Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Philippians 1:27-30, NASB
- Series: Sent for the Sake of the Gospel (2026), no. 11
- Date: Sunday, August 16, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Working Together for the Gospel
There are a lot of things you can do on your own and do just fine at them. There are some things in life that I would rather do on my own. If I’m trying to balance the checkbook, I don’t want anybody’s help with that. I want everybody—kids out of the room, upstairs, outside, not making noise. The same goes for cleaning the kitchen. I don’t want help. I want everybody out of my way.
There are certain things, though, that work better if we try to do them together. There are certain projects at the house where I might need everybody on board and everybody’s help. Even something as simple as taking a road trip through the refuge requires everybody’s cooperation. You might say, “Why do you need everybody’s help for that?” Because I can’t have a good trip on my own. I can if I go by myself, but I can’t have a good trip with them all on my own either. They all have to be on board.
So we have that discussion ahead of time about how we’re going to act, what we’re going to do, and who we’re going to be. Does it always stick perfectly? No. But it works better if I start out with that conversation: What kind of day are we going to have? How are we going to act? Then it just takes a quick reminder. It works better when we’re all on the same page about what kind of day we’re trying to have.
I bring this up because a lot of what we’ve studied this summer in our series on being sent for the sake of the gospel has dealt primarily with things that we do on our own. We’ve studied the call to share the gospel. We’ve studied what the gospel is. For the last few weeks, we’ve studied what it means to become people who are more likely to share the gospel—how to become the evangelists He’s calling us to be.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We should, as individuals, cultivate a lifestyle of sharing the gospel, calling people to Christ, and making disciples as a matter of course in everyday life. But this is also one of those things that we will do better, more effectively, and more consistently if we’re working together.
So we’re going to look at a passage from Philippians that Paul wrote to a church about this. This passage was written with a church in mind. When we say “the Philippians,” we’re talking about the church at Philippi. Paul is calling them to pull together.
Philippians is primarily a letter of gratitude. It’s a letter about joy. It’s a letter about things the church at Philippi was doing well. At no point does Paul say, “You’re not doing these things; you need to get busy.” Instead, he’s encouraging them in things they’re already doing. And this church is an example for us: the church works best when we’re each fulfilling the mission God has given us.
When you and I are out from Monday to Saturday, individually doing the things God has called us to do, we still cannot ignore the fact that the church is more than just a collection of people doing ministry next to each other. We’re called to work together even as we individually serve. Throughout this passage, Paul describes their calling and their service—everything they’ve been given to do—in cooperative terms.
We’re going to look at some of the things that are required if a church is going to be the kind of church whose conduct is worthy of the message it proclaims. Paul writes in Philippians 1:27–30:
“Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear about you, that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel; and in no way alarmed by your opponents—which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and this too, from God. For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer on His behalf, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me.”
Worthy to Represent the Gospel
Paul is writing to this church about the way they serve together, and he starts by telling them that their conduct should be worthy of the gospel. I want to explain what he’s talking about here, because right off the bat this could cause some confusion.
When he says, “conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel,” he is not calling the church at Philippi to be worthy of the gospel. You and I can never be worthy of the gospel. We can’t be worthy of God’s grace. God’s standard is absolute, sinless perfection. On my best day, I have not come close to that, and neither have you.
That’s not to put any of us down. That’s simply to be in line with what God’s Word says: we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. Paul also says that if something is earned, it’s not of grace. And the gospel is all about the unearned grace of God.
If there were ever a point where you and I could earn the gospel, we wouldn’t need the gospel. We wouldn’t need Jesus to have come and taken responsibility for our sins. We wouldn’t need Him to shed His blood and die in our place. We wouldn’t need Him to rise again to conquer death for us. We wouldn’t need any of this if we could earn it—and we can’t earn it anyway.
So when Paul says, “conduct yourselves worthy of the gospel,” he’s not talking about being worthy of receiving the gospel. He’s talking about the way they live and the pattern of their lives. When he’s talking about conduct that’s worthy, he’s talking about being worthy to represent the gospel rather than worthy to receive it.
