Philippians 2:1-4
Count Others More Important
1Therefore if you have any encouragement in Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and compassion,
2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being united in spirit and purpose.
3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves.
4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Berean Standard Bible
He begins with four ifs, and none of the four is a doubt.
Therefore if you have any encouragement in Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and compassion,
He is not checking whether they have any of that. He is stacking it up, the way you pile stones before you lean something against them. If any of this is real for you, and he takes it as read that it is, then what comes next follows out of it.
What comes next is that they would make his joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being united in spirit and purpose. He writes that from custody. Something is still missing from his happiness, he tells them, and it is not the key to the door. It is them, agreeing with each other. He says it four ways over, which is how a person talks when the thing matters and no single phrase will carry it.
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty pride, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves.
Empty pride is a good phrase for it. Pride with nothing behind it, taking up room in a conversation or a family or a church that you have done nothing to earn. And consider is a thinking word. It is not a feeling that turns up one morning and settles the matter, but a judgment somebody makes on purpose, before he knows whether he wants to. And he does not stop at equal. He says more important than yourselves. Then he says what all of it looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.
Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Look is about where a person's attention goes. Not what he feels about somebody, and not what he says about them. And the word only is doing quiet work in that sentence, because he never tells them to ignore what they need. He tells them not to stop there. Their own concerns stay on the list and lose the right to be the whole list.
Which leaves an instruction small enough to actually carry out. Find out what somebody else is carrying, and then care about it as though it had been handed to you.
How We Know
Verse 2 asks for one mind and one purpose, and later in the same letter the problem has names on it.
Philippians 4:2 urges Euodia and Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. Paul names them, in a letter that will be read out to everybody.
So the appeal in chapter 2 has at least one concrete setting in that room. The letter does not say the two women are the reason he wrote verse 2, and it never says what they disagreed about.
Questions
1 Think of somebody you find hard to be around. What would be different tomorrow if you decided to put them first, without waiting to feel any warmer toward them?
AnswerThat is the thing Paul asks for, and he does not wait for anybody's mood to improve first. Consider is a thinking word, a judgment made deliberately. The deciding comes first, and the feeling either catches up later or it does not.
2 Paul begins with four ifs. Is he unsure whether they have those things?
AnswerNo, he is stacking them up rather than doubting them: encouragement in Christ, comfort from love, fellowship with the Spirit, affection and compassion. If any of that is real, and he takes it as real, then what follows is the answer to it.
3 What does Paul say would finish off his joy?
AnswerNot getting out of prison. That they would be like-minded, with the same love, united in spirit and purpose. He is in chains and tells them the missing piece of his happiness is sitting in their hands.
4 Does he tell them to ignore their own interests?
AnswerNo. He says not only your own interests. Their concerns are allowed on the list, and they are not allowed to be the whole of it. The instruction is to find out what somebody else is carrying and care about that too.
What This Means for Us
Therefore is the load-bearing word here. Everything Paul asks for in verses 2 to 4 hangs off the four things he names in verse 1: encouragement in Christ, comfort from His love, fellowship with the Spirit, affection and compassion. He is not calling for more resolve out of a church under pressure. He is telling them what they have already been given, and then asking them to spend some of it.
Which is why he can skip the feeling. Considering somebody more important than yourself is a judgment made on purpose, and it can be made today, about a particular name, by a person who does not like them one bit more than he did this morning, because what it draws on is not his own goodwill.
So pick whoever in this house is hardest to prefer at the moment and make one decision in their favor before the warmth shows up. Small is fine. And make it out of what Christ has already handed this family rather than out of whatever is left of your patience.
Prayer
Father, we wait to feel generous before we act generous, and then we never feel it. Give us the will to decide well about people while the feeling is still missing. Make us the kind of family where somebody's interests are safe in somebody else's hands. Amen.