The Attitude of Joy

Philippians 1:21 is a beautiful verse, and one that many Christians commit to memory. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” In addition to the beautiful grammatical parallelism in that verse, and in addition to its brevity, the profundity of that verse also makes it an oft-quoted verse in churches around the world. But do we realize what that verse is really saying? Do we think about its meaning? Do we meditate on its truth and internalize it? In writing a commentary on Philippians 1:18-26, I could not devote a disproportionate section to this one verse, and so I include it here, in an excursus. Philippians 1:21 teaches us believers to have the attitude of joy.

God’s Glory in Salvation

On July 24, I preached a sermon on 1 Timothy 1:12-17 at Jimmie Hale Mission in downtown Birmingham, AL. As with my posted outline of my sermon on 1 Timothy 1:1-11, below is an outline of this sermon on 1 Timothy 1:12-17. You can listen to this sermon at mypodcast.com.

Christian Fellowship as a Reason for Joy

In Philippians 1:15-17, Paul admits to the Philippians that although “most of the brothers … are much more bold to speak the word without fear,” some of these Christians preach from impure motives. In v. 18, Paul closes the previous section of the letter and transitions into the next. Paul asks a rhetorical question, “What then?” in response to the fact that some Christians were preaching Christ out of “envy and rivalry” with Paul. Rather than rejecting these erring brothers, Paul resolves to rejoice that “whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.”

Philippians 1:12-18 reveals that Paul rejoices at gospel proclamation even when it is proclaimed at personal cost. However, those verses do not answer why Paul rejoices in the midst of his sufferings. Verses 19-26 do answer this question, and Paul’s answer is simple: the joy of Christian fellowship enables him to rejoice in Christ Jesus (and the gospel) even as he suffers both in prison and at the hands of envious evangelists.

Sacred Sandwiches, Batman!

Yes, you read right. Both alliteration and a corny superhero reference are in the title of today’s post. There is a wonderful website called “The Sacred Sandwich.” It’s a fictional “illustrated journal for small town Christians in the big bad world.” I discovered this website last week and was rolling in my chair laughing. On their introductory page, The Sacred Sandwich writes:

Scripture is the vital staple God has prepared for His people.  Therefore the mission of The Sacred Sandwich is two-fold.  First, we desire to use this publication to proclaim sola Scriptura: the “shorthand” declaration that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is the only basis of truth for the Lord’s people in the Church.  Second, and more pointedly, we desire to present faithful, consistent exegesis of Scripture as a powerful and irrefutable response to much of the current error being taught in the church today.

This website is hilariously funny. Don’t get me wrong; it presents solid stuff … but often in a satirical way. One of my favorite articles postulates the types of responses Paul’s Letter to the Galatians would receive if it were published in Christianity Today. I harbor no ill will toward Christianity Today (I even linked to one of their excellent articles in a recent post), and to my knowledge, neither does The Sacred Sandwich. If anything, these supposed readers’ responses to Galatians is an indictment against us present Christians who put unity and love (though both important) over faithfulness to the gospel. Here’s one such fictitious modern reader’s response to Galatians:

Dear Christianity Today:

The fact that Paul Apostle brags about his public run-in with Peter Cephas, a well-respected leader and brother in Christ, exposes Mr. Apostle for the divisive figure that he has become in the Church today. His diatribe against the Galatian church is just more of the same misguided focus on an antiquated reliance on doctrine instead of love and tolerance. Just look how his hypercritical attitude has cast aspersions on homosexual believers and women elders! The real problem within the Church today is not the lack of doctrinal devotion, as Apostle seems to believe, but in our inability to be transformed by our individual journeys in the Spirit. Evidently, Apostle has failed to detach himself from his legalistic background as a Pharisee, and is unable to let go and experience the genuine love for Christ that is coming from the Galatians who strive to worship God in their own special way.

William Zenby; Richmond, VA

As mentioned before, this is satire. But that “contemporary” (albeit fictitious) disdain for the epistle of Galatians says many things that many professing Christians would agree with. Let us examine ourselves: are we really following the Bible? Or are we conforming to a world that we’re not even of anymore?

You can read that whole article at http://sacredsandwich.com/archives/2781.

You can read all articles (and view all funny pictures) at http://sacredsandwich.com.

Use the Law in Love

On July 11, I preached a sermon from 1 Timothy 1:1-11 at Calvary Baptist Church in Fayette, AL. I am very grateful to Pastor Blake Thompson and the people at Calvary for giving me the opportunity to preach there again. In recent months, my pulpit notes have moved from blocks of text to a one-page outline. Below is an abridged outline similar to the one I used from the pulpit while preaching through 1 Timothy 1:1-11. You can listen to my sermon at mypodcast.com.

Rejoicing at the Gospel Proclaimed in Philippians 1:12-18

“Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” This is the central thought of Philippians 1:12-18. As Paul writes this epistle to the Philippians, he is imprisoned at Rome, which the letter itself implies (1:13, 4:22). The possibility of Paul’s imminent death while imprisoned (1:20) would also implicate Rome as the location of Paul’s imprisonment. The textual implications (along with an early tradition) far outweigh the modern conjectures that Paul wrote this letter elsewhere. From a Roman imprisonment, then, Paul writes to his “partners in the gospel” at Philippi who would naturally be concerned with whether the gospel was spreading in Rome despite Paul’s imprisonment. In 1:12-18, Paul reveals that his imprisonment has actually led to the great progress of the gospel because “most of the brothers … are much more bold to speak the word without fear.”

