The Form (03/16/25)

To come to grips with this passage in earnest, we must wrestle with some of the terminology that Paul has employed.  That it is a passage of deep theological import is clear.  As I observed in my earlier notes, so much is packed in here as to keep us occupied for weeks.  Indeed, it seems it has done so already, just in considering the commentaries.  But we must come to grips with it.  And the first point that we need to settle for ourselves is what exactly (or as exactly as we can manage) is this matter of form?  He existed in the form of God, but took the form of a bond-servant.  That this is no easy question is sufficiently evident in the amount of discussion around the subject in the commentaries, as well as by the varied nature of the conclusions drawn by them.

What we have is the term morphe.  We might find it more recognizable, and gain some sense of its meaning if we consider its place as the root of our English metamorphosis.  With that in view, we can consider the most common example of the butterfly, which begins its life as a caterpillar, bearing no particular resemblance to the creature it shall become in maturity.  It eats until the fulness of time, forms its cocoon, dissolves itself pretty entirely, as we come to understand, and then emerges in this utterly new form.  Yet, it is still, somehow, the same creature.  In its former state, it did not merely look like a caterpillar, appearing to be earthbound; it was so.  In its new form, it does not merely appear to fly, and to suck nectar from the flowers of such plants as it didn’t consume in its former state.  It does have wings.  It does fly.  It is every bit a butterfly.

It would not be hard at all to perceive this as something of a metaphor for our own transformation, the work God is achieving in us as He transforms first our soul, and later our body.  What emerges from the grave is something quite different than that which was interred.  What was buried was earthbound, mortal.  What emerges is heaven bound, eternal.  But here, the transformation, if such it can be called, is reversed.  He Who was God became man.  And now, we must stop and contemplate that matter of metamorphosis once again.  Is the reality of the caterpillar utterly eradicated in the process?  Let it be supposed a caterpillar has thoughts.  Do they remain for the butterfly to recall?  Do memories of the joy of munching leaves all day remain as the butterfly flits above the plants?  I suppose it’s rather pointless to speculate.  But the consideration has potential application, does it not?  Will we, having undergone our metamorphosis, have recall of what came before?  We are told, after all, that every tear and sorrow will be done away when we have come to our fulness.  So, what remains?  Will we remember the questions we once thought we would have for our Lord?  Probably not.  He says, after all, “In that day, you will ask Me no question” (Jn 16:23).  That could simply mean we already have our answer.  It could mean we are too overwhelmed by the wonder of it to be bothered with questions.  It could mean we have forgotten all that came before.

Of course, even the example of our own metamorphosis, as promised by Scripture, must fall short of the goal we have before us; the goal of understanding the full significance of Paul’s declaration regarding our God and King.  He had the form of God.  Now, that statement in itself ought not to cause any great anguish in our thinking.  But we will come to the matter of His emptying, and what that signifies, and if the form is the reality, and He set that aside, or somehow ceased to be that reality, now we have real trouble.  And we haven’t even touched on this question of robbery, whatever that is intended to describe.

Okay, but let us stick with form for the moment.  I will note that we have this contrasting matter of likeness, or schema with which to contend as well, and that just makes things messier.  But form, what are we contemplating?  As I observed above, the creature that had the form of a caterpillar was indeed a caterpillar at the time, whatever may be said of its later state.  And having transformed to become a butterfly, it was indeed a butterfly, whatever may have become of its former state.  One thing we can be settled on is that this idea of form is more than mere appearance.  It denies the option of phantasm.  There is no room for such ideas as sought to disturb the early church, such as that Jesus never truly became a man, but only appeared to be one.  There’s a reason John takes such pains to reveal the physical reality of the resurrected Jesus.  He ate.  He invited Thomas and the rest to touch the wounds that had come of His death.  Mind you, He also proved able to enter locked rooms, and able to alter his form enough to avoid recognition by even His closest companions.  But the idea of morphe bears this significance of describing objective reality.  You can poke it and probe it and test it any which way, and it will prove to be as it appears to be.

Barnes describes it this way.  To be in the form is more than mere appearance.  It indicates a real condition.  It describes what is permanent, an essential attribute of what is.  The Wycliffe Translators Commentary proceeds to the point that schema, or appearance as we have it in verse 8, gets to things that could be different without altering the underlying reality at all.  I can change my attire and appear to be significantly different.  A woman may apply cosmetics to so alter her face as to be almost unrecognizable compared to the unadorned image.  But push that too far and we run into trouble again with our passage.  So, let’s settle morphe first.

Somewhere, the point was made that form presumes the reality of the thing.  To have the form of God, it is necessary that one is God.  To have the form of a bond-servant, it is necessary that one is a bond-servant.  It doesn’t help, really, that we have likeness as regards His humanity, rather than form.  One might have expected Paul to indicate first, the morphe aspect of His humanity, and a schema of bond-servant, but no.  It’s the reverse.  And we’ll toss in a likeness, a homoiomati of men, for good measure.  He had the likeness of men.  And then we can add the schema of a man.

Zhodiates offers the distinction that morphe speaks to the inward character where schema indicates outward appearance.  But if we take that distinction, we’ve got a real problem when it comes to His emptying Himself, for at that point, we have only discussed the realities of morphe.  Or perhaps there is no real issue, and in verse 7, we have already shifted to considerations of appearance only.  Whatever it is that morphe seeks to set before us, it has to be, as Barnes observes, something that came prior to His incarnation, prior to becoming man.  And yet, it must also address something which could be somehow set to one side without it disturbing that former state.

This is the big problem of the passage.  We have to consider that God does not and cannot change. If God can change, He can cease to be God, and if He can cease to be God, then by the definition of the thing, He never was God.  We have to look elsewhere for deity.  More personally, if God can change, then His promises might be withdrawn, His plans might alter, or His demands of us.  We could never arrive at assurance.  We could never come to rest in reliance upon Him, for such a God would not be reliable.  So, then, how does He empty Himself and yet remain God?  It cannot be His form that was drained off, not if the from is the essence, the inward character.  Jesus, whatever else we may conclude in regard to His incarnate state, did not cease to be God.  Not in any fashion whatsoever.

Again, if He had the form of God, then He is God.  He could be no other.  The JFB commentary brings a verse from Isaiah before us to establish the point.  God is speaking.  “To whom would you liken Me?  To whom would you make Me equal, to whom compare Me, that we should be alike?” (Isa 46:5).  The point is plain.  There is no one, no being to fit the case.  And so, if Jesus existed in the form of God, then it must be that He was God.  And if He was God, then He is God, for God does not change, cannot cease being God.  He Who said, “Before Abraham was born, I AM” (Jn 8:58), continued to be “I AM” throughout His earthly life, and indeed, shall continue to be I AM even when this current order of Creation has come to its fiery end.  So, then, it cannot be His deity that was laid to the side.

Okay, so a number of commentaries conclude that it must be to do with appearances.  He did not, for the most part, appear in the full glory of His true heavenly manifestation.  One might suppose that even at His transfiguration, when Peter, James and John beheld Him glowing with such effulgence of light that even His clothes glowed, that yet, they had not seen the full glory of His being (Mt 17:2).  Moses, seeing God’s backside, and coming away from His presence with face aglow, still had not seen the fulness of His glory, the which none could see and live.  Isaiah, brought into the very throne room of heaven, seeing things indescribable, had not seen the glory of God in full (Isa 6).

But if that were the whole of it, then I should have to conclude that the obedience of Christ was rather a small thing, just God being God.  After all, the Law of God is effectively describing the character of God, the essence of God.  But we have this to contend with:  As real as that form set aside was that from taken up.  He took the form of a bond-servant.  Once again, form presumes the reality.  He was a bond-servant.  He didn’t just act like one.  He didn’t just dress poorly so as to appear to be one.  He was one, and He was one in the essential aspects of His nature.  Now, we can argue whether this was in the His nature as God or His nature as man, or perhaps both.  But He was very much the bond-servant.  And we must declare that fundamentally, He was a bond-servant of God the Father.  Okay, now we wrestle with Trinitarian realities, and wonder how that differs from being bond-servant to Himself, but there is some distinction there, in spite of the fundamental that the Persons of the Godhead are never independent of one another, but always operate in concert.  Yet, this reality of the bond-servant is a necessary component of understanding the humbled obedience He displayed throughout the course of His life here.  I might add that His example of humble obedience, His being truly a bond-servant of the Most High, gives good cause for the Apostles to have taken to themselves the descriptor of bond-servant of Jesus Christ.  The same submission and humble obedience are implied.  We are not our own men, but do only as we hear and see in our Lord.  And so it should be for us as well.

