Standing Firm in One Spirit, Philippians, 1:27-28
Philippians 1:27-28 · Vern Peterman · May 25, 2003
Philippians (2003), No. 18
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262255472316

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. As Hal mentioned, we've got a lot of people traveling, coming and going. They would ordinarily be here and are gone because of the holiday weekend, or in some cases, you may have guests here, and that's great. Before we go into the passages, a couple of things I want to bring up.

Here we have the mikveh bath. I see up on the upper left-hand corner and on the day of Pentecost recorded in Acts chapter 2, you know there aren't any rivers right there in Jerusalem immediately available and so you may wonder where they get baptized. They had these baths and they had a number of them, kind of all in a row, it was an area just south of the temple, okay, and so when when the apostles would talk about, okay, let's go ahead and baptize these, they had 3,000 converts, and so it wasn't a, boy, this is going to take days, because they had a number of these right there together, they could have a number of people being baptized all at once. These mikvah baths held about 200 gallons each.

Also in Jerusalem, they have this room here Tradition, we're not able to confirm it absolutely, but tradition has it that this room that's pictured here on the right side in front of you here, is the room where the Lord's Last Supper took place, and where the Day of Pentecost took place, where the Holy Spirit was introduced to the Church.

And why do I bring this up? You might think, Vern, what are you doing? The reason I want to bring this up is this next Sunday night we're going to be having Lord's Table and baptism. But we're not going to go to Jerusalem. We're going to do it here. So I just want to bring that up. Six o'clock next Sunday night.

And we let folks know if you have not been baptized and are interested in doing so, see myself, Hal, or Mike, and we'll talk with you about that and follow through as the case seems to fit. All right, let's move into this Philippians passage. It's Philippians 1, 27 and 28 here. Just two verses, but boy, I have to tell you, I started looking at this and I kept, about the middle of the week, I kept thinking, boy, when's Sunday going to come?

Because I just, I saw this and I said, this is so packed with neat stuff. that I just couldn't wait to show you. But anyway, I made it through. We're here. So anyway, let's read through it here. Hal read it for us, but I want to make sure we zero in on what's in these two verses. Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel, No way alarmed by your opponents, which is a sign of destruction for them But as salvation for you and that too from God Okay One of the things that it's important to keep in front of us as we as we look at scripture We want to understand this is God's inspired word. It's not up to us to just sort of inject meaning or say oh Boy, what do you think it means, okay? We need to understand what is God saying, and so we go through really some basic principles as to how that's done. As we brought up here before, the three steps are observe, interpret, and apply. Those are the three steps. Sounds simple, right? Piece of cake. But what we have to do is be thorough with each step.

Today, there is so much such richness in this particular pair of verses that I want to make sure that we keep our eyes focused on the full scope of what is in them. In this case, we want to particularly observe because that's where we're going to draw out the richness. We want to take that first step and do it full well and full right here.

We're going to observe elements of language. And one of the things you notice here, this is the first couple of verses of the book of Philippians from the oldest entire collection of the New Testament books that we have available. And what we do though is we look at language, and that means we look at the context, we look at grammar and structure, and we look at the meanings of individual words. We do that carefully. The next thing that we do is we look at the history. Of course, we've seen this picture, and some of you, if you've taken advantage of the cover sheet binder where we've got this picture of looking down on the middle of Philippi here, we get a sense of what history has come about to bring it to that point.

Having a better understanding of that history gives us the insight into these verses. The next thing is the culture, and we know from our prior study of this book that there is, in spite of the fact that it's in a Greek-speaking area, it's a Roman colony, powerfully Roman, very Roman. And as we go through these verses, Paul is going to use unique words, he's going to use words that have tremendous imagery, in order to bring these truths forth to these people in Philippi. And as I went through it, I was going, wow, this is phenomenal.

So I want you to see the wow and the phenomenal, okay? Okay. Here's Philippi, and this is on your handout. It's also on a prior handout back in January, but I didn't expect for you to remember it. So I'm going to go over it again. It was established as a Roman colony about 30 BC under Caesar Augustus. Okay?

