Paul gives an overview of the life to which Christ calls us here and hereafter.  Jesus speaks of himself as the way to the hereafter.  Paul calls us to be mindful of The Day (1:6, 1:10, 2:16, etc.).  He labors, prays, and suffers to help us to get to that day, blameless: having lived for the sake of the Gospel.  For God’s sake, live for that.  There’s nothing better to live for.  Living to serve others, loving others will get us nowhere.  Live to serve and love others for God’s sake.  Put Christ first, and the Spirit will get everything else in its proper place.

          “Join together in following my example” (3:17).  Paul is writing under arrest, suffering for the sake of the Gospel, the faithfulness that puts Christ first.  If Paul would just let that go, turn away, go another direction, he would be set free, he could be at peace with the powers and ways of the world.  Is that so hard to do?  Why live opposed to this age?  The world is big.  The powers of this world are big and so real!  Just be a good person.  Go along to get along.

          That’s not the example Paul sets.  It’s not the way his Savior and Lord showed him.  Paul doesn’t want to attain the world; he doesn’t seek the praise of those who have power in this world.  Paul wants “to know Christ,” “to know the power of his resurrection” (3:10).  The power of Christ’s resurrection is eternal life in the hereafter about which Christ spoke openly and often.  The power of Christ’s resurrection is the mystery of transformation in this life, being mended and amended by the Holy Spirit: resurrection power puts us back together.  Christ’s resurrection power is his salvation power, that changes hearts.  Christ’s resurrection power grows the love that grows the knowledge and insight that grows the fruitfulness that Paul calls a life lived “worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27).  Such a life will be counted as blameless—nothing to reproach—on the Day of Christ.  The Bible speaks of it, plainly and often.  We affirm the reality of that day.

          Pursue and cherish unity.  Our unity aims us toward a life worthy of the Gospel.  Our unity is not something we give one another; unity is God’s gift.  Togetherness, like salvation, is always a work in progress.  We work out our togetherness as we work out our salvation, “with fear and trembling” (2:12), knowing, with wonder and the keenest sense of need, that, as we turn to God more completely, we more completely know His power at work in us “to will and to act [. . .] to fulfill His good purpose” (2:13).  God fosters in us a shared spirit of perseverance.  We can be active participants in this holy work, or we can hold out, go another way, conjure our own truth.  Plenty do.  They don’t seem to be any happier or sadder than us.

          The Spirit so arranges things that, as we go together, we grow together; Paul knows this and urges us to join together with him in living our faith following his example.  He follows Jesus Christ, who called him out of the darkness of the road Paul was pursuing, called Paul into light, salvation, and the true love of God.  Oh, Paul had been convinced the way he had been pursuing was the way of love for God.  How wrong he had been!  How could he have been so blind?  He grew up among the blind, was schooled in the ways of blindness.  He loved and sought blindness, and blindness rewarded him, praised him.  Have you ever seen someone slip away from you, no matter the depth of your love, watched him slip away, her, despite your best efforts to provide a good example?  It makes me wonder how Jesus felt, among us, here.

          Keep your eyes on me, Paul is saying, because I’m keeping my eyes on Christ Jesus, and I’m not letting what I’m going through for him cause me to look to anyone or anything else for relief, freedom, reward, or praise.  “[K]eep your eyes on those who live as we do” (3:17).  Who are you keeping your eyes on?  Who is helping you to see the way forward, the way to Christ? 

          Paul and those who live as he does value Christ above all.  It’s not easy.  This life makes many demands of us, lays many claims upon us.  We can become distracted; it doesn’t take much for us to take our eyes off the way.  Mature disciples know they are becoming better at valuing Christ above all, despite the distractions, amid the distractions.  Mature disciples are committed to living out the radical message of God’s love.  They’re living for that radical message, according to that radical message, more and more.  There is progress and joy in the faith.  Though it can be sudden, it isn’t immediate; mostly it’s slow and it’s steady.

          What is the radical message of God’s love?  It’s something we can embody in our lives here and now.  It changes us and has the power to bring change in the lives of others, too.  We ongoingly learn just what this radical message of God’s love is as we pursue the example of Paul and those who live like him.  We can also get the message radically wrong as we progressively stray from their example.

