Main Point
Be like Christ - and thus be truly human
Passage
NIV
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
NASB
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
NTE/NKT (The Christ ‘Poem’)
This is how you should think among yourselves–with the mind that you have because you belong to the Messiah, Jesus:
Who, though in God’s form, did not
Regard his equality with God
As something he ought to exploit.
Instead, he emptied himself,
And received the form of a slave,
Being born in the likeness of humans
And then, having human appearance,
He humbled himself, and became
Obedient even to death,
Yes, even the death of the cross.
And so God has greatly exalted him,
And to him in his favour has given
The name which is over all names:
That now at the name of Jesus
Every knee within heaven shall bow–
On earth, too, and under the earth
And every tongue shall confess
That Jesus, Messiah, is Lord
To the glory of God, the father.
Introduction
We just sang a beautiful pairing of songs - we proclaimed the beauty and majesty and holiness of God.
We proclaimed His glory.
And I wonder what you imagine when you are singing those words.
Maybe it’s something like the prophet Isaiah’s vision in the temple when He beheld God:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. (Isaiah 6:1-4)
Or maybe it’s something like the vision John saw in the Revelation: At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. 3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby. A rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne. (Revelation 4:2-3)
Or maybe it’s something like Moses or Jesus when their faces shone brightly (Exodus 34:29; Matthew 17:1-3).
Or maybe you picture the pomp and circumstance of kings or chancellors or presidents in all their fine adornment and raiment.
Or maybe you picture a superhero with a cool costume and amazing powers, ready to defeat evil.
When Matt shared what songs we would be singing this week, I got caught up in this question.
Because when I think of glory and holiness, I think of what we talked about last week.
Last week we started looking at the core of Philippians - the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2:5-11.
This is one of the earliest pieces we have on how the Church understood the meaning of the Story of Jesus.
This hymn tells that story in three movements:His Pre-Existence (v. 5-6)
His Incarnation (v. 7-8)
His Exaltation (v. 9-11)
Last week we looked at His Pre-Existence.
Who Jesus Is
He is God
He is Christ
What Jesus Has Done
He Chose Humility
How We Imitate Jesus
We Look to Jesus
We Cultivate Culture
We talked about how before he was ever born, Jesus existed as God the Son, the Word of God.
And that the whole Bible is about Jesus the Christ – Christ being the Greek version of the Hebrew Messiah, meaning the Anointed One - the promised One who would enact God’s rescue and deliverance of a world plunged into chaos, violence, and death, through its rebellion against God - the true source of goodness, love, joy, peace, order, and life.
That’s amazing. That’s beautiful and powerful, holy and glorious and amazing.
God in Heaven. God is eternally powerful, eternally wise, eternally loving, eternally glorious and wonderful.
But on Wednesday morning, as I was sitting and praying, I was struck by a truth that I knew, that I’ve taught, something I preached last week, but that never really made its way into my imagination or worship:
The person of Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to us.
And so the glory of God is revealed to us in the humanity of Jesus.
The holiness of God is revealed to us in the life of Jesus.
The beauty of God is revealed to us in the death of Jesus.
The power of God is revealed to us in the humility of Jesus.
This Week’s Outline
So that’s what we are going to talk about today, we are going to look at the second movement of the hymn - Jesus’ Incarnation.
And in case that’s a term you are unfamiliar with, the word incarnation just means something taking on human form.
In Christianity, we use the term to refer to the second person of the Trinity - God the Son - becoming human - the man Jesus of Nazareth.
So, as we look at the Incarnation, we will focus on the fact that Jesus is human and servant. We will see that he humiliated himself and obeyed. And I will challenge us to imitate Jesus by counting the cost, and practicing obedience.Who Jesus Is
He is Human
He is Servant
What Jesus Has Done
He Humiliated Himself
He Obeyed
How We Imitate Jesus
We Count The Cost
We Practice Obedience
Pray with me.
Passage (NIV)
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Who Jesus Is
He Is Human
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
The first thing to notice is that Jesus was genuinely human.
It’s easy to skip this point and take it as obvious. In our society, Jesus’ humanity isn’t something we have to convince people about, His divinity is.
People find it easy to call Jesus a good man, or a moral teacher, or even a prophet, but not God.
And that is why we spent last week talking about the fact that Jesus is God.
But the mystery of the Incarnation is that somehow, God Himself becomes human.
Not a human becoming divine, that’s all over fantasy and mythology.
No, the Story of the Scriptures is that God becomes human.
Now, the words appearance and likeness may make us think that Jesus wasn’t genuinely human - he just seemed to be human.
And in fact, that’s a concern and an issue that was raised even in the early days of the church.
A lot of people had no problem with the idea of Jesus as divine - but had a huge problem with him as human.
The incarnation was scandalous - it was beneath the dignity of the divine to lower itself to become human.
And in the Platonic school - a school of Greek philosophy built around the thoughts of Plato - the idea that Spirit would add crude matter or flesh was ridiculous.
The goal was to leave the body and be pure spirit.
The scandal of the Incarnation was hard for a lot of people.
To the point where John has to say in 1 John 4:1-3: Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
And again in 2 John 7: I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
This scandal is what we celebrate at Christmas.
Christmas is a big deal, not just because we get to have a whole month of candy canes, gingerbread, and ugly Christmas sweaters.
Although, let me warn you, the ugly Christmas sweaters are coming, be ready for them!