Clarke seems to be the odd man out here, insisting that it was solely a matter of appearance.  He appeared to be a servant, had the attitude of a servant.  Now, his primary point is to establish that nothing had changed in regard to His essence, and with that all must concur.  And that whatever it was He laid aside, emptied Himself of, it must be something to do with His existence prior to becoming man, or taking on the life of man.  I rather like the conclusion the JFB sets forth, that the form of God preceded that of servant, and each form was just as real as the other.  He really is God.  He really is a servant.  And yes, I think it right to leave both in the present tense.  After all, we are informed that He lives ever to intercede on our behalf.  He who is Lord set Himself as servant to all.  And isn’t that exactly the instruction He gave His disciples?  “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mk 9:35).  And, ultimate Teacher that He was, He taught by His own example.  “Do you know what I have done to you?  I, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet as an example for you to follow.  A slave is not greater than his master, nor the sent one greater than his sender.” (Jn 13:12-16).

So, then, in both cases, the reality, and I would argue, in both cases, equally eternal.  Again:  God does not change.  Somehow, in taking upon Himself human form, it remains the case that God is not changed.  That which He was in His humanity must accord with what He is in His deity.  That does not require complete correspondence, but it assuredly demands harmonious unity of these two natures; not comingled so as to confuse one with the other, but agreement, concord.

Where are we, then?  Something was laid aside, but not the reality of His deity.  We see clear evidences of His deity throughout His ministry, and even in His youth.  And we see that those demonstrations were precisely for the point of establishing the fact of His deity.  Yes, I AM Who I AM.  Yet, He leaned not on the full prerogatives of deity.  And I believe we must insist that in His humble obedience, He did not avail Himself of His innate power as deity, but undertook to do so in the same limitations as are common to man, which is to say, in full reliance on prayer and dependence upon the power supplied in the Holy Spirit.  “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

So, perhaps Clarke is not so far from the truth, that He set aside appearances, the glory of His true nature as God, the which would have rendered Him a cleansing fire upon the earth.  Perhaps this is what we must see in His return, when the heavens are rolled up like a scroll, and the elements burned away (2Pe 3:10-12).  There is the cleansing fire of His jealousy, come to destroy sin once for all from His creation, that the new heavens and new earth may be established, in which righteousness dwells.  But again, I find it needful to emphasize the real humanity of His obedience.  It wasn’t deity that obeyed, but man.  It wasn’t deity that died, but man.  And yet, His deity remained, whole and intact, for all that we could not see it.

These are big thoughts, and quite probably beyond us to sort out to full satisfaction, but they are also sufficient to instill in us a sense of wonder.  That sense of wonder is right and holy in itself, for it sets us in a state of mind fitly humbled, and recalls us to our absolute, unflagging need for such a One to be our Savior, our Strength, our Hope, our Assurance.

Thank You, Jesus, for all that You underwent on our behalf.  Thank You for setting before us the Way.  Thank You for walking with us in that Way, and laying hold of us, lest we should wander.  Thank You for becoming one of us, for coming to know life the way we do, and coming to show us Life as You have it in Yourself, and not only to show it, but to share it.  Oh, that we might live after Your example!  Let it be so.  Let us grow into the fulness of it, and live it daily.

The Truth (03/17/25)

I want to come back to the matter of form briefly, as that really is a central concept to this passage.  And it is clearly a consideration that has gripped our various commentators, as they wrestle with the combination of that form Jesus had with the declaration that He emptied Himself of it, and, at the same time accounted His equality with God as not being robbery.  Okay, well, entry of the idea of theft into the picture certainly brings us up short, doesn’t it?  The strength of its impact may vary by which translation you consider.  The NASB, as but one example, keeps it somewhat softer with robbery reduced to the idea of a thing to be grasped.  But let me back up to that matter of form.

The JFB offers a rather unique view of the subject.  The author writes, “God had infinite beauty in Himself, even without any creature contemplating that beauty:  That beauty was the form of God.”  There’s something marvelous about that, isn’t there?  Whether his conclusion is correct or not, the premise is wonderful, and it builds on some critical points.  First and foremost, God, being intrinsically perfect, is not in need.  Period.  He has no dependencies.  He is complete and wholly satisfied in Himself.  That is present in our quote.  He had infinite beauty in spite of there being no creature able to see it.  Now, the author sets that in the past tense, but it seems to me the present tense would serve just as well.  Oh, you might say, the angels at least see it.  I would suggest to you, though, that even they see but in part.  You have, for example, the image of those angels with wings covering their feet, lest they touch what is holy, and covering their eyes, lest the see God and die (Isa 6:2).  Admittedly the reason for their actions is not made explicit in that passage.  But Isaiah is getting a glimpse of heaven.  But we can take, for example, from the appearance to Moses (Ex 3:5).  There, he was told to remove his sandals lest they defile the holy ground, but with that imagery, sandals are used, at least in part, to keep the feet clear of the dirtiness of travel.  Bring in the example of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, and we take the point.  Now, with the angels, whom you might suppose are more holy than we, the image is reversed, and it’s their feet that must not touch.  Perhaps it shall be the same for us when we arrive in that place, or perhaps there is something inherently different in the case of mankind, made in the image of God.  As to the covering of their eyes, we have that longstanding view that were one to see God he would surely die.  Yet, we know that Adam, prior to the Fall, was able to do so, and we have the assurance that in the fulness of time, we shall again be able to do so.  But even before Adam, God Is.  And even after the Fall, God Is.  He is unchanged by these events.  His beauty is unaltered and unmarred.

So, does this satisfy the sense of our passage?  Perhaps.  We would again have to bring other texts to bear to see it so.  We could go to Isaiah again, with his description of the Suffering Servant (Isa 53), and we are clearly being given to observe Jesus as the Suffering Servant here.  “He has no form or majesty such that we should look upon Him.  Nothing about His appearance attracted us to Him.  He was despised, forsaken of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.  He was one from whom men hide their face, despised by men, and we did not esteem Him” (Isa 53:2b-3).  I can at least see where the author perceives the idea, and its worth consideration.  Calvin takes a somewhat different angle, speaking to the marks of His majesty.  Perhaps it is not so different as all that, just viewed from a new perspective.  He did not come among us with the marks of royalty.  He did not wear a crown, did not carry a rod to indicate His office.  He was born to lowly estate, in a region of low regard, and a village disregarded even by those of the region.  He was born an unknown, child of a mere carpenter, and that, only in name.  And don’t you suppose the locals knew?  And don’t you suppose the authorities in Jerusalem had heard the rumors?  Who is this uneducated, illegitimate child to instruct us?  The cheek!  But you could see Calvin coming back to that self-same verse in Isaiah for his solution.  “He had no form or majesty.”  The substance of His earthly life did nothing to bely the reality of His heavenly being.  That appears to me the necessary conclusion here.

So, we have this stunning assertion from Paul.  “He existed in the form of God.”  Okay, first, that is past tense.  Well, no.  Only in translation.  In reality it’s a Present Participle.  It’s stative.  It is only framed in past tense fashion because we are contemplating a historical period in which He was present and alive among us in human form.  Now, this is interesting!  I don’t believe I took note of this previously.  But it changes the picture completely, doesn’t it?  “Although He exists in the form of God.”  This was as true in those thirty years as it was before or after.  And focusing in on those thirty years, it renders His demeanor during those years all the more powerful.  Although He was God Incarnate, He did not account this robbery.  Consider that as God Incarnate, He was truly man.  He was born a human baby, lived a human life, felt human pains and experienced human joys.  He knew the love of a mother, and at least for a season, the love of a father as well.  He learned a trade.  He must have had friends there in Nazareth, as well as siblings.  He may have had enemies as well, or competitors for attention and favor.  We don’t have much of a picture of His childhood, really, nor of childhood generally, as it would have been experienced in that time and place.  But He accounted it nothing to be grasped, He accounted it not robbery that He was in fact equal with God.

