Philippians 2:5 - Our Supreme Example

’This be thinking in you what also [was] in Christ Jesus...’

-paul is still talking about the phrén, our mind as it relates to understanding.  but now he sets the bar as high as it can go, giving us the perfect example of how to be focused on others.  we are to be thinking and having the same perception and understanding that Jesus Himself had.  He is our supreme and primary example when it comes to living into others-first others-better.  He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith on Whom we must fix our eyes (heb 12.2).  which points out the fact that in order for us to be able fix our attention on the needs and interests of others, we must first make sure that we are focusing on Jesus.  in order for others to increase, He must increase (jn 3.30).  me-reduction begins with Christ-production, with God’s Spirit producing and re-producing more and more of the life and character and mindset of Christ within me (cf gal 2.20).  me in Christ and Christ in me (col 1.27-28).  and so we must talk about death.  death of self.  death to me, dying to the things of me - this is the journey i must undertake not only just to follow Jesus but also in order to attain to others-first others better (lk 9.23).  i must walk the calvary road, each and every day.  we’re not talking about a scaffold or a gallows, a place of public execution.  no, this execution chamber is my mind.

-it is the ultimate paradox.  we come to Jesus to find life.  we were never made to taste death, we want desperately to avoid death, and we come to Jesus because He is the One Who conquered death and offers us life forever (jn 11.25-26).  and yet the path He invites us to follow is the via dolorosa, the road that led to golgotha, the place of the skull, the hill of execution to where Jesus dragged the very cross on which He would die and in doing so gave us the ultimate example of dying to self and living into others-first others-better.  He understood that true life is found not in trying to hold on to it but rather in losing it, in giving it away (lk 17.33, mk 8.35). 

-so, what was Jesus thinking exactly?

-regardless, to the extent that i am to be thinking the same as Jesus, i definitely have a long ways to go...