Obscure Glory and the Reigning King

Introduction

Royalty is fascinating to us. Now, us Americans appreciate royalty more from a distance with the whole Revolutionary war and such, but it’s fascinating nonetheless. Every time one of the princes of Great Brittain gets married or has a child or buys a shirt, it makes the news. The broadcast of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding had double the number of viewers than JFK’s funeral. And, one of the most fascinating part of royalty is the amount of privilege and the number of rights that come from them just being who they are, just being born into a particular family at a particular time. They could’ve been born into Nance’s Creek or Afghanistan, and their lives would have been one thing. But, they were born into Buckingham Palace and so they are the recognized sovereign over the one of the most powerful nations on earth.

Can you imagine what the news coverage would be like if when Prince Charles ascended the throne to be king he voluntarily renounced all of his rights and privileges as king? What if he sold all of the residences under his control and the officially classified priceless crown jewels in order to set up a trust that would provide financial support for worldwide orphan-care? It was be news so staggering, so unimaginable that we would want to know his end game. We’d want to know what the real story was. No king would do that willfully and without coercion. We wouldn’t even write a story like that because it’s too unbelievable. Except, that’s the story of Jesus. As we’ll see this morning, Jesus willfully forfeited his own rights and obscured his own glory that we might be rescued by him.

God’s Word

Read

Theological Warheads

v. 5 “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus” This is one of the richest theological texts in the whole Bible, and it was written as a response to what would appear to us to be the most mundane of problems. Philippi was, by all accounts, a seemingly healthy church, but they struggled with pettiness, pride, and selfishness. If we were to boil it down to a single word, the problem at Philippi was a humility problem, as in the lack thereof. Their conceit and selfishness had led to division and ineffectiveness in the church. Yet, selfishness is a sin that we’re so comfortable with that we hardly even worry about it. We think, “Everybody struggles with wanting their way and put their interests ahead of others” and somehow let ourselves off the hook. But, it was a problem so big, a root so toxic that Paul would blow it apart with a theological warhead.

From Paul’s perspective, the problem of selfishness and pride and divisions in the body of Christ was the result of Christ’s body operating without Christ’s mindset. This is what he’s getting at in verse 5 when he says “Have this mind (attitude) among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.” If you are in Christ, if you are abiding in him, it should be apparent in your attitude and mindset with one another. That is, if you are truly one body united beneath one head (namely, Christ), then Christ’s “body” should have Christ’s “mindset”. They should think as Christ thinks and see each other as Christ sees each one and treat each other as Christ has treated each one. So, in order to blow this dam of self-importance away Paul launches this theological warhead that we might look away from ourselves and gaze upon Christ in pursuit of living as Christ. He does this by painting a series of portraits of Christ (headline) and laying them side-by-side that we might see how they build upon one another to reveal the glory of Christ.

Jesus is the “Son of God”.

v. 6 “who, though he was in the form of God” The first portrait that we see of Jesus is that Jesus is the “Son of God”. Many scholars believe that this is either a first century hymn or poem, and the author of the poem, whether Paul or not, arranges the words in a way that gives it a poetic beauty yet can be a bit confusing to us now. He starts by saying that Jesus ‘was in the form of God’. For us reading that, we might be tempted to become afraid or nervous and think that he’s saying that Jesus looked something like God but wasn’t God. This is actually the opposite of what’s being said. The word ‘form’ is used here to describe something that is the same in essence, even if different in presentation. Think of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly. It’s the same essential being, but a different presentation. Think of Jesus at the transfiguration. He transformed into his own power and glory, but He is the same in essence nonetheless. So, this is to say that In every way that the “Father” is God, “Jesus” is God. He is the Son of God. He is God now, and He has always been God. He is pre-existent and pre-eminent. He omnipresent, omniscient, omni-sapient, and omnipotent. All things that have been made have been made by him and through him and for him. He has existed in all eternity as happy, mighty, and satisfied. He is invulnerable, invincible, and unmatchable. He is transcendent, yet imminent; fearsome, yet loving; rich, yet benevolent. He has been surrounded by creatures of worship singing of his perfection and goodness since before the foundations of the earth and has existed in perfect relationship with both the Father and the Spirit forever. He is, as the great council of Nicea wrote 1700 years ago, “begotten of the Father, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” He has now and has always possessed every privilege, every attribute, and every prerogative of deity, not because He’s earned it and not because He deserves, but solely because it’s who He is. It’s his being, his nature, his divinity.

