Theology (06/16/24)

There are those times in Paul’s writings when we see him burst forth in spontaneous praise to God with odes of doxology.  It was in recognition of this that I began to include doxology as a regular consideration in these studies of mine.  What in this passage gives you reason to praise God?  And I have to say that since I started asking that question of the passages before me I have yet to find a passage that does not give reason to praise God.  It may take a little more consideration sometimes to find that cause, but it’s there.

Here, I see something a bit different in what Paul has written, although I could easily see it having turned to an outburst of praise on his part.  Instead, though, we have what I would call a theological outburst.  Suddenly, there is this passage in which it seems every word is weighty and precise.  And there is so much being said in so short a space.  It strikes me as something of a theological outburst.  Mind you, it’s an outburst that remains entirely on point.  He hasn’t suddenly veered off in a new direction.  In fact, he’s making his case quite clearly, and in a most encouraging fashion.  Having issued his call for unity in the body up there in Philippi, he gives them the most significant encouragement possible.  Look at the example of your Savior!  It is in laying out this example that he, almost by accident as it seems, delivers some of the most powerful, most critical truths of the whole matter of God’s Truth.

Needless to say, I shall be spending some time on this, though perhaps not so much time as it truly deserves.  But rather like the outburst of rain that hit southern Florida this last week, it needs time for this to properly soak in and be absorbed into our understanding, and deeper still into the fabric of our being.  For that is very much the point here.  It’s declared from the outset, though I am purposely waiting to the end before I consider application.  But Paul sets the marker down early.  “Have the same attitude in yourselves a was in Christ Jesus.”  No mere sentiment this, no call to privilege either.  But having made the call, he immediately undertakes to demonstrate just how counter Christ’s example runs to our native state.  Time for a change, then.  But first, we have an amazingly rich meal ahead of us.

Lord, I’m running a bit short of time this morning, as You know, and somewhat as I expected might be the case.  I thank You for Your arrangement of our day, yesterday, the time had with family, and the way You carved out private time for us in what could have been expected to be busy places.  It was a joy to see the grandkids, and to see more harmony in the kids.  I do pray that harmony might take its place between the grandkids again as it has been previously.  Guard them as they navigate their teens, and guide them, that they may indeed find You in full.  But yes, I knew such a Saturday must exact payment come Sunday morning, so I have begun my day a bit later than usual, and schedule does not permit of lingering as I might prefer to do.  So, I will pray this.  Father, let me knew a particular care as I work through these verses, not only to be accurate in my parsing of the points contained therein, but to be carefully attentive to application.  Let this be more than mental exercise, more than morning habit.  And let it stick.  Let it take hold in the depths of my soul, shift my thinking, shift my doing.  This should always be my desire, but it seems more so as I consider all that Paul is saying in these verses, all that You are revealing of Yourself.  Give me eyes to see, and a heart to heed.  Amen.

Wholly God (06/16/24-06/17/24)

Okay, so I’m going to make a start on this, given my coffee isn’t done yet, and I have a bit of time yet.  And where I want to start is this:  “He existed.”  This, I should note, is presented to us as if it were a past tense thing, and given our linear perspective of time and history, it may seem to us that this is the only proper way to refer to Jesus.  But we know better, don’t we?  He lives!  He is.  And that same aspect of things applies here in what Paul says.  This existing that he talks about is set before us as a present participle.  It is a declaration of His contemporaneous state.  It’s not that He once lived, it’s that He lives.  And as we are contemplating what characterized His existence here, this is potent news indeed.  A present tense verb, we will tend to take as describing ongoing, continuously repeated activity, when it comes to the Greek present tense.  It may not always be so, but it is generally the case that this is appropriate.  It is observed in the grammars that really, for such activities as we would normally account as happening now in English, there is but this one Greek tense to cover them, whether they are in fact continuous actions, or one-offs that happen to be current.

But now we are dealing with a participle, a verbal adjective.  And in this application, the present tense aspect of the matter is intended to convey a state of things.  It is not a culminative point.  It is, we might say, a defining characteristic.  And that aspect of things is very much in view here.  We might better hear this as, “He always existed, and still exists.”  It hasn’t stopped.  It’s not, as with the perfect tense, some present experience resulting from past action.  It’s just that He exists – ever and always.  And so, as we come to this question of form, we need to recognize that form as applying ever and always.

So, what is this form, this morphe, of which Paul speaks?  How are we to understand the term.  Well, the most basic definition given it is shape or nature.  So, we could speak of Jesus having always the shape or nature of God.  And some would take this and run with it, concluding that we in turn, as Christians, have taken on the shape or nature of Christ.  But that misses the full power of Paul’s choice of word here.  This goes beyond mere appearance, mere likeness.  We have all known occasions where we saw what looked like one thing, but turned out to be something else.  Many is the time, especially in the fall, when a leaf on the lawn, moved by a breeze, might be mistaken for a bird.  Or clouds on the distant horizon might be mistaken for some far mountain (or vice versa).  That’s not what we’ve got here.  As Zhodiates points out in relation to our term, form is objective reality.  Okay, what does that mean?  It means, it’s more than an impression made, an opinion formed on the basis of our sensory input.  He would still have this form were none there to form opinions about the matter.

Thayer takes this in a slightly different direction, observing that what Paul sets before us here is the heavenly form of Christ, or His manifestation in heaven.  Let us say, what He is like when He is at home.  We understand from such passages as those regarding the Transfiguration witnessed by James, John, and Peter, that His heavenly manifestation was something far beyond His humanity.  The wonder of it stayed with John all his days.  We hear it in the opening of his first epistle.  “What we saw, what we touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life – manifested before us!  We saw it.  This is what we bear witness to, proclaiming to you eternal life, life which was with the Father and was manifested to us” (1Jn 1:1-2).  You hear it as well from Peter.  “He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased,’ and we ourselves heard this said from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain” (2Pe 1:17-18).  It makes an impression when one catches a glimpse of Christ in His fulness.  Think Moses receiving answer to his request to see God’s face.  He saw only God’s backside, for none can see God and live, given this sinful flesh.  Yet, even with that, the impact was so great that his face glowed.  So, what Paul is speaking of here is Christ in His heavenly fulness, Christ in His being as God, for as Zhodiates observes, none could have the form of God except they truly are God.  Again, “Form is objective reality.”