So here's this Roman colony. And Roman soldiers and officials were transplanted there, saying, OK, you're going here. And so their idea was, you are going to be a little Rome. You're going to represent Rome in every fiber in this area. And so we want to establish Rome here in this city. And so that's what Philippi was to represent.

Roman colonies had special advantages. And that was to attract them to be there and make it valuable for them to be there and underscore that they were Romans. It was different. Believe me, the Romans were big on collecting taxes, so this was a special privilege. Now, one of the things that comes out powerfully in chapter 16 of Acts, remember we studied through that back in January. Chapter 16 of Acts keeps saying again and again that being Roman was central to the thinking.

Even this weekend as we say, okay, this is Memorial Day, it isn't just time to just remember a bunch of stuff, is it? It's time to remember of those in our own nation who gave themselves, okay, as a sacrifice for our freedoms, okay? And so it's specific, isn't it? We look at that very specifically. The same thing with these people, although they don't have the heritage that we do, The same thing with these people, when they think of who am I, they think we're Romans, and they've got that front and center in their thinking.

Acts 16.12 underscores it here. Here in Philippi, and Luke writes it out, and he uses this word colony, the only place in the New Testament where he does so is a Roman colony, okay? He identifies that. Just down a few verses later, what does he do?

These people in Philippi are beginning to object to Paul and Silas, and they're saying, these guys are Jews, and that's really running against our culture because we're Romans! To them, boy, that was front and center. When they wake up in the morning, when they breathe, when they eat, they're Romans through and through. That's their mindset. As you go through this farther on in the passage, here's Paul, he comes back to them, and he says, by the way, we need to tell you, you folks didn't bother to ask, We may be Jews, but we are also legally Roman citizens. Well, that got their attention.

And by the end, the magistrates and the policemen were rather fearful because they had gone without asking questions, they'd gone and whipped and jailed Roman citizens. And if Paul and Silas wanted to press it, that's a capital offense. Serious. Why? Because being Roman was very Very central to their thinking. Being Roman was legally well-established and well-protected.

Now, this even underscores, and I was amazed, I just encountered this this last week here. Here is a coin commemorating the Roman soldiers in Philippi. And it was in circulation at the time of Paul's visit and at the time he was writing this letter. So here's a letter. Paul himself may even have seen coins like this as he went about the city. Certainly the people in Philippi that he was writing to used these very coins.

But it underscores the point. Here they're saying let's make a special coin to underscore, to reinforce the idea that these Roman citizens and Roman soldiers especially in Philippi are real valuable and important to us. So this coin is one of the messages that the Roman government would use to reinforce, you guys are Romans, that's great.

Now, let's look at some key words. This is one I looked at and I got excited about. This first one is translated, conduct yourselves, or in the King James, some of it says, let your conversation be. And one of the things that you notice here is I've got the actual Greek up there and underneath it, the Greek transliteration. That's for folks that are taking the Greek class. You can start practicing your Greek. If that bothers you, just let your eyes pass right past it and go to the transliteration. Okay? All right. Παλαιτεύω μαι. Okay? And he didn't just start saying palate and say, oh my. Okay?

So what it is, this is, this is, if you look at it, Polite uomai, we have our word politics come from this, okay? And the idea is to carry out your obligations as citizens, to live according to, that is consistent with your citizenship, okay? That was the word that Paul used. And of course these guys, they're hearing that and what are they thinking? Okay? Roman! That's what they're thinking. That's the natural thought. This idea of living according to your citizenship, boy, that was drummed into them. They're ready to step to it.

It's interesting, the noun form of this verb, the same word in a noun form, he uses in Philippians 3.20, Paul writes, "...for our citizenship is in heaven." Same word. So he doesn't let loose of this idea. Remember last word, we had this idea of threads of words? Here's one of them. Only here he uses it as a verb, and then he uses it as a noun in the third chapter. We're not done.

This verb is in the present tense imperative mood. Here's the idea that it carries in the Greek. They must right now continue to live according to their heavenly citizenship. Notice it's not an option, it's not a suggestion, it's not a good idea. You must live according to your heavenly citizenship. You must continue. That idea comes out in the Greek tense and mood here.

