I'm not going to be quoting it directly quite yet, but you can put the, like, verses one or two on the screen if you want. But he basically starts by saying, if you get anything from the life of being with Jesus, being a Christian, if his love means anything to you, if he encourages you at all, if you're experiencing his spirit, Paul wants the readers to do one thing to make him really happy. One thing. He's like, if this means anything, if you're not just messing around on Sunday mornings, do this one thing for me. And what does he say?

Essentially, it's be united. And let's just stop and think about that. This guy who's about to die says, if Jesus has changed your life in any way, it means anything to you, if his Holy Spirit is a real deal in your life, do one thing, do one thing, be united. And let's, let's stop and recognize how timely of a word that is for us as American Christians. Our country is torn up.

And we can't take, like, the cop out and blame it on people who aren't Christians and therefore aren't listening to Paul. Why can't we just use that cop out and be like, oh, it's those bad people over there. Because, well, a 2019 Pew survey found that 65% of Americans identify themselves as Christians. So that means of every two out of three people that you meet on the street are probably self-identifying as Christians. That's how they think of themselves.

They consider themselves as in Christ. Well, that's a big number. That means, just if we follow the logic, there are likely Christians deeply involved in the divisions in our country. On both sides of any argument, any fight, there's Christians. Or people who self-identify as Christians.

So it doesn't take a genius to see that the thing Paul wants most for believers is something we're failing at. The guy's about to die. The guy's saying, if Jesus matters to you at all, do this, and we're not doing it. Or maybe we're trying, but we're failing. I don't know, but we're not doing it.

And we can see that all over in whatever political debate, whatever cultural debate, even inside the church. There's like a thousand denominations. And, you know, some of that's, you know, you can't have doctrinal purity. And unity without denominations. But a lot of it is just because of infighting.

And do you know there's even lawsuits? Million dollar lawsuits over churches and their denominations fighting over property. That's mind-boggling. That is not what Paul imagined. Or I guess he imagined it because he said don't do it.

But that's not what he was wanting. You know, and it's not good. No one wants it that way. No one likes it that way. And it's, frankly, it's ugly.

And for those people who aren't Christians, it doesn't look very attractive or appealing. But I do have a feeling that many people who are Christians feel stuck. They feel like it's completely outside of their control. I'm not even involved in that fight. There's nothing I can do about it, they think.

Like it's, you know, I'm sad about it, but I can't change it, is how they feel. And I think that shows us that Paul's pleading exhortation to be united as Christians is just as relevant today as it was almost 2,000 years ago when it was written. And it's just as hard for us as it was then. We're not actually in that different of a circumstance. Sure, we got like toilets we can flush and stuff, but when it comes to human nature, we're pretty much the same as we were 2,000 years ago.

Thankfully, we do have toilets that can flush, though. And so, Paul, because he's not a jerk, doesn't just say be united and period and close the book, send the letter. He tells us how to do it, and then later he'll give us a motivation to do it. And this is where this message, I think, gets pretty radical and challenging, but thankfully we're not on our own in this. So, we're going to look at verses 3 and 4, and actually, if you could put those on the screen, or I guess one at a time, 3 and then 4 on the screen, that'd be really helpful, because we're going to look at those.

So, he says, do, ooh, I can look at it right here, that's cool. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Which is good, hard. Yeah, so, what's bound up in this selfish ambition or conceit is pride and strong desire. I want to get ahead.

I want to do my thing. I want what I want. It's also an underlying assumption that we deserve things or have rights. So basically, for me to be humble is for me to be truthful about the reality of my life. So let's think about Jesus.

Jesus is the only person who had the right to not be humble. God himself, perfect, sinless, born of a virgin. What? He had no need to be humble. He couldn't be proud.

