Philippians 2:5-11
Series: Choosing Joy in a Post-Traumatic World
I think that there's a lot of confusion associated around Christmas in the lives of people. You've got this very, very significant event of Christmas, while at the same time almost a carnival atmosphere going on in society. You've got the humility, the loneliness of the baby, the shepherds, the poverty of that early family that even their house, that baby born in a stable compared to the amazing wealth that's passed on through gift giving and so on during the Christmas time. Just the significance of the gift itself of Christmas, Jesus Christ being given as the gift for us, is so powerful compared to in a modern society all of the like plastic gifts. Many of them don't even last till the end of Christmas day before they're broken. There's just this dichotomy between these different things that are going on as you think about Christmas. That is a lot of stuff happening. And I'm sure that people who are nonbelievers don't do a lot of thinking about it. They don't think twice about it. They're just into all of the celebrating and what's going on.
In fact, they rarely will even say “Merry Christmas” anymore. Now they say “Happy Holidays” because they don't want to offend someone. I make it a point to say “Merry Christmas.” If someone were to say to me, “Oh I don't celebrate Christmas,” my response would be, “Oh that's too bad.” Because Christmas is such a valuable holiday that represents something very significant in all of history. If someone were to say, “Well I don't really believe that,” I would say that's too bad too. Because just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We as Christians don't say something's true because we believe it. We believe it because it's true. Christmas is true. And that's why we believe it. So as Christians, we do think about Christmas in a more deep way. We do celebrate it and each of us celebrate it in different ways. You have to decide what's best for you and your family. How much of the celebration part and the true meaning of Christmas, how you put all that together. But as Christians, we all have the same thing in common. We come to this special season of the year looking for this wonder of Christmas to go, “Yes. Wow. This was really big what Christ did for us.”
Today I want you to experience that in God's word, I want you to experience the wonder of Christmas. Now we're not going to look at the Christmas story from the perspective of the prophets today. And we're not going to look at it from the perspective of Mary, or Joseph, or the innkeeper, or the shepherds, or the wisemen. We're going to look at this perspective from Paul the apostle as he's looking back on this historical event. It happens that we are in Philippians 2 and verses 5-11 is our passage today. And it is the most concentrated piece of scripture describing the incarnation, the ability of Christ to come down to earth. What does it mean? What does it look like? And what is it all about? We're going to look at that passage today. As we look at it, it is my goal that you today would experience the wonder of Christmas. That it would touch you in a very powerful way that you'd go away saying, “Yes.” In fact as we talk about it today, at the end, I'm going to talk about a present that God gives us right out of this passage that really changes us, that we walk away with and appreciate and benefit from.
So let's dig into the scriptures together. Open your Bibles to Philippians 2:5-11. You'll notice verse 5 is the verse we read last week. So you see it ties right into this whole idea of honor and unselfishness and so on. He says – Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. This mind or this attitude. He's describing this attitude that he was teaching us in these first verses. That we should think of others more important than ourselves, we should value not our own interests but the interests of other people. And then he says have the attitude, this attitude just like Christ did. So now we're going to go into Christ as the example of this unselfishness, of this humility. Verses 6 and 7 take us into the birth of Christ. Verse 8 helps us understand the death of Christ. And then verses 9-11 helps us see His exaltation. That's how the passages develop there. I want to take you right into this passage.
As we go into verse 6, we see right away this word form of God. Do you see how in there I've underlined form of God. Now the word form is a very important word there. The word form is the word morphe which doesn't refer to outward appearance, it refers to the internal essence of something. Now that's going to be important in this story. When Christ came down from heaven to earth, what happened? How did He change? That's really what this passage is all about. What does it look like? And so Paul is saying when He came, He was in very essence God. That He had the form of God, the internal essence. It’s as if I were to say, “I am a person, I'm a human, and that's my essence.” Now I might appear to be a baby, or a toddler, or preschooler, or a teenager, or whatever. That may be what I am outside, but on the inside I'm always a person. Now what Paul is saying is that Jesus was always God. And now He was in the form of God and He's going to continue that. His essence will not change. The form of God.
Now that's important when you try to imagine and try to figure out what did Jesus do when He came to earth? What did He give up? What happened? He didn't give up His godness. He was God, very much so, on earth. In fact Jesus explained that to us and taught us that in this next slide, I just want to point out some verses that illustrate that. In John 14:9 Jesus said – Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. He’s saying, “You want to seek God? Well you just look at me,” is what He's saying.
