Seeking the Truth Corporately

3:15b and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you.

One thing in this verse that is missed in the English is the fact that this verse is addressed to the church as a group, not to individuals in the church. In both cases, the "you" is plural in the Greek. Paul is not saying, "If there are any among you who have a different attitude, God will reveal that to those individuals" but rather, "If you all have a different attitude from me, God will reveal that to you all." The point is that behind this comment there is a presumption in the mind of Paul that the Philippians are striving together to come to a knowledge of the truth.

There has developed in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation a dangerous hyper-Protestantism, a mindset that "me and my Bible" are all that’s needed, an attitude that denies the corporate effort that is supposed to take place in our Christian pursuit of God’s truth. The results of this are devastating. We have a million Christian groups with a million different theologies. And a vast number of “Christians” are not a part of a local church at all! When a million sinners go off on their own to study the Bible alone, this is what inevitably occurs.

Here Paul recognizes that the Philippians will keep working on this project of discerning the truth of God together. And by this God calls each of us likewise to pursue His truth alongside other believers, striving to investigate the word of God together.*

Each of us has blind spots. You help me see my blind spots; I help you see yours. Corporately we can see better.

The Bible is too big a book for anyone to know well by himself. But when we work on it together, we bring together all of our knowledge and understanding, and hopefully we will steer clear from pitfalls each of us would inevitably have fallen into alone.

Heavenly Father, You have called Your children together into one family. Help us to work together to understand You and serve You. Forgive us for a spirit of independence and self-reliance. Forgive us for the pride that keeps us apart from others, that leads us to think we don’t need others. Protect Your sheep from wolves who would devour them. Protect us from false teachers. But help Your people not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Help us to respect the resources You have graciously given to Your church by which each one might be built up to maturity in Christ Jesus.

*Footnote on Teachers

Part of the way God has arranged for this corporate pursuit of truth to take place in the body of Christ is by placing teachers in the church to help the others to gain knowledge of God’s truth (Eph.4:11-12). Everyone needs a teacher. No one becomes a teacher who hasn’t first had a teacher. If a man teaches without first being taught he denies the Biblical institution of the teacher and elevates himself to a position of teacher without oversight. Teachers help us not only to keep connected with what the wider Christian community believes, but also with what the church down through the ages has believed. What the church believes is not infallible, of course, but it is instructive as we seek to know the mind of Christ.