He Is Lord (03/30/25)

I explored the matter of the name at length in my earlier notes, so I shall perhaps keep my comments brief in this instance.  I do, however, see some degree of variance as to what name various commentaries suppose to be in view here.  Some propose that it is His name as Savior that ought to have our honor, that being a role uniquely His.  Yet, I would have to observe that there are at least a few others in the page of Scripture that come with like title, if not with so magnificent an impact as concerns that office.  And, as I observed in those notes, in the confession Paul prescribes, which God Himself prescribes, it is Lord that is given the emphasis.  The name above all names is Lord.  As Clarke points out, it’s not that He is given a name, not even a new name, as we shall be given in the fulness of time.  (Rev 2:17b – To him who overcomes, to him I will give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.  Rev 3:12 – He who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore.  And I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven from My God, and My new name.)

Is there, then, a name yet to be revealed, that exceeds that of Lord?  Or is this in fact the new name?  Many called Him that as He ministered in Israel, yet I wonder if even the Apostles truly grasped the fulness of that name.  At any rate, we can settle this much:  The name given Him at birth – and yes, it is highly significant that this name was assigned, via the angelic command, by God – is not somehow magical, some power word by which we can assure ourselves of God’s accommodation of our requests.  Saying, “In the name of Jesus,” does not make it so.  It is, at best, a claim of His endorsement.  It is most certainly not the means of cajoling Him to act in accord with our wishes.  We must needs recall that He is Lord, and we, who would claim to speak or to pray in His name, had best remain clear as to Who is in charge, and by necessary consequence, who is not.

This is a name of honor.  It is a declaration of majesty, of absolute, ultimate Sovereignty.  And here, we must once more contemplate the Trinity in full.  As is pointed out by Paul in his letter to Corinth, when it says that God put all things in subjection under the feet of the Lord, He Who put them in subjection is obviously excluded (1Co 15:27-28).  And then, He subjects Himself to Him, the Son to the Father.  And yet, “I and the Father are One” (Jn 10:30).  So, though subjected to the Father, He remains Lord, an eternal title.  He remains the Sovereign One, though submitted Himself to the Father, as ever He was.  Yet, He is no less God, and to confess Him as Lord is not in any way to dishonor the Father.  Indeed, as Barnes insists, to confess the Son as Lord honors the Father.  Indeed, it is to confess the Father as Lord as well, for our God, He is One.  Throughout the book of John, Jesus repeatedly emphasizes this point.  To receive Me is to receive the Father.  To see Me is to see the Father.  To honor Me is to honor the Father.  “I and the Father are One.”

Finally, on this topic, the Wycliffe Translators Commentary notes that this formulation we see in verse 11 encapsulates the earliest creed of the church:  Jesus Christ is Lord.  And this was meant with the full and proper sense of Lord, not just as an honorific, not just as it relates to Him as our honored teacher, but as the Sovereign ruler of all that is.  He is Lord, and there can be no other.  This was the cause for Caesar’s anger at the Christians.  He wanted to be honored as lord.  Indeed, he sought to be honored as a god, which at one and the same time indicates just how overblown his sense of his own position and power was, and just how weak and limited a view he had of deity.  Arguably, the whole of society at that juncture had rather a weak and limited view of deity.  Their gods were, by and large, just corrupt humans with less restraint, and none of them ever all-powerful.  It was a constant contest between capricious supermen.  With God, we have none of that.  We have one God, apart from whom there is no other.  None can compare.  None can compete.  Nor does He compete for our affections.  He is Lord and He does not need our worship.  He commands it.  He commands it, I dare say, by His very nature, His very essence.  To encounter Him Who is Lord is to know oneself entirely outclassed, outgunned, stripped of anything we thought made us something.

I will come once again to that marvelous scene as Joshua encounters the commander of the heavenly host.  “Are you for us or against us?”  And the reply, “No.”  It’s more elaborate in the telling, but I want us centered on that aspect of the answer.  “No.”  It’s not about you.  I serve God.  Period.  I am for Him and Him alone.  To the degree it benefits you, fine.  It sounds rather callous, I suppose, but it’s a sense of the relationship that we would be well to remember.  He is Lord.  He is absolutely supreme in authority, fully in charge, and answerable to none but Himself.  He has no need of you and me.  If not one man in all creation ever sought to obey, if not one man in all history availed himself of the salvation that has been bought by our Savior, He is in no way diminished.  His authority is not altered, nor His glory tarnished.  But in that He has determined that there shall be a remnant, there shall be a redeemed, then by God, it must be so.  He has commanded it, and so it shall be.  So it is.  Jesus Christ is Lord.  Upon this the whole of Christianity depends.  He is given as Head over the Church, and as such, we ought to be seeking to perceive and to heed His direction in all that we do, not just as the church militant, but as pertains to our living out of life on this planet.

I say we ought to be, but I must acknowledge, given my own example, which I have no reason to suppose is unique, that we most often fail to do so.  Even in the pursuit of congregational worship, we are too much concerned with our wants and desires, and not enough with His.  And this needs our attention.  This needs our prayerful concern.  If He is the head, ours is to obey.  If He is Lord, then we are His bond-servants.  Yes, His sons and daughters, but still – and I would maintain that it does us more honor even than our adoption – we are His bond-servants.  See how gladly the Apostles owned this identification.  Even Paul, if you observe him, is far more inclined to declare his position as a bond-servant than to press his authority as apostle.  The latter becomes necessary as he brings the Lord’s correction to the Lord’s people, but even in this, he remains the bond-servant of Jesus Christ, directed by the Lord.  And he invites us to live likewise, as those directed of the Lord and committed to His exclusive use.  This is, after all, what it is to be holy.