You and I, on our best day, will never be worthy to receive the love and grace of God. The good news is that He gives it to us anyway because He’s loving and because He’s merciful. But He does call us as believers to conduct ourselves in a way that is worthy of representing the gospel.
Some of the things we’ve looked at through this series have dealt with the necessity of showing the gospel by the way we live. We instinctively understand this because we’ve all seen people who live in such a way that it turns others off to the gospel. Maybe they’re just mad all the time. That can turn people off to the gospel. Or maybe they live hypocritically, so that their life doesn’t match up with what they profess to believe.
We want to live in such a way that our lives align with the gospel. They should align with the idea that God has transformed us. They should also align with the fact that God has given us life and hope and joy. We want our conduct to be worthy of the gospel in the sense of representing it. What Paul is telling the church at Philippi is to represent the message of the gospel well.
Faithful Whether Anyone Is Watching
Paul begins to outline what that looks like in verse 27. Right after he tells them to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, he says this should be true whether he’s there with them or not. Part of our ability to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of representing the gospel is to live consistently regardless of who’s present.
He says, “Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear about you.” Paul was not at Philippi when he wrote this letter. He wanted to come and see them. Paul loved the church at Philippi. He’s Paul—he’s supposed to love all the churches. He did. But he had a special bond with the church at Philippi.
He wanted them to live in such a way that whether he was there with them or far away, they were still living the way they’d been called to live. He didn’t want them to strive to represent the gospel only when he was there among them. He wanted to hear about their faithfulness even while he was gone.
He wanted to hear rumors. Do rumors go around churches? Yeah. They even go around among churches. I hear stories about this church: “Oh, they’re about to buy a new building,” or, “They’re about to close their doors.” Apparently, we’re doing both simultaneously. Word and rumors get around. We want rumors to get around about good things.
What is God doing at the church at Philippi? What is God doing at Central Baptist Church? How is God working in their midst? How is God using them? How are they being faithful? Paul wanted to hear that story as word got around—that the church at Philippi, even while he was gone, was staying faithful. They were doing what he had called them to do, what God had called them to do.
It’s easy to be faithful when somebody’s watching over your shoulder, isn’t it? It’s easy to do the right thing when somebody is analyzing your every move. But the real test is that we’re faithful when nobody’s watching. The test for the Philippians was not how spiritual and faithful they could be when Paul was there. The test was how they lived when he was far away.
This is a little different for us because we don’t have an Apostle Paul watching over us, chastising us, and calling us to account for things. There’s no denominational hierarchy that we answer to. The way things are structured here, the denominational hierarchy is supposed to answer to us. So there’s nobody standing over us saying, “You’re not doing that right.” It’s between us and the Lord, and we know He’s always watching.
For us, the application is about creating a culture where faithfulness is simply who we are as a church. As individuals and as a church, we do what we know we’re supposed to do and what we’re called to do, regardless of who sees or doesn’t see. We stand on God’s Word regardless of whether anybody is making us or forcing us. We face forward and do what we’re supposed to do whether anybody makes us or not.
It’s a shame for a church to promote convictions and priorities publicly and then neglect them or even undermine them in practice. Instead, God calls us to reflect the vital importance of the gospel in what we say and what we do, no matter who sees.
Yes, that applies to us individually as well. If you run into me at Walmart—well, that’s a rarity. If you run into me at Atwoods, that’s more likely to happen. I should be the same person at Atwoods on Tuesday afternoon that I am here on Sunday morning. That’s absolutely true of us as individuals. But here Paul is addressing the whole church. We want Central to be faithful to God and obedient to God. We want that to be part of our culture, regardless of who’s watching.
Standing and Striving Together
Further down in verse 27, Paul talks about what specifically he hopes to see. He says he hopes to hear that they are “standing firm in one spirit.” What we’re looking at in verses 27 and 28 is this idea of standing together for the advance of the gospel.
What is going to make our conduct worthy of the gospel we represent? We stand together. We work together. We strive together. And it’s not for our agenda, our opinion, or our glory. It’s for the advance of the gospel. Jesus and what He did should be the hero of every story.
Paul says he wants to see them “standing firm in one spirit.” He’s using military language here, probably alluding to the kind of formations familiar in the ancient world. Soldiers would group up in tight formations and fight together, and that made them a formidable fighting force.