When I was teaching at Village, we were asked to do ugly Christmas sweaters for some ASB event, and I wanted to be a team player, so I found some nerdy Christmas sweaters, and ever since then I’ve loved ugly Christmas sweaters.
But as awesome as nerdy sweaters are, the real reason we celebrate Christmas, the real reason it’s awesome is because we are proclaiming that God Himself has entered into our experience, and has become human.
But, while He is completely human, there are differences in his experience, and ours.
The Church Father John Chrysostom, talking about this passage, said that Jesus was human in every way that we are with two exceptions - he wasn’t born from the sexual relationship of a mother and father, and he didn’t sin.
Jesus was different from us in his conception, in his obedience, and in the fact that He was God with us.
That’s the idea of likeness and appearance in this passage.
He was recognizably human - he wasn’t something completely other.
He was completely human.
He was just also more than human.
Gordon Fee explains this passage by saying:
The word found expresses the divine reality from our human perspective, while appearance puts the idea of likeness in a slightly different way, referring to the external qualities of something that make it recognizable.
Christ Jesus, who came in the likeness of human beings, “appeared” in a way that was clearly recognizable as human. Together the two phrases accent the reality of his humanity, just as the first two phrases in verse 6 accent his deity.
Jesus had to become human if he was going to rescue and redeem us.
Hebrews 2:14-18: Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Hebrews 4:15: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.
He had to be human - fully and genuinely human.
And for some people, the fact that Jesus didn’t sin makes him seem like he wasn’t really human.
But in the story of the Bible - sin, evil, brokenness - these things aren’t what define humanity - these are the things that make us less human.
The first humans - Adam and Eve - weren't created broken and sinful. They chose sin, and we in turn are bound by that choice.
Jesus is the first genuinely human being since Adam and Even.
When we see Him, we see what it means to be human unencumbered by sin, disobedience, division, and death.
Jesus is truly God. And Jesus is truly human.
This is another great mystery of the faith.
Last week we talked about the Trinity - our greatest mystery.
Today, we talk about the fact that Jesus is both God and Human - a mystery theologians call the Hypostatic Union of Christ.
In 451, at the Council of Chaledon, the Church dealt with a lot of different understandings of the person of Jesus.
And they codified the fact that we don’t fully understand the mysteries of the God-Man, we know the boundaries of what is true about Jesus.
He is fully God, fully Human, he has Two Natures, but is One Person.
And as long as you are in the box, you are in the mystery of the truth of Jesus - he appears and is like us - he is fully human.
But he is also more than us - he is fully God.
And the confusing, upside down aspect of the divine purpose and plan, is that God doesn’t come down seeking to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45)
He Is A Servant
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Here, the phrase a nature of a servant, parallels the phrase last week when we said he was in very nature God.
As truly as Jesus was God, so too, in His Incarnation, He truly became a servant.
But the word servant is not even strong enough - the Greek word doulos is more accurately translated as slave.
You see, Rome was a slave society. And Philippi was no different.
One estimate puts 20% of the population of Philippi as slaves. 1 in 5.
And Christianity was a religion that embraced slaves.
The apostles and Jesus’ brothers called themselves doulos, or slaves, of Christ.
Celsus was a critic of Christianity writing around a hundred years after Philippians.
And he insulted Christians, saying that we want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable and stupid, only slaves, women and little children” (Cels. 3.44).
Christianity was ridiculed as feminine, not masculine.
Christianity was for the poor and oppressed, not the rich and powerful.
Christianity was for the foolish and stupid, not the wise, intelligent, and respectable.
Paul himself said, Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:20-31)
The Church embraced the least of these, the outcast, the disreputable and dishonorable, the poor and the slave, the prisoner and the sinner, and we did so because our God became human, taking on the very role and nature of a slave.
When God became human he didn’t just associate with us at a distance.
He didn’t become the greatest of us.
He associated with the lowest of us.
When He chose humility, he went all the way.
There was nothing below his dignity.
He got in the mud and much with us.
And he was ridiculed for it.
Luke 7:34: The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’
Matthew 9:10-11: 10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
But Jesus didn’t care. Jesus was a servant.
Matthew 9:12-13: 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
When He chose humility, he went all the way.
To the point where He Humiliated Himself
What Jesus Did
He Humiliated Himself
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
One of the commentators I read said that the phrase rendered he humbled himself is too tame.
We are missing the cultural oomph of what Jesus did considering the cultural context of slaves in the ancient world, and especially the disgrace of crucifixion.
That’s why he translated the phrase he humiliated himself.
In Paul’s day, it was natural and normal for a slave to do all manner of humiliating tasks—because for a slave, those tasks aren’t humiliating, they fit the station.
But if a free man would do the work of a slave, that was humiliating.
This is what is happening on Jesus’ last night with His disciples.
We’ve been talking a lot about Jesus’ last night with His disciples - the last Passover he spent, the night he was betrayed.
We’ve talked about the lessons, the prayers, and the teachings that He shared with them.
But that night starts with Jesus doing the job of a slave.
In John 13:3-17 Jesus takes a towel and washes his disciples feet.
And they are scandalized. And rightfully so.
Jesus is their rabbi, their teacher.
They are his disciples, his followers.
He out ranks them.
More than that, He is Christ, the Messiah. Peter has proclaimed that Jesus is the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:16).
But because the disciples were unwilling to humiliate themselves and act like a slave, Jesus - their master - does.