I mean, being proud is thinking too highly of yourself. But if you are the highest thing there is, you can't think too highly of yourself. But now I think about myself and all of you and all of the world, by extension, the Bible says we were born in sin and shaped with iniquity, or shaped in iniquity. Like, from the very, I am a father of a toddler, and I see from the very, I love it, it is awesome. But I also see from the very beginning, I have not had to teach her things that she shouldn't be doing.

And I see that in my own life, my internal motivations are almost never altruistic. The good deeds we do are usually for selfish motivations. We all have thoughts we hope no one ever sees or hears or knows, because they're really, really embarrassingly bad. Yeah, we're sinners. We're filled with brokenness.

We're putting ourselves first. We're seeking our own interest. There's a church doctrine called total depravity, which doesn't mean you're bad in every way, or it doesn't mean you're completely bad. It means in every single aspect of your life is touched by brokenness. That there is no, not even one category where we can say, I am perfect in this one way.

Sure, I'm a pathological liar, but I am perfect in this category. No, no, no. We're just broken at least a little in every way. And yet we're proud. We're not humble.

And so for me to be humble is actually just to think truly about myself, to not put on airs. And so, well, that's hard, but that's what he calls us to. And we're going to get onto this because it's not just going to stay here. So we're going to look at verse four then. Paul's second tip for how to be united is, let each of you look not only.

To his own interests, but also to the interests of others. So I'm not just trying to get my own advantage, but I'm trying to help my neighbor get his advantage or her advantage. You know, don't look out for your own business and take care of all those around you. And you're like, okay, okay, yeah, I get it, that's right, who can disagree with that? If everyone was humble, if everyone was helping their neighbor get ahead, how even could you have a fight?

But if you're like me, you know, actually I can't do that. That's impossible. And I'll bet a lot of you have this fear of just saying, I'm not going to do that, because if I do, there's no guarantee that my neighbor's going to do that, and then I'm just screwing myself. That's just bad for me. In short, we run into this roadblock, and the roadblock is we don't believe.

It's actually bound up with faith. First of all, we don't believe it's worth it. But do I really believe that unity in the church, unity in our country is better than getting my own way? Basically, I want my comfort, my money, my whatever, and I don't usually say this, but I want it at your expense. And we don't say it that way, because that sounds terrible.

Another early church leader, James, he was the leader of the church in Jerusalem, immediately following Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection until he was killed by the government. And he said the same thing. He says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Essentially, what causes division? He says this, is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?

You desire and do not have, so you murder, you covet, and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. Essentially, we act like toddlers, man. You are standing in between me and what I really want, and I will do anything to get it. And this happens all the time in our lives. You know, we're adults, so we're usually a little bit put on a nicer front than our small children, but it happens all the time, that we hold a passionate desire in our heart for something.

Maybe it's comfort. Maybe it's to live at the beach. Maybe it's to make a lot of money. Maybe it's to get that boat that we really want, or that nicer vacation, or that nicer vacation in a better location, or more vacations. I don't know what it is.

Maybe it's to get your kid into that really good school instead of the school they... There's a lot of money for you. God accepted into you, or whatever, I don't know. And we'll do whatever it takes to get that. I mean, hopefully, by God's grace, we have some standards.

I know we're not killing people, but we do essentially littler versions of the same thing. We sacrifice our families by working overtime, by doing whatever it is, by being away if it's a hobby that we're obsessed with, and neglecting other things. We will lie on our taxes to get extra money. We'll do whatever. If someone or something is standing in our way with what we want, that status, that position, that thing, we'll say nasty things about them, we'll stack the odds in our favor, whatever we have to do to maximize our benefits and minimize our cost and let someone else take that cost.

And we know it's wrong. We just pretend that we don't do it. And one way that we pretend we don't do it is we remove the consequences from our view. That's why we feel so uncomfortable when we pass a homeless person, because all of a sudden, the have-nots are in front of us, and we see this thing that we're doing. So we remove them.

