That being said, the
weakness that can often hobble a church is not to be accommodated. Paul’s
letters are full of exhortations that, in one way or the other, enjoin us to
walk away from the old self and toward the new. The old “belongs to your former
manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,” while the new is
“created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”
(Ephesians 4:22-23). In the opening sentences of his letter to the Philippians
he puts it this way: “it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more,
with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent,
and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of
righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God”
(Philippians 1:9-11).
As his letters readily
attest, the local church is the venue in which much of this growth is to take
place. For instance, the above prayer ties the ability to approve what is
excellent, which leads to a maturing walk “filled with the fruit of righteousness,”
to ever-increasing love among the saints at Philippi. Why is this so? If those
in a church can discover what it means to love, idolatrous self-interest will
give way to God honoring interest for the other. We then begin to look like Jesus
who “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant” so that we could be
saved from our sinful, self-absorbed selves (2:7).
Remarkably, Paul is
confident that this will be realized in the church in Philippi because “he who
began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus
Christ” (1:6). But it involves embracing the challenge to “work out [our] own
salvation with fear and trembling” (2:12). It seems that if we will respond
with faith, seeking to “approve what is excellent,” we can become a little less
paradoxical, possessing a strength that will be “to the glory and praise of
God” (1:11).
