Humility Sermon

The Mind That Stoops: A Sermon on Humility from Philippians 2

There is a kind of person we quietly admire but rarely talk about. They are not the loudest voice in the room. They are not the one angling for the best seat. They are the person who, when something needs to be done and no one is watching, simply does it. They are the person who genuinely seems more interested in your answer than in giving their own. We notice them. We are drawn to them. And if we are honest, we sense that something in them is more fully alive than what we usually carry around in ourselves.

The apostle Paul would say that what we are noticing in that person is the shape of Christ. And in Philippians 2, he invites the whole church to be formed into that same shape.

Let us read the text together. Philippians 2, verses 1 through 11, in the Christian Standard Bible.

"If then there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he appeared as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

This is the word of God.

The Situation Behind The Call

Before we go any further into the beauty of verses 6 through 11, we need to sit with the situation Paul is addressing in verses 1 through 4, because Paul is not writing a philosophy of humility. He is writing to a church with a real problem.

The church at Philippi was a congregation Paul loved deeply. He called them his joy and his crown. But something was fracturing the community. Later in chapter 4 he will name two women, Euodia and Syntyche, who have a conflict he considers serious enough to address publicly. There is strife. There is selfish ambition. There is the kind of conceit that makes a person calculate their own importance before they consider anyone else's need.

And so Paul makes a plea. He stacks up four conditional phrases in verse 1, and every one of them is something the Philippians already have. If there is encouragement in Christ, and there is. If there is consolation of love, and there is. If there is fellowship with the Spirit, and there is. If there is affection and mercy, and there is. Paul is saying: you already possess everything you need to live this way. The question is whether you will let what you have received reshape how you treat one another.

His request is striking. Make my joy complete. Not just increase it. Complete it. The implication is that their division is leaving something unfinished in the joy of the gospel itself. A fractured church is an incomplete testimony.

The remedy he names is not a program or a strategy. It is a posture. Consider others as more important than yourselves. Look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. This is not self-erasure. Paul is not asking anyone to pretend they have no needs or no voice. He is asking them to reorder their instincts, to make the other person's flourishing the first thing they reach for rather than the last.

The Pattern That Makes It Possible

Now here is where the sermon becomes more than good advice. Paul does not simply command humility and leave the congregation to manufacture it through willpower. He points them to a pattern, a story, a person. Verse 5: adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.

What follows in verses 6 through 11 is one of the most carefully composed passages in the New Testament. Many scholars believe Paul is drawing on an early Christian hymn, and whether or not that is the case, the passage moves with a kind of rhythm that is meant to be felt as much as analyzed. It descends and then it rises. It empties and then it fills. It stoops and then it is exalted.

Here is what we are told about Jesus. He existed in the form of God. This is not a reference to appearance or role-playing. The word form in Greek carries the sense of the essential nature of something. Jesus was, in his very being, God. He did not consider that equality with God something to be exploited, something to clutch or leverage for his own advantage.

Instead, he emptied himself. Theologians have wrestled for centuries with what this means precisely, and we should be careful not to say more than the text says. Paul does not say Jesus emptied himself of his divine nature. He says Jesus emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. The self-emptying was not a subtraction of divinity. It was an addition of humanity. It was the willingness of the eternal Son to enter the limitations, the vulnerability, the suffering of creaturely existence.

And then Paul takes it further. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross. That final phrase, even to death on a cross, lands like a stone. In the Roman world, crucifixion was not simply an execution method. It was a form of public humiliation designed to strip a person of every last shred of dignity. It was reserved for the lowest of the low. And the one who existed in the form of God went there willingly, obediently, for us.

This is the pattern Paul holds before the Philippians. This is the shape of the mind he is asking them to adopt. Not a vague niceness. Not a polite deference. But the deep, costly, self-giving orientation of Christ himself.

The Exaltation That Follows

Paul does not leave the story at the cross, and neither should we. Verses 9 through 11 describe what God the Father did in response to the Son's obedience. He highly exalted him. He gave him the name above every name. He ordained that every knee would bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

This is not a reward in the sense of payment for services rendered. This is the vindication of a way of being in the world. God is declaring, through the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, that the self-giving path is not the losing path. The one who descended the furthest has been raised the highest. The one who took the form of a servant now bears the name before which the entire cosmos will one day bow.

This matters for how we understand humility. Humility is not a strategy for getting ahead. It is not a technique for making people like you. And it is certainly not a guarantee that your circumstances will immediately improve. Paul himself wrote this letter from prison. But humility is the shape of the life that God vindicates. It is the posture that aligns us with the grain of the universe as God has ordered it.

What This Looks Like In A Congregation

So what does this mean for us, gathered here on a Sunday morning?

It means that the way we treat one another in this congregation is a theological statement. When we genuinely celebrate someone else's contribution instead of quietly resenting it, we are proclaiming something about Christ. When we choose to listen before we speak, to serve before we are served, to release a preference for the sake of another person's need, we are embodying the mind of Christ in a way that words alone cannot.

It also means that humility is not weakness. The Christ of Philippians 2 is not a passive figure. He made a choice. He acted. He obeyed. Humility, in the biblical sense, is not the absence of strength. It is strength directed outward rather than inward, placed at the service of others rather than hoarded for oneself.

And it means that this kind of life is possible only because of what Christ has already done. Paul's appeal in verse 1 is grounded in the reality of what believers already possess in Christ. Encouragement. Love. Fellowship with the Spirit. Affection. Mercy. The resources for humble living are not things we have to generate. They are things we have received. The question is whether we will draw on them.

If you are here today and you are not yet a follower of Jesus, what you are hearing is an invitation to know the one whose entire life was shaped by this kind of love. He did not exploit his position. He gave himself. He went to the cross for your sin and mine. He was raised from the dead. And he offers to those who trust him not only forgiveness but the very Spirit who makes this kind of transformed living possible. Repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is where this new life begins.

For those of us who already follow him, the invitation is renewal. Where has pride crept back in? Where have we been looking to our own interests at the cost of someone else's? The good news is that the same Christ who modeled this path for us also empowers us to walk it.

A Closing Charge

The mind that stoops is the mind that saves. It is the mind that holds a fractured community together. It is the mind that makes a congregation a place where the watching world catches a glimpse of something it cannot fully explain but deeply longs for.

May the God who exalted his humble Son shape us into people who carry that same mind into every room we enter, every relationship we hold, and every ordinary moment where no one is watching but him.

Sources Consulted

Fee, Gordon D. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1995.

Hawthorne, Gerald F., and Ralph P. Martin. Philippians. Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 43. Revised edition. Thomas Nelson, 2004.

Martin, Ralph P. A Hymn of Christ: Philippians 2:5-11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship. InterVarsity Press, 1997.

Thielman, Frank. Philippians. NIV Application Commentary. Zondervan, 1995.

Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.