We may, in our turn, come to bear resemblance to Christ.  We should.  That’s certainly a major part of the program here.  But we do not achieve, cannot achieve a state in which we bear His form.  Even in our eternal perfection, this will not hold true.  We shall share certain of His characteristics, in particular, our being possessed of an eternal body to go with our eternal spirit.  But that’s a far cry from bearing His form.  All of this to say that what is set before us here is Christ in His deity.  It is a clear declaration (for all that we take pains to parse through it) that Jesus Christ is, was, and always shall be God.  We can distinguish, must in some way distinguish between Father and Son, between Son and Spirit, for there are clearly different Persons involved when we see these three named.  But there is also One.  God is One.  Father is wholly God, yet Son is likewise wholly God, complete in His Godhood, and God fully present in His person.  So, too, the Holy Spirit.  Of Him, too, we can say, must say, that He is just as wholly God as Father or Son, that God is just as fully present in Him as in the Father, as in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Yet, each has their unique Personhood, their unique role in the unity of the Godhead, and each is involved in the actions of all three Persons.  God being One, His Persons are never in conflict, always in harmony, always united in mind, in soul, in purpose.  It is precisely because of this that Paul is bringing this forth here, as he seeks to encourage a similar unity of mind, soul, and purpose amongst those who form the body of Christ – the Church.

Okay.  Let’s meander over to the backside of this verse.  Jesus, Paul says, did not consider equality with God to be robbery.  This is taking us to the hardest thing in this passage.  What does he even mean by such a statement?  What, is he suggesting, or were some suggesting, that Jesus had somehow stolen deity from the Father?  How would that even work?  I suppose one could characterize Satan as playing a move along those lines in usurping the throne of Christ to rule over this present age.  But even with that, he did not rob God of deity.  Indeed, if we take the lesson from Job, with that, he did only so much as God permitted, and what God permitted, He permitted for His own purposes, whatever Satan’s designs might be.

You can sense the challenge of this verse in the variety of translations that arise, particularly as concerns this latter clause.  The NASB gives us, “[He] did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.”  Phillips suggests, “[He] did not cling to his prerogatives as God’s equal.”  Or, we could try the God’s Word Translation.  “He did not take advantage of this equality.”  Taking these together, we find two perspectives presented.  The first is pretty well summed up with those other translations, that He did not, in His earthly manifestation, avail Himself of His full rights and privileges, did not force recognition of His deity upon the world, taking up His rightful rule and reign.  That will come, but it did not come at this juncture.

There is another possibility, which Zhodiates brings out in exploring this term, arpagmon.  And that is that Jesus did not view His possession of ‘essential deity’ as inappropriate.  It was not something He had taken for Himself by main force or by trickery.  It was not a thing appropriated by Him, stolen from heaven.  It was Who He Is.

And, I have to say, for all the argument that Jesus did not, in the course of His earthly ministry, really view Himself as deity falls far short of the evidenced.  I’ll take but one example, from John’s gospel.  Questioned by the Pharisees for having the audacity to heal a man on the Sabbath – to work on the day of rest! – Jesus explained Himself.  “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”  The response is telling.  They understood the significance of His claim.  “For this cause the Jews sought to kill Him, for not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but now He was also calling God His own Father – making Himself equal with God!” (Jn 5:16-18).  They got it.  And to be sure, Jesus got it.  He knew what He was saying.  Any man raised in a Jewish household would know what those words implied, and other than Jesus, none would be so bold as to make the claim.  But He did.  Because He knew it to be True.  He is, “What was from the beginning,” to go back to John’s epistle.  Indeed, John.  He is what was from before the beginning.

Yet, He did not come in full expression of His deity.  He came cloaked, as it were, veiled from the eyes of man, lest men see and die.  I do particularly like the way the God’s Word Translation presents this verse.  “Although he was in the form of God and equal with God, he did not take advantage of this equality.”  That’s the point.

Wuest is, as usual, a bit cumbersome in his presentation, but certainly manages to make the point.  Jesus Christ is He “who has always been and at present continues to subsist in that mode of being in which He gives outward expression of His essential nature, that of absolute deity, which expression comes from and is truly representative of His inner being.”  There, I suggest, is the full force of morphe, and especially in this aspect of present participle existence.  This does not change.

This cannot change.  God cannot cease being God.  Whatever it is we are to make of what follows, this fundamental point must be retained.  God does not change.  If God were changeable, malleable as to His form or His character, we should not have arrived yet at God, for what can be changed or refashioned is in some way subject to outside forces, and God is not so.  God is uniquely not so.  He answers to none, bows to none.  What He purposes comes to pass.  What He ordains is settled ground.  Whom He elects is, of necessity, elected.  This is the power of deity.  This is the fundamental reason there can be but one God.  Were there two of such power, then they must, at some point, become answerable one to another.  There must come some occasion in which the one must bow to the other, accede to the plans of that other rather than pursuing their own.  And this simply cannot be.  If God can change, He is not God.

This has huge implication as we head into the next verse, with its notice of how Jesus ‘emptied Himself’.  Whatever we are to make of that, it cannot be that He ceased being God when He took up humanity.  It cannot even mean that He set that aside for the time-being, knowing He could come back and pick it up later.  He didn’t lock up His deity in a locker at some heavenly bus station (and there’s an oxymoron if ever there was one), taking the keys with Him so He could grab His things on the way back home.  That cannot be it.  As Jesus walked this life, He remained God.  He remained fully God.  But He did not avail Himself of the fulness of His deity.  He was truly one of us, yet without sin.  For there is another thing it would be impossible that God should do:  sin.

But I see I am slipping into the subject of the next portion of this study.

Lord, let me begin even now to fully participate in the implications of this verse.  You are God.  You came among us as God, and yet You did not make show of Your deity.  You did not insist on the honor due You as God, but accepted the rejection, accepted the outright violence done to You, and that by Your own, chosen nation!  You accepted being reviled, spit on, denounced, accused of every sort of evil, and then being tried and executed as the meanest of criminals.  At any moment, as You observed, You could have called down legions of angels to defend You – as if You stood in need of such assistance, You!  All-powerful, all-knowing God!  But You humbled Yourself.  You set Yourself before Your own students as their servant, taking on the lowliest of tasks in regard to them.  And here is this call to be of the same mind.  We have such privilege in knowing ourselves chosen by You, made brothers to You, held in the hands of the Father, the apple of His eye.  Yet, if we come to wear that privilege as a claim to rights, if we take it as reason to insist on things going our way, we have utterly missed the point, haven’t we?  I remain struck by that book title from years back: ‘You have no rights’.  It was written of the missionary life, but in Your service we are all of us in the missionary life.  It’s just that so many of us have failed to notice that fact.  I have failed, failed often, to notice that fact, and simply walked about in the privilege of my standing in heaven.  Help me with this.  Help me to see through the lens of Your will, to pursue the plans and purposes of Your heart, to truly set self aside, and that, without hidden resentment.

