Selfish Ambition

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. --Philippians 2:1-4

I wrote about the verses immediately following these in Philippians 2 last week in relation to attitude. Today, I want to focus on motivation. Attitude is how we do something, motivation is why we do something. God pays attention to both and frequently refers to motivation--what is in the heart--throughout His word. Both of these areas are difficult to bring into submission to Christ. These verses are pretty clear about what our motivation for all our thoughts, words, and deeds should be. We should be driven by the same spirit and purpose that Christ had--to bring glory to God and to further His kingdom. This means, throwing our selfishness aside and putting others ahead of ourselves. Talk about a contradiction to the American way! In our culture, we're taught to make sure our needs our met, to be true to ourselves rather than to be true to our God. This motivation is so ingrained in many of us that many times we don't even realize that we are being selfish. We're taught that if we don't look out for number one, no one will. The problem is that we consider number one to be ourselves when the Bible clearly states that we should put others ahead of ourselves and that the only number one we should have in our lives is God himself (see commandment number one). Rather than subscribing to the American philosophy of self, we are called to subscribe to the Christian philosophy of God's purpose and plan to love others more than ourselves and to serve others before ourselves. Think today about how different your life would look if you put these verses into practice. Think about how as your motivation changes, your attitude, thoughts, words, and deeds would also begin to align more closely with God's word. Think about the power the church would have to change this world if we were all of the same purpose--God's purpose--instead of for selfish ambition.