Okay.  Pause.  We come back to a fundamental.  If in fact He existed in the form of God, had the true appearance of God, then it cannot be but that He truly is God.  Calvin is not alone in making the point, but it is his making of the point that I have in front of me at present.  And again, I come up against that Present Participle.  As He came among us in the very real form of humanity, He IS still in the form of God.  That form is not perceived by those around Him, but it is no less true.  Go back to that JFB image.  His beauty may have been masked in utmost humility of form, yet His beauty is no less true for being imperceptible to man in his current state.  He was no less God in His humanity than before taking human nature to Himself.  He was no less God in His humanity than after His ascension back to heaven, His human body resurrected, and the full expression of His former glory once more displayed.

As with every commentary I see, we must come back to His high priestly prayer.  “And now, glorify Me together with Yourself, Father, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (Jn 17:5).  There, assuredly, was something set aside.  For why should He pray for it to be taken up again except that for the duration of His Incarnation it had been if not relinquished, then certainly kept well out of sight?  Even that glimpse of the Transfigured Christ which so impacted Peter, James, and John did not express the fulness of His glory.  But come His return?  Oh yes!  Like lightning flashing from one end of the earth to the other!  Imagine unending day, but not restricted to some brief season at the pole, but spread across the whole globe at once.  Indeed, imagine that unending day expanding to fill the whole universe, such that sun and star fade to insignificance in its all-encompassing brightness.  And what is that brightness?  “There shall no longer be any night.  They shall have no need for lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God shall illumine them.  And they shall reign forever and ever” (Rev 22:5).  Oh, most glorious day!

Okay, back to this matter of robbery.  It was not a thing to be grasped, this glory.  Someone or other made the point that in this matter of robbery, it’s not so much the act that’s in view, but that which was taken.  But there is a forcefulness to it.  It’s an act of violence, a wresting away what is not one’s own.  So, then, in proclaiming His equality with God, His identity as being God, He was not wresting from God that which was not His own by right.  He had the form, and if the form, then the reality.  The Pharisees and Sadducees assuredly perceived His claim, but could not perceive the validity, and so, they accused Him of blasphemy.  We are told outright that this was the deepest cause for their seeking to put Him to death.  And in fairness, had their assessment been accurate, it would have been worthy of that penalty.  I mean, Herod died, we are told, for exactly such effrontery (Ac 12:23).  As to His claim?  Well, to take but one example, “I and the Father are One” (Jn 10:30).  Hard to miss the claim there.  But, as Matthew Henry points out, had it not been true, it would have been an attempted theft of God’s glory to make the claim.  Indeed, for just such attempted theft, Lucifer was thrown down.  For just such attempted theft, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden, and humanity set on its terrible course towards death.

But it was true.  It was not a matter of theft or trickery.  It was Who He Is, and as I have observed above, it was Who He Is even in this period of humiliation, of humble servanthood.  And this must surely inform us that Jesus, though reduced to human form and limited to human capacities, remained truly, fully in control of His own actions.  Even in that very act of humiliation, the very act of being born, Jesus remained fully in control.  Luke supplies the narrative of His conception, or the moments prior.  “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and thus, your holy offspring shall be called the Son of God” (Lk 1:32).  I remind us that where one Person is, all three Persons are.  If one Person is God in full, then the fulness of God is present.  God is One, and as such, His three Persons are ever in holy concert in every action undertaken, every decision made, every plan set in motion.  The Son was as much there in the moment of His own human conception, as the Spirit and the Father.

The same held true in His death by crucifixion.  Nothing about this was chance.  Nothing about this was forced upon Him against His will.  Indeed, as you watch Jesus deal with the Pharisees and Sadducees in the days leading up to His trial, conviction, and death, you see Him pretty well goading them to action.  Come on, guys.  The schedule is upon us, and you can’t be allowed to hold things up.  Even with Pilate, who seemed entirely inclined to offer mercy, we find Jesus goading Him to the necessary decision.  “You have no authority but what My Father grants you” (Jn 19:11).  Granted, He couches that in terms of ameliorating Pilate’s guilt, and to be sure, Pilate’s actions rendered him guilty of great injustice.  But I doubt he heard that part.  Those in power tend to be rather jealous of their power.  I mean, can you imagine coming before the president, and insisting that he has no authority to require anything of you?  Well, can you imagine doing so with any hope of your point standing?  No.  All that whining about, “Not my president,” that we’ve been hearing from one side or the other lo, these many years, does nothing to alter the reality.  Like it or not, yes, he is.  And, if true of a mere head of state, how much more God?

I am wandering somewhat, but not far.  Had Jesus not been God in Truth, then to make the claims He made would indeed have been attempted robbery.  It would also have been doomed to utter failure.  He wouldn’t have been put to death by Pilate, tried by Caiaphas.  He would have been condemned by the very God He sought to rob.  But His resurrection and ascension make it abundantly clear that this was not the case.  In point of fact, we could view it as God reversing the decision of this lower court.  Yet, He laid all that aside.  He made the claim, but did not demand the rights.  He chose to walk among us without any reference to His true, rightful dignity.  He chose to become a man, and at that, a man of no means.  He was, for all intents and purposes homeless.  Once He departed Nazareth, there was never any thought of return.  Given Joseph’s apparent passing, it may well be that the family had no choice but to give up their home in that town.  Whatever the case, those three years of active ministry were spent on the road, with no place to lay His head.  And His mother was with Him, it seems.  It’s unclear what had become of His siblings during this time, but for His part, there was effectively no home to return to this side of heaven.

And so, He came among us.  The Lord of all set Himself to be the servant of all.  He made the point to His own.  “Who is greater, the one who reclines at table, or the one who serves?” (Lk 22:27).  The answer is obvious, and intended to be.  And it’s declared to emphasize the point.  Yes, he who reclines is greater, “yet I am among you as the one who serves.”  He Who was, in that very moment, equal with God, chose to serve.  He could have come in power.  He will.  But He came instead in mercy.  He entered Jerusalem not on the white horse of the conqueror, but on the donkey of peaceful transfer of power.  Don’t miss the power of this.  “Himself He emptied.”  Nobody did it to Him.  He did it by choice.  But that moves us to tomorrow’s topic, so I shall leave it here, perhaps with this last thought left unexplored except in private contemplation.  He accounted it no act of robbery to make Himself known as equal with God.  Likewise, He accounted it no act off robbery to be made low, a mere mortal, and in that state as but a bond-servant.  He neither robbed, nor was robbed.  He was and is ever and always truly God.  He was and is ever and always a bond-servant.  That ought to be sufficient to hold our thoughts in wonder.  We can join Mary in marveling contemplation of how this can be.

The Emptying (03/18/25)

The most difficult aspect of this whole passage to assess must surely be that of Jesus’ emptying of Himself.  It is difficult because it must be approached with care, with a proper conception of His divinity, which Paul has been careful to establish before coming to this point.  As we have seen, He existed in the form of God, and form presumes underlying reality.  To say He existed in the form is to say He was.  And further, as we saw in the previous section, this is not a past tense matter, but one concurrent with the event of His humanity, and likewise true today and forever.  He was and is and ever shall be God.  Here is a point where all of our various commentaries, all our varied denominations must come together as one.  I’ll let Clarke have the first word on it in this instance, who observes that it cannot be accepted that Christ somehow divested Himself of His divinity in becoming incarnate as a man.  However it is we apprehend this statement of Paul’s, this cannot be it.  Clarke proceeds to point out that as He did not cease from His divinity, neither did He cease from His true rule and reign, even for a moment.  Consider the point that John makes at the beginning of His gospel.  “All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (Jn 1:3).  Add this: “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Col 1:17).  There is a corresponding point to be understood.  Were He to cease to hold all things together for so much as a moment, then all things would cease.  And so, though He walked among us as a man, yet He still upheld all creation by His might even then.  To bring Calvin into the picture, He did not lose His glory, He concealed it.

Fundamentally, God cannot change.  He may cause His appearance to man to change.  We think, for example, of Moses encountering the burning bush, or the dove which descended upon Jesus at His baptism, or perhaps that man of war who stood before Joshua.  There are many such occasions where God has made Himself somehow discernable by the finite senses of man.  But these did not in any way alter Him.  They did not change His being.  He remained God.  He remained infinite.  He remained holy.  The same must necessarily hold true in the Incarnation.  Jesus, as He walked this life as a man, remained God in full.  He lost nothing of His divinity.  Yet, it is important for us to recognize that in this period of life as a man among men, He did not operate in the fulness of deity.  He certainly did not manifest that full glory which is His by His nature.  That is clear both from the fact that the story of humanity continues, and from His own prayer to be once more in that shared glory with His Father.  But be careful!  That He did not show forth His glory is not to say that it was no longer His, or was temporarily taken from Him.  How could divine nature be temporarily taken from God?  If it could be taken, then there must be one stronger who takes it, and if that one is stronger, then God’s continuance has become dependent.  And if dependent, then we have not encountered “I AM Who I AM,” but just some other creature, perhaps superior to ourselves, but not supreme.

