by Bill Lawrence
president of Leader Formation International
Have the mind among ourselves which was also in Christ Jesus . . .
Philippians 2:5
Join me on the night when Jesus was with His men, at one point all twelve of them, but then one betrayed Him, and at that moment Judas was accepting thirty pieces of silver to turn Him over to the Pharisees and Sadducees for an illegal trial and crucifixion. Only Jesus knew this, but He taught the eleven in the Upper Room, then walked to the Garden of Gethsemane--the Garden of Pain, having taken His three key disciples, Peter, James, and John, to His personal place of prayer and poured out His heart to His Father. It was here that He was as human as He could be apart from the cross itself. And it was here that He cried out to His Father,
... if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as You will.
Matthew 26:39
What He was praying was If it is possible, deliver Me from the price I must pay to free men and women from the penalty for sin. Tell Me, and I will pay that rather than the cross. Nevertheless,
. . . not as I will, but as you will.
That is the mind that Paul wants all leaders, not just the Philippians in their differences, but us in our leadership, to have. He is saying, Don't pursue your will but pursue the will of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Come together in the unity that the Lord God desires for you. Jesus first, you last!
You see, leadership is followership first, and that always means Jesus first and us last. That's what being a leader is--followers first, leaders last.
I will say this over-and-over again: to be a leader for Christ you must first be a follower of Christ.
You cannot be a leader for Christ unless you are first a follower of Christ.
If Jesus could not be a leader for the Father unless He was first a follower of the Father through radical desperate dependence on the Holy Spirit, how can any of us be an exception? There are no exceptions.
It's interesting to realize that the first task of a leader is to be a model of Jesus, to show your followers what Jesus is like in everyday life, in being holy, not like a high or superior priest, but as a very real nitty-gritty hands, task accomplishing, caring, a sacrificing leader who supports those who suffer and have great needs. The primary responsibility of a leader is to meet your follower's needs and help them grow in Christ and so model Jesus to all followers.
To do this you must have knowledge of God's word at the very core of your thinking and your way of life. In the battle with Satan Jesus used God's word as His sword, His weapon of defense and assertion. Even in a surface consideration of the war between good and evil you see the exchange of the Word as the way Jesus inserted Himself and proved to be superior to His enemy. What He did to defend Himself He also did to advance Himself during His time leading up to Calvary. For Jesus knowledge meant more than the thoughts He knew; it meant His way of life, the way He applied His knowledge to all that His did, the very essence of all that He was, His model of life.
For us this means that our knowledge leads us to Calvary as it did for Him, so that as leaders we become living sacrifices even as truth was for Jesus. Of course only He could be the living sacrifice for our sin and the One who paid for our sin so we could have eternal life. But as leaders we deny our-selves take up the cross and follow Jesus, as He directed His disciples to do. This means our entire way of life is the Jesus way of life as Jesus showed us when He led His men to Jerusalem and the Upper Room and to the Garden of Gethsemane and then to Calvary. We are willing to lose our lives for Christ's sake whether that is physically real or spiritually true. While He alone can pay for sin we can serve Him by sacrificing ourselves by denying our interests and taking up the cross and following Him in a desperate radical way, but to do this we must sacrifice ourselves in the death of the cross.
Taking up the cross, however, always leads to the resurrection. As a leader and the model of the Jesus way of life, you must show your followers the resurrection way of life. Think of what it was like first for the women who sought to complete Jesus's death and then for the men who rushed to see if resur-rection could be true to realize that the unbelievable was utterly real. No one could believe it, but He was raised from the dead and was introducing the reality that He expected His followers to live the new way of life that He had been demonstrating to them for three years through the Holy Spirit. It's your responsibility as a leader to desperately radically depend on the Holy Spirit to model the resurrection way of life, the Jesus way of life for all who will follow you.
And there is a reality I have been saying over-and-over: you cannot do this on your own. You need en-ablement. As Jesus said in the Upper Room Discourse the Holy Spirit would come, and He did come on the Day of Pentecost. He came and empowered all who believed in Jesus and He has done that throughout all of time from Pentecost to today. We have enablement through the Holy Spirit who lives in us and empowers us to do what the Father and the Son wants us to do.
Yet there is even more to realize about the mind of Christ and the reality that He is living in us through the Holy Spirit. Ultimately His mind forced Him to obey His Father against His will. He made this more than clear when He declared Abba! Father all things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will but what You will! Thus it was that Paul wanted the Philippians who opposed each other to seek the mind of Christ together through the Holy Spirit to arrive at a mutual agreement and overcome their differences. They would become one through the oneness that Jesus would create in them. The fact that they had differences was not an issue from Paul's point of view. The problem was that if they sought to become one through Jesus who lived in them through the Holy Spirit they would become stronger and they would make a greater impact for the Gospel. Their oneness will show to all around them what the truth about Jesus will do for all in the city what they can never do for themselves.
Leading the Calvary way brings eternal life and delivers us from futile emptiness.
Think as Jesus thought. Will as Jesus willed..
Pray as Jesus prayed. Cry as Jesus cried. Then you will obey as Jesus obeyed.
Published on Nov 11 @ 2:05 AM CDT