We do city and school zoning to keep the have-nots out of sight. We move our manufacturing offshore, because I want good stuff, and I want it cheap. So we let the poor people in Bangladesh make our shirts, or I work with Afghans who work in sweatshops making garments for cheap at oppressive wages in oppressive conditions. But, you know, we don't see it, because it's in Bangladesh, or it's in the Middle East. And so we forget about it.

In short, we can't have unity in our church or peace in the wider world around us, because we are pushing our own agendas for our own desires and fighting for our rights. We think we deserve this stuff. At least, I often think that way. I'm assuming you're probably more like me than not like me. And, you know, that same thing happens not only in our jobs, not only in our financial decisions, but it also happens in our churches and in our families.

So we've got to ask ourselves, what rights are we holding on to, or rights are we holding on to that we think we deserve? Maybe I have a right to win this argument with my wife. Maybe it's my right to spend my entire paycheck without thinking about giving generously to someone in need, because I worked hard to earn that paycheck, and it's mine. We don't usually say it like that, but that's what we think. And, you know, for us as Americans, there's another temptation.

It's a temptation of conflating our American rights, or even our universal human rights by the United Nations, with our rights before God. You know, our American rights are really awesome, and they have no connection with the Bible. In the Bible, we don't have any rights before God. He's our creator. We're creation.

Like, we have less rights before God than an ant has before me, because I didn't even create the ant. Or flies, man. I'm getting flies all over, but... Yeah, so we have no rights. Those American rights, or those human rights, were designed to help or to prevent humans from oppressing other humans.

They're designed for standing up on behalf of the oppressed to the oppressors. Thankfully, because we don't have them before God, thankfully, God is not an oppressor. God is so good. But we allow our legal rights as citizens to come into our spirituality and our decision making. So, to back up, we said the core problem is that we don't believe.

And then I talked about all the sinful things we actually believe. And Paul's response to this, because he's writing this. He writes verses 3. He writes verses 4. You know, where he says, be humble, look at other people's interests.

And then, he's just knowing that this is going to be hard for people to take. So, he reminds us of what we say we believe. If you're in this room and you claim to be a Christian, he's saying, this is what you believe. And then he gives us this beautiful thing about Jesus. What does he say about Jesus in verses 5, 6, 7, and 8?

Have this mind among yourselves. So, this is what you believe. Think this way. Which is yours in Christ Jesus. Or, another way it's translated is, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing. So, Jesus was God, but he didn't white-knuckle grasp that status. He didn't fight for his rights. And he, unlike us, had real rights that he could have claimed. But what did he do instead of holding on to them?

He relinquished them. He completely emptied himself. How did he empty himself? He became a servant. He took a low position, but not just any kind of servant, because what service did he do?

His service was to die. And it's not dying, you know, like of old age on a beach, living a good life. He died the most shameful death imaginable. The Torah says, cursed is any man hung on a tree, which the Jewish religious leaders, who, in collaboration with the Romans, killed Jesus, knew that verse when they hung him on a tree to die. And to make the shame more intense was, this is the king of the universe being killed by his own rebellious subjects.

The extensions of you and of me. And you know, that is absolutely beautiful, because he didn't have to do that. No one forced him to do that. There was that last song that we were singing. Man, I'm going to butcher these lyrics.

It's something like, we don't, what is it? We don't have a claim. How did that song go? Something about, you don't owe me anything. That's what it is.

You don't owe me anything is what we sang in that song. And that is, that's the core truth. Jesus didn't owe us anything. But he died for me. At my very worst moment, he died for me.

In my very worst version of myself, he died for me. And he died for you at your very worst. Not when you're on your best behavior and have it all put together. When you are living in an ununited, divided life with others, when you're wherever you are at or wherever you are at, he died for you. It doesn't say that he did it because we're so great or like a really good investment.

It didn't have anything to do with us and what we can bring to that arrangement, which is awesome. It says that he did it to obey God the Father. It was somehow in the inner workings of God, God did it for God. He died for us. So instead of pushing the have-nots away from himself, like he could have rightfully done, he came near.