No, Jesus did not divest Himself of divinity.  He did not, for He could not, cease being Who He is, did not alter His essence.  But, as Ironside writes, “He could unite manhood and deity.”  But in doing so, it cannot be that He ceased to be divine.  Equality with God remained.  And again, Paul states as much in verse 6.  He exists in the form of God.  I really must insist that we bring forward the present tense, stative condition of that statement.  But by appearances, nothing marked Him out as God.  It was not as it shall be at His return, when His appearance will be plainly, undeniably visible to one and all, and that, simultaneously.  He looked like a man because He truly was a man.  If you poked Him, He bled.  If He did not eat, He would grow hungry.  If He worked long hours, He tired and found need of sleep.  Now, it’s a rare occasion in the Gospels that you read of Jesus sleeping, but He clearly did so more often than that one time in the back of the boat.

This is another aspect of the matter that has to be understood properly.  Jesus, in this life He lived among us, lived as a man.  He did not obey in His divinity, but in His humanity.  To have succeeded in a sinless life only by being God would have achieved nothing as concerns salvation.  It would do nothing to satisfy the debt of humanity before the court of God.  It would just be God being God, and where’s the wonder in that?  I mean, yes, God in His full divinity is a wonder indeed, but a wonder as overwhelming our finite senses, not a wonder in that He managed it.  Of course He did!  He’s God, and being God must come as naturally to Him as being human does to us, or being lionlike must be to a lion.  But to live as a man, in every wise man except in that one critical factor of being without sin?  To go through even a life of ease with such a record would be wonder indeed.  To have done so facing what He faced, being Who He Is?  Incredible.  Unbelievable!  Except, He did, and because He did, we live.  We must, I think, come to the recognition that in seeing Jesus, the Man, we have seen man perfected.  He is, after all, the Word made flesh (Jn 1:14).  “And we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”  I have to think that John reflects on that day he was given to see Jesus transfigured.  It’s not hard to imagine how such an event would forever change everything for you, and it’s clear it did so.

So, this emptying, this kenosis, what then is it about if not a relinquishing of divinity?  Barnes is helpful on this question, observing that the idea of kenosis is that of making to be of no effect.  He gives us a helpful illustration, a parable if you will.  When the sun is obscured by clouds, as it was here yesterday, or when it is blocked out for a brief moment by eclipse, nothing has actually changed as to the nature of the sun.  At the moment, it is still dark here where I am, as the sun is around the other side of the planet somewhere.  Yet the darkness I see is no evidence of change in the sun.  The sun is in no way different than it was Saturday when all was bright and beautiful.  Jesus on earth, though not visibly divine, though veiled in His divinity, was yet just as fully God as ever.  But, “He assumed all the innocent infirmities of our nature.”  I love that Barnes includes the note of innocence in that statement.  It’s necessary.  There was that one lethal infirmity that He did not assume, that of our innate sinfulness.  What this implies is that He faced the challenges of life on the same footing as do we.  He knew need as we know need.  He faced sufferings as we would face sufferings.  He was relying on the same limited faculties as do we, which is to say that His obedience was accomplished solely by those means available to man.  That, in turn, is to observe His utmost reliance on the power of God, but not as inherently His own, but rather, as attained through prayer.  There’s a reason we find Him so often taking time apart to pray, and it wasn’t merely because He missed that holy fellowship.  Indeed, apart from those hours on the cross, I see no reason to suppose that fellowship was interrupted.  But He was taking upon Himself the full experience of humanity, and as such, the power He exercised, the holiness He maintained, was done in dependence on appeal to the Father, and the supply of answer through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Understand this.  He was wholly human, every bit a man of the same nature as ourselves.  With that one exception:  He did not share our sin nature.  Born of a woman, but not of a man, He had the unique condition of having escaped the inheriting of Adam’s legacy.  He could start with a clean slate, as we could not.  Could He have failed as Adam failed?  Conceptually, I think the potential had to be there.  Yet, at the same time, it’s utterly impossible that it should have turned out that way.  This is, after all, the plan and purpose of God, covenanted before the first moments of Creation, maintained on course across millennia until the moment of His own choosing, and then, carefully orchestrated even to the choosing of the day and the hour for Jesus to be crucified, that the full import of the Passover should be realized and recognized in Him.  But His obedience was achieved in His humanity, depending on God to the uttermost, not on His own divine being.

Ask me how this can be, and I cannot answer.  I don’t suppose any could.  Here was God, and though we speak of the Person of the Son, yet He is fully God even as is the Father or the Spirit.  And so, to avail of their power is to avail of His own, yet it seems somehow as if His power was held in escrow for the duration, available by request, but only through the authorizing agency of those other Persons.  I’m sure there is something egregiously wrong with such an assessment, but it’s the best I can do.  But as to the tension of His being in this period of His humiliation, the JFB presented a couple of verses which, laid side by side, really brought it home for me.  On the one hand, we see Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane on the eve of His greatest trial, and He is praying.  “Father, if possible, let this cup pass from Me.  Yet, not as I will, but as You will” (Mt 26:39).  There is real humanity in that agonizing prayer.  I know what’s coming.  I know what I must do, but boy, I really wish You could find another way to get it done!  But still, the submission, and given the threefold repetition of this prayer, we must recognize the degree of challenge He was feeling.

I was reminded in this morning’s Table Talk of the significance of the threefold repetition.  As the angels cry, “Holy, holy, holy,” it’s not as though they are stuttering.  They are emphasizing the holiness of God, declaring the indescribably superlative nature of His perfect, essential holiness.  I think we might find something of that same expression of the superlative degree in this threefold repetition of prayer.  But here, it is simultaneously a superlative degree of struggle and a superlative degree of submission.  Here, I would maintain, is the real victory won.  Yes, Father.  I know what’s coming.  Yes, I know it’s undeserved.  Yes, I know it’s necessary.  No, I in no way desire to go through with it.  But as it’s Your will, it shall be Mine.  There’s something of the warrior spirit in this, isn’t there?  I think of those tales of the forlorn hope, as the British military used to describe the desperate assault on some unbreeched fortress.  A mere line of flesh going up against thick walls of stone, the rain of lead fired from myriad guns and cannon, and the flash of steel in the blades of close combat.  The odds of survival were barely hovering above zero, in actually hovering rather well below zero.  And yet, needs must.  Let’s to it.  I feel something of that same resolve in the final notes of Jesus’ prayer.  “Nevertheless, Your will.”

But now, as I said, lay this other verse alongside, as Jesus explains the coming trial of His obedience to His disciples.  “No one takes my life from Me.  I lay it down on My own initiative.  I have authority to do this.  And I have authority to take up My life again.  This is, in fact, the command I have from My Father” (Jn 10:18).  “Nevertheless, Your will.”  But again, the whole of it is by His voluntary choosing.  “Himself He emptied.  He humbled Himself.”  This was not done to Him, but by Him.  But it was done through reliance on God outside Himself, even though He remained fully God within Himself.

And that begins to move me into tomorrow’s topic, so I’ll leave us with that to contemplate for the present.  Don’t lose the wonder of His willingness to be as one of us, in full, to experience all the weakness, the pain, the joy, the fulness, every aspect of life as we know it. Don’t lose the wonder of His example, relying on God to the uttermost, and satisfied to the uttermost in God.  “I have food you know not of.”  And yet, because He did, we do.  Let us, then, set ourselves to follow His example, to live our own lives in uttermost reliance on God, assured of our satisfaction in Him, and wholly committed to obeying His command, whatever the cost.

