Finding Freedom from the Prisons of the Soul: The Prison of Selfishness

finding freedom from the prisons of the soul: the prison of selfishness Tom Cowan Interim Lead Pastor English Congregation Vancouver Chinese Baptist Church Vancouver, British Columbia Sunday Sermon for 12 June 2011 Series on Philippians Scripture Passage Philippians 2:1-11

I sometimes tell people that I have fallen in love 3 times.

1. When I was about 16, I fell in love with Jesus and was baptized.

2. Then I fell in love with Harriet. This month, we will have been married 43 years. We have cried together through some painful experiences, such as the death of a lovely daughter-in-law several years ago. We have laughed over much. She has loved me through a depression. She has sat all night at my hospital bed when she was told I would not make it through the night.

3. Then I fell in love with the church. In Ephesians, Christ loved the church and gave himself for it as his bride.

I have goosebumps when I think about what God wants the church to be. I have laid down my life for the church.

I have been a pastor now for some 43 years, and one question still haunts me: Why is it that some churches at periods in their life can move ahead strongly? And then at other times seem to struggle and get stuck? Sometimes the energy of the spirit moves the kingdom ahead, and at other times—no matter what we try—it seems to be paralyzed.

There may be many reasons for that. I am aware that we are engaged in a spiritual battle, but I think there is one reason for which we have to bear responsibility.

Churches stall when individuals or groups within the church promote and push their own personal agenda, are unwilling to yield to a larger vision.

Perhaps we do have a personal project that we want to promote. There is an issue we want to c a m p a i g n f o r. T h e re i s s o m e p e r s o n a l undertaking that we think is more important than anything else, and we want it to be in the spotlight. There are times we may disagree with the direction of Council or pastors. There is a streak in all of us that wants to do our own thing.

There is a line in the book of Judges which is a prophetic word for our culture: and everyone did that which was right in their own sight. This kind of thinking leads to social anarchy in society and spiritual anarchy in the church.

When churches struggle to move forward, the most common cause is that people are not thinking and acting in unity. They are little more than an assortment of individuals, each trying to do their own thing. However, when churches are able to move forward, it is because people are willing to surrender their own agenda, their personal preferences, for a common goal and for a higher vision they believe is more important than their personal project. There is both submission to a common goal and synergy towards that goal.

When churches move forward, it is because people give up selfishness, thinking selfishly, acting selfishly, and they work together in unity.

We are taking something of a unique path through this warm letter that Paul wrote to the church in the Roman colony of Philippi. It is always seen as a letter of warmth and joy. The idea we are unpacking is that Paul writes this warm and joyful letter while he was actually under house arrest. He was a prisoner under house arrest, but remarkably free in his heart and mind.

The fragment of poetry I used last week says: Stone Walls do not a prison make Nor iron bars a cage.

This week, Philippians 2:1-11, and in it we will see how we can become trapped in the solitary confinement of selfishness. And more importantly, how we can escape from this solitary confinement of the soul.

I would like to take you through it in some detail. As you will see, it is a rich and deep passage.

We all desire, want healthy loving relationships, which means ones that are marked with honesty, authenticity, and sincerity. We want our church to move forward with love and a spirit of unity.

So Paul says in Phil 2:1: 1

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion.

Paul makes 4 statements. They each begin with the word “if…”, but the way in which they are written assumes the answer YES. They are not neutral or unbiased questions, they have an implicit answer which is YES.

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1. Is there encouragement in Christ? The implied response is: YES THERE IS! 2. Is there the reality of strengthening and comforting one another?

Again the implied answer is YES THERE IS! 3. Is there the fellowship/unity of the Spirit in the church?

YES THERE IS. We believe this to be true. We do not have to create the unity of the Spirit, and that is a gift of God to us, but we are responsible for its health.

4. Are there feelings of compassion and affection for one another? Do we feel the struggles that people are going through and want to reach out with help and support?

YES THERE ARE! Then says Paul, there is a conclusion to that, something should naturally flow from that.

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make my joy complete by being likeminded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

But we know that it is not automatic and sometimes is not easy. No matter how hard they try, no matter how loud they sing, churches can feel the pain of brokenness. They can go through periods where they are dysfunctional. They can wallow in ineffectiveness. There may be many reasons for this dysfunction in a church, but more often than not, when we worm our way into the centre and core of the problem, we will unearth selfishness in one form or another. We will find people who, in the nicest possible way, are simply trying to advance their own cause.

Even this almost perfect church in Philippi, despite Paul’s warm spirit towards them, everything is not ideal. We are given a hint of a relational struggle.

