Scripture References: Philippians 1:1-11
Some years ago I came across one of the saddest statements I think I have ever read. The biographer of Horace Walpole, an eighteenth-century English author, wrote about Walpole: “All his tastes were minor.”
Apparently the biographer meant that Walpole stumbled through life, never seeing, even in his dreams, the things that are most magnificent and most desirable.
“All his tastes were minor.” What a sad epitaph.
When I read that sad commentary, I remembered another thing I had read about an unnamed man whose horizons must have been as low as Walpole’s.
At six months of age this man could recite the alphabet. At two he could read. Before he was three he had invented a formula for remembering important historical dates. At eleven he entered Harvard University and graduated with straight A’s. And at forty-eight he died in a rented room, barren except for the evidence of his favorite hobby: collecting streetcar transfers from all over the United States.
His biographer could have written of him, as was written of Walpole, “All his tastes were minor.”
The text of the Scriptures at which we are looking now looking at, I hope and pray, addresses us, probes our hearts, and forces us to ask ourselves, “Am I majoring on minors?”
Paul, who had not seen his Philippian friends for some time, was concerned about their spiritual welfare. He had heard of their quarrelsome, divided spirit. He feared they had shelved things of monumental importance and were majoring on minors, so he wrote to encourage them to “approve the things that are excellent.” He told them to get out of life’s minor key and major on things of major importance.
You and I must also be on guard against living in life’s minor key. It is a subtle temptation that threatens each of us. To help guard against majoring on minors, Paul showed us two things to remember: our position in Christ and our privileges in Christ.
Our Great Position in Christ
John Dewey, an American university professor and philosopher, said: “The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.”
The people to whom Paul wrote held no lofty, worldly positions. They were Roman citizens, chiefly Greeks, who lived in a lonely outpost far from Rome. Most of them were poor. Yet, as humble followers of Jesus Christ, Paul told them that they held in Jesus Christ the greatest position possible. What he said of them is also true for each of us.
We Are Servants of Jesus Christ
According to the late Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest, there are five Greek words in the New Testament translated by the English words servant or slave. Two of these words are used in verse 1 of our text. The first is translated “servants” and the other is translated “deacons”: “Paul and Timothy, bondservants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons.”
Wuest wrote that “servants” translates the Greek word doulos. The doulos was a slave or servant born into slavery. He or she was bound to a master in a relationship to be broken only by death. The doulos had no will of his own, but lived only to obey his/her master. The word was used in the first century to describe the most abject, servile condition.
Paul wrote that he and Timothy were “bondservants” of Jesus Christ.” We are to understand that we, too, are servants bound to Christ Jesus.
We were born into that relationship. It’s called the new birth, and Jesus talks about it in John 3.
As a servant, our will is to be subjected to the will of our Savior. He is the Master. We are His servants. We are to place His interests above our interests.
Although the doulos was the most abject slave of the household and lived in the most servile conditions, as Christ’s servants our position is reversed: we are “kings and priests to/of God” (Revelation 1:6; 5:10; also see 20:6). But we are to live before Christ in the kind of humble spirit that characterized a first-century household slave.
The other word for servant is translated “deacons.” It is the word, diakonos, and comes from a verb which means “to pursue” or “to hasten after.”
Diakonos, which shows the servant actively engaged in his work, is also translated by the words “minister, servant” and “deacon.” It appears then that doulos more accurately describes the servant’s condition, and diakonos more describes the servant’s activity.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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