Christian Unity

Have you ever had trouble getting along with another Christian? Perhaps you found it difficult because the other person was unwilling to respond to you, or because of what you suspected was a failure in yourself. Many Christians have the same problem. In fact, even in the New Testament church at Philippi, two good friends of the Apostle Paul were having similar problems. And Paul gave them some good advice. I’m sure that his advice will be helpful to you, too.

Bishop Handley Moule, who is one of the great commentators on the book of Philippians, has written some wonderful words on this point of having the mind of Christ. He lived in the last century, and some of his language is a bit archaic. But he is so good and this is so practical that I want to share his thoughts with you.

To be humble, you need to stop thinking about yourself all the time. That’s what it means. You need to stop comparing yourself with your boss, the secretary who sits next to you, the other Sunday school teacher, or whoever it is who rubs you the wrong way. Instead, you need to think of what you can do to help that person, just as the Lord Jesus Christ did.

The third step in getting along with other Christians is to rejoice in the Lord. Paul says this in Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.” Paul knew that if a Christian is rejoicing in God’s mercy and goodness to him, he is not so likely to be nit-picking with his fellow Christians. If your thoughts are filled with God, you will not be seeing another’s bad temper, laziness or unreliability, at least to the degree that you would if you were not doing this.

Have you ever noticed how many times he speaks of being “in the Lord Jesus Christ” in the first four verses of this chapter? Three times! And once he reminds the Philippians that “the Lord is at hand.” The solution is the Lord Jesus Christ. It is He who will do in the lives of yielded Christians what they might judge impossible. You can learn to get along with other Christians only as you surrender yourself to Christ and seek His will, as His Holy Spirit enters your life and begins to make you into the man or woman that he would have you be.

Now I’ve looked at these different verses from James because through them we can summarize the different teachings that the Bible has about temptation. When we summarize them, we see that there are two basic kinds of temptation: temptations from God, which are good (and it’s not even good to use that word; “testing” is a better word). And then there are temptations to sin, which are evil. This second kind of temptation, the temptation to sin, may be divided into temptations of the flesh, the world, and Satan. It is over these temptations that every believer must triumph. And therefore it’s these we must talk about in this study.