He Became Obedient To Death
May the grace and peace of God abundantly fill your life today!
As we continue our focus on Philippians 2:5-11, the song of praise to Christ Jesus, we turn our attention to His Sacrifice for us. As I shared last week, this text was probably not original with the Apostle Paul, but was incorporated by the Holy Spirit into this letter to be the Word of God for us. It does read like the lines of a song, or even a creedal statement. When you break it down, this is easy to see. We will look this week at the first half of the text.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. Philippians 2:5-8
As we focus on this text what stands out is the fact that Jesus became something different than He was! The first thing we hear is that He was God, equal with the Father! He was eternal with God the Father, existing in the same form. Then He chose to do something. He chose to “empty Himself.”
Let me clarify something at this point! Attempting to plumb the depths of the incarnation of Jesus is just as mystifying as attempting to grasp every nuance of the Trinity. It is not possible for mere mortals to comprehend all the deep things of God.
Christ “emptied Himself” when He took on the form of a servant. It is important for us to remember how the great teachers of the past have explained this to us. Jesus did not cease to be God in any way. He chose to set aside His glory and assume human nature into Himself. He has always been God! In the womb of the virgin Mary the Second Person of the Trinity added humanity to His deity. Thus, He is from that point forward forever the God-Man.
Being God and equal to the Father in every way, the Son became a man and lived a mortal life for all the humans He had created. Jesus did not have to do this! He chose to do this for all people of all time and history. This is grace!
The living Jesus did was two-fold! First, He lived the sinless life we could not. This was to enable Him to become the perfect sacrifice for us on the cross. He was the holy One living the substitute life for all we who are unholy. Secondly, as He lived, Jesus was revealing to us the perfect life of submission and trust in the Father that each one of us should have as we live in this world. A life of dependance sounds demeaning to the people of our world, and even to us. We strive for independence, importance, and power. We seek these things by placing our trust in ourselves and the things of this world which enable us to achieve them. Jesus revealed in His life that we are to abandon the things of this world and place our lives in the Father’s hands and trust Him because He is good and trustworthy.
Ultimately the purpose of the Son of God becoming human is to do for us what God could not do as God alone! That sounds sacrilegious as I write it. There is something God cannot do? The answer is yes! God, as eternal God, Spirit being who has all glory and all power, God eternal cannot die.
God could not become a sacrifice for the sins of humanity! Therefore, God could not save His people from their sins, and He would have to watch as every single one of us was born, lived, died, and ultimately was judged by Him and cast into hell. We might ask, why didn’t God simply set aside His demand for perfection and holiness and let us enter heaven? The answer is a powerful one! If God set aside the requirement of perfection and holiness, then He would be denying His own nature and He would in that moment cease to be a Holy God. If He were to cease to be who He is by His own nature, then all that is would immediately cease to exist because God, as He is, would pass out of existence. Without God graciously sustaining all things, nothing would remain.
The humbling of Jesus enabled Him to become the perfect sacrifice which could truly pay for the sins of the world and open the way to enter into the presence of our holy God through faith in Him. The exclamation point comes in how Christ did this for us. It is stated emphatically in our text, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. Mankind in all his gross cruelty has rarely reached the point of horrific agony as when he created the cross as a method of execution. It was slow, painful, horrifying, and it afforded the opportunity for Jesus to bear the sins of the world and suffer the judgment of God upon those sins.
In the same way we cannot truly comprehend the magnitude and meaning of the Trinity or the Incarnation, we cannot truly grasp what it means that Jesus bore all the sins of all humanity and then suffered the eternal judgment of God and hell upon the cross and He did it all in six hours! It is beyond our ability as mere mortals to understand. We simply believe what has been revealed to us and praise God for His great grace.
Having suffered the unimaginable! Having been judged as a sinner and unworthy of God’s favor. Having been rejected, damned, and punished, Jesus died! The eternal Son of God, the favored One of the Father, the God who became man for all mankind, hund dead upon the cross. Sin was paid for as His holy blood was shed. The sacrifice was complete! Only one more enemy to defeat and victory would come in time! Three days’ time to be exact!
