Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. (Philippians 2:14-16, NKJV).
I am pretty good at doing some things without complaining or disputing. Things that I enjoy are easy not to complain about, and things for which I have no strong feelings are easy to let slide without arguments. But hit me with something unpleasant, or one of my "hot button" issues, then you might as well stuff cotton in your ears, or watch out, depending on the circumstances. And there is a direct correlation between how puffed-up I feel and how loud and argumentative I get. It is only when I am truly humble (rarely) that I display a quiet, gentle and agreeable attitude about things. So, Paul's exhortation here convicts me greatly. It is no accident, that the more we live and breathe in our "natural" selves, the more obnoxious we become. And unless we allow the Lord's mitigating Spirit to work actively and continually within us, the end result is ugly indeed. Less of us is better, because when we Christians are less us, we are more Him.
The word pairs Paul employs here are quite instructive, complaining and disputing linked with blameless and harmless. These are perfectly complimentary, four equal parts to a whole. The word translated as complaining is goggusmos (gong-goos-mos') in Greek, and it not only means "negative secret murmuring or muttering", but is a kind of Onomatopoeia that sounds like the activity itself. Exactly like boom describes an explosion, or vroom, an engine at speed. And the "secret" aspect of this is especially intriguing. It means that even if you manage to keep your complaining to yourself, your attitude still counts against you.
Disputing is derived from dialogismos (dee-al-og-is-mos'), which in its purest form means "reasoning out loud, or having a dialog with yourself", but in the context above it has more the connotation of "arguing constantly", often merely for the sake of hearing yourself talk and contradict. It is an unpleasant activity, at best, and taken to extremes, may be one of the reasons gags were invented.
Amemptos (am'-emp-tos) is where we get blameless from, and it signifies the absence of fault. Frankly, I find that I am almost never completely without fault, and it is likely that even the minuscule blame I am willing to assign myself is solar-systems less than the blame I actually deserve.
Harmless comes from akeraios (ak-er'-ah-yos), describing something or someone "without any mixture of evil; free from guile; innocent". Fail, again.
Now the fact that we can't, in our own strength, be these things perfectly (or even reasonably well), is NO excuse for not purposing to behave this way. In the Kingdom of God, intent matters. The desire to do good is significant, the sincere wanting to be like Christ and NOT be a reproach to His name goes quite a ways in enabling us to become more like Him, daily. Thus, Paul encourages us to practice behaving along these lines, instead of practicing sin. And there is reward in the trying, if only in that it often shows us just how far off the mark we are. Real success only comes, as I said, with becoming less me, and more Him.
There is an additional word pair, which, if viewed correctly, provides deep insight into how God sees the world of Christ-rejecting men. Crooked means skewed, off-center, off-course, uncorrectable. Unsaved humans cannot, and will not, have their course toward destruction corrected, unless within them, by faith, Christ renews their hearts and minds. They are like ships blown about by storms of emotion, greed and lust, rudderless, and with no means of navigation. In the end, their voyage through this life never ends nicely.
Perverse describes motivation to behavior that is consciously and willfully against known good. The guilty party is completely culpable precisely because he or she knows that the activity or attitude in question is directly opposed to what is known to be right. It is being evil as purposeful rebellion against being good. This is more than mistake-making. It is aiming to be bad. And both these adjectives are the essence of men without Christ.
We are to be the opposite, to shine as lights in the world. And the only way to do that is to become less opaque, less thick with our own gooey sinfulness, so that we become more transparent, allowing His goodness to shine forth more brightly in our lives, words and deeds. And the only way to do that is by holding fast the word of life, which is the gospel, and everything that it means about Christ, and about us, and our helplessness to save ourselves by good works or ritual.
The Apostle is urging the people he poured his life, soul, heart, and God-given knowledge into, to reflect upon the world that which is Jesus, so that he, Paul, may rejoice in the day of Christ, and not be subject to the emptiness of knowing his time and effort were completely wasted.
He has outlined all along in this letter how to go about doing that, but all his immensely practical exhortations can be summed up in the title of this post. To succeed in the Christian walk, to conform to what is best for us, to be the most effective possible witnesses in a dark and fallen world, we need to become less to be more. As Christ emptied Himself of the real privileges and prerogatives of Deity to become a Man, we need to empty ourselves of our own delusions of self-worth and privilege to become more like Him.
That is the only way to be. Everything else is just vapor.