The Greeks had used the phalanx, where soldiers formed up together in ranks with their shields overlapping and protecting one another. Tightly packed together, shielded and armored, they could march together and push through what was in their path. They were effective because they fought together.
That’s the kind of picture Paul is giving when he says they’re standing firm in one spirit: held together and fighting together. Not fighting together in the sense of fighting with each other, but fighting shoulder to shoulder.
Later in verse 27 he says, “with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” Again, think about soldiers fighting under the same orders and with one purpose in mind. When you watch movies about ancient battles or documentaries about them, a lot of times you’ll see hand-to-hand fighting where everything is chaos. I’m not saying that never happened. I’m saying that wasn’t the goal. Soldiers were trained to stick together, fight together, and push in the same direction. They were following the same orders. They were heading in the same direction.
The church is supposed to do likewise. We’re supposed to move together with the advance of the gospel as our priority. We’ve been given the same marching orders, and those marching orders didn’t come from me. They came from the Great Commission: as we’re going throughout the world, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything Jesus commanded.
Those are our marching orders. We go and make disciples, bringing people to Jesus Christ so that unbelievers can come to know Him as their Savior and believers can be taught to obey Him and follow Him.
Now, we’re not a Roman legion. We know that. Paul also describes us as a body. He uses military imagery to illustrate one aspect of the church, and he uses a body to illustrate other aspects. We know the church functions by each of us doing something different that God has called us to do.
We don’t all need to be me. We don’t all need to be you. We each need to be who God has called us to be and fulfill the ministries He’s called us to fulfill with the gifts He’s given us. But ideally, we’re all working toward the same thing. That’s where the military formation picture comes in.
“With one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel” shows that we’re all heading in the same direction and that the gospel is our priority. If we’re not focused on the gospel, then our conduct probably isn’t going to be worthy of representing the gospel. If we’re focused on fifty-six other things, our behavior is going to follow our focus. But when our focus is on the gospel rather than everything else, our behavior will follow in that direction.
Do Not Be Dissuaded by Opposition
In verse 28, Paul says he wants to see them “in no way alarmed by your opponents, which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and this too from God.” He’s calling them not to be dissuaded even when the world opposes them. We shouldn’t be dissuaded from following God when the world opposes us.
Jesus said that in this world we will have troubles. He said not to marvel if the world hates us because it hated Him first. And yet a lot of us—myself included—start out in the Christian life serving God, and when people around us don’t like it, it’s almost shocking. We think, “Well, that’s not how this is supposed to be.”
We can come into the Christian life with the assumption that everything is going to be sunny and wonderful if we’re being obedient to Jesus and that everybody should love us. That’s not the way it works. We’re going to meet opposition.
If you’re like me and you’re not thrilled with the idea of conflict, opposition might make you stop and think, “Maybe I’m not doing the right thing. Maybe I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” But Paul warns us here that we’re going to have opponents as we focus on the gospel. Not everyone is going to like that message.
Paul calls the cross a stumbling block. The gospel message itself is offensive to the world because we have to acknowledge our sin and our need for Christ. But the fact that people oppose the gospel or oppose a focus on making disciples is not a sign that we’re heading in the wrong direction. It’s a fulfillment of what Jesus said.
It’s also a reminder that this world lives under judgment, while God has promised to spare us from that judgment in Jesus Christ. That’s why we go. That’s why we continue to tell. That’s why we focus on the gospel as a church: because there are people in our own community—people in Lawton, Oklahoma—who’ve never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.
You might have a hard time finding somebody in Lawton who’s never heard His name. You might have a hard time finding somebody who’s never heard that He died on the cross. But folks, I’ve known people who’ve lived in this part of the country sixty, seventy, or eighty years who’ve never heard the fact that Jesus died on the cross to pay for their sins so they could be forgiven.
For a lot of people, what they associate with the gospel is that we’re supposed to do better and try harder. There are people in our community today who face an eternal judgment. So we’re reminded not to let opposition stand in the way, because the world needs to hear.
