By Dean LuskIn the weekend meeting with our fellow believers today we'll be looking at
Philippians 2:3-4:
Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. (NLT)
Now, we can't just take those two verses and build doctrine on them. There are other words surrounding these, and they give us the purpose behind the instruction above, but this phrase really sticks out at me:
Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. It's striking to me that even after following Jesus closely, listening to Him teach, watching Him love people and give to them, the apostles had an argument about which of them was better than the others (
Luke 9:46-48).
Matter of fact, on another occasion (
Matthew 20:20-28),
James and John got their mom to ask Jesus if they could sit in special places when Jesus established His kingdom. Amazing.
Question: where do you draw the line at considering others as better than yourself? I mean, if you're a forklift operator, you probably wouldn't consider an unskilled, untrained person to be better at you than driving a forklift. Someone could get killed. Obviously this isn't an across-the-board deal.
What other Biblical instructions and principles guide your actions and decisions where this is concerned? And does Biblical instruction really guide your actions, or do you just talk like it does?
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Comments (1)
Interesting post and thoughts.
I do often consider this an across the board verse that isn't talking about proficiency, but about self view and worth (or position) in life. Paul quite often eluded to his talents and worth but then cast them aside as insignificant- he didn't say they no longer existed (he was still educated and talented as he quite aptly demonstrated), just that their value was superfluous.
A forklift operator should recognize his talent but not consider it of any value other than simply operating a forklift just the same as a professor should understand his knowledge and realize it is impotent in reality and scheme to God.