So, then, let us set ourselves to exalt Him not just with lip-service and bold declarations in comfortable surroundings, but with a true commitment of our lives, a true determination to walk worthy of the life He has given us.

He Is Exalted (03/31/25)

The passage before us opens with what might seem obvious, or might seem to be at odds with what brought us here.  We begin with this statement from Paul.  “Therefore also God highly exalted Him.”  And on the one hand, we look and say, yes, of course.  He is Lord, after all.  He is God Incarnate, so certainly He is to be exalted.  But then, we must come back to the fundamentals of deity.  If He is God, He ever was God.  If He, as God, is exalted now, He has ever been exalted.  So, wherefore the therefore?  Oh, but He is given a name!  He has a new office, that of Lord.  But again, it is fundamental to deity that He does not change.  He has been perfectly Who He Is since before the beginning and shall continue to be so unchangingly throughout eternity.  So, certainly, as to His divine being, this cannot be some new thing.  He is ever Lord and ever has been.  Yet, something happened here, didn’t it?

Is it that He never truly reigned until He had undergone this humiliation?  Clearly not.  He was and is, after all, the source of all that has been created, and by His constant attentive care that which is continues to be.  We have it there in the opening declarations of John.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (Jn 1:1-2).  That’s not just John sounding like some proto-hippie.  Paul, the most serious of serious intellects, has much the same to say, though in different terms.  “For in Him we live and move and have being” (Ac 17:28a).  One could add Jesus’ own claim.  “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).  On the one hand, in the immediate setting, this is a call to close, abiding intimacy with our Lord.  On the other hand, it’s a bit of a truism, and in that sense, applies equally to all that lives.  Apart from Me you can only be nothing.

So, what then is going on here in Philippians?  This One Who has ever reigned and ever shall is assigned a name that He had not before, a new office.  And yet, as God, the office cannot be new.  We must go back to that emptying of Himself, His willing humiliation in become a man as any other, in pursuing obedience to the whole Law of God as but a man among men.  We must not lose sight of this.  His obedience came as a man.  He did not secretly dip into His divine Person as occasion required, but depended, as do we, on prayerful appeal to the Father and on the powerful supply of the Holy Spirit.   He obeyed as a man.  And as such, this exaltation we have in view is of Jesus as a man.  The JFB quotes something from Bengel to express the point.  “Christ emptied Christ; God exalted Christ AS MAN to equality with God.”  Okay!  That’s new.  That’s a change of condition, to be sure.  What man could ever succeed in pushing such a claim?  What man could be trusted with such honor?  But Jesus has been exalted, and to that same glory He had before ever Creation was.  (Jn 17:5).

Okay.  I said there are two points of concern in this opening statement of our passage.  The other lies in that therefore opening.  Was this, then some reward for merit?  Or should we more rightly understand it as the purpose for which all was done in the first place?  We tend to look at this work of redemption as being primarily about us, the redeemed.  But that is a mistaken perspective.  It is chiefly about God’s glory, even as our chief purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  We have been created with a purpose, but that purpose is not the self-satisfaction that is urged upon us at every moment by the world around us.  That’s been the whole point of the larger passage concluding in these verses.  Live worthy of what’s been given you (Php 1:27).  Being as you have this faith, granted for Christ’s sake (at His request), being as you have His love, and as well, the fellowship of the Spirit informing your affections, pursue harmonious unity (Php 2:1).  Consider others more important than yourself.  Care about them at least as much as you care about you (Php 2:2-4).  Don’t come with an agenda.  Come with a heart to serve.  Why?  Because this glorifies God Who is at work in you (Php 2:13).  And why is He at work in you?  “For His good pleasure.”  Ah.  Get over yourself!  It’s not about you.  It’s about God.

He is Lord!  He Who came among us as but a man is exalted as a man to sit upon the throne of God, His own throne, yes, but at the same time, a setting utterly foreign to human experience.  And He sits as Lord, as the One to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given (Mt 28:18).  He has been glorified, and that, by God, Who will not share His glory with another.  Nor has He done so in exalting His Son, for the Son could truly claim, and did, that, “I and the Father are One.”  Yes, and the Holy Spirit as well; deity having the fullness of fellowship in perfection in His own being even as He possesses all that is good and true and holy in perfection in Himself, having absolutely no dependency on anything outside Himself for anything.

Yes, as to His humanity, something significant transpired there at the cross.  He who knew no sin became sin for us (2Co 5:21).  Father made Him to be sin for us.  The eternal, begotten Son, was, as to His humanity made, by the Father, through the Spirit, for this very purpose, to live a sinless life as man, and yet, to take the full punishment for all the sins of all mankind, or at the very least, for all those whom the Father has given Him.  And He accepted His assignment.  He voluntarily set aside all the privileges of His divinity to walk as one of us, to demonstrate by His life what life could be, that the Law of God is indeed good and perfect, and to wipe the slate clean of all charges before the court of heaven, leaving the devil nothing of which to accuse the brethren.  And because He obeyed, even in this most agonizing and humiliating experience of death on our behalf, God demonstrably accepted the offering of His blood, raising Him to new life, in His humanity, the firstborn of many brethren, now in resurrected flesh, as we shall in due course be restored into a new vessel of resurrected flesh.  And it is to this resurrected Man that the new name has been given, a new office so far as mankind is concerned; the fulfillment of Adam’s potential.  He is Lord!