We await the victory together!
Pastor Russ
As we continue our focus on Philippians 2:5-11, the song of praise to Christ Jesus, we turn our attention to His Sacrifice for us. As I shared last week, this text was probably not original with the Apostle Paul, but was incorporated by the Holy Spirit into this letter to be the Word of God for us. It does read like the lines of a song, or even a creedal statement. When you break it down, this is easy to see. We will look this week at the first half of the text.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. Philippians 2:5-8
As we focus on this text what stands out is the fact that Jesus became something different than He was! The first thing we hear is that He was God, equal with the Father! He was eternal with God the Father, existing in the same form. Then He chose to do something. He chose to “empty Himself.”
Let me clarify something at this point! Attempting to plumb the depths of the incarnation of Jesus is just as mystifying as attempting to grasp every nuance of the Trinity. It is not possible for mere mortals to comprehend all the deep things of God.
Christ “emptied Himself” when He took on the form of a servant. It is important for us to remember how the great teachers of the past have explained this to us. Jesus did not cease to be God in any way. He chose to set aside His glory and assume human nature into Himself. He has always been God! In the womb of the virgin Mary the Second Person of the Trinity added humanity to His deity. Thus, He is from that point forward forever the God-Man.
Being God and equal to the Father in every way, the Son became a man and lived a mortal life for all the humans He had created. Jesus did not have to do this! He chose to do this for all people of all time and history. This is grace!
The living Jesus did was two-fold! First, He lived the sinless life we could not. This was to enable Him to become the perfect sacrifice for us on the cross. He was the holy One living the substitute life for all we who are unholy. Secondly, as He lived, Jesus was revealing to us the perfect life of submission and trust in the Father that each one of us should have as we live in this world. A life of dependance sounds demeaning to the people of our world, and even to us. We strive for independence, importance, and power. We seek these things by placing our trust in ourselves and the things of this world which enable us to achieve them. Jesus revealed in His life that we are to abandon the things of this world and place our lives in the Father’s hands and trust Him because He is good and trustworthy.
Ultimately the purpose of the Son of God becoming human is to do for us what God could not do as God alone! That sounds sacrilegious as I write it. There is something God cannot do? The answer is yes! God, as eternal God, Spirit being who has all glory and all power, God eternal cannot die.
God could not become a sacrifice for the sins of humanity! Therefore, God could not save His people from their sins, and He would have to watch as every single one of us was born, lived, died, and ultimately was judged by Him and cast into hell. We might ask, why didn’t God simply set aside His demand for perfection and holiness and let us enter heaven? The answer is a powerful one! If God set aside the requirement of perfection and holiness, then He would be denying His own nature and He would in that moment cease to be a Holy God. If He were to cease to be who He is by His own nature, then all that is would immediately cease to exist because God, as He is, would pass out of existence. Without God graciously sustaining all things, nothing would remain.
The humbling of Jesus enabled Him to become the perfect sacrifice which could truly pay for the sins of the world and open the way to enter into the presence of our holy God through faith in Him. The exclamation point comes in how Christ did this for us. It is stated emphatically in our text, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. Mankind in all his gross cruelty has rarely reached the point of horrific agony as when he created the cross as a method of execution. It was slow, painful, horrifying, and it afforded the opportunity for Jesus to bear the sins of the world and suffer the judgment of God upon those sins.
In the same way we cannot truly comprehend the magnitude and meaning of the Trinity or the Incarnation, we cannot truly grasp what it means that Jesus bore all the sins of all humanity and then suffered the eternal judgment of God and hell upon the cross and He did it all in six hours! It is beyond our ability as mere mortals to understand. We simply believe what has been revealed to us and praise God for His great grace.
Having suffered the unimaginable! Having been judged as a sinner and unworthy of God’s favor. Having been rejected, damned, and punished, Jesus died! The eternal Son of God, the favored One of the Father, the God who became man for all mankind, hund dead upon the cross. Sin was paid for as His holy blood was shed. The sacrifice was complete! Only one more enemy to defeat and victory would come in time! Three days’ time to be exact!
We await the victory together!
Pastor Russ
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