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By Pastor Glenn Pease
An officer of the American Flying Corps told of his experience during World War II.
He went out over the ocean alone, and he saw a storm coming rapidly toward him.
It was blacker than midnight.
He looked down to see if he could go beneath it, but the ocean was already boiling with fury.
His only alternative was to climb.
He turned his frail craft upward and began to mount.
He reached 2000 feet, then 2500, then 3000, then 3500, and then the storm struck him.
It was like a hurricane, cyclone, and typhoon all in one.
It was so black he couldn't see, and the hail struck like bullets.
He kept climbing to 6500 feet, and suddenly he broke through into the glory of sunlight like he never saw it before.
The splendor was so dazzling that he felt he was in another world.
He began to quote Scripture and to praise God.
His way out was up, and this is the way to deal with all the storms of life-look up and climb.
Set your affections on things above, says Paul.
His own testimony in Phil 3:14 was, "I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."
I'm pressing on the upward way to higher ground is to be the theme song of every Christian.
The Christian is to constantly hear the call expressed in the poem of James G. Clark.
I saw the mountains stand
Silent, wonderful and grand,
Looking out across the land.
When the golden light was falling
On distant dome and spire,
And I heard a low voice calling
Come up higher, come up higher,
From the low lands and the mire,
From the mist of earth desire,
From the vain pursuit of pelf,
From attitude of self,
Come up higher, come up higher.
Every aspiration, however, calls for a balancing attitude to prevent a virtue from developing into a vice.
Paul is well aware that you can never climb too high, and you can never set your sights too high.
The sky is the limit.
We aim no lower than perfection and Christ likeness.
But Paul also knows that the higher you go the greater is the danger of pride.
Pride can bring you toppling from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell.
Pride goes before a fall, and the history of Satan and men illustrates this truth abundantly.
Paul, therefore, right after urging Christians to total surrender of their bodies and minds to Christ, which will lead them to the heights of knowing God's perfect will, gives a word of warning.
Those who climb high and have their minds transformed so that their thoughts rise above those of the world are in danger of thinking of themselves more highly than they ought.
Paul is a master of the balanced life, and that is why we see both the negatives and the positives so often in his writings.
Be not conformed, but be transformed he says in verse 2, and now in verse 3 he gives us another negative and positive to keep us steady as we climb.
Let's look first at the negative advice.
I. NEGATIVE.
Paul is very serious about this matter, and so stresses the fact that he speaks with authority as one to whom God has shown special grace.
He also stresses that it applies to every man that is among them.
The danger of pride is not just for a few.
It is for all.
No Christian can avoid this danger.
Those in higher places are more conspicuous in their danger, but Paul urges this truth on every believer not to think of himself more highly than he ought.
We can never climb too high in Christ likeness, nor can we ever think too highly of Christ, but we can think too highly of ourselves.
Paul says do not do it, for this is a kind of conformity to the world that can hurt you and your testimony seriously.
A contemporary example of this is the experience of J. B. Phillips who became famous for the Phillips Translation of the New Testament, plus a number of other books.
As a parish priest in London he began to translate the Bible for youth who would no longer read the KJV.
This was in 1941.
C. S. Lewis saw part of his translation and was impressed.
He wrote to him saying, "It is like seeing an old picture which has been cleaned."
He urged him to do more of the New Testament.
He did, and the response was amazing.
He became world famous, and was asked to preach and lecture everywhere.
His life was suddenly one of travel and honor.
His books were sold all over the world.
He wrote, "And all the while something was going on which I did not see until it was too late.
Satan was mounting his most devastating attack on me.
He was building an image of J. B. Phillips that was not Jack Phillips at all.
I was no longer an ordinary human being; I was in danger of becoming the super-Christian!"
He began to think of himself more highly than he ought, and the result was that he fell.
He lost his gift of writing, and he entered the experience of the dark night of the soul in which there is a deep sense of the absence of God.
Fortunately he was able to come to an honest view of himself, and God began to use him again.
Pride is an ever present danger, and C. S. Lewis points out that it is based on a comparison of ourselves with others.
If we would compare ourselves with Christ and His best followers, we would be humbled, but we tend to delight to comparing ourselves with those who are inferior.
Pride does not take pleasure in having something, but only in having more of it than others.
People are not proud of being rich, but of being richer than others.
They are proud, not of being clever or good looking, but of being more clever or better looking than others.
If all others became equal to them, there would be nothing to be proud about.
That is why Paul goes on to stress that we are all members of the body of Christ, and that we all have our function and differing gifts by the grace of God.
In other words, there is no basis for pride in being superior to others anymore than the eye has a basis for being proud because it can see better than all other organs of the body.
That is the function and gift God gave it, and any gift we have is given by God, and we are not to be proud, but to thank God and use it.
Avoid every allowing yourself to think of yourself as the origin of any good gift or quality.
These are gifts of grace for which to be grateful, and not proud.
Now let's look at the positive, and see just how we are to think, and how high we can go in self-esteem.
II.
POSITIVE.
Paul says we are to think with sober judgment, or in absolute honesty.
To be honest with the facts is to be humble.
Sober thinking is just having sound and sane evaluation of yourself.
It means you do not exaggerate nor depreciate yourself, for both of these are not being honest.
Many Christians misunderstand humility, and think it is self-depreciation.
This is not so, for it is basically just plain honesty.
It is being an Apostle Paul with the highest authority a man can have from God, plus the highest revelation, and yet confessing that he sees through a glass darkly, and that he has not yet arrived.
It takes a big man to write like that.
A small and proud man feels he has to present an image of absolute perfection, but it doesn't work, for everyone can see his flaws.
The man with a sober and honest view of himself can face the facts of both his gifts and his limitations.
Listen to Charles Spurgeon, that prince of preachers and one of the greatest Bible expounders of all time.
It takes profound humility for a man of caliber to write like this.
"I confess that sometimes I come across a text that does not at the first blush agree with other teachings of Scripture which I have received, and this startles me for the moment.
But one thing is settled in my heart, namely, that I will follow the Scripture wherever it leads me, and that I will renounce the most cherished opinion rather than shape a text or alter a syllable of the inspired Book.
It is not mine to make God's Word consistent, but to believe that it is so.
When a text stands in the middle of the road I drive no further.
The Romans had a god they called Terminus, who was the god of landmarks.
Holy Scripture is my sacred landmark, and I hear a voice which threatens me with a curse if I remove it.
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