He reigns.  That is the resounding message contained in the rest of our passage.  Every knee will bow.  Every tongue will confess.  There may be vast differences in the manner and motive, but it matters not whether this was the voluntary adoration of the redeemed, or the inevitable, though resentful acknowledgement of His enemies.  He has the power.  He has the honor.  And like it or not, there will be no denying it.  It is this title which sets Christ, the God-Man, above all others, not only on earth, but in heaven as well.  All creation is subjected to Him.  All that has life, or ever did, is subject to Him.  So extensive is His reign that even death does not remove the creature from His rule.  Dead or alive, He remains Lord.  He is the One appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead (Ac 10:42), for He is in fact (and ever has been), Lord both of the dead and of the living (Ro 14:9).

And observe what has happened as a result of His exaltation.  He, Who was but a man, one in whom there was nothing to recommend Him to the attention of his fellow men, as become the Lord, the strong tower to which the righteous run to be saved (Pr 18:10).  It’s not a matter of shouting, “Jesus!”  It’s the reality of His all-powerful, all-extensive reign, coupled with the reality of His eternal, unchanging love for those of whom He said, “Of those You gave Me, I have lost not a one” (Jn 18:9).  I find no cause to restrict that to those eleven disciples who remained to Him with the betrayal of Judas.  We, too, stand among those given, the gift of the Father to the Son.  We, too, remain the bride of Christ, betrothed in this life to be wed in the next.

And then, observe this and catch the wonder of it.  I know I have read this passage often enough, but somehow it just never hit as it has in light of this study.  In Hebrews 1:6, the author writes, “And when He again brings the first-born into the world, He says, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him.’”  Here is a direct indication of Christ as Man, as resurrected Man (for He again brings the first-born into the world).  Here is what has changed.  Angels ever worship God as God, and as such, they surely ever worship the Son.  But here He is presented as the Man.  Here is the stunning fulfillment of Pilate’s unwitting proclamation of truth.  “Behold the Man!” (Jn 19:5).  It may well be that Pilate was trying to assuage his own panic after the concerns his wife had expressed in regard to Jesus.  If He was indeed deity, then Pilate’s acquiescence to the mob in executing Him must surely come with dire consequences.  If He is but a man, then that fear can be set aside.  But, rather like Caiaphas, he spoke more than he knew.  Yes!  Here was the Man, king not only of the Jews, but of all mankind, and not only of mankind, but of all Creation.  Behold, indeed!  And angels did.  And they worshiped Him, and did so in awed wonder at the sheer majesty of God’s most marvelous work.

Now, let me just bring this home.  If it is suitable that angels should be overwhelmed with wonder at the accomplishment of this one who conquered sin, as a Man, and has been exalted to highest office by God Almighty to reign over all creation for all eternity, how can we possibly pass it off as something to keep in its compartmented time?  Oh, we can sing our songs of worship on Sunday, but it’s Monday now.  We can honor Him in our times of study, but we’ve got to get to work, and that’s just not the place for such things.  Stuff and nonsense!  He is Lord of all, the rightful ruler of all that is!  And you shall find a place where it’s inappropriate to honor your King?  I think not!  Wherefore, then, our reticence to proclaim His reign?  And what shall be the reward for such reticence?  It’s worth considering, is it not?  If angels wonder at His great achievement, let us take it as strong encouragement to pursue that which Paul encourages, and seek that we might live our lives in a manner demonstrative of His great worth.  Let us rejoice to be His, and proclaim that reality boldly to any and all who will sit still long enough to hear it.  Indeed, let all creation shout out this glorious truth!  He has purchased for Himself a people from every tongue and tribe and nation, to be knit together as one flock under one Shepherd, giving them life such as persists even should the physical plant die. 

Oh, most glorious Lord!  Forgive us our quietness.  Teach us to sin not just with words, not just with our believers in the safety of the sanctuary, but in all we say and do.  You have shown us how to live, now be pleased to so work in us that we live as You have shown us.  Let us be quick to pray for the power to do so, and wise to lay hold of that power You so gladly and richly supply.  Let us be demonstrably Yours.

He Is Enthroned (04/01/25)

Okay, I think this will be a relatively brief exercise, but as we come to this point of every knee bowing, every tongue confessing, it must be recognized that we’re talking a scope wider than that of just the Church, of just the redeemed.  We are talking a scope wider than just those who have worshiped God in life.  This is everybody, every creature that has ever lived.  Perhaps, given Jesus’ statement, it even includes the rocks and stones, but I am not wholly convinced of that.  What is declared by Paul here is simply this:  Jesus is enthroned.  And again, as He is ever God, and thus ever enthroned, the sense of newness that is conveyed here must apply to Jesus the Man.  And that is wonder indeed, is it not?  Jesus the Man shall be acknowledged by all as truly reigning over all Creation.  This shall be confessed by all.  Angels in heaven shall confess it in wonder, though they have known the Son far longer than have we.  The Church universal shall confess it with utmost joy, for here is her great hope fulfilled.  Indeed, the Church universal confesses it already, for it is already the case.  He is Lord!