And instead of abandoning us to the consequences of our sin and the consequences of the pain we inflict on ourselves and on each other, he took those consequences on himself. Essentially, he lived the life we should have lived, and he died the death we should have died, which is awesome, and he gave that to us. Jesus could have preserved his status. As we said, he had no claim on us, and he wasn't forced. But he did it, and he did it to obey God the Father.

He was, as the Creed says, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day he rose again. He gave up his rights, which is, I think you're feeling that this is getting to be a little challenging of a message, but this is where I think it gets really encouraging, too. Because look at the results. It was worth it, and in the same way it will be worth it for us. In the next chapter in Philippians 3, Paul says, I want to share with Christ's sufferings and participate with him in life.

The way to life and joy and freedom is through the cross. Do we believe that? And this is where we say, how we see it will be worth it for Jesus, and has been worth it for Jesus. In verses 10 and 11 it says, 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. Essentially, Jesus did outreach, and he won the entire world over.

And he did it through the most unexpected and radical of means. He didn't have a huge marketing campaign. He didn't have a huge, like, outreach program. He didn't do massive anything. I mean, he taught and he healed.

But the core thing is, lots of people have taught and healed. The core thing that he did to win the world over was to lay down his rights, what he deserved, and died. That's what he did. And at the end of time, when human history is all wrapped up, every single creature will bend. I'm not sure.

Thank you. So right now we're not there yet. We're not living at the end of human history yet, and so right now that's not fully, we say his kingdom isn't fully consummated. So right now we live in the time of rebellion when people are free to rebel against his lordship, but it won't always be this way because on that action on the cross when Jesus died, he already won the whole world. And everyone will bend the knee.

Yeah, that is a thing to clap for. So somehow through laying down his rights and dying, Jesus won. And everyone, willing or unwillingly, will bend the knee to his lordship one day through giving up his rights. And Paul says, do that. Be like him.

Let the one who saved you be your example. Give up your rights and you'll have unity. And it's scary though to give up our rights. This is, remember that roadblock that we don't believe? When we choose to give up our rights is when we're choosing to step out in faith and say, I'm going to give this a shot.

I'm going to choose to believe this. Because we're giving up control. So we say, do I really believe this? Am I really willing to take God at his word at this? Because maybe my neighbor is not going to do it.

Maybe my neighbor is going to fight for his or her own advantage. We don't have control over that. And so we think, okay, is this like a special thing? You know, that the really great people do? Nah, that's not what Paul is saying at all.

As Christians, we are called to this way of life. The laying down our rights life. Paul says, or Paul uses Christ laying down his life for the whole world as motivation and as a picture of how we should act within Christian community. To achieve unity. Because the truth is, if every single person in this room just lays down their rights and says, you know what?

I don't have to push for my advantage in this. I don't have to seek my own ambition. I don't have to be proud about this. I'm going to lay down what I think I deserve and let you go forward in that. You will have the most united church in the world for sure, let alone Virginia Beach.

And That's what Paul's trying to say. Unity in the church. But there's even more, because what Paul does is really interesting. He's actually co-opting Jesus' activity, what Jesus did on the cross, and taking a different application than I would readily think about it, because in Romans, another letter Paul wrote to people who lived in Rome, Paul describes Jesus' sacrifice as done for his enemies. Not for his friends, not for his peers, not for his colleagues, not for his peers or equals.

It says Jesus died for his enemies. Well, if I'm laying down my rights for someone in the church, you're not my enemy. So what Jesus did is even more. And that's what's really cool, because this ingredient, or this thing, laying down our rights, is the core ingredient not only for church unity, but for the church's relationship with the world. In a sense, it's what we often call missional.

So we are not just to follow Jesus' example of laying down our rights for those we rub shoulders with here in the theater, but also for those who maybe we don't have any enemies. That feels like a pretty strong word. But for those who are as different from us as possible, even those who think differently politically. Even those who are as different socioeconomically or racially. Even those who have wronged us.