In John 8:58 it says Jesus said to them – “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am!” This is taking us back, by the way, the words I am, to the story of Moses at the burning bush. Moses is one of those reluctant leaders God told him, “Go and tell Pharaoh to let my people go,” but Moses was not really into this. And he had five excuses in the passage, and one of them was this: If I go there, and they ask the question, “What is your God's name?” What will I tell them? Because the Egyptians had a lot of gods, and they want to know which one of the gods are you referring to? And so God answers Moses and says, “Well here's what you do. You tell him that Yahweh (which is the name I am – I am or Yahweh) sent you.” So now, when Jesus is speaking in John 8:58, He says to them – “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” People were shocked. That's why they wanted to kill Him, because it was obvious He was making a claim to be God.
In John 10:33 – The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” It's very clear that when Jesus came to earth, He did not give up His godness. He was God ever-present here on Earth. That itself is this window as we open up this window of wonder in our hearts, just getting this idea that it's God who came down to earth is stunning for us to understand.
Back to our passage here, the word morphe is used twice here, form of God. He did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. So now He takes on the essence of humanity. The essence of humanity. He becomes 100% man. And this is where the logic becomes difficult for us to understand. Because we have a hard time with anything over 100%. But in God's math, He's 100% God and 100% man. He's both of those at the same time. It's hard for us to grasp that idea. But He is. He's 100% man.
That means that He was tired. He was hungry. He was thirsty. You know that Christmas carol that I love, Away in the Manger. The second verse goes: The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes, the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. I don't think so. Okay. He definitely cried. We know He cried when He was older. Right? He cried when He was a baby too. The cry is really important for a baby. It's part of humanness. It says to the dad, “Get the mother. You know, I want the real thing. I don't want you.” Okay. So there's this cry that a baby makes it's really important. He was all human. When He reached down to touch and heal someone, He had dirt under his fingernails. Okay, He was a real guy. 100% God, 100% man.
So what was different about all of this? When Jesus came to earth, what was it like? What did it feel like? How did the God and the man all work together? Well Paul is trying to explain that to us in these verses. So let's go back to verse 6 where he says – Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped (or seized or held on to), but instead it says He emptied himself.
Now in your Bibles if you're taking notes in our little workbooks, you're going to want to write the word kenao or kenosis. That's this word here, kenosis, which means to empty. The reason you want to put it there is because this passage among theologians is called the kenosis passage. Because it's really the question, what was Jesus made up of? What did He empty Himself of? That's the question being asked of theologians as we look at this passage. We're going to answer that question by looking at God's word today, as we try to understand it. But the idea is He emptied Himself by doing what? He emptied Himself (look at the verse) by taking on something. So the emptying that He does, He does by taking on this form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. So the very fact that He became a person means that He emptied Himself of something.
I'm going to show you two passages of scripture that I think help us understand that what Jesus emptied Himself of was the privileges associated with godness. Privileges. Because He didn't empty Himself of His knowledge. He knew what was going on in people's minds. He still could do miracles. He could walk on water. There were some very clear things about His godness and His humanity that were brought together. But notice what He says in John 17:5 as He's praying the high priestly prayer. He prays these words: And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. So obviously there was glory beforehand. And Jesus is saying, “Lord, return that glory to me.” So that's how we know this is glory that He didn't have while He was on earth. Why didn't have the glory? Because He stooped down. He took on humanity in His person, and in doing so His humility caused His glory to not be there, as was in the beginning. So He gave up His glory temporarily to become a person. It is just as amazing this about godness that brings glory to God and Jesus stooped down.
Now I tend to think that we as humans are pretty bright. We're pretty smart. I look around, I see all kinds of amazing things that we do. In fact, humanism is this idea that that humans are pretty great and that the solutions for all the world are found within the human spirit, the human ingenuity, human thinking. I mean I'm impressed with humanity.
Are you familiar with this new thing? Three weeks ago, DART took place, it started. DART. See if I can remember what it is called. It's Double Asteroid Redirection Test. DART. NASA launched a rocket three weeks ago. This rocket went up, the rocket itself fell to earth so they could reuse it (brilliance in my mind that they were able to think that far ahead to reuse the rocket), but then when this spaceship got up into space, it unfurled its solar panels and its sole mission is that it’s going to blast into an asteroid in 2022 in September or October. I'm fascinated by this. That they would take my tax dollars and they would play this game, this video game with real money. But no, that's not what I mean. What I mean is, I'm fascinated that they would be able to think about how to do all of this. They're going to blast this…this asteroid is not endangering Earth in any way. In fact, there are no asteroids as they can tell right now in their database of asteroids that are presently on their way to Earth to do damage to us. But just in case, they are going to send this spaceship at a speed of 15,000 miles per hour into this asteroid with the goal of moving it just a bit to changes to directory in hopes that they will someday in the future be able to use it. This is only the test. So that if they need it someday in the future, they'll be able to do it. I find that to be fascinating that the human mind has such capabilities to do something like that. That we have such intelligence that's so amazing. And we have wealth where people are giving all kinds of money philanthropically to help other people.
