My Rights!

Originally pub­lished circa 1998

I believe Philippians 2:1–11 [show]Philippians 2:1–11 So if there is any encour­age­ment in Christ, any com­fort from love, any par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Spirit, any affec­tion and sym­pa­thy, [2]complete my joy by being of the same mind, hav­ing the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. [3]Do noth­ing from rivalry or con­ceit, but in humil­ity count oth­ers more sig­nif­i­cant than your­selves. [4]Let each of you look not only to his own inter­ests, but also to the inter­ests of oth­ers. [5]Have this mind among your­selves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [6]who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equal­ity with God a thing to be grasped, [7]but made him­self noth­ing, tak­ing the form of a ser­vant, being born in the like­ness of men. [8]And being found in human form, he hum­bled him­self by becom­ing obe­di­ent to the point of death, even death on a cross. [9]Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, [10]so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11]and every tongue con­fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (ESV)
could very well be one of the most impor­tant pas­sages in Scripture when it comes to how to live with each other. Unfortunately, it is also the one that is very dif­fi­cult to live by. If we can, our churches would become pow­er­ful lights in the dark­ness of the world.

Phil. 2:1–11 [show]Philippians 2:1–11 So if there is any encour­age­ment in Christ, any com­fort from love, any par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Spirit, any affec­tion and sym­pa­thy, [2]complete my joy by being of the same mind, hav­ing the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. [3]Do noth­ing from rivalry or con­ceit, but in humil­ity count oth­ers more sig­nif­i­cant than your­selves. [4]Let each of you look not only to his own inter­ests, but also to the inter­ests of oth­ers. [5]Have this mind among your­selves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, [6]who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equal­ity with God a thing to be grasped, [7]but made him­self noth­ing, tak­ing the form of a ser­vant, being born in the like­ness of men. [8]And being found in human form, he hum­bled him­self by becom­ing obe­di­ent to the point of death, even death on a cross. [9]Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, [10]so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, [11]and every tongue con­fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (ESV)

If you have any encour­age­ment from being united with Christ,
if any com­fort from his love,
if any fel­low­ship with the Spirit,
if any ten­der­ness and com­pas­sion,
then make my joy com­plete by being like-minded, hav­ing the same love, being one in spirit and pur­pose. Do noth­ing out of self­ish ambi­tion or vain con­ceit, but in humil­ity con­sider oth­ers bet­ter than your­selves. Each of you should look not only to your own inter­ests, but also to the inter­ests of others.

Your atti­tude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not con­sider equal­ity with God
some­thing to be grasped,
but made him­self noth­ing,
tak­ing the very nature of a ser­vant,
being made in human like­ness.
And being found in appear­ance as a man,
he hum­bled him­self
and became obe­di­ent to death–
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the high­est place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue con­fess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Christ is our prime exam­ple. We are called to fol­low him, to have the same atti­tude as his. By hav­ing the same atti­tude as Christ, our rela­tion­ships with those around us will often dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer from the world’s. I feel that if we would sim­ply fol­low this atti­tude of Christ, many of the con­flicts we find in our Christian homes and in our churches would dis­ap­pear. Church “Business Meetings” would loose the acromony that is often asso­ci­ated with them because our atti­tudes would not give place for it. How? Why?

Let us look at Christ’s atti­tude. He was God, the supreme being. He could do any­thing. It was his right to do what every He wished. Yet we find Christ giv­ing up those rights.

Paul uses words that remind me of a lit­tle child in a toy store hold­ing on to a toy that the par­ent has no plans to pur­chase. The child is stand­ing there scream­ing, “MINE! MINE!” The par­ent tries to take the toy from the child but the lit­tle one holds the toy with both hands as tightly as pos­si­ble, kick­ing and screaming.

Christ could have been just like that lit­tle child. He could have held on to being the Son of God with all the rights and priv­i­leges that were his. His RIGHTS were that He was God and could do what ever he wanted. But He put HIS RIGHTS aside to save us. He not only gave up his own rights but also took upon him­self the sen­tence of death which was OUR RIGHT and died in our place that we might have eter­nal life.

Sam Rayburn was Speaker for the House of Representatives longer than any other man. One of his friends lost a teenage daugh­ter and early the next morn­ing Rayburn knocked on his door. “I just came by to see what I could do to help.” The father replied that there was noth­ing to do. “Well,” Rayburn said, “have you had your cof­fee this morn­ing?” The man replied that he had not taken time for break­fast. Rayburn quickly went to the kitchen and began fix­ing his friend break­fast. The man real­ized that Rayburn was sup­pose to have break­fast at the White House that morn­ing and quickly asked about it. Rayburn replied, “Well, I was, but I called the President and told him I had a friend who was in trou­ble and I couldn’t come.”

What a dif­fer­ent world this would be if we could learn to become more and more unselfish.

To the Phillipians, Paul said some­thing that is just the oppo­site what we hear in the world today, ” Do noth­ing out of self­ish ambi­tion or vain con­ceit, but in humil­ity con­sider oth­ers bet­ter than your­selves. Each of you should look not only to your own inter­ests, but also to the inter­ests of oth­ers.” Almost unbe­liev­able! What hap­pened to look­ing out for num­ber one? What hap­pened to mak­ing sure I get my rights. Paul acknowl­edges that we have needs and that it is our nature to look after our­selves. But what he urges us to do is to also look after oth­ers, with the same fer­vor and effort that we take to look after our­selves, and even more so since we should “con­sider oth­ers bet­ter than yourselves.”

An angel appeared to a man and offered to reveal to him a vision of hell and of heaven.

First came the vision of hell. The man saw a long ban­quet table loaded with every del­i­cacy, every kind of food to delight the palate and nur­ture the body. And then he saw that every­one seated at that ban­quet had both arms taped up with splints so that they could not bend their arms. There was no way to bring a morsel of food to their lips, so every­one in hell was hun­gry and wretched.

Then the man saw heaven revealed. Once again there was a heavy-laden ban­quet table, and to his sur­prise, the man saw that once again each per­son there had his arms in splints. But at the heav­enly table, each per­son was feed­ing his neigh­bor. And no one was hungry.

What would our churches be like, what would the world be like if we made every effort to have our atti­tude be the same as that of our Lord and Savior, King of the Universe, God’s Son who laid down his life for us.