Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory
I.
There are two ways of doing even the best work. Through strife and through love. This was seen in chap. 1, where two classes of preachers were described.
II. Entire sympathy with Christ will always heighten man’s appreciation of man.
III. Christianity is thus the only humanizing and fraternizing religion.
IV. Self-seeking is in utter antagonism to the spirit of Christianity.
V. Christianity never encourages a degrading view of human nature. Man is to be “esteemed” by man. Christians are to recognize each other’s excellencies. Love’s eye is quick to detect virtue in another. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Observe--
I. How things are often done--in a spirit of selfish opposition; of vain-glorious assumption.
II. How they ought to be done--in humility, giving the honour to others. (D. Lyth, D. D.)
Unanimity
I. Up to this point the apostle continues his appeal for unanimity. The spirit of this appeal is that of profound and tender sympathy with Christ. When history gives up her dead it will be found that where the rod has conquered its tens, love has won its thousands. The anxiety for entire oneness in the Church is in harmony with Christ’s prayer. Paul was wont to call for this. Absence of union is a reflection on the uniting force.
II. The uniting force in a Christian Church is the love of Christ. Where, then, there is disunion, it is plain that there is either not sufficient of this love, or that it is unequal to the exigencies of the case. Hence the grandeur and urgency of the appeal, “If there be any consolation in Christ;” as though he had said, “Remember that Christ’s love is on trial.” Men are looking on you as an experiment, and that not only you but Christ Himself will be deeply involved in the event of failure.
III. A discordant Church is a reflection on the moral power of the Saviour, because, without Him the Church would not be in existence. The world has a right to compare the deeds of the servant with the spirit of the Master, because the connection is moral and involves responsibility. A recently erected edifice, e.g., has fallen. How do men treat the fact? They instantly connect it with the architect or the builder. When a chemical experiment has failed men blame the manipulator. So all the practices of the Church are carried back to Christ, and He is magnified, or put to an open shame, according to their nature.
IV. What conclusion are we to come to from all this on the subject of mutual discipline? Are charity and justice to be sundered? Is there not to be a law of right in the Church? Is the garment of love to be thrown over the leper? Hear what Paul says (2 Thessalonians 3:6; Romans 16:17). The tones vary but the voice is the same Christ called Herod a fox, and said that Nathaniel was without guile. God can be warm as summer and chilling as winter. The apostle is perfectly consistent. The voice is as truly one as is the voice of a mother, when she sings her child to slumber, or shrieks at the approach of a ravenous beast. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Evils to be shunned and graces to be cultivated
The words depend upon the former, “Fulfil my joy that ye be,” etc. Why? “That nothing be done through strife,” etc. As if he should have said, If there be among you contention and vain glory it is not possible that you should be like minded, and so my joy is unfulfilled.
I. He would have nothing done through contention.
1. Contention should be abandoned by Christians, i.e., they should take no pleasure in dissenting from others (Galatians 5:20; Galatians 5:24; Proverbs 26:21). The schisms and heresies wherewith the Church at all times is troubled, come commonly from men who take a pleasure in dissent, such as Arius, Nestorius, Macedonius, etc.
2. But may nothing be done through contention? May not Micaiah set himself against four hundred false prophets (2 Chronicles 18:1-34), and Jeremiah strive with the whole earth (Jeremiah 15:10), and a pure Church with error? To know whether any thing is done through contention two rules are necessary.
(1) Is it done upon a humour to contradict whether true or false?
(2) When the truth is manifested is the opposition still maintained?
II. The apostle would repress the evil of vain-glory, a vain affection of glory, which is when vain men, to get themselves glory, single themselves in some vanity from the rest (Galatians 5:26).
1. The reason is that men desirous of this cannot, as they should, as becometh Christians, be of one accord with others.
2. It is vain-glory that we are not to affect, for this glory is allowable that men speak well of us, and glorify God on our behalf.
III. As a remedy the apostle prescribes meekness of mind.
1. Humility is opposed to contention and vain-glory as a preservative against them, and a preserver of that unity and concord of which they are the bane.
2. Ye see how it is defined to be a virtue, whereby every man, in whatsoever state or place he be, esteemeth other better than himself (Ephesians 4:2). In modesty we are to yield in many things of our own right, so that, though David knew himself to be better than Saul, yet in meekness of mind he may esteem Saul better than himself.
IV. Another remedy (verse 4) is not to look on our own things but on the things of others. Self seeking is an enemy also to concord. If we look on our own graces, wit, learning, goods, and neglect or contemn those of other men, what else will follow but vain glory and contention (Luke 18:11). We may look on our own things and glorify God, but not to glorify them; and on the things of others, not to envy them but to reverence them. (H. Airay, D. D.)
True humility
I. Its features.
1. It distrusts self.
2. Honours others.
II. Its effect. It excludes--
1. Strife.
2. Vain-glory.
III. Its obligation.
1. It is conformable to the mind of Christ.
2. It contributes to social happiness. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Prohibitions and injunctions
I. What is forbidden.
1. Not a proper care for one’s own health reputation, interest, etc., but a selfish disregard of the happiness, claims, and rights of others.
