Philippians Part 9: To live is Christ

Oct 6

God Enabled Obedience

Philippians 4:21–23

After everything Paul has written about joy, humility, suffering, unity, contentment, generosity, holiness, and knowing Christ, the letter ends rather simply:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

It would be easy to skim past those words. They sound like the kind of closing we expect at the end of one of Paul's letters. But this isn't an empty sign-off. Paul began Philippians with grace, and now he ends with grace. That is fitting because everything he has called these Christians to throughout this letter depends upon the grace of God.

For weeks, we have returned to Paul's words from the beginning of this letter: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

That statement is at the heart of Philippians. But now that we have reached the end, we have to ask ourselves what it means to actually live that way.

Because “to live is Christ” cannot remain a slogan.

When Christ Becomes Our Life

Paul wasn't writing Philippians from a comfortable place. He was imprisoned and awaiting a trial that could end in either his release or his death. Yet his circumstances didn't determine his faithfulness. He could rejoice because whether he lived or died, Christ would be exalted.

Paul expresses the same reality in Galatians 2:20: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

That is a remarkable description of the Christian life. Following Jesus isn't simply adding Christianity to the life we were already living. We belong to Christ now. Our desires, decisions, relationships, priorities, words, and actions increasingly come under His authority.

This is why merely identifying ourselves as Christians isn't enough. Christianity isn't simply agreeing that Jesus existed, believing some facts about Him, or appreciating His moral teaching. Biblical faith changes the person who believes.

James famously tells us that faith without works is dead. At the same time, Scripture could not be clearer that our works do not save us. We are not justified because we managed to become sufficiently obedient.

So how do those truths fit together?

Our obedience does not produce our salvation. It flows from it.

We don't obey Christ in order to convince Him to save us. We obey because, by grace, He has saved us and become our Lord. Genuine faith bears fruit in a life increasingly submitted to Him.

Obedience Is Not the Same as Trying to Earn God's Favor

Two people can perform the same outward action for entirely different reasons.

Someone can read Scripture because they believe checking that box makes God more pleased with them. Another person can open the same Bible because they love Christ and genuinely want to hear from Him.

Someone can give money because they hope God will reward them. Someone else can give because God's grace has loosened their grip on what they possess.

The actions may look similar from the outside, but the heart behind them is very different.

Works-righteousness says, I have done what is required, so I deserve the reward.

Christian obedience says, Christ is Lord, and I want to please Him.

That distinction matters because obedience isn't an attempt to prove our goodness to God. In fact, genuine obedience begins by admitting the opposite: we aren't good enough, we cannot save ourselves, and we need mercy. Philippians 4_21-23

This also means our actions can reveal things about our hearts that our words sometimes hide.

We can say that we depend upon God while rarely praying. We can say His Word is our authority while seldom opening it. We can say that sin is serious while continually minimizing our own.

The answer isn't to pile more religious activity onto our lives so that God won't be angry with us. The answer is to examine what our habits reveal about what we actually believe and then return again to Christ in repentance and faith. Philippians 4_21-23

Obedience grows out of a heart that recognizes Christ as its rightful Lord.

We Cannot Obey a Word We Do Not Know

Of course, if we are going to obey Christ, we need to know what He has said.

Jesus says in John 14, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.” That makes knowing Scripture an essential part of discipleship.

This is one of the reasons we care so deeply about God's Word at Watkins Community Church. Scripture is our authority, which is why we preach through books of the Bible verse by verse. We don't want to build the church around whatever topics happen to interest us at the moment. We want to hear what God has said, understand it faithfully, and allow His Word to shape us.

But even biblical knowledge isn't the final goal.

It is possible to know a great deal about Scripture without deeply loving the God who gave it. We don't merely want to accumulate information about Christ. We want our knowledge of His Word to deepen our affection for Him, and for that affection to form convictions that shape how we actually live.

That has really been the goal throughout this entire series.

We want to know Christ.

We want to love Christ.

And because we know and love Him, we want our lives to increasingly resemble Christ.

But there is a problem: we cannot produce that transformation by ourselves.

Obedience Requires Grace

Romans 8 tells us that the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God and cannot submit to His law. Left to ourselves, we don't naturally desire obedience. We naturally desire autonomy.

That means simply telling ourselves to try harder will never be enough.

We need the Holy Spirit.

Jesus promised His disciples that the Father would send the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who would teach them and bring His words to their remembrance. God doesn't call His people to obedience and then leave them alone to figure out how to accomplish it. He graciously works within His people.

This brings us back to Paul's final words:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

What an appropriate way to end this letter.

After all the commands Paul has given, after everything he has called the Philippians to become, he sends them out with grace.

The Christian life begins with grace, continues by grace, and will ultimately be completed by grace.

The Spirit uses God's Word to expose our sin, correct our thinking, reshape our desires, deepen our affection for Christ, and produce conviction that leads to obedience. Our responsibility is not to remain indifferent to that work, but to respond faithfully to it.

That also means we need one another. God has not designed Christians to pursue holiness alone. There will be times when another believer sees something in us that we have failed to see ourselves. Loving one another sometimes means having difficult conversations, speaking truth graciously, and helping each other return to Christ when we wander.

And when someone comes to us with a concern, humility means listening, examining ourselves honestly, bringing what they have said before God, and being willing to repent when necessary.

A church shaped by grace should be a church where people love one another enough to help each other obey Jesus.

What Will We Do With Philippians?

We began this series with Paul's words:

“For to me to live is Christ.”

Now, after walking through the entire letter, we have a much fuller picture of what that means.

To live is Christ means the gospel matters more than our comfort. It means looking to the interests of others and following the humility of Jesus. It means working out our salvation because God is at work within us. It means counting everything as loss compared with the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. It means pressing toward Him because He has already made us His own.

It means standing firm when life becomes uncertain, bringing our anxiety before God in prayer, learning contentment in both abundance and need, and loosening our grip on the things of this world because Christ has become our treasure.

And now, at the end of the letter, it means taking everything we have learned and actually living it.

That won't always be easy. Obedience rarely is. We still struggle with sin, selfishness, pride, fear, and the desire to live according to our own wisdom.

But we do not go alone.

Paul sends the Philippians into lives of obedience with the same thing they needed when they first believed: the grace of Jesus Christ.

That seems like the right place for us to end this series too.

My prayer for Watkins Community Church is not simply that we would finish Philippians knowing more about Philippians. My prayer is that God would use His Word to make us more like Christ—that we would hunger for His Word, depend upon His Spirit, repent quickly when He exposes our sin, love one another enough to speak truth, and increasingly submit every part of our lives to Jesus.

So as we close this book, the question before us is the same one that has been before us from the beginning:

Can we truly say, “To live is Christ”?

Not merely with our mouths, but with our lives.

And as we seek to do so, Paul's final words remind us where our confidence must remain: