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Skip Heitzig: So you remember that Paul wrote this book from a prison in Rome. He writes to the Philippians. He has a two-year prison sentence. He is waiting to stand before Caesar Nero to find out if he's going to lose his head or if he's going to live. And we made it through Chapter 1 where he talks about that.

If I were to give you an outline of the book, I would give it to you this way: Chapter 1 is the marvel of the Christian life. And the marvel of the Christian life is love. It's love. Verse 8 of Chapter 1, Paul says, "For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ." Paul loved them, had a special place in his heart for them.

But then he continues in Chapter 1—don't worry, I'm not going to read it all—verse 9: "This I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment." So the main thrust of Chapter 1 is the marvel of the Christian life, which is love. Chapter 2 is the model of the Christian life, which is Christ.

Jesus embodies love perfectly. He embodies humility, lowliness of mind. You remember last week Paul said let everything be done not with conceit or being puffed up, but in lowliness of mind esteem others better than yourselves. Verse 5 of Chapter 2: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God," etc.

So there we have the marvel of the Christian life, which is love; the model of the Christian life, which is Christ; the march of the Christian life—that's Chapter 3—which is forward, forgetting the things which are behind, pressing forth to those things which are before. And then finally, the marks of the Christian life, which are peace and joy, and that is what he highlights in that chapter.

So we're in the second section, and that is the model of the Christian life, who is none other than Jesus Christ. Now back to Chapter 2, verse 5—I know we looked at it last week, I won't labor it too long—"Let this mind be in you," or think like this, think like Jesus thinks, "who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but He made Himself of no reputation."

You remember last week I said that means to pour Himself out. He made Himself of no reputation, He took on the form of a bondservant, coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God has also highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name.

If you were here last week, I told you the word "form" is a very special word: "who being in the form of God." And I mentioned there are a couple of different Greek words Paul could have used. He could have used the word "schema" for form, but that means outward form only. But he didn't use that word; he used the word "morphe," which means essence or nature.

Jesus had the very essence or nature of God. Just like the example I used last week, our "morphe," our form, is we are humanity. That never changes. From birth to death, you are always human. Your "morphe" never changes; your "schema" always changes. When I was a little kid, I couldn't wait to become an adult.

And I did. I wanted to grow up. But once I grew up, I kind of wanted to stay where I was and not change anymore. And the older I get, the more I feel that way. My "schema" is changing, not for the better but for the worse. But I'm still humanity. Even though I went from embryo to fetus to newborn to child to adolescent to adult to an older adult, I'm still human.

Jesus is always God, is Paul's point. He was in the very essence and form and nature of God, and yet He divested Himself of certain prerogatives as God—the glory that He had with heaven, etc. We went into that last week.

Several years ago, I was taking a couple of different Greek courses. I took it for a couple of years and I was in my first year, it was Greek I, and I was studying the Gospel of John, Chapter 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And I remember going through that. I was studying the Greek New Testament when I got a knock on the door.

And I opened the door. It was like low-hanging fruit. It was a Jehovah's Witness. And I said, "Oh, well, nice to talk to you, and I've just been reading the Gospel of John, Chapter 1." And he said, "Well, I'm glad you brought that up." I said, "Why are you glad I brought that up?" He said, "Because your Bible probably has a mistranslation."

I said, "What do you mean, a mistranslation?" "Well, your Bible says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. My translation corrects it and says in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word (Jesus) was a god. And that's," he said, "what it says in the Greek."

I remember him saying that. So I smiled and I got out my Greek New Testament and I showed it to him and I said, "Where does it say that in the Greek New Testament?" He said, "Well, I don't read Greek." So I said, "Well, I don't read Greek very well either, but I am studying it, and I do happen to know this verse."

So I began in John 1:1, "En archēēn ho Logos, kai ho Logos ēn pros ton Theon, kai Theos ēn ho Logos." I said that to him and he just stared at me. And I said, "Now you'll notice that there's no definite article before Theos, ēn ho Logos. And so literally the reason it reads that way is it means and God was the Word."

The absence of the article denotes essence or being or nature. So John is making a very strong statement that God Himself was the Word, who is Jesus Christ. Again, he just stared at me, said thank you very much, turned away, and then I heard later on that the Jehovah's Witnesses were blackballing my house and don't go to that house.

