Most of us are pretty familiar with the accounts of the birth of Jesus and the visits by the shepherds, and later the magi, that we find in Luke and Matthew. In fact, even outside the church, most people have at least some familiarity with those accounts. Unfortunately much human tradition has been added to those accounts over the years, so there are all kinds of ideas about the birth of Jesus that frankly have no basis in Scripture. And it’s even easy for those of us who are Christ followers to get caught up in those traditions.
In order to illustrate that point when Mary and I were teaching teenagers in a church in Albuquerque, I used to give the kids a Christmas quiz. So just for the fun of it, let’s see how well you do with a couple of these questions.
How did Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem?
a. Camel
b. Feet
c. Donkey
d. Mary rode, Joseph walked
e. No reference / None of the above
Mary and Joseph were already married when Jesus was born.
a. True
b. False
How many wise men were there?
a. One
b. Two
c. At least two
d. Three
e. No reference / None of the above
Where did the wise men find Jesus?
a. In the manger
b. In the stable
c. In a house
d. In Nazareth
e. In Egypt
f. No reference / None of the above
But even an accurate understanding of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus is insufficient to completely understand the reason for His birth. Even though there are some hints in both Luke and Matthew’s accounts – primarily in the words of the angels to Joseph, Mary and the shepherds – we still don’t get the complete picture. That’s because most of those events are recorded from the perspective of the humans who witnessed them.
Fortunately for us, however, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives us some great insight into those same events from God’s perspective. So let’s read those words of Paul in his letter to the church at Philippi:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV)
The purpose of this section of Paul’s letter is to help his audience understand the kind of humility that they need to have toward each other. But when He uses the example of Jesus to illustrate the kind of humility they are to have, he also gives them, and us, some essential insight into the significance of the birth of Jesus.
From a human perspective there was really nothing to differentiate the birth of Jesus from any other human birth that occurred around that time. Jesus looked just like any other baby. In spite of artists’ renderings that show otherwise, He did not have a golden halo around His head. And contrary to one popular Christmas song, He most certainly cried just like any other baby. And he wet and soiled his diapers just like any other baby.
But from God’s perspective this was no ordinary birth. And here in Philippians Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, reveals the incarnation of Jesus from God’s perspective.
THE INCARNATION OF JESUS FROM GOD’S PERSPECTIVE
1. Jesus is God
In verse 6, Paul begins with a phrase that is key to everything else that comes afterwards:
…he was in the form of God…
Since this is so crucial, let’s take a closer look at the two key words:
“he was” - describes that which a person is in his very essence and which cannot be changed
The meaning of this verb is further emphasized by the fact that it is in the present tense. In other words, not only was Jesus God in the past, He remained God at the time Paul wrote these words and He remains fully God today.
The writer of Hebrews confirms that very same idea:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13:8 (ESV)
“form” (vv.6, 7)= “nature” or “character”
We’ll see in a moment that Paul uses another word that is also translated “form” later in this passage. But the word he uses here indicates the permanent nature or character of an object or person. It is something that is not affected by time or circumstances.
The fact that Jesus has always been 100% God and that He remains 100% God is confirmed repeatedly in the Bible, but we probably see that best in the opening words of John’s gospel account:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1 (ESV)
This is without a doubt the key principle that Paul lays out for us here. If this is not true, then nothing else that Paul writes makes any sense at all.
2. Jesus did not cling to His favored position
Even though Jesus was and is 100% God, he did not selfishly cling to His position as God nor view it as a prized position to be used only for Himself. This is obviously a very powerful argument for Paul as He writes to the people of the church in Philippi and urges them not to be self-focused, but rather to look out for the interests of others. If Jesus did not view His favored position as God to be something to grasp tightly, then certainly we have no excuse to hang on to whatever we have that might hinder our relationships with others.
3. Jesus voluntarily set aside:
There has been a lot of debate in scholarly circles about what is meant by the phrase “…but emptied himself…” at the beginning of verse 7. But if we read that phrase in the context of the entire passage and look at the underlying Greek grammar, we can accurately understand what Paul is writing. In Greek, “himself” is in what is known as the accusative form. Without going into a big long Greek lesson, that means that Jesus did not empty something from Himself, but rather that He emptied Himself from something. This would be similar to pouring water from a pitcher to a glass – the form remains the same, only the location changes.
What we see here is that Jesus voluntarily emptied Himself from the glory of heaven and in doing so he also set aside all that entailed. In particular, there are at least four things that Jesus willingly set aside in this passage.
• The riches of heaven
While He was in heaven with His Father, Jesus continually experienced the worship and praise that He deserves. He had at His disposal every asset and resource that He could possibly need. But He willingly gave that all up for about 33 years. This is how Paul describes this aspect of what Jesus did:
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
2 Corinthians 8:9 (ESV)
• His independent will
I don’t know exactly how the trinity operates. All I know from the Bible is that the three persons of the Godhead operate in perfect harmony and unity. But in His humanity, Jesus laid aside His independent will and chose to submit Himself to the will of the Father.