Voluntary Humiliation (03/19/25)

Himself He humbled.  How powerful a declaration this is, and critical to our understanding of what Paul is telling us.  It stems from the assurance that He is Good.  He exists in the form of God, ergo He is God.  Being God, as I have observed already, He has no dependency on anything outside Himself.  The Creator does not depend upon His creation for being, nor for satisfaction, nor for any other thing.  He is complete in Himself.  But we can add to this that neither can He be subject to any other.  Were He subject to another, then that other would rightly be God.  Because to be subject to another necessitates a dependency on the will of that other, and again, this cannot be.  So, the only way God can be humbled is by His own doing and His own choice.  All that Paul sets before us here, His becoming a man among men, His becoming obedient to another, His sentencing to death, and His undergoing death by the most ignominious means of the cross; all if this was His own doing.  Yes, obviously there were other agencies involved in the action.  Annas, Caiaphas, Pilate; these all had their role.  Joseph, Mary, His disciples, the Pharisees who hated Him and those who believed; each had their role.  You, me; we have our part in these events as well, for He died for the sins of all mankind, past, present and future.  He humbled Himself on your account, on my account; not as necessitated by our being, but as a free will choice of His own.  Even Satan, whose machinations have been in view from almost the dawn of Creation, ever seeking to disrupt God’s plan, to destroy God’s handiwork, those efforts culminating in the crucifixion of the Lord of all Creation, did so as an agent of God’s will.  Few of these were willing agents, but they were agents nonetheless, and God remained fully in control of events.

Understand this well.  Jesus was not a victim, knew nothing of a victim mentality.  Though submitted and humbled, He remained divine, He remained God.  He remained in the driver’s seat.  We need not look for somebody to point the finger at as being the one to blame for His death.  It wasn’t Annas.  It wasn’t Pilate that made the call.  Jesus is explicit about this.  “I lay down My life that I may take it again.  No one has taken it away from Me.  I lay it down on My own initiative.  I have authority to do so, and I have authority to take it up again.  This is the command I have from My Father” (Jn 10:17-18).  Observe, then, to whom He rendered obedience.  It was to the Father.  It was essentially to Himself.  Again, God is complete in Himself, even to the point of being able to reign supreme and to be humble servant in His own being.  As such, when we view the humbled Christ, when we behold the Man, as Pilate called to the Jews (Jn 19:5), we behold One who is no less divine than the Father.  We view One in no wise inferior to the Father.  He is yet the Lord, though having allowed such things to be done to Him.  And why?  That we might live!  He had no need of experiencing any of this.  He was complete in Himself before ever the birth of a baby to Mary brought His divine person into the world.  Had He done no such thing, yet He would be God, yet He would be Just, yet He would be love.  But, in His perfect wisdom, His perfect love compelled Him to undertake this life of perfect obedience to perfectly holy God, and all in the imperfection of mortal flesh.

It’s actually quite striking to me just how much of the impact of this verse is lost to us because of the way it translates to English.  Trying to put it in terms suitable to our language strips so much of the power here.  He exists in the form of God.  I don’t know why the NASB and others opt to set that in a past tense form.  It is not past tense, but present.  The NIV does a better job, and even the KJV.  Although existing in the form of God. The only cause I can see for setting it in past tense form is to lay it alongside the historical period of His incarnation, which for us, is a past tense event.  Yet, that too persists, if in the newness of the resurrected body.  But then, too, having emptied Himself, which in translation would be hard to express with the proper emphasis on Himself, but Himself He emptied, the NASB proceeds to Him being made in the likeness of men.  It’s set in a passive voice, but in fact it’s a middle voice verb.  Even were it a deponent middle, if I recall correctly, the result would be that of an active voice, subject performs the action understanding.  The best we can manage then, is that He was made by cooperative effort, or, as a middle voice activity, He acted relative to Himself.  And so, I lean towards the conclusion of the JFB, that just as Himself He emptied, so Himself He made in the likeness of men.

We generally lay that making to the Person of the Holy Spirit, but I return to that point that has been in the foreground of my thinking these last several weeks, that where one Person of the Trinity acts, all act as One.  So, yes, we can look to the holy conception of this unique child, and find that indeed, Jesus was personally involved in His own conception.  Find another who could make any such claim!  But here it holds.  Though eternally begotten of the Father, yet, when it comes to His entry into human life, it is an act of the Son as well, just as we perceive the action of the Holy Spirit in that event.  Being God, Himself He humbled, making Himself a man, and that, of no reputation, but rather a bond-servant, one with no choice but to obey.  And whom did He obey but the Father, and if the Father, then Himself as well.  It’s a marvel of a declaration, and one with which we must wrestle to truly understand, but there it is.

Now, as I write this, I am struck by the thought of another passage that had come up in the course of preparing for these notes.  God lays down the case law for Israel, we come to this.  “If a slave determines that he loves his master, his wife, his children, and would choose to remain a slave, then his master shall bring him to God, then to a doorpost.  He shall pierce his ear with an awl, and that slave shall serve him permanently” (Ex 21:5-6).  I confess I rather wondered why that verse was brought into view here.  I mean, yes, we see Jesus taking the form of bond-servant, but what has this to do with the case presented in Exodus?  Hmm.  Well, we might observe the love Jesus has for the Church, His bride.  And I suppose we might look at the piercing of His body on the cross as somehow analogous to the piercing of the ear.  It still feels a bit of a stretch, but do we see something of that law in play here?  In undertaking to die on behalf of all whom the Father gave Him, was this indeed a signing on to be a bond-servant to the Father for all eternity?  Could God somehow establish such an arrangement with Himself?  Well, yes, I should think He could.  It does not establish any outside dependency, as I have already insisted.  It is no more improbable than the state of being eternally begotten, or the Spirit eternally proceeding.  And surely, it befits the One Who came among us as the Suffering Servant of which Isaiah prophesied.

And there, I will turn to a point of contrast which the Wycliffe Translators Commentary points out.  Adam, our first father, sought to seize equality with God.  We’re back at that act of robbery.  For Adam to attempt this was indeed an act of robbery, and entirely akin to the attempt made by Satan who tempted him to that action.  God will not share His glory with another.  Period.  End of discussion.  But Satan tried.  And fell.  Adam tried.  And fell.  Jesus, on the other hand, for whom such an exercise would have been no act of robbery, instead, humbled Himself to obedience to the Father, willingly took upon Himself the office of the Suffering Servant, and fulfilled it in whole.  He who was born a servant of God sought to become like God.  He who was born divine sought to become God’s servant.  It’s a strong contrast indeed, illustrative of Paul’s observation to the Corinthians.  The first man, Adam, is from the earth, and therefore earthy.  The second man, Jesus, is from heaven (1Co 15:47).  And though it is left tacit in that place, the implication is that He is heavenly, holy as God alone can be, with all that holiness entails.  He, like no other in human history, was wholly set apart for God.  And in this, we have our example.

Voluntary Obedience (03/20/25-03/21/25)

This is such an astounding matter to contemplate.  Immortal God became, or took to Himself the nature of humanity.  In so doing, He did not become any less immortal, any less God.  And, we must also insist, He did not become any more God than He already was.  But the truly stunning aspect of this whole matter of His obedience is that His obedience was undertaken in the full limitation of human existence.  He obeyed in the fulness of man.  He did not simply cloak divinity in human skin, and then obey in His own inherent holiness.  He did not simply apply His divine self to being who He is by His own nature.  He shed the prerogatives of deity.  He shed His direct access to omnipotence and omniscience in some way, yet without ceasing to be omnipotent and omniscient in just as full a degree as He was prior to His incarnation and subsequent to His ascension.  He did not change, but He required of Himself that He use only those means as are available to man.

And this was quite necessary to the project of saving humanity.  If God had obeyed Himself as being Himself, where exactly is the worth in that?  Every man, however decent or however vile, works always in obedience to his own will.  Even the most abject slave must will himself to act as he does.  It is the nature of our being.  Just so, God in His godliness could not but act godly.  God, being inherently good, being the very definition of good, could not but do good.  But to act godly in the finite, circumscribed capacities of man?  Now, that would be something.  That would be something no man before or since has managed.  But He did.  And how did He do it?  He did it through those same means as are available to us, that being appeal to the Father in prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit to supply.  And we have as well Christ our Mediator.  Might it be that He likewise could avail Himself of His mediatorial office?  I don’t know.  That might overplay the case.  But He, as a man, obeyed God.  He, as a man, set Himself to be a bond-servant to the Father, His Father.  And again, because of the triune nature of God, I must posit that He set Himself to be a bond-servant to Himself.