Wholly Man (06/19/24-06/20/24)

Coming into verse 7, we have this shocking declaration that Jesus, Who was and is God, not just in appearance, but in objective reality, took to Himself the full form and nature of a bond-servant, again, not just in appearance, but in objective reality.  In other words, He Who is wholly God became also wholly man.  Now, we observed that in regard to having the form of God, He had all the attributes of God in full measure.  He truly was God – is God – with the full power, knowledge, wisdom, holiness, love, and wrath, and every other essential characteristic that entails.  This necessarily includes those attributes which render it impossible that a man of fallen nature such as ourselves should look upon Him and live.   And now, as we learn of Him in the form of a bond-servant, the same must apply.  He did not merely appear human, he was human, with all the limited power, knowledge, wisdom, love, and wrath, and so on that make humans human.

You will note I have left limited holiness off the list.  Man, after all, was not created in limited holiness, but was at the first of such a nature as could look upon God and live, for sin had not as yet entered into his experience, and so, Adam and Eve walked with God.  Jesus, in His humanity, became fully human, but retained that original, sinless nature.  He did not take on our sinfulness.  He did not inherit it, not being born of man, and so, not bearing the heritage of fallen man.  He was born of the Spirit, and as such, bore the heritage of the Spirit, that being holiness in full.

This transition, or addition to His being, could not transpire while He retained all that it is to be God.  That is not to say that He ceased being God.  That cannot be, for a God who can cease to be is no god.  Now, I’ll confess that I wrestle with how it is that God, Who cannot change, could add humanity to His being.  This is, I think, the most difficult aspect of the whole thing.  But there is this challenge in understanding just what happened when He ‘emptied Himself.’  It has led to any number of novel, and quite incorrect theories.  There has been the suggestion that He laid aside his Godhead to become human, that there was some sort of switcheroo at the beginning, and again at the end, of His earthly existence.  But, as we say, God cannot cease to be God.  Nor would the death of a mere human have sufficed to resolve the problem of sin for any but himself, as Scripture makes clear.  Even Moses could save only himself, even Noah.  Man’s righteousness, however perfect, is insufficient to resolve the sins of another.  So, then, whatever happened in this emptying of Himself, it is not a ceasing to be God.

Others overly stress the statement in the second half of this verse, that He was made in the likeness of man.  The word has changed.  It’s no longer form, it’s likeness.   See?  He didn’t become a man, He merely looked like one.  But this leaves us with God dying on the cross, and eternal life cannot die, can it?  It would be no longer eternal.  So, they must remove that death on the cross, and with it, the power of His resurrection as the seal of God’s acceptance of His propitiatory death.  And we can’t even make it to the end of this passage while holding to that idea.  What obedience unto death is there if death was but a figment of imagination, a trick played upon the senses?  No.  His humanity was every bit as real and complete as was His godhood.  His humanity was every bit as real and limited as our own.  In order for this to come to pass, it was needful that He set aside, as it were, His fulness of knowledge and power, those things that were His by right and by nature as being God.

But we must understand that He did not, in this way, cease to be all-knowing and all-powerful.  He lost nothing of His deity.  He simply set them to one side, as it were, putting them away so as to live the life of man, to live wholly dependent upon the Father, even as we must live wholly dependent upon Him.  He became like us in all things so as to be a merciful and faithful high priest to God, making propitiation for the sins of the people.  He faced every temptation you or I will ever face, suffered every abuse, every frustration, every humiliation that we may ever encounter (Heb 2:17-18), obedient to the whole Law of God as we could never be in ourselves, the true fulness of man.  And in doing so, He qualified not only to be the sacrifice for our sins, but to be the One to come to our aid when we in our turn are tempted.  But He did not do this by dipping into His closeted deity.  He did this in the fulness of man.  It would not do to obey God as being God Himself, for where’s the challenge in that?  But to obey God fully, and to do so in the full limitations of mankind, that had value.  And to do so in shedding eternal blood in spite of having lived so sinless a life, that had eternal value.

This is what’s being set before us.  He willingly, of His own volition, in full, covenanted agreement with the Father and the Spirit, took upon Himself all the limitations of life as a man, of being a bond-servant of God rather than availing Himself of all the prerogatives of actually being Himself God.  Now, we would have to recognize that in the record of His ministry, we find deity breaking through repeatedly.  The miracles He performed were, each one of them, acts of deity.  And we cannot but recognize that in doing these things, He was establishing the validity to His claim of being God Incarnate.  We saw that already.  Those who witnessed His ministry, heard His teachings and His claims, recognized this.  “I am doing the work of My Father,” was a claim to something far more than the obedience of a bond-servant.  It was a claim to kinship, to equality, to being God, and they knew it.  He knew it.

So, we are left with a bit of a quandary.  If Jesus, in becoming human, set aside His godly prerogatives and powers, how is He exercising them?  And the answer that must come is that He exercised them in the same way that the Apostles later exercised such powers, through utter dependence upon and devotion to the Father.  Peter and Paul are both presented to us as exercising miraculous powers, powers perhaps not quite equal to those displayed by Christ, but of similar form.  They, too, were healing the incurable.  They, too, were raising people from death.  They did not, so far as I can recall, demonstrate power over the forces of nature, nor cause food to multiply, but they were clearly able, on such occasions as God deemed necessary, to call upon His power to come forth in service to His purposes.  And these things were deemed to be attestations by God that He had indeed sent them, He had indeed authorized their message. 

So, too, with Jesus.  And I hope I am getting this right.  But those things that He did which served to affirm His claims of deity and to validate His authority were not things done of His own volition, or done by dipping into those things He had set aside as untouchable for the duration, as this passage indicates.  Rather, just as the Apostles after Him, they came to pass by the will of the Father, by prayerful supplication to the Father, and by obedience to, and faith in the Father.  It was the Father’s power on display.

Now, we can get into the weeds, recognizing that since Father and Son are One, the power of the Father is the power of Christ, so it really was an availing Himself to His own power.  Yet, it remains the case that He did not do so simply by turning inward.  He did so in the same utter dependence upon God as must any other man.  He did so by faith.  He did so by fully applying Himself to the means of grace.  His obedience was in every way the obedience of a man.