The only other place in the entire New Testament where this verb, palata uamai, is used, is in Acts 23.1. Isn't that interesting? It's a rare word, and it's the only place in all of Paul's writings where he chooses to use it, and I think it's very intentional, considering the character of the Church of Philippi. He Paul looking intently at the council in this case. He's speaking to the Sanhedrin Okay, this is the Jewish Sanhedrin the leaders of the Jews not not the people in Philippi different context, but the same word is used He said brethren.

I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day that lived my life is Palate Oh my okay, same word And so Paul is telling them that he had lived his life according to his citizenship. Okay? I have lived my life according to my citizenship. That's what he's conveying to them. So palate uomai means to the unbelieving Philippians, we look at this top picture there, here's Philippi, they're thinking, okay, to us palate uomai means I live as a Roman. Okay? For the people in Philippi, that was their natural sense.

As I get up in the morning and as I take my first breath, as I eat, breathe, and everything else, I'm a Roman. That's their thinking, and I'm going to live that out every day. With all of its privileges, with all of its responsibilities, I'm going to live it out.

To the unbelieving Jews that Paul spoke to in Acts 23.1, he did so as he spoke to them, speaking to them as unbelieving Jews, their thinking, Jerusalem.

That's the idea of this lower picture here. They're thinking, I'm going to live like a Jew should live. That's polite to them. Here's what Paul had in mind to the believers at Philippi. He said later on to them, for your citizenship is in heaven, or in this passage, we're looking at conduct yourselves as heavenly citizens. He is not imploring them to live as Romans. They've got plenty of that message.

He's imploring them to live as heavenly citizens here in this passage. in Philippians 1.27.

Okay. Here's another key word. Boy, this is full of key words and they're really good ones. All right. The next one we'll run into is standing firm or standing fast in the King James. Okay? And that's stacco. And the idea is you're standing. The idea is you're going to remain stable and keep your footing. That's the idea. Okay?

You may already be familiar with a related word that comes out three times in Ephesians 6, this is where we talk about the armor, the spiritual armor that we have, standing and spiritual warfare. He uses that word, stand. And by the way, stand, and while you're doing that, stand, okay? And what's hidden from us a little bit in English is that there is one word that's translated withstand or stand against, and all it is is the same word with the prefix anti in front of it, anti, okay?

And so if you include that, you have four times. He has the same idea, stand, showing up in there. Now, see these? This was a Roman soldier's boots, studded sandals, if you will. He called them his collegae. And these collegae, as you see there, had studs on the bottom of each one.

The idea, you are not going to slip. You're going to stand there on the ground or the grass or wherever you are and you not want to slip. Slipping is not the right thing to do. So what are you going to do? You're going to stand fast. More than conquering, as important as that was in the Roman mind, more than conquering being able to stand fast with principle and primary in their thinking. And so he uses a term, all right, Let's go ahead and use that because that's the way all these Romans, and a good many of the people there were either Roman soldiers or retired Roman soldiers, or descended from Roman soldiers. This would fit in their understanding very well. The idea?

Stand firm. Stand fast. And that's the exact picture that Paul uses there repeatedly in Ephesians 6. A phrase that comes out, the faith of the gospel. The faith isn't just a, okay, I believe in something. I'm religious. No, that's not what he's talking about. It isn't that. It is a specific set of teachings and doctrines. And it is centered upon, when we talk about doctrine, it isn't just, okay, believe this stuff, right sign here. It isn't just some sort of a piece of paper and isn't that nice and we all agree with it. It is centered upon relationship with and fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. That's what doctrine is about.

Okay? Not just, hey, we all believe this stuff, right? Okay? It has to do with our eternal standing with Christ and our fellowship with Him based on that. Okay? Consequently, and you'll see this on the backside of your handout there, there are all these places in the New Testament where the faith comes out and it's got the definite article in front of it for the explicit purpose of laying out, this isn't just, okay, believe something because it's nice to believe.