And at the end, Jesus says, “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13:13-17)
I’ve done foot washing ceremonies before. We treat them as acts of love and service and honor and imitation of Jesus.
And they are incredibly powerful - I’ve seen reconciliation and love that I never thought possible in such a ceremony.
I’ve felt my own sin and shame and pride washed away as someone has washed my feet.
But what I have never had emphasized was the act of humiliation that that moment was.
I think it's hard for us to really grasp the cultural implications here. We treat service as a good thing.
I worked in food service for about 5 years - whether at a sub shop, or Olive Garden, or Starbucks.
And over and over again we were told to serve our guests. To treat them with honor and respect, to seek their good.
And that isn’t humiliating. It’s not a disgrace to work in food service.
Some people are jerks and treat people in food service or in retail terribly, but societally we don’t look at service like a bad thing or a disgraceful thing.
The service sector is like ¾ of our economy and ⅔ of the global economy.
We talk about serving in the military, or leaders are public servants.
Serving doesn’t have the same cultural connotations for us that it had for them.
Our ideas of serving are not what being a slave was. Slaves were beneath, they were less.
Ancient slavery wasn’t the same as our American chattel slavery was, but it was still dehumanizing and bad.
We talked last week about how when Jesus chose humility, the security within that He had that was necessary to do that.
And that is true just in Him becoming human.
But even as a human, he chose to humiliate himself over and over again for our sake.
And the greatest example of that was the cross.
The cross was intentionally designed to be an instrument of torture.
And it was also meant to be an instrument of humiliation.
The sheer spectacle, horror, and shame of crucifixion is hard to convey, and really hard for us to get our heads around as 21st century Americans.
The closest visceral response I could think of was someone chopping a head off with a sword, but that isn’t even close because it at least is quick.
Death on a cross was cruel, drawn out, a public display that coming into conflict with Rome means you don’t win.
Rome crushes all opposition, and the vengeance of Rome is so horrifying and so terrifying that only a fool would cross them.
That’s the point. It’s institutional terrorism in order to suppress all rebellion.
It’s a nuclear deterrent pointed at your own people.
Guthrie says that The topic of crucifixion grated against the ears of the ancients, who regarded it as vulgarity that was best avoided in polite society.
Cicero writes of the scandal of crucifixion…as “the worst extreme of the tortures inflicted upon slaves. To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him an abomination, to slay him is almost an act of murder: To crucify him is—what? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed.”
Fee tells us that no one in Philippi, we must remind ourselves, used the cross as a symbol for their faith; there were no gold crosses embossed on Bibles or worn as pendants around the neck or lighted on the steeple of the local church. The cross was God’s—and thus their—scandal, God’s contradiction to human wisdom and power: that the One they worshiped as Lord should have been crucified as a state criminal at the hands of one of “lord” Caesar’s proconsuls; that the Almighty should appear in human dress, and that he should do so in this way, as a messiah who died by crucifixion.
And it wasn’t just shameful in the eyes of the Romans.
Crucifixion was shameful in the eyes of the Jews.
Deuteronomy 21:22-23: If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, 23 you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.
The ground itself was cursed because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion.
The people of God were under a curse because obedience to God and His Law brought blessing, disobedience brought cursing.
But, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” (Galatians 3:12-14)
Jesus was dishonored and humiliated in the eyes of the Jew, and the Gentile.
He was accursed by society, by culture, and by the very Scriptures.
The Living Word of God, condemned and accursed by the Written Word of God.
The Romans killed Jesus. They inflicted the death penalty upon Him, though He had done no wrong.
The Jews killed Jesus. They brought Him to Pilate and demanded his death.
I killed Jesus. My sin put him there on that cross.
But above all else, Jesus chose the cross.
Jesus said No one takes it [His life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. (John 10:18)
Hebrews 12:2: fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
He humiliated Himself - to the point obeyed the Divine Purpose and Plan for Redemption.
He Obeyed
rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
You know, I’ve noticed in my time teaching people that while non-Christians may struggle with the divinity of Jesus, Christians often struggle with the humanity of Jesus.
We proclaim he is a human, but we don’t really believe He is human.
We don’t believe we can be like Him. We don’t believe He is like us.
We don’t really believe He gets us, and we don’t believe that we can ever get Him.
We think His temptations aren’t real, His obedience just easier. Like He had a God shield up, so nothing could touch him.
But Jesus gets us.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15)
He struggled. The night He was betrayed, He didn’t want to obey.
He didn’t want to choose the Cross, didn’t want to complete His humiliation.
Mark 13:34-36: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”
Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him.“Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
He repeated that three times. Three times for the Lord to overcome the temptation to do it his way.
Three times to choose the cross.
To choose obedience to the divine plan.
To choose obedience to the Father.
No one forced Jesus to the cross.
While the Romans executed him, and the Jews demanded his death, and my sin nailed him to that cross - Jesus chose death, even death on a cross.
No one could force him there, He did it.
He did it because He loves you.
He did it because He loves me.
He did it because He loves this world.
He is our rescuer, our redeemer.
He paid the price.
He overcame the powers of sin and death that bind us and dominate us.
He the Rightful King of Heaven and Earth, chose the humiliating death of a slave, criminal, insurrectionist, in order to heal and make whole those who rejected Him.
He obeyed, even to death on the cross.
He counted the cost of our redemption, and He deemed us worthy.
If there is anyone here who doubts that God loves them, that God wants them, that God makes them worthy of His love - then I present to you the cross of Jesus.
Romans 5:8-10 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day of redemption. Today is the day of rescue and reconciliation.
Because Jesus is God and Man. He is Christ and Servant. He chose humility and humiliated Himself by being obedient even to death while we have rebelled and brought death upon ourselves.
How We Imitate Jesus
This is all true, and it is great, and we should say AMEN and mourn and repent of our sin, and dance and sing and rejoice in our King who redeems and forgives us.
But practically, how do we imitate Jesus this week?
We Count the Cost
My first charge to us is that we need to Count the Cost of following Jesus.
I proclaimed to you that today is the day of salvation. And it is. To any who come to Him.
But one of the mysteries of Jesus is that he didn’t make things easy for people.
Time and time again throughout his time on Earth, people would come to Jesus.
They would come for healing, or for food, or because they thought He was powerful, or He was good, or insightful, or a great Teacher, or a political leader who would change their circumstances.
And Jesus would consistently offer Himself, offer who He was, who God is, offer love and goodness and truth and life.
But He would also set the standard and the expectations high.
ONe of the most famous passages about this comes in Luke 14. In it, Jesus says anyone who does not take up and carry their own cross to follow Him, cannot be his disciple.
Anyone who loves their family, or their friends, or their work, or their country, or their hobbies, or their comfort, or even their own lives more than Jesus cannot be His disciple.
He tells us to count the cost. And He is heartbroken when we fail to choose Him.
He warns us that broad is the road that leads to destruction, and narrow is the path that leads to life, and only few find it (Matthew 7:13-14).
It is impossible in and of ourselves to be good enough for God. It is impossible in and of ourselves to please God. It is impossible in and of ourselves to follow Jesus.
But with God, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, it is possible. (Matthew 19:25-26)
But we need to be desperate for Him.
We need to be all-in. If you want Jesus and comfort, Jesus and success, Jesus and a family, Jesus and fame, Jesus and wealth - then Jesus tells us you don’t want Him at all.
That's the message of the books of Galatians and Colossians. Jesus + anything is really nothing.
Jesus wants all of you. And He won’t share you.
And only when we put Jesus in His rightful place, and give Him hit spiritual rock bottom do we truly understand He is all we want, He is all we need, and what He offers is joy unexplainable, peace unfathomable, love unspeakable, grace unexpected, and life - true life, unending.
Today is the day of salvation - today is the day of allegiance - today is the day to put Jesus in His rightful place and follow Him with all our hearts.
And as He calls us, He tells us to count the cost.
Because to follow Him, is to do what He did - no matter the cost.
To follow Him, is to obey Him.
We Practice Obedience
Obedience gets a bad rap.
Obedience can be seen as oppressive - just give up and give in to stay out of trouble.
Obedience can be seen as repressive - you don’t want me to be me, you just want me to conform to you and your ways of being.
Obedience can be seen as burdensome - a legalistic checklist to prove I’m a good person.
Or obedience can be seen as mindless and a way of bypassing responsibility - like soldiers committing war crimes and saying I was just following orders.
But then we come up against Jesus saying that we are his disciples, and we make other disciples, by teaching them to obey all that he has commanded (Matthew 28:20)
And that if we love Him, we will keep or obey his commandments (John 14:15)
There are two keys to obedience.
The first is who you are obeying. Are they trustworthy?
Last week we contrasted Jesus and the gods. Both demanded obedience.
When the gods demand obedience, my only desire is to appease them so they don’t smite, and maybe they’ll bless me.
When Jesus demands my obedience, I can trust that that obedience is ultimately for good.
Last week we looked at the passage where Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
A dear sister came up to me and pointed out that the KJV says learn of me instead of from me.
And that difference matters, because we can learn from a lot of people. And if we treat Jesus as just another teacher, we will integrate His words with any other leader or philosopher or religious teacher we want.
Our society loves that idea - all religions are the same, saying the same thing - love each other, be good people, find comfort in a chaotic, do good.
But if we learn of Him, well then we are internalizing who Jesus is, what He did, how He did it, why He did it.
It’s His teaching yes, but it is everything about Him. And then we see that all religions aren’t the same.
The call of Jesus is different, and exclusive, and radical, and built around the God who became Human, the King who became a Slave, the perfect One who sacrificed Himself for criminals and rebels and sinners.
And that when we learn of Him, we become like Him.
So I spent some time this week studying a preposition - who’s right, the KJV or the NIV. And the answer is…both.
The Greek word can be, and is, translated both ways. Even in the KJV it’s translated both ways in different passages and contexts.
And when we dive into even the littlest words of the Scriptures, there is richness and beauty and depth and transformation for us to find.
We learn from Jesus - because we need to know and understand who our God is. We need to know what He has done, how the world actually works, what it means to be genuinely human, what goodness and life and freedom and love and joy actually look like.
We need to know the purposes of God in the world, the plan of God for history, and the character of the one we seek to imitate.
We cannot obey what we don’t know. So we need to learn from Jesus.
But, we also need to learn of Jesus.
We need to come close to Him, to personally sit with Him, to actually love Him and obey Him.
Let’s call back to earlier when I told you I worked at Olive Garden. That was my college job.
I would wake up around 6 in the morning, go down to UCLA, do classes and homework all day, come back into town around 4, and then work till closing around 11pm.
While we were waiting for the last guests to leave, I would have my physics textbooks out trying to figure out the tension on a wire and wondering why I needed to know that to learn computer science.