But the fundamental point for us is that what He did He did as a man of like nature with ourselves, excepting, of course, that He was without sin.  Unlike David, his forebear in the flesh, He had no cause to observe that, “in sin I was conceived” (Ps 51:5).  He was not brought forth in iniquity, not bearing the inheritance of Adam’s failure.  But He was born of a woman, conceived of the Holy Spirit, and thus, just as set apart, just as morally uncorrupted as His Father.  So, yes, He starts with a leg up on the rest of humanity.  But we must also observe that He starts on the level with Adam, and set with the same task of obeying on behalf of all mankind.  So it is that we read of Him in Hebrews, that, “Though a Son, He learned obedience from His suffering” (Heb 5:8).

Now, I would have to suppose that God in His heaven is ever obedient to Himself.  How else would it be?  We are again at that matter of will, and if we have any sort of free will, then surely God’s will is freer, having none to coerce action from Him, no outside force to which He must bend.  So, by definition, what God does must be in obedience to His will.  But here, we are addressing matters of His will expressed as law.  Wait, though.  I am getting ahead of myself.  Let me stick with the matter of acting in human activity.  Look at that statement from Hebrews once more.  He learned obedience.  As I have observed elsewhere, this is indication that He was not obeying in His inherent power as God.  He had to learn obedience, even as we do.  From our perspective, we might suppose that the need to learn obedience requires that there had been disobedience that must be corrected, but I would have to insist that this is not so.  Our propensity for learning by our mistakes, particularly as it pertains to matters of moral purity, come of the Fall, come of our inheriting of original sin.  We begin life intent on being a law unto ourselves, and as such, must learn the need to obey.  We must learn to obey our parents.  As time goes on, we must learn to render obedience to other authorities in our lives.  We must learn what it means to be a moral student, a moral employee, a moral spouse and parent.  And yes, God willing, we come to learn what it is to be obedient to our Maker.

But Jesus, learned from His suffering.  And that suffering came in spite of His obedience, in spite of His righteousness.  Over and over again we see it as the Gospels reveal His history to us.  Having done nothing wrong, yet they seek to stone Him, or throw Him from a high cliff, or simply to revile Him.  This was the test.  I should have to think it was that much more of a test as He bore yet the full majesty and power of His deity.  Think about that comment John makes at the beginning of his gospel.  “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (Jn 1:11).   Now, you could try and limit the scope of that to His reception in Israel, but then, you could just as readily apply that to humanity at large.  And it’s still happening today, perhaps even more vehemently and more loudly than ever.  I suppose we might write that off to the devil’s sensing that time grows shorter for him, and so, he stirs up the greater resistance.  Or, we could set it down to the nature of sin, that it is ever on the increase, a disease spreading farther and farther, so long as there remains some host in which to fester.  But be that as it may, Jesus in His humanity walked among those who should, by all rights, have been His subjects.  After all, He remains the One through whom they were created (Jn 1:3).  He remains the One in whom all who exist live, and move, and have being at all (Ac 17:28).  That hadn’t changed because He came to be born of a woman.  It wasn’t something that only applied while He was upstairs on the throne.  It never ceased, for God never changes.

Yet, He obeyed, even when suffering came to Him, even when the ignominy of being so constantly rebuked, misunderstood, falsely accused, threatened, and yes, even as He underwent that farce of a trial before one unfit to be in the office he claimed, yet Jesus obeyed.  Yet, He honored even the office, if the man himself proved dishonorable.  Yet, He willingly, of His own accord and by His own choosing, went to the cross, bearing its weight on His torn and bleeding back, though as even His judge, in sentencing Him to this most awful and humiliating death, there was no guilt in Him.  And that held just as true in the sight of the Father.  He had obeyed fully, and was still obeying fully.  Can you imagine?  Can you believe that God, whose power knows no limit, God, who undertook all that He did to save even the likes of those who watched in glee as He felt the intense pain of dying in that fashion, willingly allowed all this to happen, and still found it in Himself – in Himself as a man – to pray, “Father, forgive them.  They know not what they do” (Lk 23:34)?  Oh, He learned alright.  And learning hurt.  Yet, He did so without sin.  And He did so without recourse to His divine essence, except it be through prayer and grace, as it is for us.

Do you wonder, then, that He would so often take Himself aside to pray?  It was necessary.  Like us, He had need to avail Himself daily of instruction from God, and of the power of the Holy Spirit.  Unlike ourselves, He took pains to ensure He did so.  Our failures, in large part, come of the fact that we don’t take prayer so seriously as we ought.  I know it in myself.  I have seen it, and occasionally proven wise enough to do something about it.  I could think back again to that last trip to Africa.  The difference between seeking to minister as having prepared by reviewing my materials, and seeking to minister as having prepared by prayer was stark, plainly evident to me, if not to those to whom I ministered.  God being gracious, I would hope that their benefit was not lessened by my limitations.  But when I had prayed, when I had left the direction to God?  Oh my!  But what He can do.  Oh my!  But what He will do.  I could, in fairness, look across the last four weeks, as I presented much the same material here at church.  There were weeks when I might say I did it as it should be, and others where I must confess that I leaned too much on my own strength and not enough on God.

Lord, let me take this lesson to heart.  With the opportunity coming up to preach, don’t let it be that I should just try and present my own cleverness, my own depths of perception.  But let it be that I minister to Your people those things that You know they need to hear.  Let me truly speak Your words, and speak Your words truly.  Nothing else will serve.  Let me, like my Savior, set myself to obey as a bond-servant, not to present as a clever student.  Let me speak what You would have me to speak in the manner that You would have me to speak it.  And be pleased to empower those words to achieve Your purposes.

Jesus obeyed.  And you see the point Paul is making here.  By this obedience, He humbled Himself.  This is a step beyond simply having disengaged with the prerogatives of deity, with becoming one of His own creatures.  This goes beyond weathering the abuse and rejection of His own.  But it goes through those experiences, in the humble capacities of a human man of no means, and still continues to obey.  In all things He was obedient to the will of the Father, even that most trying duty of going to the cross to die, to truly die.  It was no mere seeming death.  The sword piercing His side should put paid to any idea that such was the case.  No, He did not swoon.  He died.  No, He did not escape back into His deity to leave the empty husk of His human form to undergo death without Him.  He died.  As to His humanity, He died.  Can we say that His deity died?  I should say not, at least not in any fashion that we could recognize as dying.  But this was His purpose, set for Him by the Father, and yes, by Himself, covenanted together with Father and Spirit before ever that which is was.  But it is a humbling thing to walk in obedience such as this, even if it does not include trials on the level He faced.  And it is this obedience which most thoroughly expresses His humbling of Himself.

Calvin observes that to see such a One, this immortal Son of God who is Himself the Lord of life and death alike, obey even to the point of enduring death should indeed captivate us.  It ought to lay hold of the whole of our attention as being of singular importance.  God Himself undertook to do that which we could not.  To take the old chorus, He made a way where there seemed to be no way.  And understand, apart from Himself, apart from His determination that He would do so, there was no reason for Him to do so.  God could have got along just fine without this exercise of Creation, and certainly without it experiencing these long ages of futility, subjected to sin’s influence.  He didn’t need to create Lucifer, nor the better angels such as Michael.  He didn’t need period.  But He did.  He chose to do so.  And having done so, He chose, from before the beginning of the project, to arrange it such that He must come, take up this life of man, die this heinous death, and then take up His life again that we might in due course come to take up our lives in full, as we enter into His presence, ourselves resurrected by the same power of God by which He was resurrected.

Immortal God obeyed, and obeyed in the finitude of human form, human reality of being.  Nothing, as Barnes says, so emphasizes just how important the Law of God is to Him, the Lawgiver than that He Himself abides by its commandments.  Now, it must be said that God being God will naturally obey the Law which is given, largely, as declaring the fundamentals of Who He Is.  God will be God, to put it simply.  But Man?  We know from our own long experience just how unlikely it is for a man to be as God is.  I’m not talking about powers and miracles, about omnipotence or omniscience.  Let us settle on the simple (relatively speaking) aspect of goodness.  We can’t handle that!  Holiness?  It’s just not in us to achieve.  Even as we walk this renewed life, indwelt by the very Spirit of God Himself, and truly set apart – so in that degree at least holy – as His temple, still we can’t manage it for more than maybe an hour or so.  It’s just not in us.  Yet, in Him we live.  Yet, by His choice and continued exercise, we are being made holy in the deeper sense of purity.  Sinful proclivities yet beset us, but they don’t own us as they did.  We long for a better way, and we seek to obey, where once we would give this invisible God no thought at all, just doing as we pleased, fully convinced that it was we who were in the driver’s seat, not some intangible spirit.