But that leaves many others.  It leaves those who have not been counted among the elect, whose rejection of their rightful Lord has been confirmed and left unchanged.  It includes even those demons who serve to further Satan’s hopeless ends.  They, too, are constrained to confess that Jesus truly is Lord.  Now, here we have a bit of a hitch, don’t we?  For, does not Paul tell us plainly that no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit? (1Co 12:3).  Indeed he does.  I have to conclude that what is intended in that place is more than bare statement of fact, but true acknowledgement of it, glad receiving of that wonderful truth.  That, at least would leave us room to include them in the scope of this passage, to accept that while every tongue will confess, it will not always be a confession of love, only of inescapable reality.  Every tongue will be constrained to declare the truth of His glory; that He, the Man, is indeed Supreme God, one with God even as He claimed.

It has often been said that to encounter the historical Christ, one must either find Him to be as He claims, God Incarnate, or find Him a madman and a liar.  There’s no room, really, for this idea that we can accept that maybe He was a good man, or even a prophet, but we can’t go the distance to accepting what He said and taught.  Really?  “I and the Father are One,” just doesn’t really leave space for such half acceptance.  Call Him a good man, but deny the claim, and you deny your own claim.  If He declared Himself God and was not, then He is not good, is He?  If He spoke of Himself as deity, and that failed to prove out, then He is not a prophet sent of God, is He?  And if that’s the case, then He must in fact be accounted evil, a liar and a worker of iniquity.  But for those trying to play semantic games and split the difference, sorry, the day will come when the Truth must be acknowledged as undeniable:  He is God.  And with that recognition must come awareness of the implications of having denied it as long as could be done.  Clarke is spot on here.  To fail to proclaim this confession of His divinity is in fact to dishonor God Almighty.  For it is His claim and it is True.  To say otherwise, to act otherwise, is to seek to steal from His glory, and shall not go unpunished.

Now, observe that Clarke moves us beyond merely acknowledging the inevitable Truth, to active confession of Truth, that is to say, vocal declaration, and I would suggest, glad declaration.  Rejoice, for your Lord is on the throne!  Let it be known to all that Jesus reigns forevermore!  Join with the Apostles in glad confession that He is Lord, and we are His bond-servants.  It will come about in due course that the world will catch up to us and confess the same, but we shall have to accept that they shall not do so with the same love, with the same glad rejoicing. 

I’ll shift over to Ironside for a moment, who writes, “Subjugation is one thing; reconciliation is another.”  All shall indeed confess their subjugation, for what choice shall there be come the end?  But not all shall be reconciled to Him.  The vast majority, it seems, shall confess His Lordship only to be marched off to their eternal punishment.  Now, a few of our commentaries strung together a series of passages to demonstrate the frequent use of similar formulations to indicate universality of scope. Things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.  And yes, we can find some variety of thought as to what is indicated by that.  I suppose I’ve already made my opinion known.  But what is interesting is what can be observed when we come to the example of Colossians 1:20, with its observation of the reconciled.  Here, some would seek to find evidence of a universal salvation with none excluded.  After all, all means all, right?  And here we have that all, as Paul speaks of how God through Jesus reconciles all things to Himself.  But there’s another clause.  “Through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”  Ironside observes the point that hell, the things under the earth (or in the sea, which tends to have the same end in view), are not included.  There are bounds upon the all.  The redeemed are reconciled, but the redeemed are not the universal whole.  There remain the goats.  There really must remain the goats, or again, we have a Jesus that’s spouting errant nonsense as He teaches.

Where I suppose I would diverge from Ironside is in the understanding of what name we have in view here.  He takes it to be the name Jesus itself, particularly in its meaning of, “Jehovah the Savior.”  But that cannot be, can it?  Not if the confession here is made even by those who have established themselves as His enemies.  I suppose we could accept they may have to confess that this was true for others, for the redeemed, but one doesn’t get the sense that this is where Paul is headed, where this passage is headed.  We are, after all, applying prophecy here.  Let’s take a brief look at the original, and leave it set in its setting.  “I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.  They will say of Me, ‘Only in the LORD are righteousness and strength.’  Men will come to Him, and all who were angry at Him will be put to shame” (Isa 45:23-24).  Now, I must note that allegiance is not a direct translation in this case, but something the translators find implied in the swearing of oath.  And it comes in the midst of a divine plea.  “There is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior.  There is none except Me.  Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other” (Isa 45:21-22).  The offer is universal, yes.  But the acceptance is clearly not, else there would be no putting to shame of those who were angry at Him, would there?  No.  These are those of which He says, “They have no knowledge.  They carry about their wooden idol and pray to a god who cannot save” (Isa 45:20).  I seem to be working backward through this, but I think I shall leave it there.

Come the end, they will bow.  They will confess the truth of His singular supremacy.  But not as having been reconciled, no.  They will confess because they are constrained to do so by the evidence of His glory revealed.  Though there is no love in it, they will of necessity acknowledge that He is the glorious Supreme God, even though He is seen in body as Man.  For the redeemed, though, this is glad acknowledgement of the joy set before them.  Here is Jesus!  Here is God enthroned over all creation.  Here is hope once for all satisfied in its fulfillment, and who can but rejoice?  We may look with wonder, at present, at those 24 elders around the throne constantly bowing down in worship.  Wouldn’t that get old at some point?  No!  And we, when at least we come home to our heavenly abode, shall likewise find ourselves ever desirous of giving fullest expression to our joyful worship of Him Who sits on the throne.  There will be nothing mechanical about this.  It won’t be, as it may be in our churches, that one says, “stand,” and we stand, one says, “be seated,” and we sit, one says, “let us pray,” and we pray.  No!  It will be the natural inclination of hearts made full to bursting with the joyous realization of every hoped for good.  It will be the natural response of eyes filled with the heavenly vision of Christ as He truly is, and yes, of ourselves, as we have truly become.

