Sermon text: Philippians 3:17-21; Philippians 4:1
Paul opens this section of Philippians with a call that reaches back through the whole letter: “Join in following my example, and note those who so walk as you have us for a pattern.” The word behind “following” carries an interesting linguistic history — it shares a root with the English words “mimic” and “mime.” This is distinct from our word “imitate,” which is used instead of “follow” in some translations and elsewhere (such 1 Corinthians 11:1). This alternate word traces to a Latin root meaning “image.” The difference matters: imitation is about appearance, taking on the shape of something, while mimicry is about action, actually reproducing the behavior. Paul isn’t asking for surface resemblance to a godly life. He’s calling for the real thing — a life that does what it appears to do, not one that merely looks the part while functioning differently underneath.
That distinction sets up the sharp contrast Paul draws next. Many, he says, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ — and he says it weeping, the only place in Scripture where Paul is described in tears. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, their glory is their shame, and their minds are set on earthly things. This description doesn’t fit the legalists Paul confronted earlier in chapter 3, the ones demanding law-keeping before someone could follow Christ. This is the opposite error: professing believers who concluded that God’s grace gave them license to live however they wanted, indulging appetite and self-gratification while claiming Christ’s name. It’s the same danger Paul addresses head-on in Romans 6 — shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid. Grace was never meant to be tested that way.
Worth noticing is what Paul means by “the cross of Christ” in this phrase. He isn’t narrowing his focus to the physical event of the crucifixion alone. The cross functions here as shorthand for the entirety of God’s redemptive plan and the life that plan requires — the same kind of figure of speech at work when a news broadcast says “the White House announced” to mean the whole apparatus of the presidency, or “Wall Street reacted” to mean the entire financial system. To be an enemy of the cross, then, is to stand against God’s redemptive purpose altogether — against Jesus, against salvation, against a life ordered toward honoring Him rather than the self.
Against that warning, Paul sets the believer’s true identity: our citizenship is in heaven, and from there we eagerly await the Savior, who will transform our lowly bodies to be conformed to His glorious body. That transformation is not yet fully revealed — 1 John 3:2 puts it plainly, that it has not yet been shown what we shall be, only that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him. But the reality of that future citizenship is meant to shape present conduct, the way someone accepted early to a university already starts thinking and living like a student there months before classes begin, or someone starting a new job already answers “where do you work” with the name of the place they’re headed rather than the one they’re leaving.
Paul closes the thought by calling the Philippians his joy and his crown, urging them to stand fast in the Lord because of the shared future that is already secured for them. The passage ultimately turns on a single, searching question: given that others are watching how a life is lived — its values, its priorities, its walk — whose pattern is being followed, and whose pattern is being set for someone else to follow in turn.
Header image by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash.