PHILIPPIANS 2:3-4

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Verse 3 This verse names two things which both drive Christians apart, but in different ways. “Selfish ambition”, or “strife”, is concerned with the future, and how large a part we should play in it; “vain conceit” (literally “empty glory”) looks back at the past, and exaggerates the part we played there. In the one case, we’re looking ahead and giving ourselves more prominence than we should; in the other case, we’re looking back – but doing precisely the same thing. Others will have a different scale of priorities for the future, and a different range of memories from the past; and so we’ll run into arguments and resentment pretty quickly.

Considering others better than ourselves doesn’t mean trying to convince ourselves that others are more talented or worthwhile than we are. It means putting them first, whether or not their abilities and experience match ours. The word literally means “to hold above”.

We need to recognize when other people know less than we do, or are less capable than we are; we can’t step in and use our gifts appropriately unless we have a clear picture of where we can fit in. And we need to be clear about other people’s failings, “as wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16) when it comes to confronting human fallibility. Christians aren’t called to deceive themselves about their true worth, or to express gullible naivety towards other people.

But this verse is reminding us that we have to be “as gentle as doves” too. We’re servants of one another, and so regardless of other Christians’ status, talents or contribution, I have to put their good before my own and “hold them above” myself.

And we need to remember when we do observe the faults of others that it’s perilously easy to judge them more harshly than we would ourselves. That’s an insidious way of making ourselves feel better! Instead, as Matthew Henry comments on this verse, “We must be severe upon our own faults, and quick in observing our own defects, but ready to make favourable allowances for others.”

Verse 4 Putting others first isn’t straightforward. We can easily push them aside without even realizing it, if we aren’t aware of what matters most to them. Only when our attention is focused on their real interests will we make appropriate decisions. (It’s a bit like the difference between receiving a Christmas present which someone has carefully chosen to suit us perfectly, and receiving yet another pair of socks! Sometimes the socks will be just what we need – but it’s hit-or-miss, and we’re painfully aware that the gift is a casual, perfunctory fulfilling of a social obligation, rather than a real desire to bring us pleasure!)

So Paul tells us to look on “the things” of others. The Greek is intentionally vague. It covers possessions, desires, dilemmas, preferences, qualifications, dreams, ambitions, fears, insecurities… the lot. It means living inside someone else’s skin as well as we can, taking an imaginative leap and seeing the world from their perspective, rather than our own.

We may not always make the leap successfully – some people are more difficult to fathom than others – but most of the time we will, and in any case there will usually be gratitude that we have made the effort. I’ve often been counselled by well-meaning people who have no idea what’s really going on inside me; nonetheless, their human concern to identify with me has sometimes been healing in itself.

Looking at it from the other side, most arguments and quarrels between Christians start because we don’t understand “where people are coming from”. Often the websites you see blasting intemperately away at other theological positions have fallen into this trap: they completely misrepresent the other side, not because they’re intentionally trying to be devious, but just because they don’t have the imaginative sympathy to see how other Christians, with a different background and outlook, might justifiably arrive at such a position.

So we accuse one another of dishonesty and duplicity, of deceitfully handling the Word of God, and the temperature rises because we introduce a moral dimension into an intellectual argument. If only we’d “look on the things of others” first, we might save a lot of grief. When I read a book I instinctively disagree with, do I try to get into the mind of the author, and see sympathetically where his views arise from? Or do I simply scan it through looking for erroneous statements on which I can pounce and then pontificate?