Building Up, Bending Low: The Mind of Christ in a Two-Storey World

Drive through almost any community and you can read the aspirations in the concrete. A single-storey house with steel rods reaching up from the roof, waiting for the second floor. A new wall higher than the neighbour’s. A gate with fancy ironwork and lions on the pillars. Nobody says it out loud, but we are building upwards, and part of the reason is that we want to rise.

There is an old saying that attitude determines altitude. It is usually meant as encouragement to stay positive, and there is truth in it. But Paul, writing to the Philippians, describes an attitude that moves in the opposite direction from what we expect.

The attitude that went down

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes in the King James wording of Philippians 2:5. Then he describes that mind. Christ, though He was in the form of God, did not cling to equality with God. He emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, was made in human likeness, and humbled Himself even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:6–8).

The movement is downward. Step by step, lower and lower. And only then does Paul say that God highly exalted Him (Philippians 2:9). The altitude came from God, after the descent, not from Christ reaching upward.

That is a challenging pattern to hold up against our building plans.

Looking to the interests of others

Just before those famous verses, Paul gives the practical instruction they illustrate. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others (Philippians 2:3–4).

Bring that into the yard. When we plan the second storey, do we think about whether it will take the morning sun from the elderly lady next door? When we raise the wall, do we consider where the rainwater will now run? When we build a gate that announces our success, is there a hint of wanting the road to notice?

None of this means building is wrong. A family needs room. A strong wall can mean safety. A second floor can house a widowed parent or a returning child. The question is not whether we build up, but what mind we build with.

Inside the house

The mind of Christ matters even more behind the front door. Hard seasons test attitude most, and many of them are domestic: a job lost, a leaking roof with no money to fix it, a sibling who has not paid their share for the family house. It is easy to complain, to keep score, to insist on what we are owed.

The attitude Paul describes looks different. It is the parent who gives up the bigger bedroom to the teenagers who need space to study. The brother who lets go of an old grievance about who put more into the land, so the family can finally sit together at Christmas. The wife who, after a sharp exchange over the bills, is first to say sorry. These are small descents. They do not look like rising. But they are the shape of Christ in a household.

Without grumbling

A few verses later Paul adds a line that lands close to home: do all things without grumbling or disputing (Philippians 2:14). Every family knows the sound of low, constant complaint. About the water. About the neighbours. About the in-laws. About the house that is never quite finished. Grumbling does not fix anything, but it slowly lowers the temperature of a home until nobody feels warm there.

Choosing thanks instead of grumbling is not denial. The roof still leaks. But the attitude we bring to the leak shapes the people who live under it.

For reflection

• In your current or planned home improvements, whose interests besides your own have you considered?
• Where might God be inviting you to take a lower place in your household this week?

Lord Jesus, You came down so that we might be lifted up. Give me Your mind in my home and on my street. Teach me to build without pride, to serve without keeping score, and to leave the lifting up to You. Amen.

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