But I wish they wouldn't have; I wish they would have come back. But Paul's whole point is God was the Word. He was in the form of God, that never changes. He divested Himself of certain prerogatives, but God exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and those on earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Guest (Male): Now let's apply that. Let that mind that I just described be in you, where you are willing to divest yourself of certain prerogatives in a relationship in order to serve that other person that you are relating to. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. So the model of the Christian life is Christ. He's the first model. There are more, by the way.

Because Paul himself was a follower of Jesus Christ, and if you remember, in another letter Paul says follow me as I follow the Lord. Paul uses himself as a second example in verse 17 of Chapter 2. This is sort of where we left off: "Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me."

Paul didn't know if he was going to live or die. That's what this is all about. To be poured out was speaking of a drink offering, a libation that was often poured on burnt offerings in the tabernacle or in the temple. And it was a metaphor to be used of life being poured out to death. So the very last letter that Paul writes, 2 Timothy Chapter 4, he uses this language: "I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure (or death) is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

Now he says, "Look, I'm in prison, don't know if I'm going to live, don't know if I'm going to lose my head. If I do, I'm happy. I rejoice. I am living my life divesting myself, emptying myself, being lowly minded. I'm serving the Lord. If that's what He has for me, great. If that's what He doesn't have for me, great."

So Jesus is the first model, the first example. The second is Paul. Now there are two more that follow. There's Timothy, his protégé, and a guy by the name of Epaphroditus, and that's the rest of this chapter. First of all, Timothy, verse 19: "But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be encouraged when I know your state."

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The Bible is one unified story of God's love and redemption, but sometimes it can be difficult to see how all the pieces fit together. In "Soaring Above It All," Pastor Skip Heitzig takes you on a one-year devotional journey through the entire Bible, highlighting the key people, events, themes, and truths of Scripture in a way that's approachable, encouraging, and easy to follow. Preorder your copy of "Soaring Above It All" today wherever you buy books. Now, here's more from Pastor Skip.

Skip Heitzig: You know, Paul was always part of a team. When you think of Paul the apostle, I don't know exactly how you think of Paul, but a lot of people sort of see him as a rugged individualist, doesn't really need people. He kind of works on his own. It's just he and God, and God speaks to him and he does his thing. Couldn't be further from the truth. Paul always had others with him—a team. Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Silas, Aquila and Priscilla, Apollos, Epaphroditus, many of them. Paul was always part of a team.

Two more people that he relied on a lot, two friends, were Timothy and Epaphroditus. Now, Timothy. Timothy was born and raised in a town called Lystra. Paul went through Lystra in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) on his first missionary journey. That's when we believe Timothy as a child was converted to Christ. Timothy was the product of a mixed marriage, meaning his mother was Jewish who became a believer in Christ; his father was an unbelieving Greek.

So he is the son of a mixed marriage, but Paul calls him my son in the faith. Paul's son in the faith. So his grandmother was Lois, his mother was Eunice. That's mentioned in the book of 2 Timothy. Timothy converted on the first missionary journey of Paul, as I said, when he went through town, stayed in Lystra. When Paul came back through on his second missionary journey, Paul then invited him to join his team.

So from that day forward, Timothy became part of Paul the apostle's evangelistic crusade team, a full-fledged member, and he served with him ever since, his son in the faith. But look how he describes him: "I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be encouraged when I know your state." I'm going to send Timothy. He's with me in Rome, eight hundred miles away from you guys in Philippi.

But I'm going to send him to you because I want to know how you guys are doing in your faith. "For," he says in verse 20, "I have no one like-minded who will sincerely care for your state." It's a very unusual word that he uses here: "like-minded." It's the only use of it in the entire Greek New Testament or the entire New Testament. He uses it once and it's to speak of Timothy.

The word that is translated like-minded is "isopsychos," and it literally means equal-souled. Equal-souled. We would say soulmate. We track. Paul writes to the Corinthians and he says that Timothy does the same kind of work in the Lord as I also do. So you think of all the people Paul the apostle knew—he knew a lot of people and he served with a lot of people—but of all the people that he loved, that he served with, stalwarts in the faith, fruitful people in the ministry, no one was quite like Timothy. There was only one person who was like-minded, who thought like Paul thought, who cared for people like Paul cared for people, who were motivated not by status, not by financial remuneration, just to serve the Lord. Paul said I don't have anybody else like that except this guy.

In the Old Testament, you remember David when he met Jonathan, the son of Saul, it says that David and Jonathan's hearts were knit together. Very similar kind of a relationship. They loved the same Lord in the same manner as each other. Jonathan could see that motivation in David, he admired it; David could see that back at Jonathan. So equal-souled, soulmate.