But one thing that I did learn, though, that made me sad, was that no one wanted to work on a Sunday afternoon shift.
I learned this my first month - everyone fought to get Sunday afternoons off because Sunday afternoons were when the Church people came out.
And church people were the rudest guests, and the worst tippers. And as a church person - this both made no sense, and broke my heart.
How do we come to church, spend two hours worshipping, praying, and learning from our God who generously gave Himself up for us, who humiliated himself for us, and not go forth and radiate love, grace, and generosity?
How do we act with entitlement and judgmentalness and stinginess?
It’s so easy to not learn of Jesus - to not let this time and this space shape and mold us into the image of God.
Our hearts can become cold, we can lose our motivation for imitation.
Because that’s the second aspect of obedience - our motivation.
Is our obedience just mindless duty, or is it the loving response of a heart devoted to Jesus?
Revelation 2:1-7 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious,I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
We need to obey, we need to repent, and act, and to serve and be like Jesus.
And the rewards are wonderful, the presence and paradise and life of God forever and ever and ever.
But it’s not just action and duty for performance sake. It’s not just work for an eternal paycheck.
It’s not me at Olive Garden acting like there is nothing better in the world than getting you some salad and breadsticks in the hopes of a bigger tip.
No, our obedience to Christ is the response of gratitude and love and connection with Jesus.
It is the overflow of meeting a God who loves us sooo much.
Conclusion
It’s being blown away by Jesus who is God and Man, Christ and Slave. It’s been in awe of Jesus who Chose Humility, Humiliated Himself, and Obeyed to the point of death, even death on a cross.
And it's seeking to imitate Him. We understand, and embrace the cost of discipleship, we look to Jesus as our Lord and example, we cultivate a culture of unity through humility amongst ourselves and each other, and we continue the practice of obedience, growing by grace day by day.
I remember Dave Rutledge, the youth pastor I served under for years, once told me that if a leader isn’t willing to do the least important thing, they had no business being a leader.
If I wouldn’t set up chairs, I didn’t have any business teaching the Bible.
If I wouldn’t clean the toilet, I wouldn't have any business counseling people.
If I wouldn’t listen to and obey my leaders, I had no business expecting others to listen to and obey me.
Why? Because Jesus didn’t come to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45).
Before we get hung up on what we deserve, on what we think is beneath us, before we ever allow pride an inch in our lives - we go back to this hymn.
God became human. Christ became a slave. The perfect one died a criminal's death, all to save me.
Nothing was beneath him to rescue me.
That cross needs to form my imagination when I think of the glory of God.
Behold the man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders;
Behold the glory of the redemption of God.
In Revelation 5:9-10, Jesus in His glory is seen as a lamb who was slain. And He is worshipped:
And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
Let’s be on mission for and obey this God and King who loved us enough to die for us.
Amen?
Pray with me.
Benediction
2 Peter 3:18: But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
Overview
Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
This passage is of fundamental importance for Christology, then as now…Here are some of the questions that arise from each verse: Does the passage imply that Christ was ever less than God (2:6a)? What sort of robbery might he have attempted (2:6b)? What did it mean that he emptied himself (2:7a)? Did he take the appearance or the actuality of a slave (2:7b)? Was he human or merely in human likeness (2:7c-d)? What is involved in his humiliation (2:8)? Who is he that has been exalted (2:9a)? What is the name that is above every name (2:9b-c)? (225-226)
Jesus is worshiped as God in the unity of his divine-human being (Guadentius)...He who rightly worshipped the Father now receives our worship (Cyril of Alexandria). Every kind of creature now reveres him. Even the angelic spirits bow metaphorically (Origen). Christ now sits as ruler as firstborn of the dead (Gregory of Nyssa). This demonstrates that Christ is God (Theodoret). The Father is glorified through the salvation of humanity (Athanasius). (242)
The New Testament in its World
Paul’s previous request for unity among his readers is to be achieved by actively cultivating certain virtues, particularly those connected with learning to think (as we might say) messianically–in other words, thinking as Jesus thought. Their union with him is the ground for such character-development, however counter-intuitive this was in greco-roman culture. And, when he wants to persuade them to imitate the Messiah’s own virtues, he offers them a short poem, perhaps the earliest statement we possess of a Christian view of Jesus.
The poem provides the foundation for the challenge to self-sacrificing unity (2:1-18) and also, in chapter 3, for self-abnegating discipleship. The poem depicts Jesus’ life in three stages: pre-existence (v. 6), incarnation (vv. 7-8), and exaltation (vv. 9-11)...The weight of the poem rests on the decision (of the one who was all along equal with God) to become human, and to travel the road of obedience to the divine saving plan, yes, all the way to the cross. The point is that that decision was not a decision to stop (in some sense) being divine. It was a decision about what it really means to be divine. His subsequent exaltation demonstrates that on the cross Jesus had done what, in Israel’s Scriptures, only God can and will do. Paul has, in effect, rethought Israel’s monotheistic tradition and discovered Jesus at its heart, not as an abstract theory but as a human of recent historical memory as well as of present spiritual experience.