But if you take all of that and put it together, it is about the size of a pea compared to the glory of God, which is so big. And so when God became a man, He gave up that glory. Are you seeing that? That's what He's saying here. That we think we're so great, but we are nothing really before God. And so when Christ became a human being, He gave up that glory. That's pretty big. Kenao. Kenosis. He emptied Himself. He gave up that glory temporarily.
Secondly, He gave up His independent authority. Jesus answered this question Himself. He said to them – “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son does also.” So Jesus is taking His cues from the Father. He’s praying to His Father, “Father, take this cup from me.” You know, He recognizes the Father has the plan and Jesus has given up His independent authority in this sense. Those are the kinds of things, the privileges associated with the godhead that are given up. As Jesus takes on this form, morphe, of a person, He gives up those privileges.
Well let's go back to our passage because in verses 6-7 he's talking about the nativity, he's talking about the incarnation, Jesus coming down to earth. In verse 8 he's talking about the crucifixion – Christ’s life and His death. It says in verse 8 – And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
You see, another, I think, window into the wonder of Christmas is the recognition that the story of Christmas is only a piece of the story. That it's a much bigger story that has to do with God coming down, becoming obedient, even to the point of death, death on a cross. It's part of God's grand scheme, God's grand plan to redeem His people, to redeem us so that we can have this personal, intimate relationship with the godhead. Redeem us.
Redeem. That's the word we use when we take a coupon to the store and we redeem it. We get something for it because we're redeeming the coupon. Whenever you have a redemption, you have four things. You have the person who's taking it in to get it redeemed or giving it. You have the person receiving it. You have the coupon itself or the price itself. And you have the result, what you get out of it. Right? Those are the four things in any redemption.
Well let's apply that to the redemption of Christ. Who's giving the gift? Who's giving the certificate? Who is this? God the Father. Right? Okay. That's good. Now so far, we're on track. Let's see if we can get the second question. Now we have the redemption itself or the certificate, the price that was paid. What's that? It's Jesus Christ. Okay. So now we got that. Now here's the tricky one. Who's it paid to? Okay, God takes the certificate and pays it to someone. Who does he pay it to? Death. That's an interesting idea. He pays it to Himself.
You know, when I was a young person this was kind of a surprise to me. I remember I was hearing about redemption, maybe for the first time, and they were asking this question. I was thinking, well, he must have paid it to Satan. No, no, no, they said. No, it's not to Satan. He’s paying it to Himself because of His holiness. God is so holy that He can't accept a person who is sinful to be in His presence. So He sets up this redemption plan, that when someone accepts this price of Jesus Christ, then they have the benefit. Remember, there's a fourth thing, the benefit. They can have this eternal life, they can have this close relationship with God because God pays the price to Himself. That's this grand plan that God has. I go, wow, this is big. It's not just about a baby. It is about a whole plan that exists. So when we catch this wonder of Christmas, we say, “Wow, something's going on here.” That's verse 8.
Well then we go on in verse 9 and down to the rest of this passage. Notice the word therefore. Because now what He does is because of this humility that Christ has, this obedience, God is going to exalt Him. Let's read the verses. In verse 9 it says – Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. What is that name? We'll come back to that in a minute. 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. Is the name Jesus? No. The name is Lord. That's the name that was given. There's a lot of people named Jesus, but the Lord is this idea that when He's given this name Lord that's when every knee will bow.
And notice it says every knee will bow, in heaven (those are the angels that are bowing their knee and worship to God), on earth (that's us who are here on earth at the present time, bowing our knee to God), under the earth (that's those who have died, gone to hell). Okay, they know now that God is God. They bow the knee. There's no one that will ignore the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord. It's powerful. Every person somewhere is going to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. The best thing to do is to acknowledge that right now. That's why there's a prescription that Paul tells us about that’s salvation.