Glory to God!  Glory to God!  Glory to God in the highest!  Yes, that shall perhaps be at least the downpayment on our joyous proclamation, but oh!  The joy of seeing You, of knowing that all is indeed well and truly finished, and the new and perfect creation begun!  Oh!  To find ourselves home with You forever, to enjoy You in full, no more facing the disappointment of our failures and falling into sin.  Even so, Lord, even so!  Come quickly, for we long to see this day.  Yet, Thy will, not ours.  You have perfect timing, and we rest in Your wise counsel.

He Is God (04/02/25)

Now I would deal with the matter of the exaltation of Jesus.  It’s easy enough to just read across this passage and enjoy a warm feeling.  Oh yes, He is exalted!  And it’s quite natural that we should forever be speaking of that in the present tense because for us there is no experience of a time when Jesus was not the risen Savior.  It predates our existence, so yes, it is present to our present.  But it is just as much a present tense declaration to those who came before His incarnation.  When He says to the Pharisees, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58), the point is made, and well did those who heard Him recognize that point was being made.

This forces us to recognize something, and it’s not just that Jesus was and is God.  It forces us to recognize that Jesus, as God, was and ever is possessed of all the essential attributes of deity.  Now, when we speak of those attributes as essential, we are primarily concerned with the idea that they are central to His being.  They are matters of His character, His nature.  But there is something more to that essentiality.  They are essential because were those attributes to alter in any way, it would be indication that He is not in fact God.  God cannot cease from His perfect holiness and be God.  God cannot cease from His love and be God.  God cannot cease from His life and be God.  To be God is to be holy, is to be love, is to be life, is to be truth, is to be, ever and always without ceasing and without interruption all that He is.  And tying all of these attributes together is the notice that He is perfect.  This speaks to completeness.  There is not, nor has there ever been, nor could there be, anything lacking in any one of His essential attributes.  As they lack nothing, there is no place for their increase.  As they are complete, there is nothing in which they are deficient.  God is complete in Himself, and He is unchangingly Himself.

This is the state of affairs with which we must wrestle as we come face to face with the kenosis of the previous passage, as well as the exaltation of this passage.  If He is unchanging God, then He is God even as He walks the earth in this humble form of humanity.  He is God even as He is born of God.  He is God even as He dies.  He is God even while He is in the grave.  And being God, He is perfect in glory.  He has always been perfect in glory.  He remained perfect in glory even while here on the earth in such form as could not recommend Him to any man’s attention.  And yet, we have that prayer.  “Father, glorify Thy Son” (Jn 17:1).  “Glorify Me together with Yourself, Father, with the glory I had with You before the world was” (Jn 17:5).  But, Jesus is God!  He is glorified.  He is glory!  In the same sense that He is Truth, and He is Life, He is Glory.  It is an essential attribute of God.  And as such, though veiled during His earthly sojourn, it remained true of Him that He is glory.  So, what changed?  What was lessened, and what increased, that Paul should speak of Him being highly exalted?

Forgive me belaboring this point, but it feels critical to me that we must understand the implications.  Is it of salvific import?  No, probably not.  I don’t suppose our salvation depends on us having a right understanding of such matters.  But there is something powerful at play here.  Jesus, whom we find referred to as the God-Man – not in Scripture, but by those who have been and are stalwarts of the faith – was, is, and ever shall be highly exalted, He was already raised to highest position, as the terminology implies, because He is God.  What shall be found to be of higher position than God?  By definition there can be no such thing, no such being.  If there were, then that being would be God, and Father, Son, and Spirit must be accounted something less than God.  And then, given the claim to deity, The Trinity must be found evil, as He has lied to us so fully about His own standing.  But this is not the case.  He is God.  He is the Self-existent One.  He has no dependency, none to answer to, nothing that can lay claim to being required for His continued being.  Rather, all else that is depends utterly on Him to continue its being.  Paul boldly informed the Athenians that it is in Him that we live, in Him that we move, in Him that we have being (Ac 17:28).  There is no way that we can properly understand this in the reverse.  I mean, yes, God, by His own choice, has come to indwell us as His temple.  But there is nothing of dependency in that.  We cannot suggest that in us He lives, in us He moves, in us He has His being.  And yes, I’ve heard it put forward in this fashion, and far too often.  It doesn’t work.  Take us out of the picture, and all that He is remains.  He is no more dependent upon us as His temple for His being than He was upon the structure Solomon built.  To suppose otherwise is to begin the slide into that same error that led to the destruction of the temple, that led to the destruction of Jerusalem.  It is utmost presumption and seeks to set mere creature on the throne of God.  It may not be the conscious intent, but it is the unconscious implication, and the motive of whatever has prompted one to propose such a preposterous misformulation of truth.