Jesus obeyed.  Jesus humbled Himself in perfect obedience, even to the point of dying the death we deserved, even to the point of taking upon His perfectly holy self the weight of all the sins of all mankind, of all those whom the Father has given Him.  And in so doing, He has achieved our sanctification.  Yes, we continue to be in process, and shall do so long as breath remains to us.  But He has bought for Himself a bride, a people, a nation, a priesthood who will in fact be His and His exclusively.  We struggle, to be sure.  We continue, as did He, to rely on the grace of God, the power of God, on His attentive ear and His answer given to our prayers.  We rely on Him even to render those prayers right and acceptable, for too often we not only know not what to pray, but know full well that the things for which we pray are not really to the point.  We pray our wants rather than His.  We seek our purposes rather than His.  But He is slowly, gently, training us out of such things.  And He sees to it that the prayers that reach His ear have been adjusted to suit proper ends, and He shapes His answers to those best ends, to our best good, even when we’re too short-sighted to know what that good might be.

Indeed, praise God from Whom all blessings flow, you who remain down here below.  Praise the God Who Is.  Praise the God Who condescended to come down among us, to experience life as we do, and to conquer death in our name, that we might come to live a life worthy of being called life.  All glory to His name, and may we undertake daily to walk more worthy of His gracious love for us.  May we learn to humble ourselves in like obedience to Him Who loves us so.

The Significance (03/21/25-03/22/25)

I suppose I have already dipped into the area of application and significance.  This being more of a didactic passage, it is not difficult to perceive the application.  Indeed, Paul spells it out for us at the outset.  “Be like this.”  “Have this attitude which was in Christ Jesus.”  That attitude, as he proceeds to lay out for us, consists in obedience, and obedience, as we have observed comes as expressing the sort of humility to which we are being urged.  Matthew Henry is pretty succinct in summing this up.  He indicates that humility and Christ-likeness are one.  That’s worth considering a bit, isn’t it?  For I am sure you know, as I do, many who make their Christ-likeness a matter of pride.  Mind you, it doesn’t take much digging to find those who make humility a point of pride.  We likely don’t even have to look beyond ourselves to see it.  Pride is insidious and endemic.  And it takes exercise of real dependence upon God in like fashion to our Lord and Teacher to tame it.  Like Himself, we must learn to set aside all our constant busyness to carve out times of prayer.  Much though it may bother my flesh to encounter those who do so in greater degree, far better we should be carving times out of our prayer time to address our busyness.

Even as I type these thoughts, my eye goes to the little clock on the corner of the screen, noting that the hour is later than my usual, and the needs of the day crowd closer than I might like.  And my loyalties are divided.  But, God!  There are so many things I would do today, those I must, and those I would rather.  There are meals to prepare and eat, employments to be pursued, skills I would learn, and yes, hours I would idle away on ostensible amusements.  There are family members who shall want my time.  There are ministry needs that shall need my time.  And how am I to get to it all, and yet have time to sit in prayer?  Ah, but I could stand to learn my own lessons, and recall to mind that I serve the creator of time, and if He wants my time, surely He can also make a way for all these things to find their own proper slots in my day. 

Perhaps, then, the call I am feeling is to set aside these pursuits and just pray.  Or perhaps these times are in fact a form of prayer, and I need but me more attentive to what I am hearing from Him in response.  But that in itself sounds a tad prideful, doesn’t it?  Oh, yes.  I hear God.  I mean, I know how that can come across to my ears when others make such a claim.  And yet, I feel comfortable in saying that as I pursue these studies of mine, I do in fact hear from God.  I am not going to fall into saying, “Thus says the Lord,” I don’t think.  Not without much stronger cause.  But do I feel that the Spirit accompanies me in these studies?  Turns my attention to those points that need it, oftentimes surprises me with the direction things take?  Oh, yes.  But in this instance, I think maybe I do need to just pause with the reading and the typing, and seek closer communion.  So, I shall close these notes for today, seek to blot out the tyranny of the clock for a brief period, and do as I am called to do.

Well, then, what are our takeaways from this passage?  We have the setting, and we have Paul’s introductory purpose statement.  Have this attitude.  What attitude?  The attitude of humble obedience to God.  But more, the attitude of service.  But humility would seem to be the fundamental guidance.  How did we come to this passage?  Through the call to have humility of mind, to do nothing out of selfishness or pride, but as caring more for others than for self (Php 2:1-4).  We have as well that call to harmonious unity, and we can observe that Christ in His humiliation, His humble humanity, was in fact of the same mind as the Father, united in Spirit, and intent on one purpose, to echo the goal of verse 2.

Of course, God is One.  His persons are never in conflict, united in the goal and purpose of His every deed.  I must again observe how difficult it is to frame any discussion of the Godhead in something approaching proper English.  The ever-present reality of One God, Three Persons renders pronoun usage difficult.  If I take to using Them to express the harmony of the Persons, it encourages thinking of God as more than One, but to apply Him to the Persons will, if nothing else, offend the grammar checkers.  Oh well.  They are challenged enough by my writing anyway.  But God is One, the perfection of this harmonious unity to which we are called.  Indeed, we are called to give expression to that very harmonious unity in our own rather unique condition as one body made up of so many individuals.  The challenge is evident, and experienced with regularity.  How are we to be thus harmonious?  How are we to be one?  And the answer, as Paul drives us to recognize here, is equally evident.  Humble yourself to obedience.

This obedience is not to man, but to God, although it may very well require of you that you indeed obey man.  This, too, is a call repeatedly found in Scripture.  Submit to the authorities, knowing their authority is delegated to them by God for your good.  That’s harder, of course, when we look at said authority and find them antagonistic to piety.  But then, we can once again look to our Lord and Teacher for the example.  Did He revile the high priest that fomented false charges against Him?  No.  Did He disregard Pilate, or denigrate him for his failings?  No.  He submitted.  He gave honor where honor was due, to the office, if not the specific officer.  He did not rale against the injustice being done Him, but submitted.  We might incline to suggest He did so because being God, He knew the plan.  But we must recall that in this ordeal of human existence, He walked as wholly man.  As Paul has told us here, He emptied Himself.  We might consider His statement to His disciples, there on Mount Olivet, that as to times and schedules, even He was not given to know, but only the Father.  Now, that cannot be something said of Christ in His deity, can it?  If the Spirit searches the mind of the Father, surely the Son knows it just as fully.  But He obeyed in His humanity.  He walked and lived as a man.  And as to His knowledge, He was as dependent upon what Father chose to reveal as are we.  I might suggest He was wiser than we in that He did not insistently probe beyond what the Father chose to reveal, but kept Himself fully occupied with what was revealed.  Surely, if it was enough for Him, it ought to more than suffice for us.

But we are trying to move to action here.  And the fundamental calling, it seems to me, is that of the servant, but not a servant constrained and coerced into service, not as having no choice.  Rather, willingly, gladly setting oneself to serve, serving from the place of love.  We can’t lose sight of that necessary ingredient.  As Paul writes to Corinth, and to us, apart from love, obedience would be empty of any value (1Co 13).  So set yourself to love, set yourself to serve, even to serve sacrificially.  Be ready, willing, and able to set aside personal agenda, personal interest, personal need, for the sake of satisfying the need of your brother, your sister.  Seek not position, but rather, mutual growth.  Are there going to be challenges in doing this?  Absolutely!  This is not an undertaking that we can hope to pursue apart from the presence and the power of God.  But then, the whole of Christian life is designedly of the same nature.  We cannot be holy apart from God.  That would be a bit too set apart, or set apart for the wrong thing.  We cannot love apart from God, not in the manner to which we are called.  Oh, we can have sentiment, to be sure, loyalty even, and we can certainly feel the tug of eros.  But to love in this manner, to love enough to cast aside self-interest entirely, even to the point of death?  As Paul writes, perhaps for a good man, one might dare to die (Ro 5:7).  But then, we aren’t good, are we?  We certainly weren’t at the point Christ died for us.  No.  “While we were yet enemies” (Ro 5:10).  In this condition, He loved us.  In this condition, He died for us.  In this condition, He obeyed, even unto death on the cross.