If you find another person who loves Jesus as much as you love Jesus, of the opposite sex, marry them. I did. I found somebody who is equal in soul to me. I took her out to dinner one time. I had known her for several months, actually a couple of years. I had dated her and then, to my chagrin, dumped her. But then we were eating dinner one night and she ministered to me the things of the Lord and what He had done in her life, and I thought I'm an idiot for letting her go. She is equal-souled. So I got to marry my best friend and soulmate.

He continues in verse 21: "For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus." Now, that's quite a statement. One translation says for everybody else is selfish, except for Timothy. I don't exactly know what is in Paul's mind when he wrote this. I don't know who he's referring to. Maybe he's thinking of those people in Philippi who were preaching the gospel for all the wrong reasons. We discussed them a couple of weeks back.

But all seek their own, or everyone else is selfish, they don't seek the things which are of Christ Jesus. "But you know his," Timothy's, "proven character, that as a son with his father he served with me in the gospel. Therefore I hope to send him at once as soon as I see how it goes with me." I've got to find out if I'm going to live or die, what the verdict will be. "But I trust in the Lord that I myself shall come to you shortly."

So Timothy had a proven track record. Paul had utilized him before, sent him on other errands, other missions, from Ephesus to Thessalonica, from Ephesus to Macedonia, a few different places. So he mentions this, that he is reliable, he's trustworthy. Second friend that he mentions, fourth example of the model of the Christian life after Christ, after Paul, after Timothy, is verse 25, Epaphroditus.

"Yet I considered it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, and fellow soldier, but your messenger and the one who ministered to my need." Now, Epaphroditus, that's not a name you hear every day, is it? Have you ever met an Epaphroditus? I never have. It sort of sounds like a disease, right? Laryngitis, appendicitis, I've got a bad case of Epaphroditus.

But this guy was not a disease; far from it, he was a trusted friend to the apostle Paul. He was probably a Gentile convert. We don't really know much about him. There's only two times in the entire New Testament he's mentioned, both of them are in the book of Philippians, Chapter 2 and Chapter 4. But I'm guessing he was a Gentile convert because his name, Epaphroditus, is a reference to the goddess Aphrodite.

And the name Epaphroditus means related to Aphrodite. It came to mean lovely. The name means lovely. But it has an association with Aphrodite. Now, you remember Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and fertility. If you ever make it to Corinth in Greece, you can still see this little protrusion, this little mountain right on the outskirts of town called the Acrocorinth. It goes 200 feet up from the city of Corinth itself.

On the top of the Acrocorinth in the city of Corinth was a temple to Aphrodite that employed 1,000 prostitutes. Because Aphrodite was worshipped by prostitution. So if you came to Corinth in those days, those 1,000 priestesses would walk the 200 feet down on the steps into the city of Corinth at night to ply their trade, and the money they got supported the work of the temple of Aphrodite.

So whoever this guy is, I'm guessing he was a non-Jewish person, a Gentile convert who had associations, his parents named him after Aphrodite. The name came to mean lovely or pleasant. But Paul calls him his brother, his fellow worker, a fellow soldier—I like this next part—"but your messenger." What does he mean?

The word "messenger" is the word "apostolos." So it would be translated apostle. He's my brother, he's my fellow worker, but he's your apostle. You sent him out. You sent him to me. You sent him to Rome. I'm eight hundred miles away. Epaphroditus is your missionary to Rome, and here he is with me. Epaphroditus traveled all the way to Rome to serve the apostle Paul while he was in prison.

He was a true servant. He is an example of esteeming others better than himself. So Jesus Christ, Paul the apostle, Timothy, now Epaphroditus being sent on a mission to alleviate the suffering and help Paul the apostle. Epaphroditus believed in something I'm going to give a term to: basin theology. Basin theology. Let me explain. Everybody goes and lives and works out of one of two basins in life.

Basin number one is the basin of Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate, when Jesus came before him and he didn't know what to do with Him, he wanted to acquit Him, but the crowd was against Jesus. So Pilate called for a basin of water and a towel. He washed his hands in the basin, symbolizing I am washing myself of the responsibility, you do with Him what you want. Crucify Him? Go ahead.

That's the basin of self-centeredness. The other is the basin of Jesus Christ. On the night Jesus was betrayed, He took a basin of water and a towel. He girded Himself with a towel, and He began to wash the dirty feet of the disciples. So you and I, we have a choice: will we work from the basin of Pilate—self-centeredness—or from the basin of Christ—ministering to one another's needs?

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