Philippians 2:7
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Good evening, church. It is good to be with you. As Greg said, our text is to be found in Philippians chapter 2, verse 7. I think it's on page 980 into 981 in your pew Bibles, if you would like to turn there. Have you ever been humbled? Right, we all have. If we were to line up everybody, bring them up on the stage, and they share their story of the most humbling thing that has ever happened to them, I'm sure it would be interesting, to say the least. To be humbled is a common human experience. We sometimes get humbled in small ways.
We trip in front of our friends and fall over. Sometimes we get humbled in large ways. Sin gets uncovered, or something along the lines of this. To be humbled is a common human experience. But a rare human experience is to meet a person who humbles themselves. A person who actually chooses humility. a person who chooses to confess sin, a person who chooses to put others ahead of themselves. That's super rare. It's one thing to be passively humbled. It's a whole other thing to embrace it.
But the hope of the Christian faith is not that man gets humbled. It's not that even man would humble himself, but that God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, the one who was and who is and who is to come, the Alpha and the Omega, would, in fact, humble himself and become man for us. And this is the truth that Paul is driving at, and it changes everything. So let's dive into this text and see what Paul is saying. I'm going to read verses 5 to 8 to set some context.
It's Philippians chapter 2, 5 to 8. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. I think the main idea of this passage is that the Son of God has humbled himself, so you too ought to humble yourselves.
The Son of God has humbled himself, so you too ought to humble yourselves. I want to break that down to two points. Point number one, the humiliation of the Son of God. Point number two, the humble walk of the Christian life. Look, this is Philippians chapter two. There is so much stuff in here. Many of you will know this passage. Many of you will know that there's tons of theological truth in here. There's all sorts of every single word, every single phrase gets so much treatment in all the books. It's crazy all that's going on here. And we can't pull everything apart.
So this is what we're going to do. We're going to get in a tank. We're going to drive across this theological minefield. We're going to blow up a bunch of mines as we go along. We might even swerve and try to push a heretic off the road. We're going to try to do all that tonight in kind of short form to get to the point of the humility of Christ. So let's dive into this. Okay, so the easiest way, the best way to understand what is going on in verse 7 is to contrast it with the things going on in verse 6. And there's three quick contrasts that will help you understand verse 7. Contrast number one. Look up in verse 6. You see the words form of God.
Jesus Christ was in the form of God. Look back down to verse 7. He took the form of a servant. Contrast, form of God, form of servant. The word form there is like morphe, mighty morph and power rangers, that word, morph. It just means who he appeared as, who he was, right? So he's a form of God and he's form of servant. Contrast number one. Contrast number two. He was in the form of God. Verse 7, he took on the form of a servant.
One is stating who he was. And in Paul, all the way back into eternity, he was this, but he took on a servant. He voluntarily took that upon himself. Form of God, form of servant, was form of God, took on form of servant. Third contrast. Notice in verse 6 again, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. Okay, note the assumption. He did not count equality with God a thing to be held on to for his own advantage or something like this.
Well, that assumes that he is equal with God. The text is clearly teaching that he is actually equal with God. And that gets contrasted with in verse 7, that he was born in the likeness of men. Likeness of men there should make you think of like Genesis chapter 2, right? Man is made in the form, or not, made in the image and likeness of God. Here we have the Son of God taking on the likeness of man. It's a complete reversal. Three things. Form of God, form of servant. Was in the form of God, took on the form of a servant, equal with God, born in the likeness of man.
What's the point? Well, the point is what they sang at VBS this past week. He's totally God and he's totally man. A sloth, I think, was singing that this past week. This is apparent to all creation, right? Jesus is God, and he is man. Full stop on both. But that is not the point of this text. I mean, that's true, and we have to hold that. We have to hold that with everything that we are as Christians. But the point of this text is those first three words in verse 7. But he emptied himself. That's the point. How does he get from form of God to form of a servant?
Well, he had to empty himself. And that is what Paul is trying to show us, the humiliation, the condescension of the Son of God. By the word emptied there, just to be very clear, that in no way means that he lost his divinity. It in no way means that he set aside divinity or poured it out or something along the lines of that. It's all totally messed up. It's not right. You understand he emptied himself by the next phrase, right? You say, how, Paul? How did he empty himself? Well, by taking the form of a servant. The definition of what it meant for God to empty himself, for the Son of God to empty himself, was to take on the form of a servant.
In other words, it's a complete condescension. It's a complete humiliation for the Son of God to do this. All right, that's the heavy lifting. Our tank's on the other side of the field. We blew up some things. We ran our hair to take off. Okay, so what does this mean? Okay, a couple things to think about with this. First, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is not just some cute doctrine that you just get to put a baby on a Christmas card from time to time and ship it off. And it's not just sitting there to be just an encouragement to us, as if it dignifies humanity in some way.
It does. I don't want to diminish that. But in this text, it's trying to show how God went from so high to come so low. Right? It's like, this is a silly illustration, but it's like if I had some power in me to like become a worm or something like this, and you were holding me and talking to me, and you're like, hey, I'm really glad that you dignified like wormhood. I'd be like, okay, yeah, but do you see the condescension? Do you see what I went from to what I became? Now I'm a creature. I'm a creation. And to descend down to wormhood is humble enough. But for God himself, for the son of God himself to take on human flesh, that's condescension and humility like you and I have never even begun to imagine. This is who he is, and this is what he has done. He has humbled himself. Do you think of him like this? Do you understand how much Christ came down for us? Second, the Son of God does not merely take on the form of, quote, man, right? He takes on the form of a servant, and this
is what Greg was getting at this morning. This is what we're going to be seeing in Isaiah as we continue on. He took on the form of a servant. And this is massively huge. This is huge. I mean, come on, at least give the Son of God the dignity. If he's going to take on being man, at least give him the dignity to be born in a palace. Or at least give him the dignity of having the highest officials of Jerusalem attend his birth. At least have the best doctors. At least have the temple choir follow him around for all of his days just singing his praises. Can we at least give him some dignity. No.