The poem then works out the new patterns of thinking and living (2.12-18). (443-444)
Third, Paul focuses on humility…Humility was regarded in the ancient world as weakness, the characteristic of inferiors and slaves who had been kicked down to the bottom rungs of society. Pagans usually prized (as most people still do) ‘honour’ and fame, usually built on the backs of others. But for the Messiah and his people it is different. Paul is more than capable of giving commands. But most of all he wants his readers to absorb the story of Jesus, specifically the story of his humility, death, and exaltation, and to ‘work out’ what their ‘salvation’ is therefore going to mean in practice (3.12). He wants them, in other words, to adopt a form of moral reasoning shaped by the story of Jesus as the bedrock of their single-minded unity. (448)
Fee
The ultimate paradigm of a genuinely Christian mindset is Christ himself, who is the premier manifestation of the character of God, which God is trying to reproduce in his people so that they might also thereby be truly human
Verse 7
Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
Augustine: He is said to have “emptied himself” in no other way than by taking the form of a servant, not by losing the form of God. FOr that nature by which he is equal to the Father in the form of God remained immutable while he took our mutable nature, through which he was born of the Virgin.
Augustine: He “emptied himself”, not because as eternal Wisdom he underwent change. For as eternal Wisdom he is absolutely changeless. Rather without changing he chose to become known to humanity in such a humble form.
Theodore of Mopsuestia: By “emptying” the holy Scripture signifies becoming of no account, just as in Corinthians Paul speaks of faith as if it had been made of no account, or emptied of significance, if Christ be not raised.
Gregory of Elvira: Only by assuming human form could he become the Savior of humanity. Note that when a sun is covered by a cloud its brilliance is suppressed but not darkened. The sun’s light, which is suffused throughout the whole earth, penetrating all with its brilliant splendor, is presently obscured by a small obstruction of cloud but not taken away. So too that man, whom our Lord Jesus Christ put on, being our Savior, does not lessen but momentarily hides the divinity in him.
Cyril of Alexandria: What sort of emptying is this? To assume the flesh, even in the form of a slave, a likeness to ourselves while not being like us in his own nature but superior to the whole creation. Thus he humbled himself, descending by his economy into mortal bounds.
Marius Victorinus: We must understand this “emptying himself” to consist not in any loss or privation of his power but in the fact that he lowered himself to the basest level and condescended to the meanest task. By fulfilling these he momentarily emptied himself of his power. Assuming flesh and human form and likeness, he suffered, died, and fulfilled all the things that belong to humanity.
Gregory of Nyssa: The Godhead is emptied so that human nature may accommodate it. What is human, on the other hand, is made new, becoming divine through mingling with the divine.
Ambrosiaster: He is said not to have taken the form of God but to have been in the form of God. What he is said to have taken is the form of a slave when he was humbled like a sinner…His “taking the form of a slave” was not simply his becoming human but his profound identification with sinners, voluntarily “taking the form of a slave”.
Augustine: The Son humbled himself, taking the form of a slave. But meanwhile he remained above any slavery because he had no stain of sin.
Leo the Great: He “assumed the form of a slave” without the stain of sin, enhancing the human without diminishing the divine. That emptying by which the invisible One offered himself to be seen and the Creator and Lord of all things elected to be one among mortals was a sovereign act of stooping in majestic pity, not a defect of power.
Augustine: The Lord Jesus Christ came in flesh and, having “accepted the form of a slave, because obedient even to death on the cross.” He has no other purpose than that by this dispensation of his most merciful grace he might give life to those who have become, as it were, members of his body. He is their head in order to obtain for them the kingdom of heaven. This he did to save and set free. He redeemed and enlightened those who had formerly been consigned to the death of sin. They had been languishing in slavery, captivity, and darkness under the power of the devil, the prince of sinners.
Ambrosiaster: his obedience to the Father took him even as far as the cross. Yet, throughout he knew himself to be the Father’s Son, equal in divine dignity. Yet he did not make a display of this equality. Rather he willingly subjected himself. This patience and humility he teaches us to imitate. We are to refrain from making a display of our claims to equal dignity, but even more so we are called to lower ourselves into service as we follow the example of our Maker.
Eusebius of Caesarea: Read the record of his compassion. It pleased him, being the Word of God, to “take the form of a slave”. So he willed to be joined to our common human condition. He took to himself the toils of the members who suffer. He made our human maladies his own. He suffered and toiled on our behalf. This is in accord with his great love of humankind.
Hilary of Poitiers: Note well the breathtaking economy by which the Son assume flesh: Through the obedience of the one who was in the form of God [and] was emptying himself of the form of God, [he] was born as a man. In doing so, he took a new nature upon himself! This occurred not by a loss of his power and nature but by an assumption of a new condition…Though he retained the power of his nature as God, he was in much of his earthly ministry temporarily relinquishing his exercise of the power of his nature as God as he walked as a man. The effect of this economy of order was this: The Son in his entirety, namely, as both man and God, was now, through the indulgence of the Father’s will, in union with the nature of the Father. This is what occurred to God the Son: that he became a man.
Chrysostom: What does it mean to be “in a human likeness”? Does it mean that his appearance was merely a fantasy? This would be something merely similar to a human and not made in the “likeness of a man”. For to be made in “the likeness of a man” is to be a man…So what does it mean, “in a human likeness”? With few exceptions he had all our common human properties. The exceptions: He was not born from sexual intercourse. He committed no sin. These properties he had which no human being has. He was not only human, which is what he appeared to be, but also God…We are soul and body, but he is God, soul and body. For this reason, Paul says “in the form” —and so that when you hear of his emptying you may not suppose that he underwent change, degradation and some sort of annihilation of his divinity. Rather remaining what he was he assumed what he was not. Becoming flesh, he remained the Word of God. So it is in this respect that he is “in the likeness of men” and for this reason he says “and in form”. His nature was not degraded, nor was there any confusion [of the two natures[, but he entered a form.