That’s our message here.  It is absolutely challenging to try and come to a proper understanding of all the dynamics involved.  But we must arrive at this much:  Jesus was every bit a man, and in His humiliation, as we speak of it, in this earthly walk, He was no more than man.  He did not avail Himself of His own inherent power, but remained one of us, and in so doing, demonstrated that much more fully and accurately how it is that we must apply ourselves to this business of walking humbly with our Lord.

So, where are we at?  We have this curious reference to robbery in the previous verse, and now this business of emptying Himself.  How does it all work?  Let me put the Phillips translation of these two verses before us.  “For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God's equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man.”  You see that both forms of existence are full and complete.  He is God by nature.  He is a man by nature.  He is, as Anselm coined it, the God-Man.  He is unique in all existence in this regard, unique among the Persons of the Trinity, and certainly unique amongst all humanity.

Wuest offers us another take on the significance.  It is of a piece, I think, but brings out some different points.  “But himself He emptied, himself He made void, having taken the outward expression of a bondslave, which expression comes from and is truly representative of His nature as deity.”  Isn’t that something?  If we accept the point, this form of bond-servant is truly representative of His deity.  I’m not sure I can quite arrive at that point in my thinking.  To be sure, Jesus Himself declared that He did not come to be served, but to serve (Mt 20:28).  But is that intended to convey that God in all ways and at all times sets Himself as servant to man?  I think not.  That smacks more of a genie than the God of all Creation.  He is the Creator, and we the creatures, and while He is also our Provider, yet His purposes remain His own.  It remains His to command and ours to obey.  I am perhaps not clear on Wuest’s intent in that statement.

What fits the context best is to understand a setting aside of full rights and privileges.  We are, after all, discussing a call to ‘humility of mind,’ to regarding others as having priority over self-interest.  And to be very clear, we have the same full expression of being, the same reality of being, in regard both to His deity and His humanity.  Both are present and complete.  And, as later theologians would take pains to make clear, they are distinct.  His deity was not comingled with His humanity.  They remain somehow compartmentalized, and yet united.

So, then, in this latter part of verse 7, we find Jesus in the likeness of man.  The NET, in their footnote, observes that this is the same term Paul applies in discussing Jesus in Romans 8:3 – God sent His own Son [full claim to deity] in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin, which He condemned in the flesh.  Now, if Jesus was truly a man of sinful flesh, then He is a man of sin, and His death has done no good for anybody, Himself included.  But that is not the case.  It was a likeness.  There was resemblance, but with this term we cannot necessitate a corresponding reality.  They conclude that a similar point is being made here.  To quote, “Jesus looked like other men, but was in fact different from them in that he did not have a sin nature.”  He shared in our human nature, in its limited faculties and strengths, in its utter dependence upon God.  But He did not share our sin nature.  And so, while wholly human, he differed from the rest of humanity.  Indeed, we might say that in being wholly human, that difference was made.  All born since Adam have been incomplete in their humanity, bearing as they do the seed of sin inherited in his seed.

But whatever we make of this being a likeness, and I do think that’s a reasonable explanation of the matter, that His departure from morphe in this case consisted in the lack of sin’s stain, verse 8 restores clarity that He was indeed a man.  We have yet another term to contend with here, schemati.  But we have moved beyond mere resemblance or similarity.  There is full form and reality to His humanity, every bit as much as to His deity.  We could, I suppose, present it as His heavenly form versus His earthly form, but I think that seriously underplays the significance.  He was a man in every regard, apart from sin.  He did not walk the earth as God, but as Man.  He did not obey the full law of God by applying His deity, but by humble supplication, by the strength of God supplied to Him in prayer, as we are taught to seek His strength.  He obeyed as a man, died as a man, lives as a man.

This is a point critical to our understanding.  Jesus is a man, lived life as a man, fully human with all the limitations that entails.  Yet, He remained God.  There is a limit to that likeness, in that He did not bear the seed of Adam’s sin.  As to His strength, His wisdom, His physical nature, He had the same limitations as we do.  He suffered pain like we do.  He may well have dealt with colds as we do.  He knew times of exhaustion, times of hunger, times of rejoicing, times of deepest sorrow.  In all things, He dealt with life as one of us.  Yet, that sinlessness sets Him apart.  And because He was born sinless, and through dependence on the Father lived a sinless life, He was fit to be our propitiation, to die in our stead that we might live in Him.  This is the rich testimony of the New Testament.  This is the Gospel.  “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He was rich, but He became poor for your sake in order that you might become rich through His poverty” (2Co 8:9).  He died that you might live.  He paid your debt that you might be free, bought you out of your slavery to sin and established you as a freedman.

And more than merely a freedman!  You have been brought into the very family of God!  “In the fulness of time, God sent His Son, born of a woman, under the Law, so as to redeem those who were under the Law, such that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5).  Who is it that needs redemption?  It is the one who has been enslaved, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.  It might be for debt, it might be for crime, or simply for being on the losing side in battle.  But you and I were in bondage, had been from birth.  Yet, the price He paid, He did not pay to Satan who had mastered us, but to God Himself, before Whose court we stood guilty, on account of which we had been given over to this punishment.  But in our enslavement, even had we been able to see that there was another way, we could never earn our freedom.  The price was beyond us, and as I say, we were blinded even to the possibility.

A slave in Rome could hope, through careful marshalling of such funds as he might earn in his bondage, to procure status as a freedman for himself.  He could buy his way out.  The Jewish slave, having sold himself into that condition, knew that there would come the day of Jubilee, when his debt would be done, and he could return to his life and livelihood.  But the slave to sin?  How shall he pay the price of eternal death?  What hope did he have of ever escaping that bondage?  He had none.  But Christ came.  He paid that unpayable bill to the court of heaven in His eternal blood, an eternal death for an eternal crime.  And because He did, we have been taken from our bondage, set in a condition where sin can be resisted, rejected, where we can lay hold of the help of our Father, even as did He, and resist the devil such that he must flee.  Trials remain.  Challenges persist.  But we are on new footing.  We are sons of the Most High, adopted by His choosing, for who ever forced an adoption of themselves?  But He has chosen.  He has called.  I am His.  That is settled.  And all because in the fulness of time, Christ humbled Himself, God Himself born of a woman, come under the Law as a man.

Can you feel the wonder of that?  God came down!  The Greeks had their myths of such things, but here was the reality.  And the reality didn’t come down to cavort and take advantage of creaturely man.  No.  He became one of us.  He didn’t avail Himself of His power to overwhelm us with the wonder of His being.  Indeed, Isaiah speaks of His humble state, looking forward to it as he does.  “He grew up before Him like a tender shoot out of parched ground.  He has no stately form, no majesty such that we should look upon Him and remark Him.  His appearance was not such as would attract us to Him.  NO!  He was despised!  He was forsaken!  A man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief, one from whom to hid our faces.  We esteemed Him not.  Yet surely our own griefs He bore, our own sorrows He carried.  And still, we accounted Him as stricken and afflicted by God.  Yet He was pierced through for our sins, crushed for our iniquities.  The chastening due us for our well-being fell on Him, and by His scourging we are healed” (Isa 53:2-5).  I might offer that the penultimate clause in that passage could be understood as saying that the chastening which fell on Him was for our well-being.

And through it all, He remained committed to His course.  Having set aside the powers and privileges that were His at all times, He faced this crushing trial as a man.  At any time, He could have, at least theoretically, tossed the whole business, exposed His deity, and put an end to the whole thing.  Satan’s temptations were quite real, for He could very easily have accepted any one of those ideas, and that, without need of bowing down to Satan expressly.  He was still God.  Nothing prevented Him functioning as God; nothing but His own will, and that, of course, was enough.

You may remember that song that came out some years back, “What if God was one of us?”  Now, to be honest, I never gave it sufficient attention to determine whether the singer’s intent was to honor God or make sport of those who believe Him, but either way, the question’s answer is quite simple.  He is.  He made Himself One of us, chose of His own free will to become one of us, and in so doing, in living a life fully human, He gave us cause to know the fullness of our own true humanity.  The Law, Paul explains in Romans, exposed sin.  It couldn’t address it, only point it out, and let us know our crimes.  Seeing Jesus in His full humanity, unstained by sin, could only do the same if that were the sum of it.  To have known Jesus in His earthly life, apart from faith, must be condemnation, for now you have seen what it means to be human.  If there remained any excuse of ignorance, that was removed.  We should recognize that in preaching the Gospel, we do much the same.  When the Gospel comes to one to whom the gift of faith has not been given, it still by all means achieves its purpose.  Yet in such a one, that purpose must be seen to be condemnation.  Sin lies exposed.  Every last defense has been removed.  There is no claim of ignorance.  There is no appeal to mercy, as if the offer of rescue had not been made.  The chance was given, the reality of your situation laid bare, and the solution set before you.  But you would not have it.  “How often I wanted to gather you children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.  But you were unwilling” (Mt 23:37).

Those were Jesus’ words to Jerusalem, to the center of that religion which claimed to represent God as His own, uniquely chosen people.  But they had long since ceased representing God, preferring their sin.  Their condemnation was shown just, and their punishment came swiftly.  And do you suppose that we who form the Church today can expect any greater leniency than these whom God led personally out of Egypt, and established as a nation in the first place?  We either represent Him truly, or we set ourselves at great peril.  This does nothing to erode my confidence in His election, and the certainty of His calling.  But it does supply warning that many who account themselves Christians are not truly so.  Time yet remains to make it so, and Lord willing, it may be that they will yet be granted to have faith in God as He truly is.  But so long as they persist in refashioning God after their own corrupted image, it can never be.  God will not be mocked.

I have wandered rather a lot this morning.  Let me try to come back on course, and then we can move to the next section.  We have some major, fundamental points established here.  First and foremost (and more difficult to grasp, I think, than even the idea of Trinity), Jesus is both God and man.  And let me stress the present tense in that.  He is.  Not, He was.  Not, He has been one or the other at various times.  No.  He is.  In this kenosis, this emptying of Himself, He did not cease to be God.  What we can rightly understand is simply this, that He let go those godly prerogatives that remained His.  He became one of us, living as one of us.  It was needful that One should come to fulfill the Law as one of us, but it was impossible to one born of Adam, for Adam’s sin defaces such a one even from conception.  There is no period of purity in the infant.  Sorry.  I know many a mother feels it necessary to believe that there is an age of innocence, before which, if that child dies, no sin accrues to his or her account.  But it just isn’t so.  All have sinned.  It’s right there in that passage from Isaiah that I already referred to.  “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each has gone his own way” (Isa 53:6).  Ah!  But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.  Now listen.  I must insist, as I say, that there is no such age of innocence.  That does not, however, preclude their salvation, for He who calls His own from the womb, Who chose His own before the first moment of creation, is assuredly able to make Himself known to those even in the womb, to present to them the gift of faith, and to receive them as His own.

But God became one of us.  He succeeded where Adam failed, and in the same human frailty in which Adam failed.  He did not win through by dipping into His godly powers, but by appeal to the Father, even as you and I must win through.  I might suggest that He won through with even less to work with than we have, for we can cry out to our Lord to rescue, which He could not, being He is our Lord.  But our Father?  Oh, yes, He could appeal to Him.  And the Holy Spirit indwelling?  Yes, indeed.  That was attested to at His baptism, when the Spirit came down and rested upon Him.  But this still leaves Him facing the challenges of life in the same fashion that we are now called to face them:  relying on the Father, responding to the Spirit, striving in all things to walk worthy of the kingdom of which we have been made citizens, adopted into the royal family, and granted life eternal.  I could keep going, but I think we can now make our way into verse 8.

Exemplar of Humility (06/21/24)

So, we have this interesting transition from verse 7 to verse 8, and in fact, one finds the transition point wandering somewhat between translations, but we have the statement first that He was ‘made in the likeness of men,’ followed by Him ‘being found in appearance as a man.’  It’s two different points being made in two different terms.  The first addresses a resemblance to men generally, as we considered in the last passage.  But then we have this second statement, as to His schemati being that of a man.  His outward form was indeed human.  The body in which He walked the earth was in fact a human body which underwent all the usual development of such a body.  He was a man of flesh and blood, even as ourselves, apart from the matter of sin.  He was, in short, truly human.  As the Message supplies the idea, “Having become human, he stayed human.”  That’s a useful counter to those who suggest that He abandoned the body prior to crucifixion, or that He only seemed to be human to those around Him.  Much more could be said to that point, not least, how Thomas required to touch His wounds before being convinced of His reality after resurrection.

And that’s a point to retain as well.  His being human did not cease at the grave.  It did not cease period.  He is even now fully human even as He is now fully God.

Zhodiates tries to offer a bit of perspective on the implications of morphe and schemati, suggesting that the former term defines His inward character, and the latter, His outward appearance.  I’m not sure I quite accept that distinction.  For, were we to see into heaven and observe the Lord upon His throne, the appearance we should see would, I suspect, have far more to do with morphe than human schemati.  But, as I have not seen this, I can hardly insist on the point.  All that being said, this last term does speak to that about the man which strikes the senses.  But it is more than mere form, just as nomos, the name, indicates far more than merely the fact that His name was Jesus.  In both cases, the terms encompass the whole man, not just form, not just what people called Him, but what He did, how He acted, what He said and taught.  In short, whether nomos or schemati, the whole of who He is comes into view.  But Paul stops us just short of His deity in this last clause.  It was His appearance as a man, who He was as a man, how He was perceived and encountered as a man among men that is in view.  In other words, it was in His humanity that He humbled Himself.  The Weymouth translation offers that He was ‘recognized as truly human,’ and to be sure, the wording would permit such a reading.  But it seems to me to indicate more than this.  He was recognized as truly human because He was truly human.  And in His true humanity, quite without availing Himself of His deity, though it remained His essential being, He humbled Himself.

The general impression seems to be that it was by becoming human that He humbled Himself.  What does that even mean?  Well, the simplest application would be that He assigned Himself lower rank than was His due.  He abased Himself.  In that sense, yes, becoming human was rather a huge step down for the Almighty ruler of the Universe.  Surprisingly, this does not come as a middle voice action, but simply as a statement of fact, of past action.  Now, whether it is intended to be past action relative to the time of Paul’s writing, or past action relative to the climactic act of death on the cross, is, I suppose, up for debate.  But let us take it as relative to the cross, which would seem to me to be more the object of His obedience than His humbling. 

Forgive me if this has become too much a grammatical exercise, but it seems critical to understand correctly what is being said.  And so, I observe that everything beyond His becoming obedient is set in the genitive, the possessive case.  The action is in becoming, which we shall get to momentarily.  But the precursor to action is the established fact of His humbling of Himself.  Okay, I have just pointed out that this act of humbling is presented apart from the middle voice, is in fact in the active voice.  But then we have that reinforcing, or emphasizing eauton.  Himself He humbled.  It was not done to Him, but by Him.  It was not a humiliation brought about by superior force, but an act of His own free will.  This isn’t, then, about how He was treated by the Pharisees, by the Romans, by His own countrymen.  It’s about the fact that though He remained fully God, He willingly cut Himself back, as it were, to the capacities of the fully human.  And it is in this condition that He undertook to become obedient, whatever the cost.  And that cost was unimaginably high, infinitely high.

I am stressing this setting aside of deity’s privileges (though not setting aside deity by any means, as this would be impossible).  But up to that brief period on the cross, the fellowship He knew with Father and Spirit, has known from all eternity past and continues to know for eternity future, was briefly interrupted.  And again, I have this challenge to my thinking in that God cannot change, and yet, here is this hiccup of change, however brief.  But it is clear that when the full weight of the sins of humanity fell upon Him, and with that weight, the full force of God’s judgment against sin, fellowship was broken.  God, Who cannot abide sin could not fellowship with this which had become the fulcrum of sin, the focal point.  Fellowship must be broken off for the duration.  And it is this reality which produces the severest agony in our Savior, as He cries, “My God!  My God!  Why have You forsaken Me?”  As events would prove, He was not in fact forsaken, but in that moment, perfect Holiness must stand back, must reject utterly the sin laid bare before Him. 

And let me suggest to you that this standing back included that essential deity that remained Who Jesus Is.  This is not possible, you will say, and yet, even among us mere mortals we are well aware of those who in a very real sense lose touch with themselves.  Unless we are one of those who has done so, I don’t suppose we can readily imagine the anguish, especially if there remains the conscious realization of that loss of contact.  Something in me has gone missing.  Perhaps we may recognize it in one who is beginning to succumb to the plague of Alzheimer’s.  They know they are losing themselves.  They know that all they know is slipping from their grip, and can do nothing about it.  Forgetfulness, I suspect, becomes more a blessing at some point, than retaining awareness that things are missing from the mind.  But amplify that a few thousandfold.  Eternal God has lost contact with His Godhood.  How did that work?  I don’t know.  Did deity wall itself off somehow in Him?  I think not, but perhaps.  It did not depart, yet it is obvious from the nature of the thing that deity did not die on the cross.  He died as He had lived, as a man, fully human and utterly dependent upon God, and in this case, God outside Himself for everything.

And here, we are met with the middle voice.  He caused Himself to be.  You would think this might be a present participle, a stative condition described for us, but in fact it’s an aorist participle, pointing to a punctiliar action.  And, as the aorist might suggest to us, it is effectively a past action, right along with that humbling.  That being the case, we do have our attention focused by the context upon the final act of obedience:  a wholly undeserved death, and that by the most vicious, most cursed means then available; death on the cross.  Let us understand first that Rome utilized this means of execution only upon the most vile of criminals, at least at this stage.  Nero rather corrupted the practice, but at the time it was only the worst of criminals, at least according to Roman standards, who would face such a death.  For it was designed to be both prolonged and utterly humiliating.  Here you were, posted like a billboard, stripped of everything, unable to so much as shift your position.  And as death eventually came, loss of control over bodily function would necessarily precede the event.  Add to this that in accordance with Mosaic Law, death upon a tree was sure evidence of God’s curse upon you.  One suspects the intent here had more to do with hanging oneself, than with being nailed to a cross, but the application held.  And indeed, Jesus was bearing the curse of God in full force, as He bore upon His back the sins of all humanity.  We have yet to learn the full weight of His burden, for humanity persists, and persists increasingly in its sinfulness.

But in all of this, we must remain aware that nothing of what transpired was forced upon Him.  He may have agonized over His decision to obey, especially towards the end.  That prayer in Gethsemane is clear indication of this.  It is also clear indication that He was facing His end in the full humanity of His being.  Those prayers were deep groanings, the struggle to obediently face what must come had Him sweating blood.  How often, I might ask, have you or I ever prayed even to the point of working up a sweat, let alone sweating blood?  But He must needs steel Himself for the work ahead, and so, He prayed.  “My Father, if there’s any way possible, take this cup from Me.  Yet not what I will, but as You will” (Mt 26:39).  “Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done” (Mt 26:42).  And then, a third time.  But we are not given to hear the words of that final plea.  Mark notes another clause to that first prayer.  “Father!  All things are possible for You.”  Surely, You could find another course to victory.  But this had been covenanted from before the beginning.  Thy will be done.  And in Matthew’s accounting, you can hear the strengthening resolve, or, if you prefer, resignation to what must be.  If this is how it must be, so be it.  I do find myself wondering what we might have heard in that third prayer, whether it remained the agony of approaching death, or something a bit more assured.

