Christ the King – But What Kind of King Really?
Phil 2:5-11 November 21, 2010
Intro:
We are coming back this morning into our study of Philippians, after a two-week break that celebrated our partnerships in ministry and mission. Those two weeks are an important part of our ministry through partnership – we, as a local church, can’t do a whole lot in the important area of theological education, especially in Brazil, but we can partner with people like Doug Janzen and thus very much be a part of that important area of ministry. Likewise, we can’t solve the global problems of justice and “stupid poverty”, but we can come alongside 12 teachers and 130 children in Bolivia through our partnership with Ivan and the Casa de la Amistad. And the main message I took from the past two Sundays, and my substantial conversations with our partners around those big events, was this: we, as a little church here on 142 street, really are making an impact, we really are a significant factor, and we really are appreciated. I don’t say that to puff us up or make us feel prideful, but rather to encourage us that the work we have entered into with our partners is bearing fruit for the Kingdom of God, and that Jesus – our King – has sent us as “citizens of heaven”, we have done our best to follow, and the past two weeks I felt the smile of our King in our obedience. We have not labored in vain. And as your pastor here, I want to say that I deeply rejoice in the hearts of service, of generosity, and of wise partnership that I see continuing to grow and be expressed here at Laurier. We are, I believe, honestly being more conformed into the image of Jesus as our focus continues to shift from ourselves and our needs to how we can serve and bless others as bearers of the good news.
Now those of you who really listened carefully to that introduction might well have connected it to some of the themes we have been seeing in our study of Philippians. We left off last time with 2:1-4, and so now I’d like to take us back into Philippians 2. I’m going to begin again in verse 1 and read through to the end of verse 11. You might want to just follow along on the screen as I’m using the NRSV mostly, with a couple places where I’ve chosen alternative translations (which you’ll see in brackets).
Phil 2:1-11 (NRSV mostly…)
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that (you have) in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to (cling to),
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Appreciating and Experiencing:
This hymn is, for me, deep, complex, beautiful, inspiring, humbling, and very moving. Have you ever had that experience of reading a piece of poetry for an English course, having it move you, and then going to class and dissecting it and analyzing it and reducing what was an emotional connection to an academic/intellectual experience? I don’t want to do that with this passage. I do want to get into it deeply, because if it is studied well the deeper understanding heightens the emotional – and in this case spiritual – connection, but I don’t want to begin there.
I want to slow us down. These words are full of power if we will pause in them. They will shape us and mold us if we will let them. They will inspire us to a deeper love for God and others if we will experience them. So here is what I want to do. Before we dive in and study the passage this week and next week, I want us to read the words together, out loud, slowly, with some significant pauses, and accompanied by an image on the screen try to absorb them into our hearts and spirits, through our minds and through our emotions. Then we’ll begin our study, continuing it next week, and we’ll close each week by repeating this meditative corporate reading exercise. The logistics are simple – please read the phrase on the screen along with me, and then pause to absorb and meditate and allow the Holy Spirit to translate the words to you and bring them alive within you, and I’ll ring a simple bell when we are ready to move to the next phrase.
5Let the same mind be in you that you have in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to cling to,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Unraveling:
Having taken time to try to absorb the passage, let’s begin to train our minds with the goal of understanding it more fully so that it can impact and shape us even more profoundly. One of my favorite resources guiding my study of Philippians begins this section with these words:
This magnificent passage (vv. 6-11) is an early Christian hymn in honour of Christ. It is the most important section of the letter to the Philippians and provides a marvelous description of Christ’s self-humbling in his incarnation and death, together with his subsequent exaltation by God to the place of highest honour. The paragraph is the most difficult in Philippians to interpret. (P. T. O’Brien, Philippians, NIGTC, pp. 186-188).
On one level, I don’t see this as an extremely difficult passage for us. If we simply absorb the major point, and interpret it and experience it in the context of the rest of Philippians and our lives as 21st century Christians, it will grow us in our love for God and others and profoundly shape us. The challenges come when we dive in and try to unravel the deep meanings, and try to really comprehend what this passage is teaching us about who Jesus really is. That challenge is worthwhile, and it is one we will engage, but I’m mindful of not wanting to lose the beauty and impact of the overall passage.
