3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. 4 Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. -- Philippians 2:3-4
We > me (Philippians 2:3-4)
Philippians 2:3-4 is a command for Christians to embrace a posture of humility. Have you ever met a truly humble person? What were they like? How did they make you feel? On the other hand, have you ever met a prideful or arrogant person? What were they like? How did they make you feel?
With that in mind, we look at God's word in verses 3-4, where selfishness and conceit is rebuked and humility is commanded. Paul tells the Church at Philippi and the Spirit tells us today to:
- Do nothing out of SELFISH AMBITION
- Do nothing out of CONCEIT
Pauls command here is strong...The Christian is to do nothing for selfish gain or to appear a certain way. No instagram post, no community service, no sermon, no generosity, not a single thing is to be done to promote ourselves. This is a challenging command from the Scriptures. The call of the Christian is to remove ourselves from the center of the story and place Jesus there.
Preoccupation with oneself is sin.
Paul then pivots in verse 3 and gives us a positive command. Instead of living out of selfish ambition or conceit, we are to adopt the posture of humility and "consider others as more important than ourselves." What a countercultural posture...every person we meet we are meant to consider them as more important than us. This is a surprisingly freeing reality. We no longer have to make every moment about us, instead we make every moment about Christ and others.
We don't focus on being interesting, we focus on being interested.
We don't focus on being impressive, because we're impressed by Christ.
The posture we are commanded to take in this passage is not one of self-hatred, but one of humility which we do not point to ourselves but we point to Christ.
God has called us to walk in the light, not the spotlight. - Dr. Michael Svigel
Today, may we walk in light of Jesus, not the spotlight as we point to Him in every single thing that we do. Let's be Game Changers.
