A Church Being Re-Formed

In Week 5 of A Re-Formed Imagination, we turned our attention to Philippians 2:1–4 and considered what it means for a church to be re-formed by the gospel. Before Paul sings the Christ Hymn in verses 6–11, he addresses the communal posture that must be reshaped if the church is to faithfully embody the story of Jesus. The question is not simply what we believe, but who we are becoming together.

Paul begins by grounding the church in gospel realities already at work among them: encouragement in Christ, comfort from love, participation in the Spirit, and affection and sympathy. These are not ideals to achieve but gifts to receive. Unity, then, is not something we manufacture—it is something we are called to live in alignment with. Paul urges the church to be of “the same mind,” not through uniformity, but through a shared orientation toward Christ-shaped love.

Paul then names the true threat to community life: selfish ambition and empty glory. Rivalry, comparison, and self-protection quietly fracture life together, even in churches that confess the right things about Jesus. At the heart of rivalry is fear—fear of being unseen, unvalued, or unsafe. Paul does not shame this instinct; he exposes it so it can be healed. Humility, he reminds us, does not grow in fear but in security.

Counting others as more significant than ourselves is not self-neglect; it is self-forgetfulness born of trust. Because our lives are secure in Christ, we are freed from grasping for status and recognition. The same attentiveness we naturally give to our own interests is now expanded to include the interests of others.

This passage leaves us intentionally unfinished. Before Paul tells the story of Jesus’ self-giving love, he invites us to notice where we still resist it. In doing so, we are invited to become a church being re-formed—together—by the gospel that shapes not only our beliefs, but our loves.