Jesus Forfeited His Rights

v. 6 “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” But, if all of that is true, what are we to make of what we read next. He says, “though he was in the form of God, (he) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” This appears confusing, yet it is in every way remarkable. The key to understanding this is the word ‘grasped.’ You have to remember that these words are building upon each other and that they are written to address a practical problem. So, what He’s saying is this: Jesus was fully God in every way that God is God and deserving of all of the rights, privileges, and prerogatives of God, but Jesus, though rightfully deserving, did not consider those rights and privileges as being something worth ‘grasping’, clinging to, holding onto. Jesus was entitled to his own preferences, yet prayed in the Garden, “not my will, but your will be done.” He had the right to never know sadness, embarrassment, or pain. He had the right to judge and never be judged, to be served and never serve, to have and to never give. He had the right to know joy without the interruption of depression, relationship apart from the wounds of betrayal, and life without the sting of death. Yet, Jesus “forfeited” his rights. He did not insist upon his very own prerogatives.

Self-importance Won’t Survive Jesus’ Glory

APPLICATION: What a searing picture for a self-centered, self-important church. Brothers and sisters, do you see how our selfish ambitions and vain conceit run and hide from the glory of Christ like a cockroach from the light? They cannot survive the glory of Jesus. We insist upon our rights and preferences as though sinners can be entitled, and Christ, who is worthy of all of praise and all preference and all prerogative, chooses not to hold onto what is rightly his. We insist that the church is about us even though it’s not. We evaluate the sermon instead of applying it, critique the ministries rather than serving them, and we are offended by one another rather than loving one another. But, Jesus lived as though the world was not centered around him, even though it was him who held together every molecule of water that fills the Pacific. Church family, come into the presence of Jesus this morning, and humble yourself. Your self-centeredness and “Self-importance” won’t survive Jesus’ glory.

Jesus is the “Son of Man”.

v. 7 “but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” The second portrait that see of Christ is that Jesus is the “Son of Man”. The Son of Man was Jesus’ favorite term for himself, referring to himself in the gospels more as the Son of Man than any other name. It meant that He was the seed of Eve that had come to crush the head of the Serpent. He was the Son of Adam that had come to obey and redeem the world where Adam had disobeyed and condemned the world. That is, it meant that Jesus had come to ‘empty himself’, or to ‘make himself nothing’ as the NIV puts it. There’s been a lot of questions over the course of the last couple of hundred years as to what Paul meant by Jesus ‘emptying himself.’ What did He empty from himself? Did He empty his omnipotence, his omnipresence, or his omniscience? Blasphemy! The world was held together all 33 years of Jesus’ life, and Paul makes equally clear that Christ holds all things together in . Did He empty himself of his awareness that He was in fact God? Why then did he accept the worship of men and tell sinners they were forgiven and transfigure in his power and glory before three of his disciples? But, Jesus emptied himself of his “dignity”, not his “deity”. He took ‘the form of a servant.’ And, a man that becomes a slave is no less a man and is no less himself. Humble as his work is, his value remains the same. And, Jesus, becoming a servant, did not cease to be himself and did not cease to have the value that is his. Rather, in adding the nature of a man to the nature of the divine, He willingly set aside the privileges of Lordship that were intrinsically his. He ‘emptied’ the fullness of God into the brokenness of humanity. He ‘emptied’ the invincibility of God into the fragile flesh of man. He ‘emptied’ the eternal into the temporal. He ‘emptied’ the adoration of the angels for the rejection of men. He ‘emptied’ his command of angel armies to wash the feet of his own betrayer. ‘He made himself nothing!’

Jesus was Perfectly Man

v. 8 ‘he humbled himself’ As much Jesus was like mankind, He was different, too. And, the difference between the man Jesus and every other man was not that Jesus was not entirely man or only half man. The difference was that Jesus was perfectly man. Jesus was who God had always designed men to be. This is the subtle hint of the phrase ‘being born in the likeness of men.’ It’s that He’s the same as them in essence but different than them in purity. Jesus has a human nature apart from a sin nature. The Son of Man did not inherit the sin of man. Nothing better illustrates the perfection of Jesus’ humanity than his voluntary restraint of privilege and power. That Jesus volunteered is twice emphasized: ‘he emptied himself’ and ‘he humbled himself.’ That is, Jesus didn’t abandon his privilege because he was compelled to do so. Jesus abandoned his rights and privileges because he wanted to do so. Did you know that there’s not a single instance in all of the gospels in which Jesus used his deity to his own advantage? Oh, it is plain as day that He had knowledge and power that transcends a mere human nature. He multiplies bread and fish and feeds thousands. He tells a Samaritan woman at the well everything that’s happened in her past even though they’ve just met. A woman that had been bleeding for years touches the edge of his garment in the midst of a thronging crowd and is healed instantly. And, Jesus knows that the power has went out from him and that she has been made well. But, the Son of Man has no place to lay his head, and He does not make himself a house. You see, Jesus is a “man” as much as He is “God”, and He lived as a man. He obscured his divinity by emptying himself as a lowly, homeless servant.