No.  Jesus is God.  In the moment of His birth, as in the moment immediately preceding and the moment immediately following, Jesus is God.  As He is brought to temple for His circumcision the eighth day, in accordance with His Law, He is God.  As He kneels to pray in Gethsemane, desirous of finding some alternative to what lies ahead, He is God.  As He confesses to His disciples that there are matters about which He is not given to know, but only the Father, He is God.  And as God, we must accept that yes, He actually does know.  But as to His confession, we must likewise accept that yes, He is speaking truly.  And as He is nailed to the cross, as the agony of that torturous device becomes the means of His death, as the spear pierces His side, and as they take Him down and lay Him in the tomb, He is God.  Yet, God cannot die.  Surely, He cannot.  If God cannot change, what greater change could one posit but that He ceased to be Life?  Well, He didn’t.  And in like fashion, His exaltation here cannot imply that for some brief period He was not exalted.  Perception of that reality may have failed in those around Him, but the reality of that condition did not.

All of this requires us to conclude that when we find Him highly exalted here, it is a matter of His human nature, albeit a human nature that has been brought to perfection.  I expect we must argue that He was perfect in His human nature from birth, and thus the necessity of leaving Adam’s line out of the deal, freeing Him from that crippling burden of original sin.  And yet, sin had to have remained a very real potentiality to Him.  To have succeeded in upholding the whole of God’s Law perfectly throughout the thirty some years of His earthly life could mean nothing except there was the potential for failure.  The temptations in the desert are a pointless footnote except there was truly the possibility of Him succumbing.  The agonized prayer in Gethsemane is mere posturing except there remained the possibility of Him backing out and choosing to do something different.  But He, in His humanity, did not succumb.  In His deity, there could be no possibility of it.  It would hardly raise an eyebrow to learn that God had been consistently godly.  What else could He be?  But a Man?  Now, that’s something!  That’s something unprecedented.  And, I would have to add, it’s something that has never been duplicated, nor could it be.

So, this exaltation is not of His Godhood.  For Him to sit on the throne as God is merely to say He is Who He Is; true enough, but not really telling us something we didn’t already know and expect of God.  But for Jesus, the Man, to be taken up into heaven, alive and in His resurrection body, the first-born of many brethren, and in that condition set upon the throne:  Now, we’re saying something.  Now, there’s a place for change.  Jesus, in His humanity, had never before been possessed of that glory which was His in His deity.  Even on the Mount of Transfiguration, I suppose we must hold that this remains true.  There was a glimpse of it, yes, but I suspect even then, it was not the fulness, else Peter, James, and John would not have been available to come down the mountain with Him.  But, ascended to heaven, returned into that glory which was His from eternity past straight on through into eternity future, He rises in human form, but in human form of the new, resurrection flesh.  We see from His appearances in that interim between rising from the grave and ascending to heaven, that there is a real body involved, but quite apparently one with capacities far in excess of our own. 

And again, I turn our eyes to that matter of being the first-born of many brethren (Ro 8:29).  This speaks to that resurrected body in which He ascended, and as such, stands as a surety of our own resurrection.  “If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1Co 15:19).  But we have not!  He has been raised from the dead.  He is the first fruits of those who have died in Him.  This mortal must put on immortality (1Co 15:53), and in Him, the first, it has.  In us, it shall because in Him, it has.

So, we come, perhaps, to the introductory therefore of this passage, about which Calvin makes the point that it is not supplying the reason for action, but the consequence of action.  Now, of course, we must needs decide which action he is talking about.  Is he addressing God’s action in exalting Jesus, or Jesus’ action in humbly submitting?   If it is the former, then it seems to me this is a distinction in which is no difference.  The consequence of former action would of course be the reason for later action, would it not?  To say that exaltation comes as the consequence of His obedience is much the same as saying that His obedience is the reason for His exaltation.  I’m not sure I’m expressing myself as well as I should here.  And I’m not entirely certain why Calvin felt it necessary to make the point himself.  It is clear enough in Scripture that this exaltation, the reward set before Him, was indeed a motivating factor in His obedience.  What does Hebrews say?  “For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).  It was for the joy, for the reward.  But that reward, I think, goes beyond the personal gain, if you will, of being restored to His full experience of deity in all its glory.  It was more than merely coming back home with this new human body, this new human existence.  It was, indeed, the joy of all that He had succeeded in achieving, the joy of knowing the age-old plan and purpose of God in redemption, in history, completed in full, everything finished and put in motion towards the final goal.  The full number of the redeemed has been redeemed, even if, in the order of our experience, some of that number have yet to be born.  His humiliation is complete, and His exaltation is complete, and the records room in the court of heaven has seen every charge blotted out.  The accuser has no longer any charge to bring against the elect.  Arguably (and I have seen it argued by those whose views I respect), he no longer has entrance into heaven to bring said charges.  He has been thrown down and shall not be getting up.

So, yes, this exaltation is a matter of His human nature, as His obedience was a matter of His human nature.  And as such, as Clarke reminds us, He has achieved, in His human nature, a dignity ‘as infinitely beyond that of angles as His divinity is beyond that of man.’  This is a reward, then, for His obedience, but it is so much more than merely that.  It is indeed a declaration of His true equality with God.  It is an acknowledgement that Jesus the Man is One with Jesus the Son, and the God-Man is one with the God Triune.  Behold, o Israel, the Lord your God, He is One!