4:2 I plead with Eudoia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other…

That is Paul’s point in vs. 3-4.

3 Do

nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

He mentions several things that can lurk within each one of us, which can trap us in the prison of selfishness, and as a result bring unity to a halt.

1. Selfish ambition. The word originally meant a day labourer, someone who worked for the day, got his pay and went home. Then the word interestingly shifted its meaning and became associated with a politician who ran for political office, who made what we call campaign promises, who said anything that they had to say simply to get themselves elected. This became their motive.

It describes a picture of self-seeking ambition.

The only concern is: What’s in it for me? How do I promote my cause?

2. Self-importance. This is vain conceit. It is the desire for personal glory. This is when someone wants to make a name for themselves.

3. Self-interest. This is when we promote our personal agenda. The more we feed our own ego, relationships wither and die because transparency, sincerity and authenticity are replaced by manipulation, deception and malice.

This trinity of egotism, selfish ambition, selfimportance, self-interest, join forces to trap us in the prison of selfishness.

When we find our hearts and our hands chained by these fetters, can we ever find freedom from this prison of the soul?

We must read on in Philippians, we find the key that unlocks this prison and sets us free.

Paul then writes one of the most powerful and inspiring passages you will find anywhere, verse by verse, line by line, word by word. It paints a picture for us of our Lord. It contains some of the most important and crucial theological truths we need to know. It is an absolute pearl, a priceless treasure of a passage, but the reason for and the setting for this pearl is critical. Its primary purpose is not good theology, important as that is, but it is pastoral. It is speaking to us about how to think and how to live with each other.

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Your attitude, your mind, your way of thinking should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Here the Bible sets a basic truth before us. Our inner lives are always governed, always shaped and transformed by our thinking, what we think about and how we think about things.

Proverbs says in its timeless wisdom:

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As a person thinks in their heart, so they will become.

Today’s motivational speakers preach that simple truth. They moralize. If you want to change how you live, then change how you think and people pay big bucks to hear that. People drink it in as though so as to truth was innovative and groundbreaking. It is basic biblical living.

When we talk about “mind”, we are not talking about university degrees, or our IQ, or something intellectual. By mind or thinking we mean how all the silent and unconscious thoughts and perceptions, the world of ideas and thoughts, which silently and constantly shape and form our inner life, and so shape our outer world.

We must recognize the reality that ideas and thoughts are primarily the stronghold of evil in society and in our inner self. When Satan wanted to draw Eve away from God, he simply gave her an idea. The idea was that God could not be trusted. The idea did the rest of its deadly work in her mind.

I believe that at the core of the Christian life is the work of transformation: metamorphosis. This is essentially a process of recognizing the ideas and the system of evil that govern this present age.

We must identify them with ruthless honesty, and then we replace this system of thinking with the ideas and the system of thinking that Jesus embodied and taught.

Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed [metamorphosis] by the renewing of your mind.

This process of spiritual change/metamorphosis is one of progressively replacing those fallen and selfish ideas with the ideas and images that filled the mind and the heart of Christ himself. As we think about Christ, and as we move towards the mind of Christ in our lives, we are engaging in the total interchange, the replacement of our ideas and images with HIS ideas and images.

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attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: So how did Christ really think? What really shaped his mind? What ideas are close to his heart so that, as we eject wrong ideas from our thinking, we replace them with His ideas, and we

engage in this process of relational metamorphosis?

When we start to think like Jesus, we exchange self-ambition for mutual service. We give up the demand for our own rights.

Greek has two words for ‘form’: MORPHE which means the same inner essence SCHEMA which means the outer form, what we see 6 Who,

being in very nature [MORPHE] God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, Jesus was in the very nature God, the word is MORPHE, it means he shared the same essence of God. In other words Jesus was God, and so if anyone had the right to say he was God and to hold on to that equality, JESUS DID! But in an amazing way, he did not regard this equal status with God as something to be grasped and held onto with a clenched fist. In fact he was willing to let it go. He was willing to lay it aside in the same way he laid aside his robe and took a towel and a basin.

It is teaching us that Jesus had dealt with the question of EGO. The place where he had fought and won this battle was in the wilderness as he faced Satan. Satan tried to find some crack in his soul. Some Achilles heel. Some idea that would subvert his trust in God. An idea such as, surely you don’t think that we can trust God. Jesus did not hold the rights of being the first son of heaven in a clenched fist.

When we start to think like Jesus, we stop thinking in terms of rights—we start thinking in terms of how to serve.

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made himself nothing, taking the very nature [morphe] of a servant, being made in human likeness.