No, let his birth be in a manger. Place him in a feeding trough. Let's have smelly shepherds be the ones that come to him. Let's have him grow up and have his kingship rejected. Have him be a man without a home. Don't even give him a place to lay his head. Make him acquainted with sorrow. Make him acquainted with grief. Mock him. Put thorns on his head. Strike him. Whip him. Spit on him. Strip him. Crucify him. Crucify him. Behold the servant of the Lord. do you see what Paul's saying here? When the Son of God came, he didn't just come to the highest that man had to offer. He came as low as he could. Because in going that low, he can catch us as he comes back up. He comes beneath us so that he can rescue us. And Paul continues on saying that he comes even to the point of death on a cross, which we know as Christians means that he came to die to forgive us of our sins. Look, this is the gospel that Christians preach. We preach that God has become man and humbled himself, taking the punishment that we deserve so that we can be
forgiven. And if you're not a believer here today, I just want to ask a simple question. What in the world in your life has ever loved you in that sort of humbling way? What sort of thing in your life, money, sex, whatever, has ever loved you in that way and given itself for you in this way. Christ has come down to rescue a people and to lift them back up. It's incredible. We should praise him, the suffering servant. But once again, the point of this text is not strictly salvific, although it is that. The point of this text is to look at Christ in his humility and to be changed by. In other words, to take on his mind. And that will take us to our second point, the humble walk of the Christian life. So why is this, you know, you can't really see it in the ESV here, but this is a poem, maybe an ancient poem or poem or something that, sorry, that, you know, that Paul
puts in here, right? And the question is, why does he do it? Is he just trying to show us he's totally God, he's totally man, so that we can just have a bunch of blogs that we fight over about how this all works together? Is that what he is doing here? Well, no. He puts this poem in here to show us the humility of Christ so that we would have, verse 5, the mind of Christ. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Jesus Christ. And his argument is this. He's arguing from a greater to a lesser, if the son of God condescended all the way down to man, then whatever thing you need to do that is humbling in life for you right now is just honestly a cakewalk compared to what he did. It's honestly so small compared to what he did. So Paul will say, for example, in verse 4, let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
And you just have to say, like, that's, at first blush, I mean, that just sounds insane. Like, I'm so interested in myself all the time. And Paul says, well, if Christ counted other people's interests greater than his own, then you all do, too. I mean, can you imagine standing on Judgment Day and you're trying to make some argument to God that your interests were actually that worth protecting? That your interests were actually greater than the people's around you? And in walks the Son of God with holes in his hands and holes in his feet and a hole in his side.
Where's your argument? It's nothing. It just disappears. He counted others' interests as greater than his own. And we ought to as Christians do it as well. Verse 3, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. And you just stop and you say, Paul, please don't talk like this. can't you just say just arbitrarily love one another and we just call it that? No. Christians are people who in humility count others more significant than our own selves because the Son of God counted us more significant than his own life.
But you know, what's so interesting about this passage is that the main command that spurs this whole thing is verse 2. Complete my joy. Paul says, complete my joy by being of the same mind. So hold on, here's the logic. Okay, Paul says, I want to be happy, and I want to be happy in the unity of the church, and in order to be happy in the unity of the church, the church, the people of God, must in humility count others more significant than themselves, and they must also look not only to their own interests, but to the interests of others. Well, what that means is that they must have the mind of Christ. What is the mind of Christ? It is the Son of God becoming man and taking on death for us. And Paul says, look, if you run that chain, if you take on that mind and you start loving others in this way and start practicing humility in your life, that will eventually run all the way to joy. That will run up the chain to joy, specifically here the joy of Paul, but there's so much that we could say about this. I mean, do we want to be happy in the unity
of the church here. Do we want this? Then we must put on the mind of Christ. We must consider other people's interests more important than ours. Or even more so, Paul is an apostle. He's a pastor. And what could bring pastors and elders of churches more joy than a church that in humility loves one another, puts one another before themselves, walks in unity together? That's a gift, church, that we can give our pastors. It's a sweet and wonderful thing, but there's more here.
There's more here. How many marriages could be healed if these things were practiced? How many broken relationships could be healed if these things were practiced, if love was put on instead of contention? This verse, if you're not convicted, you're not reading the passage. This is meant to convict us. But it's also meant to encourage us. Because like I started with, the ground of the Christian faith is not that we will get humble enough, not that we'll do all these things perfectly enough to build up some perfect unity in the church. The ground of the Christian faith is that Christ has done it for us. And he went to death, even death on a cross. You should turn to him and trust him. You know, the end of all this though, all this love and unity and wonderful doctrine is actually verse 9, and I'll end with this. Therefore, God has highly exalted Christ and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should
bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The end of this entire passage is the glory of the Son of God, the glory of God the Father himself, the praise and worship and adoration of the saints for all eternity. And it's like Paul is saying, do you want that? Do you desire that? Well, you can have a foretaste of that in the here and now. We can have a foretaste of that as we walk in humility and love and unity with one another, and we will see joy, but ultimately we will see his face and worship him. Let's pray.
Father, we stand amazed that your son, your only begotten son, would become man for us. And it just makes us realize, Father, that we trust in such fleeting things. We chase after such small things when the big thing is Christ and his goodness to us and his death and his resurrection. Father, we pray, Father, that you would make us a church that has his mind. that you would make us a church that has his humility, that has his love that you would give us joy and that we would see you on that great day together singing your praise Father we pray all this in Jesus name, Amen