Jesus Became a Curse

v. 8 “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” In fact, he so emptied himself and made himself nothing that Jesus became not only a “man”, but a “curse”. He so renounced his rights as the Son of God that the Son of Man lowered himself upon a tree that bore the curse of all men. You see, we cannot think of him as a servant without thinking of him as the Suffering Servant from . The one man, Adam, through his disobedience had cursed us all, and now the one man, Jesus, was going to redeem us all by obeying the Law perfectly and the will of God sacrificially. As God, He could have aborted his own mission at any point. He says himself in that he could call down legions of Angels to destroy his oppressors. But, as a man, as our substitute, He did not call on the forces of heaven to his own advantage. Instead, every day, he continued to voluntarily ‘empty himself.’ As a servant filled with shame, He was nailed to a tree without raising a single word to his own defense. Isaiah told us that the Suffering Servant would be like this. In , he wrote: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before it shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” The sacrifice that Isaiah wrote about was the first consenting sacrifice that we read about in the Bible. To offer a lamb or a bull, the priest would have to constrain and hold it still to keep it from running away. But, the Son of Man didn’t live for his own interests, and He didn’t live for his own comfort. The Son of Man spared the lives of his condemners and prayed for his own executioners that they might recognize him in his obscure glory hanging on the cross and be saved by the grace that He offered them. Jesus emptied himself, and He did it willingly. Jesus humbled himself, and He did it sacrificially.

Bring Your Pettiness to the Cross

APPLICATION: So, brothers and sisters, Paul is beckoning you, and he’s beckoning me to bring our petty complaints into view of the cross. Rather than be upset when we aren’t as loved as we think we should be, he calls us to visit the cross so that we might instead see to it that we are loving others well. Instead of being frustrated when something changes that we didn’t want to change, he calls us to visit the cross that we count the needs of others as more significant than our own preferences. He calls us to visit the cross so that we might be called away from our pity parties and grumbling and gossiping and venting to our high position as servants in the Kingdom of the Most High God.

Jesus is the “Reigning King”.

v. 9 “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” And, that brings us to our final portrait of Christ in this great hymn: Jesus is the “Reigning” King. If you would have seen Jesus nailed to the cross, He wouldn’t have looked anything like God. In fact, He would’ve hardly looked like a man. The Philippians were Roman citizens, and the cross was so shameful that they were not even legally allowed to be crucified, even if condemned. But, as lowly as He was, as mortal as His death proved, Jesus was going to be raised. Jesus’ glory would not remain “obscure”. In fact within a few weeks, Jesus would ascend to the right hand of the Father so that a couple of decades later, Paul could write this in the past tense. “God HAS highly exalted him.” Jesus had his crown, and He had his throne. His shame had passed. His humiliation was accomplished. An eternal era of glory was going to be ushered in. And, he quotes from with one slight change. Oh, he wants to see the glory of this and worship. He wants us to see glory of this and be humbled. says, “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.” And, here Paul changes it ever so slightly as to say, “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” That is, Jesus, though a man who emptied himself, is the risen and reigning King. He is the God of the Old Testament that parted the seas and showered the bread and saved a Nation, and He is the God of the New Covenant raising up churches like Philippi and Iron City.

Your Glory Won’t Remain Obscure

APPLICATION: Jesus’ glory will not remain “obscure”, and yours won’t “either”. So, in the here and now, humble yourselves. Count others more significant than yourselves. Look out for the interests of others and not your own interests. And, as much as it puts you out, as much as it costs you, as much as makes you uncomfortable, the obscurity of your discomfort will one day be transformed into the glory of an eternal crown in the presence of reigning King! That’s the promise made secure by a crucified Servant that’s now the reigning King.