What we do know is this:  Jesus remained entirely in control of His own actions.  He was not a puppet on a string.  He was not a madman devoid of sense.  He was not a victim, either of God or of Satan, nor even of Annas or Pilate.  “No one has taken my life from Me.  I lay it down on My own initiative.  I have authority to do this, and I also have authority to take my life up again.  This is, in fact, the command I received from My Father” (Jn 10:18).  Indeed, it was the agreement reached between Father, Son, and Spirit before ever the experiment of man began.  And so, as the author of Hebrews indicates, “Though a Son, He learned obedience from His suffering” (Heb 5:8).  There is His full humanity.  He learned obedience.  It wasn’t inherent power.  It wasn’t the obvious concurrence of His deity with His deity.  It was the obedience of a man who learned obedience.

So, what are we to learn from this?  Well, we have the pointer back at the start of the passage.  “Have this same attitude in yourselves.”  If it was fitting that Christ, the Son of God, should learn obedience from His suffering, for one thing, we can be quite certain that such a syllabus is suitable for us as well.  We are not somehow better than our Teacher, deserving of greater privilege and honor.  Far from it!  Neither are we going to find such depths of obedience come naturally to us, not even in this state of rebirth.  Could we account Jesus as reborn prior to His resurrection?  I don’t rightly know.  That He was indwelt by the Spirit seems clear enough, so from that perspective, we might say yes.  Yet, it is in that resurrection that He is accounted as having become the first-born of many brethren, isn’t it?  Or perhaps I am reading thoughts into that declaration, for Paul is there speaking of God’s predestining us to conformance to the Son’s image, and it is for that reason that He is the first-born among many brethren, not because of His resurrection.  Though, apart from His resurrection, there would be no conforming of us to His image.  The two are too integrally connected.

But beyond the reality of suffering, and the need to accept that suffering as discipline unto obedience, the lesson is far more to be found in this:  Obedience to God is the expression of humility.  It was so for Jesus.  It is so for you and for me.  This doesn’t require us to go whipping ourselves or bashing ourselves.  It doesn’t require us slashing ourselves with words of rebuke or derision.  It requires recognizing that God is God and we are man.  It requires that mindset that we see expressed by Paul and the other Apostles so often, as even in this letter.  “Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus” (Php 1:1).  This is who we are, servants in the household of God.  Are we sons?  Yes, for He has made us so.  Yet, we are servants.  It is not ours to demand, to insist on our rights and privileges as citizens of the heavenly palace.  It is ours to keenly observe our God and King, to remain alert to His least indication of command, and then, to obey with all alacrity and all earnest effort.  Obedience is practiced in doing those things that He has given us to do, in not complaining about the tasks we are assigned, either because they are too hard for us, or because they are too demeaning for us.  Obedience is practiced in loving what He loves, approving what He approves, doing as He does.  But this we cannot do by main strength.  This we can only do in humility, walking humbly with our God, leaning wholly upon Him for ability, and giving Him all the glory for any accomplishment we may achieve.

Action Required (06/22/24)

We have still the central command of this passage:  Have the same perspective as Jesus, the same priorities.  He is your teacher, after all.  And He is your teacher in all things.  How did Jesus teach?  By many means.  Certainly, He taught by words of instruction.  We have plentiful record of such times of instruction.  And, as we see the response of His closest disciples, we see that He left room for them to engage with what He was teaching, to give it due consideration and ask questions about those parts that may have at first seemed straightforward enough, but proved perplexing upon further contemplation.

Then, too, He taught by example.  He lived what He taught.  The same can be said of Paul, and could no doubt be said of Peter or John or any of the others.  They weren’t like so many, who find it needful to advise their students to do as they say, not as they do.  How often do we hear of parents whose training comes with the need for such disclaimers.  Some of us may have grown up under just such parenting, or dealt with other scenarios in life where our mentor proved to be of unreliable character, however fine his philosophy.

Much is made of the way Jesus taught as a Jew, not as a Greek.  I think that is seriously overblown.  I expect you would find far more in common between, say, Socrates and Jesus than such a perspective could ever allow.  The whole mode of teaching in that period, and I honestly don’t think it much matters which culture you consider, would have followed a similar line.  Hear what I say, watch what I do, live as I live.  But however it may be in the world, that is certainly the mode and the manner of Christian faith.  Here is your Teacher.  Be taught by His example, and then, by all means, go and do your best to do likewise, to live likewise.  Does this require, then, that we all give up house and home to become itinerant street preachers?  No.  Neither did it require as much of every disciple to follow Jesus.  Some remained.

We have this idea, somehow, that to be a faithful follower of Jesus must mean that we make evangelism our own personal priority, and I’m just not sure that’s the case, at least not as usually envisaged.  Is it the case that every Christian should head out to the mission field?  If they did, from whence would come their support?  Oh, I know.  We could become exceedingly spiritual and insist that we will simply depend upon God to provide.  And there might even be occasions where that answer was the right and necessary answer.  Yet, he who remains, and becomes the base of supply and support to those who go forth is just as vital to the work.

Let me set it forth a bit differently.  When Paul planted a church, there was expectation that growth would continue after his departure.  There would be those in that church who were in fact evangelists by gifting, and would in turn go out and plant other churches.  There would be those who couldn’t help but tell everyone they saw about Jesus.  But there were also those who formed the local body.  There were elders and pastors appointed, and these did not, as a rule, simply take to the road, abandoning their assignment in preference for starting new churches.  Each had their part in the work, and each part was vital.  That continues to be the case today.  It’s not about all of us setting ourselves to the same task.  That’s not the unity Paul is after, going back to the preceding passage.  It’s a harmonious effort towards the one goal of being the body of Christ, of living the life He teaches us to live.  Whatever our role, pursue it with Christ-like perspective.  Whatever the task, execute it as unto your Lord and King.  Whatever the challenge, whatever the moral dilemma this day puts before you, consider well what your Lord would have you to do, and then do it as He would have you to do it, do it in the full power and the full love of your Lord.

We have this marvelous opportunity to observe how Jesus lived as a man.  We are not left with God in His full divinity, but with Jesus, Who set aside His rightful honors to come and serve others, even to serve others who did not know their need.  He obeyed.  He obeyed God, as Paul observes here, whatever the cost.  He didn’t do so blithely.  He wasn’t one whose brain had developed without the normal faculties of fear and concern.  Again, that time of prayer in Gethsemane makes this clear.  He knew doubts.  He knew the anticipation of pain far beyond what most of us will ever face.  But all that being said, He appealed to His Father and ours for the strength to obey, and He received it in the same fashion as we shall in our turn.  He taught us the way, and the way was not simply to man up.  The way was not to stir up one’s reserves or one’s adrenaline so as to maintain a stiff upper lip.  No, the way was humility, recognizing one’s inability, and crying out to the One Who can save, the One Who can provide the strength and will that we lack.

