Friendship
What makes a follower of Jesus? How do we learn to be like Him? We want to imitate Jesus, and obey what He commanded, but how does that actually happen? That’s where Paul’s letter to the Philippians can help us.
Philippians is a wonderful letter from which to learn about discipleship. It isn’t written to correct behaviour or doctrine (like many of Paul’s letters), but simply to express friendship, thank the church in Philippi for a gift, and talk about how Jesus shapes the ordinary Christian life. This makes it a happy letter, and a very practical one. It also includes a wide range of experiences – success and failure, hardship and victory, past and future, abundance and poverty – and considers how to find joy in Jesus in each of them.
This section comes after Paul’s wonderful description of Christ Jesus’ servant attitude and the call to live out your salvation as God works in you. The relationships between Paul, Timothy and Epaphroditus illustrate the way they lived sacrificially so that others might hear the good news. We see Paul’s vulnerable side here, as he shares his feelings about his friends, but he also calls the Philippians to rejoice, even alongside sorrow and anxiety.
If you have any questions surrounding this talk, want to find out more about Citygate Church, or want to know more about what it means to be a Christian, please fill in our online Connect form at citygate.church/connect and someone will be in touch to chat.
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