We, for our part, are unlikely to face so great a trial.  And I would further maintain that should it come to pass that we are called to do so, it will be because God has already strengthened us for the trial.  It is indeed a signal honor so to suffer on His behalf, for He who will not cause us to be tested beyond our ability will have, in such case, have discerned that we are able.  And He will furthermore supply the power and grace by which to persevere, as well is the inward will and wisdom to avail ourselves of said power and grace.  That, I think, might be a point more suited to later verses in this chapter, but it’s in play here already.

Hear the call then, and you’ll forgive me, I trust, for simply repeating myself from earlier notes.  But why restate it differently?  “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.”  This is our daily goal.  This is cause enough to seek the Lord daily for our daily bread.  That daily bread is more than simple concern for provision.  Lord, let the grocery store have everything in stock and fresh which I need or desire today.  No, that’s not the point.  Our daily bread, as with our Savior, is to do the will of our Father.  What would You have of me this day, Father?  Supply the strength, the grace, and yes, the wisdom, that I may be about that very thing and see it through.

But as inclined as we are to see crises on every side, and to be sure, the daily media feast would prefer it were these crises to keep our attention, because it would keep our attention on said media, the fact of the matter is that we are unlikely to be in so great a crisis as all that.  Far more, it’s a matter of dealing with the mundanities of daily life.  I mention the grocery store.  Okay, I will be there later today to see to my weekly stocks.  I shall likely be off to the bank.  How shall I interact with those working in these places?  How shall I handle the standard frustrations of bad drivers on the road, of shoppers stopping in a way that blocks the aisle?  What shall be my response if they don’t have the perfect produce I desire?  What shall I make of matters if family needs prevent me pursuing my hobbies, or if church needs occupy so much of my day as leaves me with little time and energy for personal pleasures?  How shall I respond tomorrow, as my family desires a special time in the afternoon?  Shall I begrudge them the inconvenience?  I should hope not.  But I would be lying if I said I don’t often feel such occasions as encroachment on my precious time.  Okay, then, Jeff, heed your instruction.  Look out for the interests of others, humble yourself and serve.  Yes, Lord.

Of course, the greatest aspect of this call to humble service pertains specifically to areas of spiritual growth.  Can we love enough to confront sin in our brother, our sister, our spouse, our child?  Can we confront it in love, rather than anger?  Can we set aside our neediness to lend ourselves to the needs of others?  To my mind this goes well beyond activities like helping at the homeless shelter, or even activities like shipping out overseas to minister to believers there, although that gets perhaps closer to the mark.  But as trite as the saying becomes, our first mission field is right here at home, whether we consider the home in which we live, or home as expression of our body life as a church.  We have a duty to our brothers and sisters, to love them enough to serve them.  We have a duty to love them enough to speak truly to them, even when speaking truly may risk rejection.  That doesn’t mean we have to be rude about it.  That certainly doesn’t mean we need to set ourselves to be so blunt as to all but assure offense.  No!  We are called to speak the Truth, yes, but in love.  Too often, we incline to speak the Truth like a blunt weapon, and that simply won’t do.  That is not humble Christ-likeness.  That’s pride flailing about in self-defense or self-promotion.

I am going to suggest that we need to be humble enough to question our own motives.  Are we in fact serving in obedience to our Lord, or are we more rightly acting in hopes of promoting our own worth?  Do we come to the place of service aching with love for those we serve, or do we, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, do the minimum to gain the maximum?  Are we busily seeking honors by acting humble?  Oh dear.  I dare say even our best efforts are yet tainted by the sinful nature that remains a part of us.  Our best works remain as filthy rags, to take Paul’s phrase.  But we need to be seeking to act as those led by God, as those set to be bond-servants to our Lord.  We need to stop insisting on our rights and privileges as sons of God, and instead seek simply to pursue our purpose in God.

Think about it.  Think about what this very passage is telling you of your Savior.  He truly is God, and yet, in this humble taking up of the bond-servant’s role, He did not in any way insist on the prerogatives and privileges of deity.  He did not call down a legion of angels to defend Him from the abuse of Jew or Roman.  He could have.  He did not simply smack Satan out of the way at that first encounter in the desert, simultaneously rejecting his offer and seizing what was offered.  No.  He humbled Himself.  He persevered on the course of obedience demanding nothing of honor, nothing of self-satisfying pleasure, only pleased to do as the Father willed.  So, then, on what basis shall we go forth into the world demanding recognition for being His?  On what basis shall we, as the old Steve Taylor song went, say, “We’re king’s kids, dang it!”  Privileges?  Rights?  I think not!  “You Have No Rights.”  How I have appreciated that book title; a book written in regard to the life of a missionary.  But it’s all our lives.  This is what it means to be a bond-servant of the living God.  “You have no rights.”  You are not your own.  You were bought with a price.  You, who were once enslaved to sin are now a bond-servant of Righteousness.

Have, then, no aspiration to glory.  We have considered the comparison before, but I appreciate Ironside’s take on it.  We have two examples to consider.  First, Adam.  Adam aspired to glory, and fell.  That was the temptation set before him, and he took to it.  In contrast, we have Christ, the last Adam.  He came down from glory.  He set aside all outward appearance of that glory which was rightfully His, innately His.  And He did so in obedient service to God.  That service expressed God’s love for us, His love for us, but it remains fundamentally done for God.  So, too, our actions on behalf of the kingdom.  They are fundamentally done for God, but they are necessarily also done in expression of a true love for those we serve, a true love of our own, fueled by the true love of God.  This is love beyond mere sentiment, and it is love with a total disregard for any idea of privilege.

This is love which might just begin to perceive how great a thing our Lord did for us.  It’s hard, at least for me, to truly grasp this.  Jesus died for me!  I mean, it’s such an historical event, so far in the past.  It’s not something I can experience viscerally.  I cannot, I don’t suppose, feel it with the immediacy of Peter, James, and John, not even with the force of Paul’s conversion.  But I know this.  My Jesus loves me, died for me, took my sins upon Himself, not as becoming sinful in His own person, but as taking upon Himself the full penalty of my guilt.  And it pains me to think how readily I even yet add to that penalty.  It’s a consideration that has stuck with me since the earliest years of my coming to faith, something my old prayer partner said in regard to that situation.  Every sin I commit, even now, even however far into my future, adds to the weight of sin my Savior bore that day, and how can I?  Knowing His love for me, knowing His sacrifice for me, how can I?  And yet, I do.  And yet, awareness of that reality quickly slips out of view while I go and do my own thing.

Let me bring Clarke in here, who writes, “What must sin have been in the sight of God, when it required such abasement in Jesus Christ to make an atonement for it, and undo its influence and malignity!”  My only complaint with that thought is the hint that sin is no more.  What sin must have been is what sin must yet be.  How egregious the event, then, when we who know the love of our Savior, who are so keenly aware of what He underwent to atone for sin, are yet so ready to sin again, even knowing.  No wonder Paul’s own soul cried out, “Oh!  Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Ro 7:24-25).  And with him, I can only throw myself on the mercy of my God, and the assurance of His grace.  “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  But I hold that in a certain tension.  I am mindful, as I consider all that is set before us here, that all of this was set before His own, those who proudly proclaimed themselves the chosen ones of God.  Oh, how proud they were of their status!  So proud that they could not accept the humble Savior who stood before them; so proud that rather than humble themselves in worship of true God, they put Him to death.  Original sin remains.  We are still ever so keen to be god rather than worship God.  And this temptation we must fight with every ounce of spiritual strength we have.  And knowing that will never suffice, we must set ourselves to obey as our Savior obeyed, by full reliance on the value of prayer and the answering power of the Spirit.

Father, help us.  Help me.  I know I am too easily prepared to abandon the Way, be it for a moment or for a season.  But I would not have it so.  Hold me fast.  I know You do.  I know I walk with the assurance that none can snatch me from Your hand, least of all me.  Yet, I know also the concern lest I be so proud of my status in You that I reject Your correction as it comes.  Keep me humble, Lord.  And I am keenly aware of the risk of praying such a prayer.  But it is needful.  If, in any of my supposed service to You I have in fact been serving myself, correct me.  If necessary, strip me.  For I would be yours in heart and in truth.  Show me where You would have me to serve, and then empower me to serve.  Show me where You would have me withdraw, and then grant me the grace to do so graciously and without rancor.  Show me how to be Your bond-servant, for I am Yours.