Yet, there is far more to this than merely facing challenges, even challenges faced for possessing and proclaiming faith in Christ.  The whole matter set before us is less to do with weathering crises than with daily mundanities.  Count others as more important than yourself.  Consider their interests and needs as being of higher priority than satisfying your own interests, supplying your own needs (Php 2:3-4).  Be outwardly focused.  See the need around you, and supply the answer, insomuch as it lies within you to do so.

It comes down to this.  If we would please the Lord, we must needs pursue His will, share His priorities, look to His desired outcome in each day, in each situation of the day.  What did He command us?  “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34).  Here is the primary means by which the world will know that you are in fact one of His.  You love one another.  And even more stunning a witness to this truth, you love even those who spitefully use you.  Here is the life of humble pride.  It is humbling in the uttermost, because we know full well that the only way we can find it in ourselves to comply is by appeal to Christ to have His way in us.  We know ourselves well enough to know that our own innate response to the situation would be far less loving, far less constructive.  Most of us, faced with the choice to serve, particular to serve one wholly unappreciative of our service, or to simply pursue our own pleasures without concern for loss, would happily choose the latter.  If there’s no visible downside to enjoying life, why would you not?  But Jesus comes along and effectively says, how can you continue to be so focused on your pleasures when all around you are facing pain?  How can you forget the parable of Lazarus and the rich man?  Do you really wish to come to the end of your earthly days only to learn that in those days you received already all the pleasure you are to have forever?  Obviously, seeing such a future laid out would suffice to turn us from our pleasures of the moment.  And yet, we are terrifyingly adept at blinding ourselves to that outcome, forgetting eternity.

No.  We need to know the conviction that comes of the Holy Spirit, when God is pointing out the places in us that still need work, and a lot of it.  We need to have the humility of heart to acknowledge that His observations are true, and we need the commitment to actually do something about it.  And then comes yet another humbling recognition that in our own strength and ability, we haven’t anything even close to the drive and capacity to do so.  Lord, I need You.  There can be no other response.  It’s that place Paul finds himself in the center of Romans, and we all know it well if we have yet any self-awareness.  The things I would do, the direction of my will, I do not in fact do.  And those things I know full well I ought not to do, these I find myself doing.  The wishing is in me, but not the willing.  I am at war with myself, and I cannot win.  Who will set me free?  (Ro 7:18-24).  If you haven’t felt this struggle, if you don’t feel it even today, then all I can say is watch out!  Pride is at the door, and it is not the humble pride of a bond-servant, but the deceptive pride of one who thinks too highly of himself.  It is the lie of a deceitful heart, convincing you that you’re good enough.  Pray, therefore, that God might expose the lie gently, privately, that you may once again humble yourself before your King, and acknowledge your dependence on His good graces.

Listen, you and I are never going to be like Christ, certainly not in perfect likeness.  Not in this life.  Not in this flesh.  This flesh remains burdened by sin, however truly the spirit has been reborn.  That aspect of renewal remains future so long as Christ remains in heaven, so long as His return remains future.  But that does not prevent us from trying, nor does it excuse us from doing so.  Recall once again the central point here:  Jesus obeyed as a man, not as God.  His obedience, to be sure, included many evidences that He was in truth God Incarnate, but it was not in personal possession of all the power of deity that He obeyed, it was in the humble state of a man.  Yes, there remains that distinction of being a man born sinless thus at least having the potential to remain sinless, an advantage you and I do not share.  But there remained the challenge of remaining sinless.  It did not come for free.  It came with significant personal effort, and at significant personal cost.  We read of Him setting His face towards Jerusalem.  One could say He had done so from His first breath.  For this Jesus, born of a woman, born under the Law, was born to a purpose, and that purpose had been known from the outset.  Even within the womb, His purity shown through.  Even from birth, His position was recognized, and that, primarily by those whom the chosen people would dismiss out of hand – shepherds, of all things!  Women!  And worse, these pagan astrologers of the east.  This is what God chooses to bear witness to Himself?  Oh, I think not!  And yet, He did.  For His own were too proud of their status to humble themselves before Him. 

Let this not become our own story in this present age.  May we not come to value our denomination more than the Truth.  May we not become so satisfied in our status as being among the elect, that we lose all care for the lost around us.  May we not become numb to the sorrow, blind to the darkness, because after all, we have plenty of light in our houses.  Others may be suffering, but we are well provisioned.  No!  Be like Christ to the degree you are able.  Set aside your self-serving ways, your satisfaction in doing as you please, and seek instead to please Him, to serve as His bond-servants, to be His instrument in addressing the needs of a very needy world.  Be ready to lose yourself that you might gain Him.  Be available.  See those good works that He has prepared beforehand for your doing, and be the one to do them.  Will there be reward for your service?  Perhaps.  But honestly, who cares?  You already have so rich a reward in being one granted the assurance of eternal life in the presence of your Lord, bathing in His light, sharing in His love.  What greater reward would you ask?  Do you need a larger mansion than perhaps He had in mind for you?  No.  Do you need a bigger orchard than your neighbor in heaven?  I should hope not.  There’s enough of that competition for possessions here.  There will be no place for such thinking there.

So, then, let’s set ourselves to the task:  Have the same attitude as you see was in Christ Jesus.  Count others as more important than your own wants and needs.  Set yourself to serve, rather than to be served.  Love.  Love sacrificially.  Love even where there is little likelihood of reciprocity.  Love enough to do what’s necessary, regardless the cost, regardless the possible rejection and reviling.  Love like Christ loves the church.  For there is no other way to be the church.  There is no other way to be a limb of the body than to pursue the will of the body, and that will is expressed by the Head, Christ Jesus.  What use a limb that rejects the will of the Head and just does what it wants?  Who will be pleased to have fingers that will not respond, legs that just twitch and jump as they please, but refuse to work in concert to propel the body forward?  Hear, then, the voice of your King.  Be attentive to His gestures, the hints of His will, and seek to be as instant as the angels in responding.  Seek to be as humble as His weakest and best servants, appealing not to our own, all but non-existent strength, but applying ourselves to the well-spring of His strength, that we may indeed satisfy all His plan and purpose in us.

Take action.