We see this demonstrated throughout the ministry of Jesus, but perhaps nowhere is it more clearly displayed than in John 4. Jesus has just had His encounter with the woman at the well in Sychar. The disciples return with some food and encourage Jesus to eat, but He responds with these words:
…My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
John 4:34 (ESV)
• The use of His Godly attributes
Jesus did not, as some claim, strip Himself of His deity. That would not have been possible because if he had somehow been able to do that, he would have emptied Himself of His nature and essence.
What He did do was to voluntarily choose to limit the use of His Godly attributes. Jesus did not stop being being omnipresent on omniscient or any of the other things that He is as God. He just gave up His right to use them except as He was directed to do so by His Father.
This idea is confirmed in verse 8, where Paul writes that Jesus was “found in human form”. Although we can’t see it in the English, Paul uses a different Greek word for “form” here.
“form” (v.8) = “changing, outward appearance”
In a moment, we’ll talk more about how Jesus added humanity to His deity. But when He did that, one of the things that happened is that He took on a body of flesh that was continually changing with time and circumstances. He grew from the baby in the manger, to the young child that the magi visited to a young man in the Temple, and finally to a man who ministered for about three years here on earth.
And His physical body, like ours, was subject to stress, disease, injury and death.
• Intimacy with the Father
Although Jesus continued to have fellowship with His Father through prayer during His life here on earth, He gave up the deep, intimate relationship that He had in heaven as part of the triune God.
We see the ultimate result of that on the cross:
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Mark 15:34 (ESV)
Can you imagine what that must have been like for Jesus? I know there have been times in my life when I have voluntarily set aside some of my rights or things that I am entitled to for the sake of my wife or children, but it can’t even begin to compare to giving up the glory of heaven like Jesus did. And what is even more amazing is that…
4. He was humiliated for our sake
Jesus did not voluntarily lay aside any of these things for His own benefit. He didn’t do it to get His name in the paper or be the lead story on the 10:00 news. Everything He did, He did for you and me. He was even willing to be humiliated for our sake. Paul describes two ways in which He chose to be humiliated on our behalf:
• Added the essence of humanity to His deity
In verse 7, Jesus is described as “taking the form of a servant”. We’ve already seen the word “form” twice in this passage – once in verse 6 and once ion verse 8. Here Paul uses the first one – the one that describes the nature or character of something or someone.
The verb “taking” is the key here. That particular verb does not imply exchanging one thing for another, but rather adding something on to that which already exists.
What that means is that Jesus did not lay aside His nature as God – but He did add the nature of man to it when he was born in the likeness of man.
There is no way that any of us can imagine just how humiliating that must have been for Jesus. But that was still nothing at all compared to the second way He was humiliated four our sake.
• Died the most humiliating death possible
From the accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion, we can conclude that it was certainly one of the most painful ways anyone could be executed. The Roman jurist Julius Paulus listed crucifixion in first place as the worst of all capital punishments, listing it ahead of death by burning, death by beheading, or death by the wild beasts.
But what is not quite as apparent from those accounts is just how humiliating of a death it was. Although most artists’ renditions picture Jesus on the cross with at least a loin cloth, historical records reveal that most subjects of crucifixion were completely nude. The Romans, in particular, considered the humiliation of the crucifixion process as an effective crime deterrent.
As we celebrate the incarnation of Jesus today, it’s real easy to think about a cute little baby in a manger who was born over 2,000 years ago. But once we begin to understand what that cost Jesus, it’s not nearly so easy to just stop there. Once we comprehend, at least as much as we can with our limited human minds, just how much Jesus loves us and to what lengths He was willing to go to in order to demonstrate that love, then we can never really view Christmas the same again. You see, without the cross, the birth of Jesus would be no different than any other birth that happened in Bethlehem that day, or even that year. In fact, His birth would be no different than any other human birth in history.
But the story doesn’t end at the cross. Because Jesus was willing to humble Himself, even humiliate Himself, for our sake, God exalted Jesus. He raised Him from the dead and Jesus is once again seated at the right hand of God.
One day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. But for many of those people that acknowledgement of Jesus as Lord will come too late. The Bible is clear that only those who commit their lives to Jesus as Savior and Lord here in this lifetime will receive eternal life and experience an abundant life here on earth as well as eternity in the presence of Jesus. For those who choose not to do that here on earth, they will one day see that Jesus is indeed exactly who He said He was and they will have to acknowledge Him as Lord. But then they will spend the rest of eternity in a place of torment, separated from God for eternity.
That is actually the fate that all of us deserve. Listen to the words of Paul from Romans 6:
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23 (ESV)
Every one of us has sinned and as a result what we earn – our wages – is death, not just the physical death we will all experience one day, but also spiritual death.
But the good news is that as a result of Jesus humbling himself and voluntarily setting aside all the privileges of His deity, He is offering all of us a gift today. And it is certainly a better gift than any other one you will receive this Christmas. It is the gift of eternal life. If you have never received that gift, I want to encourage you to do that before you leave today.