Sometimes you may hear people use an expression, people of faith, as if believing in something had all those people in common. That's not what this points to. It's THE faith. It's THE specific set of teachings and doctrines that are focused upon relationship and fellowship with Jesus Christ for eternity. That's what it's about.

Okay? And you can look at those passages on your own to dig that up. Okay? Now, more key words. Striving together. I saw this and I thought, oh man, this is marvelous stuff. Okay. Sunaflao. Sun means together, okay? And atleo, of course, we get that idea, you look at that and you say, well, that sounds like athletics and athlete. Yep, you guessed right, okay?

Striving together so as to contend or struggle alongside others. That is, we would say a team player, being on the same team, okay? Working together as a team would be our concept of that. Here we have this word, athleo, that Paul is drawing from. But remember, we think purely athletics. It was, to the Roman mind, athletics and being a soldier were closely related. They put those two together in their thinking. This word here, very interesting. Again, the point I keep coming back to as I look at this, Paul is very specific about the words that he chooses.

And this word here is only used in this verse and in Philippians 4.3 and nowhere else in the New Testament. So he's picked this word to match the unique character of the culture of Philippi. It's specific, it's deliberate, it's not accidental.

Now, get the idea, here are Roman soldiers striving together. Do you see that? Here's the position that they would take for defense against arrows and rocks. When I talk about rocks, I'm not talking about little things like this. I'm talking about big rocks being hurled at you. I'm talking about arrows sometimes flaming, being shot at you.

And so what they would do is they would pull together in this formation. It was a defensive posture that kept them from being vulnerable from those kinds of attacks. And when they would strive together, they would be defensive of one another and working as one person, okay? Striving together. So here was the defense against arrows and rocks. Look at this one. Here's the defense against a horseman on cavalry coming at you.

Do you see what they would do? They would have on the lower part these javelins, pilum they would call it, and they would stick those on the ground and put their studded shoe behind it to give it good footing. They would have those sticking out and then otherwise be behind the shields. And then the next row of guys on top would also put their shields up there and then have their own pylum sticking up for a higher trajectory with those. Great defense.

Ordinarily, if a cavalryman would run up against somebody, I mean, have you ever had a horse run at you? It's a frightening experience. I have. I wouldn't volunteer for it again. But to have also not just a horse running at you, but a guy on top of it that's well equipped and well ready to take you on, what they would do is strive together like this in defense of one another. And that defense would also be offensive for the one who came at them. But it's an example.

This kind of striving together Not only would they use it in battle, but the people at Philippi, they would get together and watch this, these kinds of maneuvers, there in the amphitheater. That was a part of their sunafleo, their striving together. So now you see the people at Philippi, they've got this picture in their minds that they've been trained in, many of them, that they've seen at the theater again and again and again. So when Paul says, I want you to strive together as a team so that you have a common defense, your defense helps the other guy and the other guy's defense helps you, that that striving together fit a picture in their mind that says, oh, I know what that is.

I know exactly what that is. See? Paul is not just picking words out that are just sort of, hey, that'd be a nice thing to tell them. He is being very deliberate in what he is choosing to convey to them. Okay, another key word. This is beautiful stuff. Look at this. It gets even better. Alarmed. King James Version is terrified. Peturo. And this is not just spitting. Peturo. It means to be frightened or lose composure. For example, it's used as shying away in battle to abandon one's battle position.

Don't get alarmed and terrified so that you're running away from your battle position. This was a word specifically used in the New Testament to describe a Roman military horse that would panic and shy away from the noise and fury of the battle. Don't be spooked, would be our modern term. A horse gets spooked and just all of a sudden do things that are crazy. The defense falls apart, the ability to strive together falls apart, so he's giving a contrary thing. Don't be alarmed. Don't be running away and getting spooked in a battle situation.

Now, the Roman cavalry, that was an awesome part of their both defense and offensive force, okay? And they would rely on well-trained horses and well-trained soldiers atop them that were very thoroughly equipped. And they were powerful as long as the horse did not Peturo. Get frightened. If the horse got terrified, it turned from being a powerful offensive and defensive weapon to being a problem. Because the horse could even be a danger, not only to the rider, but other people on the same team.