Theodoret: He says of the divine Word that, being God, he was not seen to be God but wore a human appearance. Yet the word “in the likeness of men” are appropriate to him, for the nature that he assumed was truly human, and yet he was not [merely[ a man, though he at first glance appeared to be only a man.
Augustine: He did not take on his humanity in the simple way that a person puts on clothes, as something exterior to him. Rather he took on human form in a manner inexpressibly more excellent and more intimate than that. The apostle has made it sufficiently clear what he meant “He was made to appear in human likeness.” He was not exhaustively reduced to being a man. He rather assumed the true estate when he put on the man.
Guthrie
The main verbs here form the narrative backbone of the passage and are translated as “[he] stripped himself” (eauton ekenosen) and “he humiliated himself” (etapeinosen eauton).
Thus, the incarnation and the passion are the two means by which the Son accomplished his mission.
The verb translated “stripped” (kenoo) could be used by ancient authors to express making something “empty”, “to expend”, “to throw away”, “to strip”, “to abandon”, on the one hand, and “to destroy, render void” or to “make something of no effect” on the other. Generally, in the New Testament, the word carries the metaphorical meaning “to empty” something of its effect or meaning.
(In light of Isaiah 52:13-53:12) According to this reading, the Son “emptying himself” to take the status of slave semantically parallels the through of Isaiah 53:11-12 of the servant “pouring out” or “emptying out his soul” in order to justify many.
This notion of Christ “divesting” himself of status is further clarified by the clause “taking the outward appearance of a slave” (morphen doulou labon), which indicates that the Son relinquished one status in order to take up (lambano) another.
Mark 10:45, a passage that also has Isaiah’s suffering servant as a backdrop, comes to mind: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
In the New Testament, the word translated “becoming” (ginomai) often communicates the entrance “into a new condition”, changing from one experience or state of existence to another, and in the present context it gives us the means by which Christ changed his status to that of a slave.
It means that he shared in human nature, in our humanity, but was distinct as well (cf. Rom 8:3); no other human has been equal to God the Father prior to becoming human. The Son joined humanity in its human experience, adding humanity to his deity.
As with Hebrews 2:14, the Son of God could not have died if he did not become human.
And thus, having lived a human life, “he humiliated himself” (etapeinosen eauton) by taking the path to a dehumanizing death by crucifixion. The more common rendering of the verb, “he humbled himself”, might be regarded as a bit tame. Although the emphasis is on Jesus assuming a status as slave, humbly taking for himself a “downwardly mobile” posture in life, “humiliated” may be a better translation, especially given the cultural content of servants/slaves in the ancient world and the reference to the crucifixion.
This example of Christ’s obedience calls to mind a culminating moment in the Son’s obedient life—the great “not my will” moment in the garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42).
Christ’s obedience is a prime example to the church in their ongoing discipleship.
Further, Jesus endured a very specific form of death, death on a cross, an engine of both humiliation and termination. The horror and social stigma of crucifixion in the ancient world is difficult to convey adequately in a short space. Cruel, purposefully drawn-out torture was combined with public humiliation in a way that communicated in no uncertain terms the fate of those who came into conflict with the purpoes of the Roman Empire. The topic of crucifixion grated against the ears of the ancients, who regarded it vulgarity that was best avoided in polite society.
Cicero writes of the scandal of crucifixion…as “the worst extreme of the tortures inflicted upon slaves. To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him an abomination, to slay him is almost an act of murder: to crucify him is—what? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed.”
This is the great irony, the scandal of a crucified Lord of glory (Phil :6; see 1 Cor 2:8) “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23).
Cohick
What is involved with Jesus taking on humanity, assuming a human body, being born a human? Does he have a sinful nature as have all children of Adam? Not according to 2 Corinthians 5:21, which states that Jesus knew no sin. Is Jesus then not really like us? Does he not know our struggles or temptations? Indeed he does (Hebrews 2:14-18; 4:15). The hymn is drawing attention to the fact that Jesus embraced mortality in taking up a body…Not only did he take up mortality, but also was obedient to the very end, to actually die…Jesus, the Son of God, identifies with us and participates in humanity, and thus we may identify with him and participate in his death and new life.
In Paul’s day, it was natural and normal for a slave to do all manner of humiliating tasks—and for a slave they were not so much humiliating as expected of one’s status. But if a free man would, for example, wash another man’s feet—that was humiliating (John 13:3-17). You see, sometimes it is not the task itself that is humiliating, but it becomes such if it is “beneath” the status of the person.
The shocking point of the hymn is that Christ stood on its head the common understanding of free man as one who sought honor and avoided at all costs what society viewed as humiliating.
A true human is one who embraces obedience, even if that path leads to humiliation. It is not that God delights in humiliation; it is that in God’s eyes what humans consider worthy of exaltation is vainglorious, and he cannot be a part of such status seeking. What we consider humiliation, in other words, is only so because we exist in a world that privileges self, not God.
Verse 8
Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
Chrysostom: He honored the Father all the more, not that you may honor him less but that you may marvel all the more. Here we learn that he is truly a son who honors his father more than all else. No one could have honored God the Father more than God the Son. The measure of his sublimity corresponds with the depth of his humility.
