“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
Philippians 2:3-4
- The particular brand of unity Paul insists upon can only be possible when “selfish ambition or vain conceit” is far removed from God’s people.
- Selfishness is never an ethical option, regardless of consequences (the double negative is as strong as the language would permit (μηδὲν . . . μηδὲ; “Do nothing . . . never!”).
- The imperative of v. 3 is binding on all Christians at all times.
- In typical Greco-Roman thought “humility” (ταπεινοφροσύνη) was more a vice than a virtue and was “looked on as shameful, to be avoided and overcome by act and thought” (Esser, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 2:260).
- The cure for selfishness is putting others ahead of ourselves or “consider others better than yourselves,” which by definition is humility.
- Hence, to “conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” necessarily entails self-denying, self-sacrificing displays of humility toward one another. The predominant trait of all believers must be humility; otherwise we face God as our opponent (1 Pt. 5:5-6, note the present tense: “God [continually] graces the [continually] humble” and vice versa)!
- Paul is not condemning all self-interests, but a selfish preoccupation with them. The gist is to fix our attention upon others’ interest first, before our own. Indeed, the hallmark of biblical love is that it is “not self-seeking” (1 Cor. 13:5).