(12) Strength in Suffering Series
Dog trainers tell clients that dog obedience school promotes well-being for a dog’s happiness and mental health. If only we would realize that our happiness, mental health, and well-being are bound up in the same principle. Our Master and Creator knows exactly what we need, so why do we resist the obedience training we find in His beautiful manual the Bible?
“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
Philippians 2:12-13
True obedience can only be performed by the one who’s obeying. The obedience we learn as children doesn’t apply as adults. We aren’t being given a list of boxes to check off to graduate from Christian Obedience School. Just as forced obedience is not submission to God, neither is fake obedience. Fake obedience comes from a mind that hasn’t developed the right way of thinking, and fake obedience happens only when someone is looking. Paul says the Philippian Christians were to obey when Paul wasn’t there to witness it.
Paul says God has a good purpose and that He uses His obedient sons and daughters to bring about His purpose. This is what we were put on earth to do. If we act against His Will, we are, in essence, acting against our own nature because we were designed to obey Him. The saying, “she was beside herself” expresses how a person isn’t thinking or acting like she would normally act. Similarly, a woman is “beside herself” when she chooses not to obey God; she is living outside of the role specifically created by God for her.
“Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”
Philippians 2:14-15
Grumbling and arguing in context here do not have the same meaning as a pained complaint or voicing woe in the throes of hardship. Grumbling and arguing have the underlying emotion of feeling unfairly treated; it’s a sense of injustice directed towards God. Grumbling is defined as secret displeasure with what is being commanded of you. You may not say it out loud, but you don’t think you should have to obey that command. That feeling that you shouldn’t have to obey has to stem from somewhere, and it’s coming from a belief—it’s a distorted belief deep inside. That belief is that what God wants you to do isn’t really good for you, or it isn’t the best ‘option’ for your life.
Paul tells Christians not to think like the crooked and warped people around them. Paul had once thought like his warped and crooked generation; he’d used the governing authorities, a system meant to protect the innocent, to hunt down and kill Christians who were following the most obedient, peacemaking system ever established on this earth. Jesus had to use a harsh wake up call to turn his thinking around, blinding him on his way to persecute Christians. Paul talks about his experience when Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus. He recounts his conversion, telling King Agrippa in Acts 26:14 that Jesus said to him, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” “Kicking against the thorns (or goads)” was a well-known proverb in Paul’s time. Greek writers used this phrase to mean one was trying to rebel against an inexorable truth, and that the actions of rebellion were just going to bring more pain and beating down for the one who refused to accept the inevitable. So, Paul, the former champion of distorted thinking, is the one God chooses to teach the principles of obedience to these suffering Philippian Christians. He is showing them that acting like Christ is not the same as thinking like Christ.
The Philippian church was battling warped thinkers. Persuasive rebels were among them posing as Christians. These disobedient souls did not believe God’s way was in their best interest, and so they were sifting through the saints, looking for people they could get to rebel with them. These faithless teachers twisted the Son of God’s words and actions to promote their thinking. They questioned the teachings of Paul and the other apostles and created feelings of distrust about the plan of God. They did this by beginning rumors that God’s appointed men weren’t teaching the same things and creating contentions (1 Corinthians 1:10-13). They also tried to discount Paul, doubting whether his letters were written by him and doubting his apostleship. This is still going on today as people, who claim to be Christians, resist God’s word and cause others to question Christ’s covenant. When someone doesn’t really want to follow God, distorted thinking leads her farther away from God.
Paul tells the Philippians they have a job, and that job is to promote God’s plan, not their own. They had to let God do the work through them. They couldn’t do that if they were determined to find ways to secretly disobey Him, and they couldn’t do that if they trusted their own reasoning over God’s wisdom. It’s the small, ‘grumbling’ decisions that develop those twists in the thoughts of Christians. Paul tells his brothers and sisters that God knows when a soul isn’t fully onboard with His principles.
Our warped and crooked world prefers to believe human reasoning is wiser than God’s instruction. The people around us argue that “that command was never meant for my situation.” Twisted thinkers work themselves into positions and situations that completely change and corrupt what was meant to bless them. Spiritually, you and I become twisted, broken down, and handicapped just by living in this disobedient world. When a Christian woman is living beside herself, she can’t be the woman she is meant to be, and that is going to cause suffering. You can’t do anything about some of the scars you carry, but Paul tells you the things you can change. Those things have to do with straightening out distorted thinking by choosing obedience over your own personal brand of logic.
We don’t live in the context of Philippi, where Christianity was a new life-changing movement. Most of us live in the opposite context, where Christianity influences our thinking in ways we take for granted. Unfortunately, the ‘Christian’ thinking that influences us today is not following the principles of Jesus’ New Testament. It is directed by habit and tradition; it is carried out by man’s reasoning and desire to fit in. The pure, simple desire to obey God’s commands, completely trusting that He knows best, has been replaced by “common sense Christianity.” As our generation loses the knowledge of God’s principles, we also lose the real reason we obey. Christians are told to do things from a willing heart, but this is followed by some guilt trip or public pressure. We have fought for so long against the thinking of the world that we’ve moved to the other extreme, pressuring our Christian siblings to act like Christ without thinking like Christ. From this distorted understanding of Christianity has come the voluntellers, who decide what you should be doing, and the self-help preachers, who proclaim self-improvement strategies from the pulpits. Christians are left physically and emotionally exhausted, while feeling empty and lacking. My sister, are you living with unnecessary guilt, burdened and weary?
We have a twisted understanding of what God wants for us, His purpose and His plan, if we think God is displeased with us when we say ‘no’ to all the pressure to do instead of be. Christ wasn’t moved to save us by His own guilt, and guilting a sister will never bring about the true, heartfelt results Paul is teaching. Statements like, “Do this because you want to…but if you don’t, you should feel bad,” come from the same belief, way down deep, that what God thinks is best isn’t best for us at all. No warnings of leadership disapproval are needed to motivate you to obey God. God knows when it’s everything you can do to get out of bed today. He sees what you can’t do when you are suffering in secret, and He sees the encouraging acts you are able to do. There may be no pats on the back, no public recognition, but that was never the point; was it? God isn’t the one teaching His daughters to think with relief, “I followed the program, so I have the congregation’s approval.” The Church isn’t there to guilt trip. The Church is there to teach God’s daughters to hold His hand and obey Him wholly… from the heart.
Paul will continue in the next verses by describing what we are to be: shining lights!
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