So he's saying, don't get frightened. He says, you know how bad that is. You're either Roman soldiers or you've seen it in the amphitheaters, but one way or another, you know what I'm talking about. He says, don't get like that. you believers. Again, he's hard-hitting word-picture-after-word-picture. He's bringing the point home to them, both in positive terms, striving together, and in negative terms.

Not like this. That's bad. Don't do that. More keywords. As a sign, as a King James, as an evident token, some translations would call it proof. Endexus. Now, that is not a word to describe the state where my granddaughter was born, okay? It's not in texas, okay? This is in dexus, all right? In dexus.

And the idea is it simply means evidence, okay? This was a legal term in the New Testament times, and you would use that to describe evidence that was presented in a court case, okay? So he's saying, this makes perfect sense, he's dealing with this legal and been talking to them about this legal situation that he's in, right? So he draws on a term that they would know and understand, and he says, their position and your position are evidence. Okay? Evidence. That's the word that he uses here.

The next one here, we want to take a look at these powerful series of words that are called prepositions. And here there's three of them that stand out. Three uses of the word in in English. It's very convenient that the Greek is in. So very similar and very simple. But notice how those stand out. One is conduct yourself in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. The next one is stand firm in one spirit. And the next one is in no way alarmed by your opponents. So he's got the use of those prepositions there standing out.

Now, we want to just kind of go back because we had looked previously, earlier as we were studying the letter to Philippi, and one of the things was just understanding this word. Simple as it is, it's important to understand in Jesus Christ, for example, was the use of this word in and the idea there is that it is to represent that the believer is entirely within Jesus Christ.

Okay. It's not. It's like this. It's not like this. Not halfway. Okay. Not mostly. Okay. That's not the idea. The believer's eternal position and identity are entirely within Christ Jesus. Period. Entirely, completely, 100%. That's the idea. So now, with that as a background, Paul uses that little preposition, and, three times in this little pair of verses here. So here's this usage of the word, and let's look at those. conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

What is he saying? He's calling for their condition to be entirely within their eternal position and identity in Christ Jesus. That's what he's saying. He isn't saying, boy, try real hard. Give it your best shot. He's not doing that. He's saying, you have a position in Christ that's indisputable and untouchable and unchangeable. He says, conduct yourselves entirely within that position. Let your condition fit your position. The next place he uses it is conduct yourselves in one spirit. And that again is entirely within one spirit. He wants a singular motivation.

He wants them to be acting as one people. conduct in their condition is to be entirely within their singular eternal position and identity in Christ Jesus. One of the things you notice, I have a position in Christ as a believer. If you are a believer here this morning, you have a position in Christ, and that is the same as mine. This position that we have in Christ is true for each individual believer, but it is common to all believers.

And that's what he's zeroing in on here, one spirit. Now, alarmed by your opponents. Now this one is different from the others because the others are a positive statement, right? What do you notice about this circle? Look carefully. What do you see? What do you see? What do you see?

Nothing. That's intentional, okay? Vern didn't goof. That's intentional. In no way, okay, alarmed by your opponents. He didn't say, this is okay, but just this one here is the only way you're allowed to be alarmed, okay? It's blank. It's empty. In no way. All right, what's he spelling out?

He's saying to them, there is absolutely no basis in our eternal position to be alarmed in our condition by our spiritual opponents. You see that? There's no basis in our position to be alarmed in our condition by our spiritual opponents. Think about that. This is phenomenal.

Things that ought to alarm other people, we have no basis in our position to be alarmed as well. Why? because we have a different spiritual standing, permanently. No basis. He's in no way alarmed. And notice the word picture used by this alarm. This is the panicky horse. This is the horse that's going, oh no, and goes just running off. No basis in that.

Speaking of opponents, one of the things Paul doesn't say is, what opponents are we talking about? You know, he's there in jail and he can say, okay, he's got opponents, but what opponents do they have? Well, he doesn't spell it out. And so all we can do is kind of put two and two together from the rest of scripture and what we know.