HIlary of Poitiers: Humility is hard, since the one who humbles himself has something magnificent in nature that works against his lowering. The one who becomes obedient, however, undertakes the act of obedience voluntarily. It is precisely through the act of humbling that he becomes obedient.
Cyril of Alexandria: He humbled himself, according to the Scriptures, taking on himself the form of a slave. He became like us so that we might become like him. The work of the Spirit seeks to transform us by grace into a perfect copy of his humbling.
Chrysostom: It is a great thing—ineffably great—that he became a slave. But to undergo death was much greater. Where can anything be found more paradoxical than this? This death was the most shameful of all, the most accursed. And he in death appeared to be a reprobate. This was not an ordinary death.
Augustine: He humbled himself, being made obedient even unto earth, even death on a cross, so that none of us, though being able to face death without fear, might shrink from any kind of death that human beings regard as a great disgrace.
Cohick
The hymn thus stresses the willingness of Christ to embrace his humanity, even unto death.
Fisk examines the story line of Christ’s incarnation side by side with ancient novels. These stories often begin with the hero or heroine at the heights of fame, success, and status. They trace the rapid descent to the depths of humiliation brought about by Fate. Then, with surprising brevity, the stories recount the main character’s vindication by the gods, who rescue them from death. Our Philippian reader might initially assume a similar story for Christ, but would quickly be brought up short on two points. First, Christ initiates his own humiliation; second God does not act to save Christ from death on the cross. These distinctions are crucial in distinguishing Christ as Lord and critiquing the pagan view of earthly status and seemingly appropriate actions for the gods.
Christ’s actions suggest that all acts of obedience are worth the same, and all humans are called to act obediently. For example, who should change the baby’s diapers? Is it a job naturally suited for an immigrant woman? If her high-income empowers change the diapers, do they deserve credit for being humble—like Christ—because such work is beneath their dignity? There are no tasks of obedience and service suited to one status, ethnic group, or sex. To do otherwise is to invite sexism and racism into our midst.
Fee
Apart from the absence of the “not/but” contrast, this sentence is formally very much like the preceding one. It begins (1) with a participle emphasizing Christ’s present “mode” of being, in this case “as a human being,” followed (2) by the main clause (he humbled himself), followed (3) by a similar participial modifier, again spelling out how he did so (became obedient to death), which in turn (4) is brought to rhetorical climax by specifying the kind of death (even death on a cross). Thus the two sentences in their essential parts are parallel:
Being in the form of God,
he emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by coming in the likeness of human beings.
Being found in human appearance,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death,
death, that is, on a cross.
The word found expresses the divine reality from our human perspective, while appearance puts the idea of likeness in a slightly different way, referring to the external qualities of something that make it recognizable. Christ Jesus, who came in the likeness of human beings (both similar and dissimilar to us), “appeared” in a way that was clearly recognizable as human. Together the two phrases accent the reality of his humanity, just as the first two phrases in verse 6 accent his deity.
As with true deity, true humanity is expressed in his humbling himself, picking up the language of verse 3. The obedience that characterized his entire human life found its definitive expression in his death on a cross. The emphasis on obedient to death points to his readiness, as one of us, to choose the path that led to a death “destined for our glory before time began” (1 Cor 2:7). Which is quite in keeping with him who, as God, impoverished himself by taking on the role of a slave.
Here is the very heart of Pauline theology, both his understanding of God’s being and his understanding of what God is doing in our fallen world. Here is where the One who is equal with God has most fully revealed the truth about God: that God is love and that his love expresses itself in self-sacrifice—cruel, humiliating death on a cross—for the sake of those he loves. The divine weakness (death at the hands of his creatures, his enemies) is the divine scandal (the cross was reserved for slaves and insurrectionists).
No one in Philippi, we must remind ourselves, used the cross as a symbol for their faith; there were no gold crosses embossed on Bibles or worn as pendants around the neck or lighted on the steeple of the local church. The cross was God’s—and thus their—scandal, God’s contradiction to human wisdom and power: that the One they worshiped as Lord should have been crucified as a state criminal at the hands of one of “lord” Caesar’s proconsuls; that the Almighty should appear in human dress, and that he should do so in this way, as a messiah who died by crucifixion.
Likewise, this is the scandal of Pauline ethics: that the God who did it this way “gifts” us to “suffer for his sake” in this way as well (see 1:29).
How radically different is God’s view of our being fully human from the bland and shallow “beautiful people” Western culture exhibits to sell us on ourselves. Having abandoned both God and the one true Human, Christ Jesus, our culture fawns on—and takes advice from (!)—any and every celebrity, empty-headed as he or she might be, who appears on a television talk show. What fools we mortals be, whose truth about ourselves is finally to be found in the one truly human life that inhabited our planet.
Resources Used
Cohick, Lynn H. The Story of God Bible Commentary: Philippians. Edited by McKnight. Scot, Zondervan, 2013.
Edwards, Mark J., and Thomas C. Oden, editors. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. InterVarsity Press, 2005.
Fee, Gordon D. Philippians. IVP Academic, 1999.
Freedman, David Noel, et al., editors. The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, Doubleday, 1992.
Guthrie, George H. Philippians. Zondervan Academic, 2023.
Motyer, J. A. The Message of Philippians. InterVarsity Press, 1984.
Wright, N.T, and Mike Bird. The New Testament in its World. SPCK, 2019.
Wright, Nicholas Thomas. Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters : Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. SPCK, 2004.