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Happy Lord’s Day!
This past weekend, I had the privilege of preaching on how to risist rivalry and pursue unity, largely from Philippians 2:1-5.
You can watch or listen to the sermon here or by clicking the link below. I’ve also included the full sermon transcript below. 🙂
I pray the Lord blesses you through His Word!
~Blake
P.S. The sermon starts at the 18:45-minute mark.
It’s a joy to worship Christ with you all again today. We are continuing our “I Believe” sermon series. Each week, we are looking at one phrase from the Apostles’ Creed, which is a short summary of faith that Christians have universally affirmed for nearly two thousand years.
Last week, Pastor Sterling did an excellent job explaining the phrase, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Today, we look at the following phrase: [We believe in] “the holy catholic church, the communion of the saints.”
You’re probably thinking, “I don’t like how you emphasized the word catholic there!” But in all seriousness, we’ll cover each of the words in our phrase today, including the word catholic, which—spoiler alert—does not mean Roman Catholic. And hopefully, we’ll gain some clarity.
But before we do that, let me ask for a show of hands: How many of you remember the 1987 film The Princess Bride?
Those of you who have seen the movie might remember this scene. Vizzini (the bald guy on the left) and Wesley (the guy on the right) decide to play a high-stakes game over some bread and wine.
If you have not seen the movie, you may look at these photos and say, “Wow, that looks like a pleasant time of fellowship!” (Especially if you ignore the hostage in red!)
But if you know the scene, you’ll know that Wesley put a deadly powder called iocaine in both goblets—and this powder would poison and kill Vizzini—meaning, what appeared on the outside to be a sweet time of communion and fellowship was actually poisonous and deadly.
Now, part of what makes this a kid-friendly movie is that iocaine powder is a fictional substance—you couldn’t buy it today to poison your friends (in case you are getting any weird ideas!). But the Bible teaches that there is a kind of communion (or fellowship) that poisons and kills—and there is another kind of communion that nourishes and gives life.
Today, we will consider how to make sure our communion with one another is nourishing and life-giving rather than poisonous and deadly.
So, we will spend most of our time looking at the word communion from the Apostles’ Creed.
But before we do that, I would like to briefly overview each of the other words in our phrase—as this will set a good foundation for us. (Again, our phrase says we believe in the holy catholic church, the communion of the saints.)
HOLY
The word holy simply means set apart. For example, 1 Peter 2:9 says, “You are a chosen people . . . a holy nation, God’s special possession.”
When God calls you holy, he’s saying, “I have set you apart for a special purpose. I’ve empowered you to live differently than the world.”
Recently, I heard someone say that if you go to a river, one of the ways you can distinguish a dead thing from a living thing is whether it can go against the current. You will never see a dead thing floating against the current—only living things have that power.
In the same way, when God sets you apart and gives you new life by his Spirit, you now have the power to live differently and do things that are unnatural to this world. For example, you now have the power to obey Jesus’ words in Luke 6:27-28, when he tells us to
- Love your enemies;
- Do good to those who hate you;
- Bless those who curse you;
- Pray for those who mistreat you.
You now have the power to
- Say no to your flesh;
- Repay evil with good;
- Humbly repent of your sin rather than hiding or self-justifying;
- Love and forgive those in your life who have sinned against you.
So, holy primarily means set apart. But it can also mean purified. For example, Ephesians 5:25 says, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing [purifying] her with water by the word. . .”
The Bible describes two kinds of purity: positional purity and practical purity.
Positional purity
Positional purity is synonymous with justification, and it means that through the blood of Christ, you and I are already perfectly pure in the eyes of God.
Jesus says in John 15:3: “Already you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us in him before the foundations of the world to make us holy and without fault in his eyes!
This is positional purity (or justification).
Practical purity
Practical purity, meanwhile, is synonymous with sanctification. It refers to the fact that we are progressively becoming more like Christ in lived-out holiness through the power of the Holy Spirit.
We see both kinds of purity described in Hebrews 10:14: “For by one sacrifice, he [Jesus] has made perfect forever [positional purity] those who are being made holy [practical purity].”
So, when God calls us “holy,” he is saying, “You are set apart for a purpose, justified by the blood of Christ, and sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Next, let’s consider the word. . .