We wouldn't call them our enemies, but that person who just really shafted us a long time ago. Those people. Those people. Those people who are outsiders. Laying down our rights is the necessary ingredient for the Christian life, both for Christian unity and for Christian mission.

And our way of serving Christian brother and Christian neighbor is not just preaching the good news, not what I'm doing now and just telling you about it, but it's living this gospel life. It's relinquishing our rights way of life. There's a really cool word that maybe you've heard. If not, I'm going to teach it to you. It's called cruciform living.

Cruciform means life in the shape of the cross. And I love that word. So I'm going to use it for a little bit here. So while the specifics of my calling, I live overseas, I work with refugees, those specifics are... Different from yours.

But all of yours are also different from yours. Your specifics of your day job are different than yours, which are different than yours and different than yours. So the specifics of all of our callings are different. But the core of our calling as Christians is exactly the same. And it's essentially relinquishing our rights.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, he was a theologian and a pastor who was executed by the Nazis in the Second World War. He said, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Because the way to freedom, the way to life, the way to unity, the way to being an attractive body of believers in the world is through the cross. And so maybe you're tracking and you're like, okay, Jon, this is inspiring. This is awesome.

Maybe you're thinking, man, Leon, why did you invite that guy to talk? This is heavy. Or maybe you're just, you're still not on board. You think, I don't believe that. I've got three short little examples that I think will help make this make sense that you've probably, experienced before.

So we see this exact same principle on a much smaller scale when Jesus says, it's more blessed to give than to receive. I love getting things I want. If anyone out there wants to give me a Subaru, not the new ones, because they're kind of ugly, but like a 90s Subaru. Yeah, I will love you forever. That would be awesome.

Oh, you got one for me? You got one for me? Oh, it's brand new. I'm sorry about that. But it feels great to get something you really want.

But you know what? I had this really cool privilege a few days ago. My daughter Shiloh loves, she's two, she loves Daniel Tiger. If you're a parent, you maybe know Daniel Tiger. It's like Mr.

Rogers 2.0 cartoon version. She loves, she's obsessed with Daniel Tiger. And so my mom sent us a little package of little, I don't know, Daniel Tiger figurines of the characters. And so I got her up one morning and I laid out all the figurines right where we always sit and drink coffee and milk on the front porch.

And I, I put them on the rail of the porch. And seeing her freak out when she saw those was like brought a tear to my eye. It felt so good. It felt better than what I would imagine, how I would feel if I got a Subaru. I haven't had that happen, but it felt so good.

I lived the truth of it's more blessed to give than to receive. And I'm sure all of you, if you. If you think back, you can think of a time when you gave a really meaningful gift to someone and that was just way better than getting something for yourself. That's essentially looking out for the interests of others and not yourself. That's laying down your rights in a small way.

We look at the cross and that's a big way, but even the small ways we have done, we've experimented with that, and we found that that was great, that was awesome. So maybe that same is going to hold true at a bigger scale. It's going to be harder and better. And even more worth it. So the second little thing is that our hearts are moved inside us when we hear about self-sacrifice.

Everyone universally finds it beautiful. Whether it's Jesus' sacrifice or like you hear this really moving story about how a soldier lays down his life to save, I don't know, Band of Brothers sort of thing. Or this translates really well into movies. I don't know if you've seen the cartoon, The Iron Giant. Like he sacrifices himself at the end and it's awesome.

Or I love Lord of the Rings. And at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie, when Boromir is like trying to save the hobbits, go, go, go. And he just takes all the arrows. That's just powerful stuff. That's moving.

And there's so many movie after movie after movie where we see that. And why is that? It makes no sense. Except for in this cruciform living gospel logic. And I think that's because God has put this logic deep down inside of our hearts.