What is salvation? How do you get saved? Very important question. So in Romans 10:9-10 we have the prescription. This is how you get saved, I want you to make sure you understand this. You don't get saved, Paul says, by being baptized as a baby. That doesn't save you. You don't get saved by doing good works or joining a church. Here's Paul's prescription and we need to know this because this is what it means to be saved. It ties right into the verses he shared in Philippians. But he says – If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved.
Now the interesting thing about all of this as we look back, let's look at the whole passage again together. Because as we look at this whole section of scripture, it goes back to verse 5. There's something that takes place, a universal truth here, that we want to grasp in our own lives. This is the present, I think, that we receive from this passage that God wants us to take and use. That we could put into practice in our lives this week.
Notice what he says at the beginning – Have this mind among you, which is yours in Christ Jesus. In other words, take all these ideas that I've told you about, and put them into your own practice. Here's why. Because if you humble yourself like Jesus did, then you're exalted. The world doesn't understand this. The world thinks if you want to be great, you need to tell everybody how great you are. If you want to be great, you need to compete with others and step on them to get ahead. If you want to be great, then you need to make sure that you're making it happen. That's not God's message here for us. I think it was hard for some of the disciples to get this idea. Not everybody gets this universal truth that when we humble ourselves, then God is the one who exalts us. I think Paul gets it as he writes these words in Philippians.
I think Peter gets it. Peter writes in his book – Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. This is a principle that God has laid out in His word, that humility, when we demonstrates self-sacrifice, when we're unselfish (as we talked about last week), when we do that, we're emulating Christ because Christ did it and He was exalted. The same thing is true about us. We don't focus on greatness, we focus on servanthood. We focus on being caring, and loving, and sharing, and all of those things that are in this unselfish category. We allow God to be the one who exalts us. Peter got it.
James here… This is James, the brother of Jesus, who didn't get it at first, until Jesus was crucified. And then somewhere in that whole thing, James realized, “Wow, this is more than just my brother. This is the Messiah.” And James writes in his book in James 4:10 – Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. That's the principle. That's the general principle. It was hard, I think, for the disciples to grasp this.
Do you remember the story in Mark 10 of James and John? Now this is a different James. James and John were brothers. They came to Jesus and they said, “Jesus, when we come into your kingdom, could one of us sit on the left of the other on the right?” And when the other disciples heard about it, they were indignant. Why? Because how come they would ask that question? We want to be first, we want to be best. And so Jesus answers them. And He says to them, “You know, guys, I don't know who's going to be in my right or left. That's not for me to give. But I'll tell you…” Here's a principle. This is the universal principle. This is the same principle that Peter tells us about here that James tells us about, that Paul is telling us about. Jesus said it first. He says, “If you want to be great in God's kingdom, learn to be the servant of all.” It's this universal principle that we take away and we start living in our lives, because that's where greatness comes from. It's this ability to humble ourselves and allow God to do this bigger work. We're just a part of this bigger piece of what God is doing.
I suppose my favorite verses that describe this are the ones that Ginny in our Bible study this week was kind of elaborating on. This is the washing of the disciples’ feet. He was trying to teach them the same idea. But Ginny was saying, “Look back at the verse right before that, in John 13:3 it says – Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. Do you see? In other words, Jesus knew something. He knew this universal idea, this very important responsibility that we have, this ticket to greatness. Can I even say it that way? That we humble ourselves. He knows that is so important. So this is what he does. It says – He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with a towel that was wrapped around him. Wow, that's big.
What God wants to do in our lives is something that's just, well, it's wondrous. Now when we do get this idea, we get the wonder of Christmas, when we realize that God came down to earth, we recognize that God was 100% God and 100% man in Jesus Christ, when we recognize that the humility of Jesus Christ is so powerful, that He stooped down and He stooped deeper to be crucified, and that God exalted Him, then our knees bow. And what happens is we worship Him. That's what Christmas is really all about. It's about this worship experience we have that says, “Wow.” Worship is really that statement, “Wow, God, this is so big. This is so amazing. I need this in my life.” Because when I start seeing how big God is and I recognize how small I am, and I recognize that God has a plan for me in His kingdom, I am just enthralled and I say, “Okay, God, lay it out for me. Lord, I'm not going to get sucked into the petty stuff that's going on. I'm going to trust you. I'm going to humble myself in my family. I'm going to humble myself in my work. I'm going to humble myself to do work that you want me to do. Lord, I'm going to do all of those things. Why? Because I worship you and I praise you and I adore you for what you've done.” And that's the wonder of Christmas.