CATHOLIC
The word catholic (notice, again, this is small-C catholic, not Roman Catholic), simply means universal. This reminds us that the Christian church consists of people from all. . .
- PLACES.
Matthew 28:20 says, “Go and make disciples of all nations . . .”
- GENERATIONS.
Psalm 145:4 says, “One generation will commend your works to another.”
I’ll pause for a moment to say this: I’m so grateful for those of you who are in the generations above me. It’s hard to quantify how much the younger generation needs you. In a constantly changing and often difficult world, we desperately need to see examples of Christians who walk faithfully with Jesus—year after year and decade after decade—and they don’t give up. They don’t quit. They don’t stop gathering together. They don’t stop seeking after Jesus.
Man, is that encouraging to see! Whenever I’m tempted to doubt whether God will sustain me for a lifetime of service to him, it’s so helpful to see faithful Christians in the generations above me—a beautiful reminder that “If the Holy Spirit sustained them, he will sustain me.”
The church (being universal) consists of people from all places, all generations, and finally, all. . .
- TIMES.
Hebrews 12:1 says that we are “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” referring to those believers who have gone before us.
If you want to get nerdy (which I do, so I will!), theologians call this the visible church and the invisible church. The visible church refers to Christians who are still alive today. The invisible church refers to all believers who have gone before us—who are still part of the church, even if we cannot see them right now.
One of my favorite examples of this comes from my Grandma Ruby.
My Grandma Ruby (we called her Nanny) passed away in 2019. She was the grandma I was closest with growing up and throughout my life. That’s her on the right and me on the left (in case you couldn’t tell who was who!).
Anyway, after Nanny passed away, we found her Bible. On the very first page of her Bible, she had one line scribbled down—we don’t know when she wrote it—but it said this:
“Christians who have passed are not in our past. They’re in our future.”
Nanny lived and died in the joy of this hope. Because the church is catholic (universal), we can have hope that believers who have passed away are still part of the church—meaning, God is still not finished with them! They aren’t in our past but our future.
SAINTS
The word saints is related to the word holy, and it simply refers to all true believers or God’s chosen people. This is, ironically, one of the ways we differ from the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church sees saints as a special class of Christians—perhaps even holier or worthier than others—whereas we believe that all God’s people are saints.
For example, 1 Corinthians 1:2 says, “To those sanctified in Christ Jesus—[a reference to all believers]—called to be saints together with all those in every place who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ . . .”
In other words, if you are a Christian, you are a saint—and if you are a saint, you are a Christian. You are part of God’s chosen people.
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Okay—with that overview of the creed being said—we will spend the rest of our time looking at the word communion in our phrase from the Apostles’ Creed.
One of the best descriptions of the communion of the saints comes in Philippians 2:1-5. If you have your Bible, you can turn there, as this is where we will spend the rest of our time today.
As I read this, ask yourself, “What does this text say about the kind of communion God wants us to have with one another?” Or, to put that in the words we used earlier: “How can we make sure our communion is nourishing and life-giving, not poisonous and deadly?” How can we make sure our fellowship does not have iocane powder in it?
Let’s read the passage:
1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus . . .
How can we ensure our communion with one another is nourishing and life-giving? According to this text, we must do three things:
- Resist rivalry (v. 3)
- Pursue unity (vv. 1-2)
- Cultivate humility (vv. 3b-5)
Let’s consider these one at a time, beginning with:
Resist rivalry (v. 3)
Perhaps nothing poisons Christian communion more than rivalry. Notice again v. 3:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition [rivalry] or vain conceit [empty glory]. Rather—and here’s the antidote to rivalry—in humility value others above yourselves. . .
According to this verse, rivalry among believers always stems from pride and insecurity (being glory-empty). Whenever we feel the need to “one-up” our friends—whenever we feel like someone else’s successes or joys threaten us—it’s because we are insecure. We’re glory-empty. We’re trying to build our sense of worth on how we measure up to those around us. We’re prideful.
Tim Keller describes this reality better than I ever could. Check out how he puts it in his book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.
Keller says,
The way the normal human ego tries to fill its emptiness and deal with its discomfort is by comparing itself to other people. All the time.
