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When I was just getting my feet wet as a pastor, I had a close mentor in the ministry whom I would meet with regularly. We would drink coffee, and in my pseudo-intellectual caffeinated state, I would love to jump into the deep end of theology and speculate and postulate my way through various “ians” and “isms." I'd ask things like, “What do YOU think about Semi-Pelagian Arminianism soteriology as compared to five-point Calvinism?”
Sometimes after an hour or so of this, my friend would get frustrated with me and say this: “Yeah, that is all well and good but…what does it look like?” In other words, he wasn’t so interested in exploring the cerebral ramifications of an idea, but rather to what effect was all this knowledge. What good were these conversations if they were not transformative. Around this time I came across a quote that I though was so instructive, I printed it out and put it by front door where I would see it every morning when I left for the office. It said “The end of all good theology is love”.
I was thinking of this while studying chapter two of Philippians. Paul encourages us to be humble, compassionate, encouraging members of His Body. But, as my friend would say, “What does it look like?” Paul provides the perfect example of exactly “what it looks like” in an amazing poem that describes the life, death, resurrection and exaltation of our Messiah Savior Jesus Christ.
This time we deconstruct Paul's awesome poem and tease out all the beautiful intricacies of how Christ loves us, and therefore, how we are to love each other!
Pastor Dain