My thoughts from Rob Bell's message from April 27, 2008: Others

Rob continued going through Philippians ever so slowly. Today it was chapter 2, verses 3 and 4:

3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

This was another great message where he breaks down each little piece of this passage which is saturated with good stuff. I don't think I have time to really capture what the whole of the message was in here. I mainly just want to give a synopsis of what I came away with, both for my own records, so that I can refer back to it at some point if I'm teaching something regarding this topic, and so that others out there can do the same.

He begins by talking about the Trinity and goes back through the previous chapter again, looking at all of the ways that Paul references the members of the Trinity both communally and individually. And then talks about how God, the Son, and the Spirit exist in community, each feeding and serving each other.

"God's eternal reality is the love between Father, Son, and Spirit...This is what God is...Union and communion are the goal of all created reality." -- Scot McKnight

And then he goes on to talk about what "looking not to your own interests but to the interests of others" looks like using that example of the Trinity. He quotes the theologian Karl Barth, and talks about those people who just get under your skin. Those people who just do things the complete opposite way of how you think they should be done, and those people who are strange and different.

We discover respect for each other, not on this ground or that, perhaps without any grounds, counter to every ground, simply because we are bidden when looking at our neighbor to think of the "one thing" - Karl Barth

The one thing here being God's grace. Paul is saying: if you want to understand God's Grace: orient yourself around the strange, the different, the coworker you can't stand, the embarrassing relative, the person who makes you crazy. In trying to love and serve them you will begin to get a glimpse of what it's like for God to love you with all of your strangeness, differentness, etc.

the strange, different, unintelligible, subjective aspect of my neighbor is the garment in which the "one thing" meets me. - Barth

Another great message from Bell.