Jesus is Lord. This early Christian confession is seen peppered throughout Paul's epistles, it is perhaps one of the earliest confessions of the church and it is revolutionary in nature. In the Philippians 3-4 passage for this week, Paul is reminding the Philippian believers that just as Philippi is a Roman colony and its citizens share Roman citizenship, so Christians who confess that Jesus is Lord are given a new identity and citizenship, one that is heavenly. This does not in anyway mean that Christians do not have a vested interest in this earth, or that Paul is encouraging a spiritualization of our lives. Instead, Paul is setting up a contrast between a life that is lived primarily from our physical appetites to the recognition that Jesus calls us to a life oriented on God and others.
His calls to "imitate me" is not a proclamation that he has somehow reached a state of perfection nor that he is an example of morality, but rather that he recognizes the transforming (3:21) power of Christ as the ruler of all. It is through the power of Christ who is now Lord of all, that Christians are transformed. We stand fast not in our performance, but in Christ's current work in our lives. If the Roman passages last week encourages us to recognize that we are now constituted as a new people of God, this passage encourages us to stand fast in the fact that as recipients of new citizenship we are learning a new culture and language as we are gradually transformed into the people that show the love, grace and mercy of God.
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