          Some take it as self-evident that this message is love for neighbor: love that asks no questions, has no expectations, love that, above all, does not judge.  Only, the heart always does, judge: yes, no; good, not good; true, not true; to be desired, not to be desired; the way, not the way.  The heart always does judge.  How?  By what standard?  What is the radical message of God’s love?  What is it for?  Who can tell us?  Might I suggest that the Bible can be of help?  We hear this word radical; perhaps it conjures images of young people wearing bandanas and black clothing, marching somewhere, fists in the air, or of aging hippies, waxing nostalgic as they lecture our children in university classrooms.  Radical, activist.

          The root of the word, however, is much deeper.  Radical means root.  What is the root message of God’s love?  Welcome?  Inclusion?  Partly, but there’s more to it.  Jesus Christ—the love of God, the Word of God; God is love, so His Word is the Word of love.  Love is one of the biggest mysteries!  It has something to do with attraction, something to do with reaching us in that place in our heart that we’ve reserved, maybe without even knowing it, reserved only for the one who loves us best, most.  Jesus says the greatest love is the love of God.  Jesus shows it, too.  The love of God is the origin and destination of our life, in Christ.

          The way to God is love.  The way to God is obedience, which Christ calls faithfulness.  Love has expectations and standards.  Love looks like something.  We flatter ourselves that it looks like us; we couldn’t be more wrong.  Being broken, our love is broken; we break the covenant of love.  A covenant establishes a standard and expects obedience, faithfulness.  Love never looks like us, for we are not obedient, not of ourselves, not apart from Christ.  We are broken, stained, cracked.  Our hope is Christ, Christ the love of God, Christ the Word of God.  Christ is “obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (2:8).

          As Paul urges us to follow the example of those who live like him, he warns us that there is a way to love your neighbor and lose your life.  “As I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ” (3:18).  He isn’t talking only about those outside: this is why he warns us with tears.  Enemies of the cross of Christ do not consider themselves enemies of Christ.  Far from it!  They see themselves as allies.  They hear Christ’s call to love neighbor, and they respond Yes!  They hear Christ’s words against judging, and they respond Yes!  They hear Christ’s words about the reward of heaven, and they respond Who knows?  They hear Christ’s words about the punishment of hell, and they respond Oh come on!  They hear the voices in the Bible say Christ atones and it all seems very mysterious, unintelligible, even unreasonable, so they don’t listen; they turn their attention elsewhere, to what they love, to what matters to them: the radical message of love as they understand it.

          They are allies of Christ and enemies of the cross of Christ.  The faith that isn’t.  The obedience that’s not.  Paul often warns about this, not just here.  To be an enemy of the cross of Christ is to refuse to believe anything good happens there; it’s just where Jesus died in a barbaric, inhumane way: just the sort of thing the unenlightened do to those who follow the radical way of love.  “[T]he message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18).  The cross—the power of God.  Mysterious, yes.  Unintelligible?  Unreasonable?  We live as disciples, striving to follow the example of Paul and those who live like him, following Jesus Christ to know him and the power of his resurrection, power that promises life eternal and a radical change of life here.  The cross reshapes our lives, imparts its shape to our lives.

          The life of a disciple takes its shape from Christ, crucified and risen.  What is the cross for?  Paul tells us plainly in Colossians and in 2 Corinthians: reconciliation between God and man.  Reconciliation is a radical act of love.  To be an enemy of the cross, then, to deny that the cross has any significance, to say, rather, that all the significance of Christ, his real significance, is in his life on earth, his compelling character, is to deny the reconciliation Scripture tells us God made with man, in Christ, at the cross.  Where there is no reconciliation, there is wrath, there is judgment.  The Day is then a day of woe, not a day of wonder and joy.    

          “Their destiny is destruction,” Paul tells us (3:19).  Scripture is plain: people do not all have the same destination.  This is not a pleasant fact, and it is a fact of the faith, a fact of God’s radical love.  Paul laments those whose “god is their stomach” (3:19).  While there is a specific context for why Paul writes to the Philippians, the application of his words is much wider and enduring.  What we crave we serve.  It matters, then, what we crave.  Apart from Christ, we crave what cannot bring us life.  In Christ, we crave holiness: the radical love of God.

          Paul laments those who serve their cravings rather than Christ: “their glory is their shame” (3:19).  Does anyone glory in what is shameful?  Yes, if they don’t realize it is, if they do not see it that way.  Blindness.  Paul knows all about blindness.  He certainly knows that enemies of the cross of Christ boast most happily in what ought rather to cause them greatest shame: whatever we might have counted to our credit is garbage, compared to Christ.  My intelligence.  My talent.  My virtue.  My values.  My compassion.  My accomplishments.  My education.  My pedigree.  My goals.  My intentions.  And so on.  Isaiah, long ago, wrote “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, / who put darkness for light and light for darkness, / who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. / Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight” (Is 5:20-21).  But who does that?  Those who don’t know any better.  Those who prefer to go another way, receiving what the age calls truth or conjuring their own.  Proverbs tells us “The way of fools seems right to them” (Pr 12:15), that “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” (Pr 14:12, 16:25).

          A fellow pastor shared a post from ProgressiveChristianity.org.  The gist was this: “the message of Christianity isn’t about eternal reward or punishment.  It’s about the radical message of God’s love which we can embody in our lives here and now.”  Partly right and so wrong.  Here and now.  Heaven, hell, who knows?  Does it matter?  Paul warns us against those whose minds are “set on earthly things” (3:19).  Things of here and now.  We’ve heard that warning before: “Get behind me, Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (Mt 16:23).  Elsewhere, Paul urges, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col 3:2).

          We set our mind on things above as we pursue the example set for us by Paul, following Christ.  Christ came for reconciliation between God and man.  He accomplished it upon the cross.  Those who have faith in this reconciliation will have life everlasting: the fullness of reconciliation with God.  Honoring Christ’s compelling character does not require faith, just imitation.  Imitation is not faith.  The Spirit causes faith in us: not regard for Christ’s character but faith in the saving reconciliation he won for us through his sacrificial death on the cross.  God’s love, like God, is supernatural: it has power to reach the most sacred places in our heart.  Jesus knocks there not for you to come out and imitate him but for you to let him in, to sit with you, be with you, to rejoice there, together, forever.

          The way of faithfulness is the way of love—not our conjured words about love but God’s Word of love.  Love others, for God’s sake!  “[O]ur citizenship is in heaven” (3:20).  There is the Christian’s country; there is our true home.  Citizenship has to do with belonging, with enjoying full benefits and privileges.  Where do you want to belong?  What benefits and privileges do you seek?  The world holds out belonging; the benefits and privileges are quite attractive, until God opens your eyes, and you see what garbage it is compared to Christ. 

          Paul and those who live as he does “eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3:20).  We eagerly await the Day.  Everlasting life in the presence of God is not a reward, no reward for anything we have done—we do not look to our works.  We look to Christ, who perfects our fellowship with our Father in heaven.  Everlasting life is the perfection of fellowship with God.  When we know Christ rather than imitate Jesus we come to know the power of his resurrection and we attain the resurrection, in Christ.

          Jesus is exercising his power, his blessed ability “to bring everything under his control” (3:21).  Christ is exercising his kingship, about which we rarely reflect but which we feel.  It is not the power of his example that transforms us but his resurrection power, by which he “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (3:21).  All mysterious, beyond our experience, yet within our grasp, in Christ.  We are awaiting the Day of Christ.  Live, serve, love here and now with hearts looking to that day.  We are being perfected for fulness of fellowship with our Father in heaven, perfected for life.  When Paul says, “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21), he has this transformation also in view.  Paul wants to lead us into the mystery, the holy wonder, the sacred awe, of knowing Christ and having him in us.  Truly, we are preparing and being prepared for something much bigger than any of us can imagine.

          We do not get ourselves there.  Christ, in the power of the Spirit, does.  “[S]tand firm in the Lord” (4:1).  If all discipleship means is finding the character of Jesus compelling, then, indeed, stand firm with the Lord.  Paul, though, does not urge us to stand with the Lord.  He urges us to stand firm in the Lord.  That can only be done by faith.  Great is the mystery of faith: as great, and as deep, as the mystery of love.  They are the same mystery.

          And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.