So, then, in the big picture, here is what this passage is about:
• vv. 1-4: a call to live in unity and humility because this is what it means to “live as citizens of heaven, conducting ourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News of Christ” (1:27).
• v. 5: a transition verse linking the call (vv. 1-4) with the hymn (vv. 6-11)
• vv. 6-8: Jesus’ humiliation
• vv. 9-11: Jesus’ exaltation
And within that “structure”, the message is this: the actions and attitudes with which we live our lives, each and every moment of each and every day, must be inspired by and modeled after both the truth of who Jesus is and the example He has set for us.
That is why I want us to experience the passage in its wholeness and with its impact before breaking it into smaller chunks to try and understand it intellectually. Because Paul’s big goal is that we would be overwhelmed with the love of our Jesus for us, who would go to the incomprehensible depths He went to in order to show us His love (in the first section describing His humiliation), that we would be deeply moved by the hope of Jesus’ exaltation (section 2), and thus we would live as we have been commanded (the context before and after). Do you see the movement? Paul is telling us how to live, instructing us, and then he takes us to Jesus: here is Jesus – emptied, stripped, choosing not to cling to all that it meant to be Divine but rather to freely give it all up, be obedient, even obedient to the point of suffering a horrid criminal’s death on a wooden cross. But the humiliated Jesus is not the end of the story – there is exaltation and an assurance that one day ALL will know that this humble man was really God and all will fall down and worship. AND SO we then are led in responses of obedience and deep love for God and others (“5Let the same mind be in you that you have in Christ Jesus”).
And if you and I would live in the beauty and poetry and allow this passage to impact us, I believe it would transform us. This is a theme I find myself repeatedly returning to as I walk through and teach Scripture: all the commands, all the instructions, are not “prescriptions” backed by fear and threat of punishment, nor are they ways to make sure we can behave properly and thus hope God is pleased with us and then be nice to us. Instead, they are appropriate responses, which must flow from our love for God which is a response to experiencing His love for us. I see that theme again here in Phil 2. It comes right back to Jesus.
It comes right back to us really understanding – in head and heart and spirit – that Jesus is God – He was with God in the beginning, fully God, completely divine, with all the power and all the authority. It was through Jesus that all things were created.
But when the time came, when the heart of God was moved by a deep compassion, a deep desire for us to be truly loved again, for us to be forgiven and free and redeemed and restored to relationship, Jesus made a free choice to “empty himself”. To take “the form of a slave”, though He was God. He became human.
And as glorious and as incredible as that is, Jesus went further. He “became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.” Because of His love for you and for me.
And when we get that, when those truths sink down deep, past all the lies about who we are (like we are consumers, like to have our needs me we have to be self-centered, like we are insignificant, like we don’t matter, like we aren’t loveable), when we let the truth define us, shape us, mold us, THEN we step into an incredible relationship of new life. And then we live all these other instructions in Scripture with joy and with power. And we see God’s Kingdom come, and His will be done.
Conclusion:
“Christ the King…”, that is what this Sunday is on the church calendar. That has been the guiding theme of our worship service – we have sung of Jesus the King, we have read Scripture about the exalted Lord Jesus, we have prayed to and through Jesus the King of Kings. And we’ve probably imagined Jesus on the throne, with the crown and the staff of power, multitudes gathered in worship and adoration. And those are good images, Scriptural images. But they are not exclusive images.
What kind of King do we have? We have a King who, out of a deep love for us, laid aside all the privileges, all the comforts, all the benefits: a King who took off the golden crown of honor and took on a crown of thorns, who took off the royal robes and ended up hanging almost completely naked on a cross, who walked away from the crowd of loving adoration and hung in front of a crowd of mockers. Why? because of God’s desperation to have a restored relationship with you, with me, AND with that friend of yours, that family member, that neighbor or colleague at work, with whom Jesus does not yet have a restored relationship.
My goal this morning has been simple: to introduce us to the Christ hymn in Phil 2:5-11 with the prayer and desire that we would see, feel, know, and be shaped by the nature and the character of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are going to read the hymn together again in closing, and the thought I urge you to place alongside this description of Jesus is this: is your life a response to this King?
5Let the same mind be in you that you have in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to cling to,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