Some people have said, well, maybe these were Jews. We know previously that there were very few Jews in Philippi. They didn't appear to even have a synagogue because they were meeting at the river. And it would take 10 Jewish men to form a synagogue, so they didn't have that. So it's hard to imagine them particularly right there being a problem.

Now, nearby Thessalonica, that's a different issue. Boy, the Jews from Thessalonica, they were rasty, nasty guys, okay? They would tail Paul, dog him everywhere he went, and cause all the trouble they could. And as you read through, especially in Acts chapter 17, Boy, they're chasing them everywhere.

It's possible that that's at least some of the opponents here. Could be. Now another possibility is we know without a doubt that Philippi was very Roman. And we know from reading Acts chapter 16 that it was essentially the Roman influence that opposed the Christians. Paul and Silas for sure.

Here's one of the things that was necessary for the Romans. The Romans were required at intervals, and later on they actually developed a certificate that you had to have, but they were required at intervals to go into the emperor's temple and make a sacrifice to the emperor because he was considered one of the gods. It didn't matter if you had other gods, that's okay, but you had to sacrifice to the emperor because he was considered a divine being. And so you had to do that. Even at the outset, as soon as the Christians were not doing that, here they are in this city of Philippi that is Roman to the core, including sacrificing regularly to the Roman Empire's deity, Emperor's deity.

And the Christians would say, hey, wait a minute, I'm not going to do that. Instantly, it would put them in opposition to the culture there. Thinking of this situation, I'd like to tell you a little account. You know, in our culture, we don't run into too much opposition. Anybody run into really serious opposition, sometimes you might get somebody who's really heated and animated. I'd like to tell you about an instance. This is my own circumstance here.

Spring of 71, I started off first year at college. I'd start off taking classes. Of course, they have various core courses you have to take. And so I was starting off taking these core courses. I signed up for a class in the philosophy of Eastern religions. And the idea was we were going to study, you know, that's what the course description said, objectively, all the different things that were supposed to happen, you know, and be believed and whatnot among these different Eastern religions.

That's what I thought I was signing up for. Well, what I signed up for was something quite different. This instructor, this is a picture of him from the, he's apparently still teaching at the college, so almost 30 years later. But this instructor that I signed up for there, he had a very different idea as to how this class ought to go.

And so it became apparent pretty quickly, he didn't want objective study, he wanted you to subjectively experience each one of these little religions, go into this meditation thing you know, go through that. Well, I wasn't going through that. And then it was also very apparent in my papers that I wrote that I was a Christian. Anyway, the first couple of weeks, you know, they go and they call roll and after that in college, they don't bother with that.

But towards the end of the second week, this Professor Dimitri was going down the list. And he was, you know, checking off different people, you know, here, here, He says, Peterman, you're a Christian, aren't you? I said, yeah. He said, stand up. So I stood up. So he came over and he just whacked me across the side of the head. And I didn't do anything at the time. I thought, well, if I do something, anything I do from now is a mistake. So anyway, I just, I didn't do anything.

And then, you know, it's interesting. Half the class said, hit him again. And the other half of the class said, no, this is stupid, you know. But then, you know, we sat down. I continued on and there was one other Christian in the class who had signed up with the same understanding that I had. And, you know, I continued to go ahead and speak out as I had through the class and write, you know, papers as I had. And those weren't well received, by the way. But I continued to write and speak as I had.

But, you know, it's amazing as I look back on that instance there were two positive outcomes at least from that incident in spite of the opposition. And that's the most flagrant instance of opposition that I've personally experienced. One thing that came out of this I thought was fascinating, of course this guy's name after that was drilled into my head.

A few weeks later I was at church and noticed one of the guys up leading in the music up there at church has the same name. It's his son, okay? Amazing. And his son is also instrumental in producing subsequently a Christian music album. The other thing that was amazing is immediately after he whacked me in the head, Nancy seemed real interesting to me.

