Content warning: Infant loss
SCRIPTURE READING Philippians 2:1-13
If our life in Christ means anything to you─if love, or the Spirit that we have in common, or any tenderness or sympathy can persuade you at all─then be united in your convictions and united in your love, with a common purpose and a common mind. That is the one thing that would make me completely happy, There must be no competition among you, no conceit, but everybody is to be humble: value others over yourselves, each of you thinking of the interest of others before your own. Your attitude must be the same as that of Christ Jesus.
Christ, though in the image of God, didn’t deem equality with God something to be clung to─but instead became completely empty and took on the image of oppressed humankind: born into the human condition, found in the likeness of the human being. Jesus was thus humbled─obediently accepting death, even death on a cross! Because of this, God highly exalted Christ and gave to Jesus the name above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee must bend in the heavens, on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God: Jesus Christ reigns supreme!
Therefore, my dear friends, you who are always obedient to my urging, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, not only when I happen to be with you, but all the more now that I’m absent. It is God at work in you that creates the desire to do God’s will.