PHILIPPIANS 2:14-15

14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe

Verse 14 If we’re going to cooperate with God’s working in our life, as Paul has just suggested we should, it makes absolutely no sense to be negative about the way he’s doing it. And so part of the “working out” process is to make sure we don’t spend all our time feeling discontented.

Paul says that everything we do should be “at a space from” (Greek choris) complaining and arguing. Both of these are ways of expressing unhappiness; the first word describes muttering and grumbling in the background (the sound of the word, goggusmos, suggest the kind of noise it might be) while the second word (dialogismos) is talking about an upfront argument. Whether we make our protest quietly and secretly, or loudly and explosively, we’re doing the wrong thing.

There are goggusmos Christians who present a surface appearance of being keen, spiritual, dedicated to God’s work – and yet beneath the surface are eaten up with secret discontents: jealousy, envy, grudges, an overriding sense of the unfairness of everything. Their ongoing argument with God is crippling them just as it did Jonah and Elijah. And just like those two prophets, they may crucially limit the extent of their effectiveness for God by the way in which they burn out their limited energies in useless self-pity and indignation.

Then there are dialogismos Christians who flare up easily at the provocations of others. At least their indignation is out in the open, which is marginally healthier. But again it’s a pointless waste of creative energy. “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit,” says Ecclesiastes 7:9, “for anger resides in the lap of fools.”

There’s another difference between goggusmos and dialogismos: the first can be just an instinctive, unthought-out, immediate reaction; but the second is the product of reasoning and sustained thinking. Sometimes our fleeting feelings propel us out of agreement with what God is doing, and sometimes we think and rationalize ourselves into a state of outrage. (That’s exactly what Elijah had done in 1 Kings 19; notice how he delivers exactly the same little self-pitying speech in verse 10 and verse 14. You can imagine him on his long journey, putting the ideas into place, honing the phrases with self-righteous indignation, trying to convince himself he had every reason to be annoyed.)

But however we do it – we shouldn’t. It does nothing to help us “work out” our salvation.

Verse 15 If we manage to keep “clear blue water” between discontent and ourselves, we stand a chance of becoming blameless and pure and without fault. You wouldn’t notice it in English, but all three Greek words begin with “a-“ (which means “not…”): amemptos, akeraios, amomos. Taken together they give us a clear picture of what God’s ideal for his children is.

Amemptos means “without blame” – irreproachable. There should be nothing in our conduct that could be questioned.

Akeraios means “without mixture”. It was a word used of milk or wine which hadn’t been adulterated with water; of metal which was 100% pure. According to James Denney, “The fundamental idea of akeraios is that of freedom from alien or disturbing elements.” William Barclay explains: “The Christian is a man whose utter sincerity must be beyond all doubt....When used of people, it implies motives which are unmixed. Christian purity must issue in a complete sincerity of thought and character." And so there should be nothing in our thinking that could be questioned either.

Finally, amomos means “without flaw”. It was a technical word in Greek religion, used to certify that an animal was pure enough to sacrifice; there was nothing wrong with it. Here’s Barclay again. “To say that the Christian must be amōmos is to banish contentment with second bests; it means that the Christian standard is nothing less than perfection." There should be nothing in our character that could be questioned.

Conduct, thinking, character – if our life is visibly, transparently different in these areas, we’ll “shine like stars”. For the universe, says Paul, is as dark as the night sky, and populated with people whose lives are twisted. In a “crooked” `and “perverse” world, the Christian difference will be the best demonstration possible of the gospel.