Nature of a servant. Again this word MORPHE. It means that being a servant was not an act. Being a servant was the true heart of Jesus. When he washed feet, it was not merely symbolic. It was not an act. He was revealing his true nature.

When we push for own agenda, when we campaign for our cause, when we push other people out of the way, we are denying our true nature in Christ. But when we release our selfish

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grip on things, and when we yield to the spirit of God in community, we are finding and displaying our true inner nature.

Whenever we take the role of a servant, we are thinking like Jesus. We are discovering our true inner nature, which we will never discover by pushing our own agenda. Our true inner self will only be discovered when we serve others. And when we start to think like this, we are engaging in metamorphosis. This invisible process of exchanging the fallen ideas of our culture and replacing them with the thinking of Jesus.

When we start to think like Jesus, we exchange the upward climb for downward mobility. Our natural drive for self-promotion is reversed.

Think of how our society thinks and works: 1.You’ve got to get ahead 2. Get to the top of the line 3. Look out for Number #1 This is all upward mobility. We are not just moving ahead, we are moving up!

In contrast it says of Jesus – “…he emptied himself.”

1. HE GAVE UP THE WEALTH AND RICHES OF HEAVEN 2 Corinthians 8:9: He who was rich became poor so that we through his poverty might become rich.

2. HE GAVE UP THE GLORY OF HEAVEN

of his society and ours, his thinking is not about getting ahead. It is not about getting to the front of the line. It is not about self-advancement and self-promotion. It is about stepping back. Actually it is about going to the end of the line.

Whenever we choose the path of humility, we are thinking like Jesus.

Whenever we take the path of obedience, we are thinking like Jesus.

He became obedient to death, and if you can imagine it, death on a cross!

When we say we want to start to think like Jesus, we had better be careful because it will change everything about how we think and how we live.

But what happened to his grand objective of saving the world?

What about OUR plans? What is to happen to OUR agenda if we think like that?

When we start to think like Jesus, we exchange control for trust. We are prepared to trust God to bring about his results, in his way, and in his time.

One of the reasons we lobby and push for our own agenda to get to the top of the list, when we campaign for our project, is that we simply do not trust other people to respond to what we think is important. We want control. We want our agenda met in our way and in our time.

In contrast, Jesus submitted his agenda into the hands of people who arrested him and orchestrated a plan to execute him, and as he did this, he was trusting God. Remember what Jesus said: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. He trusted himself fully and in every way to God.

John 17:4: Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world began

So Philippians 2:9 says:

3. HE GAVE UP HIS OWN INDEPENDENCE AND WILL

There is just a hint in the words that when God intervened and brought Christ out of death and hell. The glory to which he was returned was in some unfathomable way. Actually higher than what he had when he left heaven to come to earth. Jesus received more then he had before he came to earth. And whatever that was, it came about because he was willing to trust God with his life and what happened to it.

Hebrews 5:8: He learned obedience through the things he suffered.

It is the reversal of the normal way of thinking. The life of Jesus turns everything upside down. It puts everything in reverse order. He thought differently about everything. The first would be last and the last would become first.

When we say that we want to start to think like Jesus, we need to be careful. Because how Jesus thought about everything was the reverse

“….But God highly exalted him.”

When we start to think like Jesus, it means we are taking the idea that we have to control everything. We have to be in command of all that happens, including the timing. And we are

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replacing our need for control with trusting God to do what He wants in His timing. This is what Jesus prayed in the garden. Not my will be done, but your will…It is a prayer of trust.

To start to think like Jesus is to allow God to step into the process and direct what is to happen. It means we take our hands off the steering wheel.

We allow God to run things. And to our amazement, we may actually find if we will do this, that the results God brings about may in fact be greater than would have happened if we had stayed in charge trying to control people and things with our grubby fingers. We will also find that his timing is perfect!

1 Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

It is saying: I will take my hands of this issue. I will surrender to God’s will, to God’s agenda, to God’s timing. That is how Jesus thought. And when we start to think like Jesus, we will start to think like that.

As we think about Christ, and as we move towards the mind of Christ in our lives, we are engaging in a life of total interchange. The complete and total replacement of our ideas and images with HIS ideas and images.

The process of spiritual change is one of progressively replacing those fallen and selfish ideas of our culture that so easily seep their way into our minds. Thoughts of selfish ambition, ideas of self-importance, an agenda of selfadvancement, and exchanging them with the ideas and images that filled the mind and the heart of Christ himself.

This is freedom from the prison of selfishness.

So we come to this table, remembering the mind and attitude Jesus had in the garden in the shadow of the cross. Luke, Father if you are willing, take this cup from me, but not my will but your will be done.

That is the mind of Jesus for us this morning.

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