This being the case, Jesus, in His humanity as in His deity, is rightly due every honor, every ounce of worship.  He is deserving of a universal adoration.  That every knee should bow to Him becomes the more consequential as we perceive that this, too, has reference to His humanity.  Every tongue confessing His rightful Lordship over the confessor has reference to His humanity.  We may say as well as His deity, and yes, it is a powerful declaration of deity to insist that it shall be so.  But it is a wonder beyond all wonders that it shall be so as regards Jesus in the flesh, Jesus the Man, whom all shall behold when that day comes that He returns as He ascended, with a shout to be heard world-wide, with the whole host of heaven in accompaniment, and indeed, every tongue, gladly or constrained by main force, shall confess the obvious truth:  He is Lord!  He has risen from the dead, and He is Lord!

I’ll conclude this part of my study with this from the JFB.  “The Father’s glory, and the Son’s, is inseparable.” How could it be otherwise?  Father and Son are inseparable.  How that fits within the scope of events on the cross remains to me something of a mystery.  For it is clear that in some wise eternal fellowship was broken, if only for those few hours.  And yet, eternal fellowship being yet another essential attribute of God, it could not have been so broken as all that.  We must again perceive Jesus in His humanity, deprived by choice of all those prerogatives of deity, suddenly experience the skies like iron, the communication He had known with the Father cut off.  And for one who had cultivated such intimacy with the Father, in His humanity, this had to wrench Him with an agony far beyond that of the nails driven through His hands and feet.  This was the real agony of the cross, that God must turn His back upon Him at His lowest moment.  And still, He must obey.  And still He did.  And so, the last Adam won through, and having won through, won for us.  Praise be to His name!

He Is Our Teacher (04/03/25)

I come to the last subsection of this study, which I have labeled, “He is Our Teacher.”  I do so as reminder that Paul has brought us to consideration of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ simply so that we can marvel at Him, but as setting before us the strong encouragement of His example.  He is in effect saying, here is your Teacher, disciple.  See what He does and do likewise.  Go back to the start of the larger section which our passage is concluding.  “Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel” (Php 1:27).  “Be of one mind, one love, one soul, one purpose.  Have humility of mind, and care for one another” (Php 2:2-4).  And most directly, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus” (Php 2:5).  In sum, His example is our model.  His mindset is our ideal, the goal towards which we are to strive.  And I will stress yet again, we’re not talking Jesus in His deity, but in His humanity.  We are not considering ineffable, non-communicable matters of His character, but those that are in fact within reach, albeit only in the same way that He achieved them, which is to say, by close, prayerful fellowship with the Father and reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit.

The clear and obvious lesson before us on this account is that of humble obedience.  This is not the cringing compliance of one faced by superior power.  That would set us on no better footing than the meanest demon.  It is something far different than acceding to the inevitable.  Yes, His power is unanswerable, and if He requires that we must do, then do we shall.  That’s there in the message that every knee will bow.  No adverbs are supplied.  There is no suggestion that all will do so gladly, joyously.  But they will do so.  Neither, I dare say, does it suggest actions undertaken solely with an eye to personal advantage.  To be sure, to love the Lord your God is most advantageous.  To obey Him is Life and to love Him is obedience.  But I come back to Calvin’s point.  Therefore does not indicate the reason for action, but the result.  This is to say that Jesus did not humble Himself as a means to gain exaltation, but exaltation came as a result of His humble obedience.

There is a distinction to be felt here.  And it is felt nowhere more than as we seek to arrive at personal application of the truths being taught in this place.  The JFB offers the thought that if we would be likewise exalted we must likewise humble ourselves.  Now, while that is certainly the case, it comes more as a motivational statement.  Having just bounced back to Calvin’s comments to retrieve that prior point, I find I prefer his formulation on this matter.  He writes, “Every one therefore who humbles himself will in like manner be exalted.”  Now, it may help us to remain humble knowing what the outcome shall be, but the outcome ought not to drive our effort, rather it ought to be our comfort in the midst.  He will recognize and reward.  Of course we would also have to say the same of our sins, our failures to comply humbly with His command, and they are several.  Knowing that He has not missed the least infraction any more than He has overlooked the least compliance ought rightly to move us firmly into the humble column, albeit with the comfort of knowing all that our Lord has accomplished on our behalf.  But knowing that it is what He accomplished on our behalf must surely serve as a strong counterbalance to pride.  No wonder, then, that Paul moves from this passage to the observation that it is God working in us, not only to empower the work, but to empower the will to work (Php 2:13).

Okay.  So, let me assume that we have agreed that to form our character after that of our beloved Lord is our settled goal, the one purpose of our shared mind and soul, who believe on Christ and love Him as Lord.  One thing further we may quickly observe in our Teacher is that in His example, deed follows upon word.  What He says is what He does.  What He commands is what He does.  I see much the same in Paul’s teaching.  What he instructs the church to be doing is what he himself is doing.  When he calls upon the church to consider others as more important than themselves, he is in the process of doing that very thing.  He’s imprisoned.  He’s coming up on his trial date, and one could reasonably expect that all his energies would be turned towards preparing his defense.  But, no.  All his energies are expended in care for the churches.  Moneys he could be using to cover expenses for his housing and so on have been spent on writing supplies, and on covering the travel expenses of those sent to bear this message to Philippi.  The church matters more to him than himself.  God’s purposes supersede personal concerns.  And this is exactly the mindset, the character, he is urging upon all who call themselves Christians.  “Have this attitude in yourself.”  Let deed follow word, and let word be true.  To put it perhaps more bluntly, you call yourself a Christian, act like one.