In his famous chapter on pride in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis points out that pride is by nature competitive. It is competitiveness [rivalry] that is at the very heart of pride.
Lewis writes,
‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are [actually] proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking, there would be nothing to be proud about.’
In other words, we are only proud of being more successful, more intelligent, or more good-looking than the next person, and when we are in the presence of someone who is more successful, intelligent, and good-looking than we are, we lose all pleasure in what we had. That is because we really had no pleasure in [the thing itself—only in having more of that thing than the next person.]
Do you hear what Keller (and Lewis) are saying? Rivalry turns our friends into enemies and our companions into competition.
This is Satan’s game plan: He wants to poison us and to poison our communion with one another by setting us against each other—by making us rivals. Once again: there is perhaps nothing more poisonous to Christian communion than rivalry (and comparison).
So, how do we resist rivalry?
We will consider this question further later, but for now, I want to offer one of the most powerful tools for resisting rivalry—a tool I learned from a pastor named Gavin Ortlund.
A couple of years ago, I read Gavin Ortlund’s Humility.
In this book, Gavin talks about how his brother, Dane, became famous—largely through his book Gentle and Lowly (which has now sold close to a million copies). Gavin said that when Gentle and Lowly sales first started to take off, people would regularly come up to him and start raving about his brother:
- Your brother is amazing!
- Your brother is the best author I’ve ever read.
- Your brother’s book changed my life.
- Do you realize how brilliant your brother is?
So, Gavin said he committed early on—in order to combat envy and rivalry—that whenever anyone came up to him and talked about his brother or his book, he would use that as an alarm clock to immediately stop and pray for his brother’s greater blessing. He prayed that Dane’s book would sell more copies, have more success, and impact more lives for the gospel.
After reading about Gavin’s practice, I identified three men in my life whom I was tempted to envy (make my rival). I made a habit of praying for these men every morning when I woke up. And I didn’t just pray generically for these men—I prayed for their greater blessing in the areas I was tempted to envy. After a month or two of consistent prayer, I noticed two things happened:
- My temptation to envy these men decreased.
- My genuine love for these men increased—and I actually started to want them to succeed in the areas of which I once felt envious.
One of the most powerful tools for combating rivalry is praying for the greater blessing of the people in our lives whom we are tempted to envy. Instead of pitting ourselves against them, we must join their team!
This brings us to the second way we can ensure our communion with one another is life-giving rather than poisonous. We must:
Pursue unity (vv. 1-2)
Look back at verses 1-2, and notice all the different ways Paul describes the unity God calls us to have with one another:
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ . . . if any common sharing in the Spirit . . . make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.
Ever since I was little, I’ve loved playing basketball. Here are a couple of pictures of me when I was very young:
I loved basketball then, and I still do today. My biggest complaint about our church is that none of our four campuses has a basketball court. It’s a shame! So, for this point on unity, I want to encourage all of us to unite together to build a basketball court at Chapelstreet!
Anyway, when I was little, one of my favorite feelings was going up to get a rebound that multiple people tried to grab, and then I ripped it away from everyone else. This made me feel strong and tough—and boosted my little ego.
But often, I would go up to grab a rebound, come down with the ball, and someone else would be ripping at the ball, too. So I’d yank harder. But then I’d hear my coaches and teammates screaming from the sideline, “Same team! Same team!” Suddenly, I’d look up and realize that I was trying to tear the ball away from one of my teammates—and he was trying to pull it away from me—neither of us realized it!
Now, here’s the thing: If I kept fighting with my teammate at that moment, the ball would fly back up in the air, and the other team would get it. Or we would get a backcourt violation (a penalty). We could only win if we stopped fighting and started working together. And this is precisely what God calls us to do in this passage. Paul says,
- Share in the Spirit
- Be like-minded
- Have the same love
- One in spirit
- One mind
In other words, whenever you are tempted to tear down another believer, remember: “Same team! Same team!” You’ll only win if you stop fighting and start working together. You must pursue unity.
