big stuff

Philippians 2

3 Don't be selfish;

don't try to impress others.

Be humble,

thinking of others as better than yourselves.

4 Don't look out only for your own interests,

but take an interest in others, too.
  

5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God,

  he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.

7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;

  he took the humble position of a slave*
  

and was born as a human being.

When he appeared in human form,

8 he humbled himself in obedience to God

  and died a criminal's death on a cross.

9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor

  and gave him the name above all other names,

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

  in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

  to the glory of God the Father.

It is obvious here that Paul was not someone who believed that “all paths lead to God”.

And that would have been easy to say back then, because there were LOTS of different religions, & it was not unusual for people to extend fealty or loyalty to more than one religion.

They kind of did a game of pick & choose with religion, taking the parts they liked, or which were politically or socially advantageous for them to connect with.

Kinda like the way we do today.

Paul establishes right from the beginning of the passage that being selfish / self centered / elf absorbed in counterintuitive to a life devoted to following Jesus.

One of the hallmarks of a follower of Jesus is to be others oriented.

Is latter something we see a predominance of today, or is it more the former?

But perhaps Paul's strongest point is that Jesus came to serve, not to be served.

Serving is hard, because we give up all rights to know the who,what, where, when, &/or how of anything we are asked to do or mandated to do.

When we serve, we give up those rights.

That's why I know whenever I hear someone say, “All I want is to be servant of the Lord,” I know that he or she has never been one.

Being a servant is putting aside our person wants, needs, dreams, hopes, & desires, & buying in to whatever the Lord wants & directs us to be &/or do.

That's why there's not that long of a line of those signing up to be a servant.

This is another of Paul's BIG statements about who Jesus is & the singularity of life through Him.

Read the passage again, after thinking about all these different things.