We often comment on the fact that as we go about our mundane daily duties we are encountering unbelievers who are quite aware of our claimed faith.  And it’s true that for many of those who deal with us daily, they are looking to see if character and confession are in accord.  And we know quite well that it is not always so, not as we would have it to be.  We still carry the old man of the flesh about in ourselves, and sometimes we allow old ways to resurface.  But we have the Holy Spirit within, reminding us that this is not the way, and we come to repentance.  It is to be hoped that our coming to repentance includes undertaking to make things right with those we may have wronged or offended in our lapse.  Yes, we have sinned against God alone.  I think, philosophically, as sin is a broach of God’s Law, it is simply not possible to have sinned against another.  But that’s a far cry from saying we can’t offend against another.  If that were so, well, I would have to suppose we’d already arrived in the new creation, and that is quite evidently not the case.  So, we must undertake to address our failings as faith requires, owning up to them, offering real apologies, not the non-apologies so common to those in the world who are caught out in some matter.  No, a real owning of the error and a real desire and effort to see things set to rights, even when doing so is to our personal disadvantage.  In fairness, I think our handling of our own failures will go further to demonstrate the truth of our confession than would a perfect adherence to the ideal.  I mean, there has to be a reason why God has chosen this difficult path as His preferred means to spread His Gospel.

So, what to do?  I return to a few lessons drawn from my first passage through these verses.  First and foremost, seeing how Jesus obeyed, relying on prayer and supplied power, maintaining by appeal to and reliance upon God, surely, we must do likewise.  We must set ourselves to seek God’s aid where we are weak, to seek humility where we are proud.  We must be willing to appeal to God to reveal to us those weaknesses in order that we may address them.  We must appeal to Him to speak to us on those matters where we have fooled ourselves into thinking we are better, stronger than we are.  In short, we ought to be praying daily for the strength and the will to live in light of this position we hold.  We are sons of God, adopted into that position and assured of our inheritance in Him.  But as sons, we are called to make manifest the good character of our Father, and that, sadly, remains far and away beyond us to do in our own strength.  We need to feel that lack, to be driven to prayer by our neediness.  We need to be driven to fellowship with one another by our neediness, that we may draw strength from one another, and lend our gifts, such as they are, to their need.  Why?  Because this has been His design for us.  We are not called to dwell in isolation, but in community.  There’s a reason.  Jesus did not come to obey by hiding Himself away from the world.  He did so in full connection, with full participation in all that life is.

I know for myself the great stronghold of pride remains.  I can laugh it off as a Wilcox trait, and I don’t know as I’d be straying much from the truth to do so.  I could seek to explain it away as the nature of the engineer, but that is probably confusing cause and effect.   Whatever its roots, it makes no difference.  The true root of pride is sin.  Or, to turn it around, a fundamental root sin is pride, and it needs constant dealing with.  Am I further along than I was, say, back years ago when I was working my way through Romans?  Perhaps.  I think at least the battleground has changed.  There have been advances on some fronts, and losses on others.  But pride is a sneaky foe, and comes in many disguises, including the disguise of false humility.  Yes, we are that much of a mess, it’s true, that we can be proudly humble.  It’s not just for televangelists.  It’s common to man, and it stinks to high heaven.  So, then, let us be in prayer for these besetting sins.  Let us be in prayer not just as a tossed off moment to close the morning, or to bless the meal, or what have you, but as truly sensing our want and our need.

With that, I’m going to turn to one more point to close out this study.  I seem to have left myself a note in my former notes.  There, I wrote, “The teacher is at his best when the Holy Spirit has taken over, bypassing his preparations, if you will, or maybe appending to them the things God knows need to be taught right here, right now.”  This was back last June, so somewhat removed from my last engagement in teaching, and with no particular occasion in sight that would have me teaching again.  But as I come to the end of this section, I have been teaching again, and on that favorite topic of mine, how to dig into these Scriptures and mine them for those things God has for us.  But I am also being asked to preach the end of this month, which is something new for me, and something I need to take seriously, prepare for more fully than I tend to prepare for things.  And in pursuit of those preparations, I very much need to bear that point in mind.  I must prepare, but I must prepare myself to allow the Holy Spirit to drive.  That must surely mean more time in prayer, and will, at least short term, mean less time in these private times of contemplation, or at least a redirecting of them to the more immediate purpose of preparation.

All that to say, I will, of necessity, be interrupting my regularly scheduled program for the next little while so as to devote the necessary time for preparation to pray the message God would have me to preach, and may He be pleased to guide my preparations as well as my delivery.  Lord, I shall surely need You at every step, not least to keep me mindful of my need for You at every step.  So, once again, I come, and I ask that You confirm to my heart the message You would have me deliver.  Let me be more concerned with what they need to hear from You than with style or competence on my own part.  Let this be an example of exactly the thing enjoined upon me by this letter, of considering others more important than myself.  My reputation, after all, is of no value except as it demonstrates my true allegiance to You, which is to say, except as it demonstrates Your true reputation, Your true character, Your true heart.  That’s going to be a big ask for me, one I cannot achieve apart from Your true empowerment.  And so, I trust in those verses immediately ahead in this letter, that You will indeed be at work in me, as You always are, to will and to work for Your good pleasure.  May it be with grace and love that I make that work manifest in delivering Your word truly and compassionately, and wholly for the glory of Your exalted name, my Lord.