Nevertheless, Paul goes on to admit that some of these evangelists are envious of Paul and “proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.” Despite their impure motives, however, these evangelists proclaim a true gospel, and because their gospel is true, Paul rejoices and affirms “Yes, and I will rejoice.”

Crying Out in the Silence

Before reading my blog post (click “read more…”), please read Dr. Moore’s article for Christianity Today.

Expressions of Joy from Philippians 1:1-11

I encourage you to read Philippians 1:1-11 before reading my commentary so that you may be “examining the Scriptures … to see if these things [are] so” (Acts 17:11).

These verses of Philippians serve as the letter’s introduction. In these verses, Paul follows his standard introductory formula for his epistles by opening with a greeting, thanksgiving, and prayer. Paul’s expressions of joy, however, do not merely model different ways that we can express joy; more importantly, these expressions of joy teach us to glorify God by basing our joy in Him.

Feminism Kills

Last week, Dr. Mohler posted a blog about one feminist’s (sinfully) logical stance against abortion. In the June 30th (2010) edition of the London Times, Antonia Senior wrote an article entitled “Yes, Abortion Is Killing. But It’s the Lesser Evil.” She writes:

What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition, a fetus is a life by any subjective measure. My daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person-forged in my womb, not by my mothering.

This is a nice admission. What comes immediately after is even better: “Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life.” I wish Ms. Senior’s article had ended there. That would’ve been a nice ending, a liberal feminist’s admission that abortion is indeed “the action of taking a life,” which is simply euphemistic for murder. But sadly, her article does not end there. Note Ms. Senior’s conclusion: there is an attempt “to decouple feminism from abortion rights,” but

you cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control. The single biggest factor in women’s liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology. Abortion would have been legal for millennia had it been men whose prospects and careers were put on sudden hold by an unexpected pregnancy. The mystery pondered on many a girls night out is how on earth men, bless them, managed to hang on to political and cultural hegemony for so long. The only answer is that they are not in hock to their biology as much as we are. Look at a map of the world and the right to abortion on request correlates pretty exactly with the expectation of a life unburdened by misogyny.

As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil. The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.

Yes. Let it shock you. Read that last paragraph I quoted one more time. I wish your eyes were deceiving you, but they’re not. This woman, who mere paragraphs ago admitted that abortion is “the action of taking life,” that life is indeed “formed at conception,” concluded her article by justifying the “taking [of the] life” of “nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year” as “the lesser evil” when compared to the supposed evil of women being prevented from usurping the “political and cultural hegemony” of men. She concludes that it is a lesser evil to no longer be “in hock to [her] biology” than it is to allow “nearly 200,000 … babies” to be aborted yearly in the UK alone! This is not biblical. The Ten Commandments forbid murder, and Jesus goes further to equate abusive language to murder! Yet this woman would rather have unborn children murdered than see women’s attempts to usurp the “political and cultural hegemony” of men foiled! Her willingness to “kill for” women’s rights is highly disturbing and highly unbiblical, not only because it defies the laws against murder but also because it defies God’s high calling for women.

Homosexuality

In my recent post (and page) announcing my upcoming series on Philippians, I briefly mentioned that I had “only one special post idea left.” This was that only remaining special topic (that I already had in mind that) I hadn’t yet gotten around to. Is it controversial? Yes, but it bears discussing. Homosexuality is a hot-button issue (as is abortion—which will be the next special post), but it’s an issue the Bible addresses, not just in Leviticus but also in the New Testament. The whole Bible is breathed out by God and is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). “All Scripture” includes passages like Romans 1:24-27, which reveal that

God gave them [idolaters, see vv. 18-23] up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Now, in later verses Paul does go on to list other sins that God “gave [sinful people] up to,” but the first sin resulting from blatant idolatry that Paul mentions is homosexuality: “women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.” Not only did women do this, but men also “were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” You may say, “Jordan, that passage is fine and everything. But new scientific studies show that some people are born that way; it’s natural.” In which case, you miss the point. The whole created world has been tainted by sin; as Paul later writes in Romans 8:19-22, the whole

creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

“But Jordan,” you may argue, “surely two people’s love for each other can’t be sinful! How can love be a sin?” All of creation has been tainted by sin. And because of sin, “God gave [certain people] up to dishonorable passions,” namely, homosexuality. “How can a loving God do this?” you ask. People are sinners by nature. People choose sin, God does not actively will people to sin. For God to “give them up to dishonorable passions” is the same thing as it is for God to harden Pharaoh’s heart. Romans 9 speaks of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, but at the same time, Pharaoh himself also hardened his own heart. People choose to sin; and homosexuality is but one of the sins that are of “dishonorable passions.”

“But Jordan,” you say, “they love each other! Why can’t they marry?” Not only does God condemn homosexuality clearly in passages like Romans 1, but God also upholds the created design for marriage (between one man and one woman for a lifetime) in passages like Ephesians 5:31-33. In this passage, as Paul lays out his explanation of what a Christian marriage should look like, he bases his argument on the original (sinless) creation of man and woman:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Just as an abusive husband or unsubmissive wife betrays the “mystery” of “Christ and the church,” so do homosexual unions betray the mystery of Christ and the church. Just as premarital heterosexual sex sins against God’s perfect created order, so does all homosexual sex sins against God’s perfect created order.