II. What is enjoined? not inquisitiveness, but consideration, sympathy, help--because of God’s ordination, our own mutual dependence, Christ’s example, the pleasure and reward. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Selfishness
I. Its nature.
II. Operation.
III. Cure. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Vain-glory
Vain-glorious men are the scorn of wise men, the admiration of fools, the idols of parasites, and the slaves of their own vanity. (Lord Bacon.)
Lowliness of mind
If we have any graces, they are graces which ought not to elate, but to humble us; and that the more we have received, the more we ought to abase ourselves, as you see among the ears of corn, those bend their head lowest which are the best and the fullest of grain. (J. Daille.)
Humility
Of all trees, I observe, God hath chosen the vine, a low plant that creeps upon the helpful wall; of all beasts, the soft and patient lamb; of all fowls, the mild and guileless dove. Christ is the rose of the field, and the lily of the valley. When God appeared to Moses, it was not in the lofty cedar, nor the sturdy oak, nor the spreading plane; but in a bush, a humble, slender, abject shrub; as if He would, by these elections, check the conceited arrogance of man. (Owen Feltham.)
Christian humility
Rowland Hill, during his last illness, being asked by Mr. Jay if he felt his personal interest in Christ, replied, “I can see more of my Saviour’s glory than of my interest in Him. God is letting me down gently into the grave, and I shall creep into heaven under some crevice of the door.”
Avoiding vain-glory
When Lacordaire, the most renowned of Roman Catholic orators, was complimented upon being the first preacher in France, he replied, “No; I am the second; Adolphe Monod is the first.” (J. A. James.)
Frederick the Great once sent a sword to George Washington with the inscription, “From the oldest soldier to the greatest.” (H. O. Mackay.)
Truthful estimation
It is impossible for a man to esteem another better looking than himself, when he is only half as good looking. There may be a difference between men in appearance, but if a man is six feet high he cannot say of another man who is only three feet high, “I think he is taller than I am,” and be a truthful man. If a man is sagacious and he knows it--as he generally does--he cannot say that a wool gatherer is smarter than he.” If a man is generous and kind, he cannot make himself believe that a stingy man is better than he. But this is not the idea. Paul meant simply that a man who is using his whole self for other men, and is striving to help others instead of helping himself, is putting himself below others, or esteeming them better than himself. The mother esteems the child as better than herself in that sense. If either of the two is to lie awake she lies awake. She lies awake that the child may go to sleep. If either she or the babe is to go hungry it is not the babe. She esteems the babe better than herself in the sense that she gives herself away for it; that she bestows her thought and feeling and care on its behalf. Paul means that when we love our fellow men, we ought to be in that general spirit which shall lead us to feel that service rendered to others at some inconvenience, and it may be suffering, is a great deal better than rendering service to ourselves. And it comes back again to that other form, “Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself.” (H. W. Beecher.)
The estimation of self and others
In the ancient fable a man carried two bags slung over his shoulders. In the one in front he carried his neighbour’s faults: in the one behind, out of sight, he carried his own--the exact reverse of the Christian way. (Christian Age.)
The example of Christ
The primary object of the apostle in the next few verses is not to tell how great Christ was by nature, and how low He became, although in his illustration he has done so; but to show how He looked on His own things and the things of others. St. Paul begins the tale of Christ’s humiliation by referring to the state of mind which led to it; and the clause which has the prime emphasis laid upon it is that which virtually asserts that He did not regard His own things. Though the form of God was His He did not regard it with a selfish and exclusive attachment, but He laid it aside and became man. He was in the form of God, and did not think it a thing to be eagerly laid hold of to be equal with God in having or exhibiting this form. He emptied Himself of it. He did not look simply to His own things--the glories of the Godhead; but He looked on the things of others, and therefore descended to humanity and death. His heart was not so set upon His glory, that He would not appear at any time without it. There was something which He coveted more--something which He felt to be truly a ᾶρπαγμός, and that was the redemption of a fallen world by His abasement and death. Or to speak after the manner of men, two things were present to His mind. Either continuance in the form of God, and being always equal with God, but allowing humanity to perish; or vailing this form and foregoing this equality for a season, and delivering by His condescension and agony the fallen progeny of Adam. He gave the latter the preference from His possession of His “mind,” and in indiscribable generosity He looked at the things of others, and descended with His splendour eclipsed--appeared not as God in glory, but clothed in flesh; not in royal robes, but in the dress of a village youth; not as a Deity in fire, but a man in tears; not in a palace, but in a manger; not with a thunderbolt in His hand, but with the hammer and hatchet of a Galilean mechanic, and in this way He gave the Church an example of that self-abnegation and kindness which the apostle here enforces, “Look not every one on his own things, but also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Professor Eadie.)
Humility and joyfulness
Our humiliations work out our most elevated joys. The way that a drop of rain comes to sing in the leaf that rustles in the top of the tree all the summer long, is by going down to the roots first and from thence ascending to the bough. (H. W. Beecher.)