We know that that's how things are supposed to work. We long, deep underneath all of the other stuff, we long to live for something worth dying for. Something far bigger and far more meaningful than living for our own comfort. So Jesus also, this is the third thing. So the first one is we've experienced this in little ways.

We're moved by this when we see other people do it. And then the third thing, to help this make sense to us, is that Jesus isn't asking you to do something he didn't do. He's not a hypocrite, thankfully, which is great. He did this first. And he did it more than you will ever do.

God himself dying for sinners. Me being a sinner, even giving up my life, will be for another sinner. That's much less ridiculous and outrageous of an exchange. That's my Saul who he's, you will need a chance for the spent. He's in .

He's face. He did it first. And if I trust Jesus, I can do what he tells me to do, because he also did it. And yeah, so those are the three things that I hope help this make sense. And so this cruciform living of giving of our rights for everyone who calls himself Christian isn't something that's just for vocational ministers, like pastors or, I don't know, full-time overseas people or folks like that.

It's not just for Leon. It's not just for my friend here with the guitar leading worship. It's not just for small group leaders. It's for every single one of us. He says, Paul says, this is a life that's befitting of all Christians.

And so this passage is actually in a little bit of a larger section, which starts a few verses earlier in chapter 1 verse 27. And in that verse, he says, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. And worthy here doesn't mean earning it. Like, don't try to, you know, become worth the gospel or, I don't know, nothing like earning it. It means befitting.

Live in a way that is befitting of the gospel. The gospel is this message of what Jesus did. So to help us understand Paul's language, because we don't use worth it or worthy of or befitting very often, let's give a recent example. So not too long ago, things came out on the news about a president of a Christian university in the area who conducted himself sexually in ways that did not befit his role as a university president. And so the university essentially asked him to resign.

That president was an embarrassment to the institution and to many Christians because he was not living worthy of his position. And so Paul says, live in a way that is worthy of your position. Live in a way that is worthy of the gospel. He's saying, look at what happened on the cross. Look at what Jesus did on the cross.

Look at that and live in light of that. How can we be saved by the divine Christ who gave up everything, all of his rights, while I'm still holding on to my rights for my own advantage? How is that anything but hypocrisy? The only response that makes sense in light of what Jesus has done, the only thing befitting of his lead is to follow him in relinquishing my rights and giving up my advantage for others. And when we find this.

Follow Jesus' example. We will find unity in the church, and we will live beautiful lives, and we will experience freedom. A lot of times, we are actually just bound by our desires. Our desires to get more money control us. And I'm going to close with a beautiful picture of a time when the church at large chose to live in this cruciform life.

Dionysius of Alexandria wrote sometime in the middle of the third century. And he was writing about the Christian response to the plague of Cyprian, which is probably a really large measles outbreak. And this is what he said. Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of any danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ.

And with them departed this life, serenely happy. For they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. The world around them during this plague was throwing out their sick family members into the streets so that they wouldn't get infected themselves and would just let the people die in the streets. But the Christians took them into their homes to care for them and also got sick and died. And that is a product of the radical life that happens when we lay down our rights and follow Jesus.

That's the mind of Christ that Paul is calling us to have in verse five. And that will give us unity. And that is our mission in the world. When we do this, I believe we will see two things happen. We will see that unity grow and grow in our church.

That's the point of the passage. And we will see that our style of life as individuals and as a community of Christians will be so attractive, the whole world will be affected. I happen to do this cross culturally, but it's for all of us everywhere. So I'm going to close or maybe Leon's going to close, but we're going to pray and we're going to just ask the Lord. Lord, Spirit, show us what in my heart am I holding on to white knuckle grasping on to status or rights or positions or desires that you're asking me to give up for my neighbor.

And that I can find true freedom. So, Lord, thank you for this opportunity to look more at the beautiful work that Jesus did on the cross. Reveal to us how we haven't done this or how we can do this more. Because we all, every one of us, have room to grow in this. That our whole life is laying down our rights and receiving more of Christ.

Please give that to us today. In Jesus' name.