Riches To Rags Series

Riches to Rags September 20, 2009

Opportunities missed:

There was a very cautious man,

Who never laughed or played.

He never risked, he never tried

He never sang or prayed.

And when one day, he passed away

His insurance was denied.

For since he never really lived,

They claimed he never died.

If we want to ‘really live’, we need to get in touch with the One Who really gives us life. We need to get to know Jesus Christ, the Creator of each and every one of us. And our attitude towards life should be very much like His. In order to find out what is REALLY important in life, the things we should REALLY strive for, we must set our focus on a better example than just another human being who, like very other human being, is flawed by the effect of sin. Instead, we need to look to Jesus, Who lives without sin, and Whose attitude towards life is very different than the world’s attitude. Look with me at Philippians chapter 2, verses 5-11 and let’s read about what our attitudes should be like.

Philippians 2:5-11 (New International Version)

5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

6Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

7but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

8And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Humility – riches to rags…by choice. If Jesus humbled Himself so much…shouldn’t we?

Jesus was fully God and fully human. Fully God in power, knowledge, etc.

Knew that Jairus’ daughter, though dead, would live again, He knew He could give her life, but had to physically go there to heal her (Mark 5), as it was with Lazarus (Luke 11). Other times, He simply spoke, and people were healed…like the centurion’s servant (Luke 7)

He went from GOD to nothing (human) but retained His deity the whole time.

Don’t think that Jesus was not fully God, but fully human. If was simply ‘human’, His sacrificial death would not be enough to pay for all of our sin as humankind. To deny that Jesus was God in the flesh is what leads to Gnosticism. That would mean we were still on our own when it comes to salvation, which according to Jesus’ words and the teaching of the NT, is impossible without Christ. He is in very ‘nature’, God. The Greek word is morphe. The closest translation in our English language is ‘form’ or ‘nature’ referring to whom Jesus is. It is that which truly characterizes a person. And what He is, Who He is, is GOD.

We see the use of the word ‘morphe’ used to day to talk about things like changing the look of one picture into another (morphing). Or we may recognize metamorphosis, the process of changing one thing into something different tan it originally was (like a caterpillar into a butterfly). But here, it is simply morphe. The form, or nature of, in this case Christ Himself.

And His form, His nature is God. He is equal in form to God, in other words, Jesus is God. This phrase ‘equality with God’ is one of the most powerful statements in the Bible that Jesus was God, not like God, not part of God, not lower than, but GOD Himself. John writes Jesus’ words in chapter 10, ‘I and the Father are one.’ This is an incredible relationship! Again, in John chapter 14, Jesus tells the disciples if they have seen Him, they’ve seen the Father. How can you see two people and see only one? It’s not twins. This is only possible if they are the SAME, equal in every way. Jesus is equal with God, because He is God.

This is SO critical in understanding Who God is and how we can know Him, because Jesus IS God, and we know Him by His Word. As in John 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It’s this relationship of being with God, and being God, that for me, solidifies that the Trinity is true. God the Father, God the Son, and the Spirit that Jesus promised when He left this earth and Who came at Pentecost. God is 3, God is one, Jesus is God…no question, no doubt, no other way!