A young seminarian was excited about preaching his first sermon in his home church. After three years in seminary, he felt adequately prepared, and when he was introduced to the congregation, he walked boldly to the pulpit, his head high, radiating self-confidence.
But he stumbled reading the Scriptures and then lost his train of thought halfway through the message. He began to panic, so he did the safest thing: He quickly ended the message, prayed, and walked dejectedly from the pulpit, his head down, his self-assurance gone.
Later, one of the godly elders whispered to the embarrassed young man, “If you had gone up to the pulpit the way you came down, you might have come down the way you went up.” The elder was right. God still resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
Paul has just shared his desire to see the unity of the Philippian church strengthened in order that they might endure conflict from a hostile culture for the sake of the gospel (1:27-30). Paul showed the relationship between unity and humility (2:1-4). And now in https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Php2.5-11 (Philippians 2:5-11), he gives them a proper motivation for humility, namely the example of Christ.
The humility-exaltation motif throughout Scripture finds its climax in this passage. Consider how this restructures everything you think and do. As we better understand the mind of Christ, we begin to adopt that mind for ourselves.
The esteem that we long to receive does not come through self-assured promotion of our own accomplishments.
Spurgeon, “The higher a man is in grace, the lower he will be in his own estimation. Not because he is comparing himself with people, but because he is comparing himself with the Lord God.”
Read https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Php2.5-11 (Philippians 2:5-11).
The Depths of Humility (5-7) Christ is an example of the humble mind Paul exhorts us to have (5).
Jesus “was in the form of God” (6), clothed in preincarnate divinity. Before entering creation as an infant, the Son shared divine glory with the Father and Holy Spirit. Jesus “possessed inwardly and displayed outwardly the very nature of God himself” (Motyer).
We see this explicitly in https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Jn1.1-2 (John 1:1-2), “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” And again in https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Jn17.5 (John 17:5), “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” And finally in https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Heb1.3 (Heb. 1:3), “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature...”
Jesus was God, but he did not exploit his position for his own advantage. He possessed equality with God, but He emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant (7). In what sense did Jesus “empty” himself?
1. He did NOT empty himself of his deity or any of the essential attributes of his deity. He did not cease to be God, even temporarily. He did NOT exchange his deity for humanity. It is not that Christ “exchanged the form of God for the form of a slave, but he manifested the form of God in the form of a slave” (F.F. Bruce).
2. He willingly laid aside the independent use of his divine privileges, taking the form of a servant.
a. He actually became a servant. As much servant as he is God. “It is not ‘Of what did he empty himself?’ but ‘Into what did he empty himself?’” (Motyer). “It’s subtraction by addition. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant” (Derek Thomas; Sinclair Ferguson).
b. He received a servant’s treatment his entire life. He experienced the limitations of the flesh (i.e., eat, sleep, pain, suffering). He took on a role of poverty. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become...
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