Now, an important caveat: unity is not the same thing as uniformity. Pursuing unity does not mean that we can never have disagreements as believers. In fact, differences in personality, culture, gifting—even stances on secondary and tertiary issues—can actually strengthen the body of Christ when done correctly. But our differences will only strengthen us if something deeper unites us.
So, what unites us, despite all our differences (according to verses 1-2)? Sunday school answer alert: but it’s Jesus! It’s the gospel. It’s what we confess in the Apostles’ Creed. Pastor Brian reminded me this past week that this is why we are studying the Apostles’ Creed—because in a world where division (and disunity) are rampant, these foundational truths are what unite us.
In Matthew 16:14-16, Jesus says that when we are united by the Gospel—by the confession of Jesus Christ—the gates of hell will not stand against the Church. Only when we wander away from the Gospel—when we put anything other than Jesus front and center in our lives and ministries—is our communion with one another in danger of being poisoned.
This brings us to our final point. How can we make sure our communion is life-giving and not poisonous? We must. . .
- Resist rivalry
- Pursue unity
Third and finally, we must:
Cultivate humility (vv. 3b-5)
Notice again verse 3:
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves . . .”
What gives us the power to resist rivalry and pursue unity? What gives us the power to be a life-giving community that resists the poisons of this world? According to this verse, it all starts with humility. As long as we are prideful and insecure, we will continue to turn our friends into rivals and fight with our teammates instead of working together for the gospel.
So, how exactly do we cultivate humility? Many have observed that you cannot directly pursue humility. The moment we look inward and ask, “Am I humble?” (or worse, “How humble am I coming across?”)—true humility disappears. We’re right back to being prideful.
In other words, the only way to cultivate humility is not by focusing on ourselves but by focusing on someone else. This is exactly what the text says. Notice verses 5 and 8, again:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who . . . humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
In other words, if we want to be the kind of community God created us to be, we must keep our eyes fixed on Jesus—our Savior and perfect model. Think about it:
Jesus resisted rivalry. Whereas rivalry turns our friends into enemies, Jesus turned his enemies into his friends. Rather than poisoning his enemies, Jesus drank the poison of the cross for his enemies to reconcile us to God.
Jesus pursued unity. Ephesians 2:14-16 says that on the cross, Jesus broke down the wall of hostility that existed between Jews and Gentiles. Jesus came to unify people from every tribe, tongue, and nation—to make the church universal.
Jesus cultivated humility to the greatest degree—“[humbling] himself to death—even death on a cross” for you and me!
Don’t you see his beauty? Don’t you see what great lengths he went to save you and bring you into a new communion with him and his people? Don’t you long to be like him?
Today, Jesus is calling you to pick up your cross and follow him. He is calling you to resist rivalry, pursue unity, and cultivate humility—all by keeping your eyes fixed on him.
If you have not yet put faith in Jesus, today is a great day to do that. Jesus wants to free your soul from the poison of rivalry, disunity, and pride. He wants to bring you into the holy catholic church, the communion of the saints. He wants to bring you into communion with himself.
Will you respond to his call today? If so, please pray this with me as we close.
Lord Jesus, I need you. Forgive me for my pride. Forgive me for my rivalry—for all the times I’ve turned my companions into competition. Forgive me for the times I’ve contributed to disunity instead of unity. Change my heart, be my Savior, and help me to walk in obedience to you—today and the rest of my days. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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Blake Glosson (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is a pastoral resident at Chapelstreet Church in Geneva, Illinois. He has been published and/or republished or referred by:
- The Gospel Coalition
- Life Bible
- Crosswalk
- Eternal Perspective Ministries (Randy Alcorn)
- Challies.com/Tim Challies (here, here, and here)
- DashHouse (Darryl Dash)
- Moody Radio (here, here, and here)
- The JOY FM (here and here)
- ChurchLeaders.com
- Monergism.com
- The Aquila Report (here, here, and here)
Previously, Blake served as the director of young adults at New Covenant Bible Church in St. Charles, Illinois.
Listen to more of Blake’s sermons here.
Read or watch “Hope in Times of Suffering” here.
Read or watch “The Lord and Savior We Need” here.
Read “Why Does God Say No to Good Things?” here.
Read “Break Shame’s Chains Through Christ” here.
Feel free to drop a comment below with thoughts or questions!
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