Accepting the Cost of Following Christ
Then we come to verse 29. Paul says, “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer on His behalf.” I had to read through this several times to make sure I was understanding it correctly.
Paul is talking here about there being a cost to following Christ—a cost to obedience to Christ. Part of what will help us as a church, just as it helped the Philippians, to have conduct worthy of representing the gospel is to accept the cost of following Christ.
We accept ahead of time that there’s going to be a cost. We don’t know what it’s going to be, but whatever it is, we’re going to pay it. Before it happens, we’ve already made the decision.
We understand that there’s no cost for salvation, but there is a cost involved in following Him. We don’t suffer in spite of following Jesus. Again, we can have this idea that everything is supposed to be wonderful if we follow Him. But sometimes we suffer and incur a cost because of obedience to Jesus.
What made me sit up and take notice of verse 29 is that Paul writes about this suffering as though it’s a gift. Do you notice that? “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer on His behalf.” Not only did we not earn or deserve the gospel, but God, out of His own goodness and grace, gave us this plan of salvation, gave us the opportunity to believe, all of that—but He’s also granted to us, as an additional gift, the ability to suffer for the sake of Christ.
On the surface, that does not sound like a gift any of us wants to open, right? Merry Christmas. Open it up: it’s suffering. Nobody wants that gift. That’s how our flesh feels about it. But that’s exactly how Paul phrases it here.
That word “granted” is tied to the root word for grace. This is something God has been gracious enough to bestow on us. And we think, “How is it possible that God treats this as a gift?”
The reason it’s possible for our suffering to be a gift is that, with the right mindset, it’s an honor to be so associated with Christ that the world would hate us too. In our flesh, we think of it as a burden. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you, “I enjoy suffering for the cause of Christ.” I’m not there yet.
But we have to remind ourselves that it is an honor, and it is a sign that we’re actually walking with Him if the world wants to persecute us the way it persecuted Him. To be clear, none of us are facing the exact same level of persecution He faced. The persecution we face here is very mild compared with what people suffer in other parts of the world.
But I’m talking about any kind of suffering. It’s an honor for the world to look at us and say, “They are so tied to Him, let’s get them too.” I would hope that the world would look at us and associate us with Jesus.
That doesn’t make suffering fun. It doesn’t make it pleasant. But it reminds us that there’s a purpose in mind. Anytime we incur a cost for faithfulness to Jesus, anytime we incur a cost for our commitment to the gospel, it’s further confirmation that we’re on the right track.
Paul tells them it has been granted to them to suffer on Christ’s behalf. Then he says in verse 30 that they’re “experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me.” We can count the cost and endure suffering because we realize we’re not the only ones who’ve ever gone through this.
The history of God’s people is littered with stories of people suffering for the sake of the gospel. We look at those first disciples who carried the gospel message after Jesus rose from the dead. Most of them—or at least half of them, we can say with historical certainty—were martyred. Most of them, we’re pretty sure, were martyred. We know none of them lived easy lives.
What did they do? They weren’t hurting anybody. They were out preaching the resurrection. And they suffered enormously for it. We look at the earliest believers. We look at believers up to this day in closed areas, and what they suffer isn’t a sign that they’re doing anything wrong. It’s a sign that they’re being faithful. God has provided us with encouragement and examples to help us remain faithful.
A Church Worthy of Representing the Gospel
As a people, as a group, as the people of God called Central Baptist Church, we need individually to go and be faithful throughout the week and do what God has called us to do. The ministry He’s given you is not going to look exactly like the ministry He’s given the person in the pew next to you, in front of you, or behind you. It won’t look exactly like mine. Mine doesn’t look exactly like it did ten years ago.
He’s given each of us something to do right now in obedience to Him. We all have to be individually faithful and fulfill what He’s called us to do. And if you’re struggling to know what that is, I would love to talk with you about it and help you discern what God wants you to do. Once we know, we simply have to be faithful to do it.
But at the same time, it takes us as a body encouraging one another, strengthening one another, and building a culture that is worthy of representing the gospel. We do that through consistency. We do that through deliberately standing together and making the gospel a priority. And we do that by realizing there’s going to be a cost involved and resolving to pay it, whatever it is.
