Shine like stars!

Major Wendy Stanbury reminds us to bring the light of Jesus into the darkness of our world.

Key text

• Philippians 1:27–2:16

Have you ever stood outside, away from the light pollution of the cities, looked up to the night sky and seen the thousands of stars shining in the darkness?

A few years ago, the rock band Coldplay reminded us: ‘You’re a sky full of stars…/ You get lighter the more it gets dark.’ Two thousand years earlier, the apostle Paul said something similar in his letter to the church in Philippi: ‘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.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life’ (vv14–16).

Pause and reflect

• What does it mean to ‘live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people’ (v15 New Living Translation)?

The letter to the Philippians begins as a thank-you letter. It is thought that Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, northern Greece, while he was imprisoned in Ephesus and reliant on friends for food and money. He was very grateful to the community of believers in Philippi for their generosity. Paul’s affection for them is evident as he writes ‘I thank my God every time I remember you’ and he refers to their ‘partnership in the gospel’ (Philippians 1:3–5).

Paul would have been aware that it was not an easy time to be a Christian in Philippi. While they were not suffering the outright persecution experienced in some places, the countercultural message of Jesus Christ was not always received well. To proclaim Jesus as Lord meant denouncing the Roman emperor as lord of all. This resulted in Christians being ostracised from their friends and neighbours, discriminated against and sometimes suffering violence. Therefore, Paul appeals to the Philippians: ‘Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ’ (v27).

Pause and reflect

• Have you ever suffered because of your beliefs? 
• How did you respond?

The tone of this letter shifts as Paul moves on. He asks the Philippians to examine themselves and their actions. 

He calls them to remain united, with the common focus and purpose of their lives being the good news of Jesus Christ. He urges them to ‘stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel’ (v27).

If the church in Philippi is going to withstand harassment from outside, then it will require unity from within. In chapter 2 we read that there is no room for selfish ambition or looking to our own interests. Unity comes from humility and a desire to put the needs of other people before our own.

Pause and reflect

• How do you react under pressure? 
• Do you find yourself looking out for other people or is there a tendency to put yourself first?

Paul tells the Philippians how not to behave, then he explains how this unity in humility is made possible. Unsurprisingly, it is all about Jesus. Put simply, Paul tells them: ‘Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself’ (2:5 The Message). Verses 6 to 11 is one of the most beautiful and poetic passages of Scripture, known as the Philippian hymn. Throughout history, the question of how Jesus could be truly and properly God and truly and properly man has perplexed the Church. There are many complex theological explanations for this foundational belief, which is encapsulated in The Salvation Army’s fourth doctrine. The words of these verses have been examined and dissected again and again to try and understand how Jesus is fully human and at the same time fully divine.

In his book Paul for Everyone, Tom Wright summarises the Philippian hymn. He writes: ‘His progression through incarnation to death must be seen, not as something which required him as it were to stop being God for a while, but as the perfect self-expression of the true God.’

In his humility, Jesus lays aside all the advantages of his divinity and chooses complete obedience to the point of death. Some translations write that Jesus ‘emptied himself’ (v7 English Standard Version) or ‘made himself nothing’ (v7) for each one of us. This is the perfect expression of God that Tom refers to, a God who is willing to humble himself as a servant and live a selfless, obedient life and die a selfless, obedient death on our behalf.

Pause and reflect

• Allow Philippians 2:6–11 to speak to you afresh. 
• How does the example of Jesus help us understand how to live as his followers today?

In The Call to Holiness, General Frederick Coutts describes holiness as ‘Christlikeness’ and goes on to say: ‘The closer a believer draws to Christ, the more sensitive will [they] become to anything un-Christlike in [their] life.’

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul describes a beautiful, generous group of believers who have the possibility of self-destructing under pressure if they continue in their un-Christlike ways. Trying to impress others or thinking too highly of ourselves is a surefire way to bring disunity and dissatisfaction to a group of Christians.

However, if we look to Jesus, we see that a life of humility and obedience is what God requires of us and then we, too, can shine like stars as Kingdom people, shining even more brightly the darker it gets.