Anyway, I won't put that together. Okay. All right. Let's take a look at this passage here. This is an expansion and explanation, and you have it on the back side of your handout here. And again, the idea is this is not explicitly a translation, but the idea is to make sure we understand every part of what's being said.

Only you must live in your condition in a manner consistent with your position as heavenly citizens. Entirely within the truth of the good message about the person of Christ So that and I think this is important to understand Paul's statement is he's saying you know whether I come or not He's not all of a sudden waffling on his coming.

He's trying to get them to understand this So that whether independent of whether I come and see you or remain absent That is not depending the leap in the least upon the legal outcome of my appeal to Caesar He doesn't want their walk He doesn't want what they are living and doing and thinking to be dependent upon his presence or absence. He wants them to be personally dependent upon Jesus Christ. Individually and corporately dependent upon Jesus Christ.

That's what he's aiming at. I will hear of you that you are in your condition continuing to stand firmly upon your eternally held position. in spiritual unity with one perspective and way of thinking, continuing to strive together. That is, he wants them to be standing your ground together and contending totally in unison. You think about these, remember the picture we had up there, those Roman soldiers with the shields together, and they were operating together.

I mean, this is not something you do kind of haphazardly. This is what he is imploring the church at Philippi to do as a church in a spiritual sense. Do we get the weight of what that means for us as a Christian? And I don't mean a burden. What I mean is this has intense significance for us as believers here at this church that are striving together with one spirit and one mind is intended not to be just a bunch of independent people that just happen to float into the same place. But there is a unity that this world can hardly comprehend. And it only comes because of relationship and fellowship with Jesus Christ. All that is for the specific faith, okay? Not just faith. Specific faith conveyed to you that is the one truly good message.

This is potent stuff. This is powerful stuff. Because it is not leaving us in a spot to, okay, just kind of come and, boy, sure nice you showed up here this morning and, you know, we'll see you next week because that's your weekly duty or something. This is an amazingly intense exhortation that he's giving them. And he's using word pictures with them that they understand very well to bring the point home. Let's look at the next verse.

Your living as heavenly citizens will then be such that you are not in any way alarmed or terrified by the threatening behavior of your spiritual opponents, as if your position in Christ could somehow be threatened. Which threatening is evidence of their being on the path to spiritual and eternal destruction, but which lack of fear on your part is evidence of your condition being consistent with your eternally held position of salvation in Christ. It's going to show up one way or the other. If you are not terrified, that's going to put you apart. It's going to stand you apart. And that unique and precious salvation, as you know, knowing that both The evidence and the salvation originate from the eternal being and unchangeable character of God himself.

We have, I'd say in our culture, not the overt opposition that tends to get us panicked. I would say in our own culture we're more inclined to have a subtle opposition that gets us distracted. But if we see the intensity of what Paul is saying. If we get the sense of what Paul is saying here to these people and apply that to ourselves, the message comes home powerfully as believers. He says, one mind. Real interesting, he's told the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians 2, I believe it's verse 16. We have, plural, the mind, singular, of Christ.

Isn't that something? Here we are, gathered in this room. We've been going all sorts of different directions. Some of us driving here and there, different parts of the greater Denver area. Some of you may be visiting from elsewhere. And that's great.

But when he's speaking to believers here, we have this singular mind. And he says, I want that to be lived out. You have it positionally. He says, I want that lived out in your condition. And I see no reason to make Holly Hill some sort of an exception.

I think that's what the Lord has in mind here. The Lord himself has in mind, with one mind, that we have one mind and one spirit. The identical motivations, the identical perspectives, because the Lord not only has laid out the truth for us, but has given us his Holy Spirit to bring those truths home.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at these powerful words in this passage and begin to let the significance of this soak in, Lord, our position that we each individually have, Lord, is also a position that we have corporately together since we have been placed into the very body of Christ. And this is the local representation of that body. And Lord, we just would look at these and give you thanks for that marvelous position that we have in you. And just pray that in the midst of the things in life which would tend to either frighten us or distract us or draw us off in some other direction, we just, Lord, thank you that we have this tremendous and marvelous privilege and opportunity to behold you through your word. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.