Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

My son Emery was saved and started following Jesus in January of this year.

It has been such a blessing to have conversation with him about his faith.

One morning, a few weeks after his salvation, he was eating breakfast before going to school.

He said, “Dad, there are just two things I still don’t understand.”

I said, “only two, huh?”

He said, “yes, how does Jesus live in our hearts?

and how can God be three in One?”

I laughed and said, “You’re doing pretty good if those are the only two questions you have!”

Scripture teaches many glorious truths.

Some of them are easy to understand.

Some of them we wrestle with and believe by faith.

Many times we see these truths side-by-side.

That is the case in our passage today.

Teaching

Philippians 2:5-11 has been identified by some commentators as the most important and most difficult passage to interpret in Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

We will wrestle with some of the difficult sections today, but the over all message is clear:

We look most like Christ when we serve others and humbly obey God.

A life marked by these two traits declares that Jesus is Lord and glorifies the Father.

So let’s dive into this passage today:

Let’s start with the structure.

This passage comes right after the verses Pastor Matt preached last week:

Phil 2:4

The Apostle Paul is going to give a few examples of what it looks like to consider others more significant than ourselves and to look to their interest.

We are going to look at the example of Christ today.

In the weeks to come we’ll look at the example of Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus.

Paul uses verse 5 as a transition to look verse to show the example of Christ.

He then has what many call the “Christ Hymn,” which breaks nicely into two sections.

The first section deals with Christ humbling Himself, with the second dealing with the exaltation of Christ.

One commentator puts it this way:

(William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1066.)

“Let the same kind of thinking dominate you as dominated Christ Jesus,”

This verse helps us see that Paul’s main concern is that we imitate Christ.

We imitate Him through unity with Him.

We have the mind of Christ at the point of salvation.

We are joined with Him, but our thinking has to shift as the Spirit renews our mind.

Paul encouraged the Philippians here in a similar manner to how he encouraged the Romans in Romans 12:1-2

We all want to know the will of God in our lives, we all want to know what is good, acceptable, and perfect.

The first thing Paul points us to in Christ’s example is his humility.

1.

The Mind of Christ chooses service over self-exaltation.

One of the difficult things about Jesus to understand is that he is both fully God and fully man.

One rapper says it this way:

I know it’s deep but when you peep you’ll find it’s dense

Jesus both God and man- two hundred percents

yeah Fully divine, fully human

Introducing the hypostatic union

(https://www.shailinnemusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Lyrical-Theology-Pt-1.pdf:

Hypostatic Union)

Jesus is 100% God always has been and always will be.

In his incarnation, when He was born as a man, he added to His 100% God a human nature.

Jesus is 100% God and 100% man.

For you math Wizs out there you are trying to figure out how 200% dwells in one being.

Since my son Emery only had those two questions, he must have this one figured it out, ask him.

There is a mystery to it, if we could understand everything about God then He wouldn’t be God we would.

God isn’t just smarter than we are, He’s infinitely smarter.

We will learn many things in heaven, but we will always be learning something new about God—forever!

Two questions we need to look at briefly:

What does it mean that Jesus didn’t count equality with God a thing to be grasped in verse 6?

In what way did Christ “empty himself” in verse 7?

Remember that Jesus is fully God and fully man.

Paul is showing us how Jesus did not exalt Himself.

As the second member of the Trinity, Jesus is coequal with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

They all three share all the same attributes in one God.

Paul is showing us that Jesus didn’t hold tightly to all his rights.

He didn’t use His infinite power, wisdom, strength, etc for his advantage.

You could read the verse this way:

who, continuing to be in the form of God, did not consider equality with God “something to be used to his own advantage,”

(Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), 404.)

But that still leaves the second question:

In what way did Jesus “empty himself” in verse 7?

We know He continued to be God even during his time on earth, so He didn’t cease to be God, so what’s Paul talking about?

This verse has the sense of he deprived or “divested himself of his prestige and privileges”.

(William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 539.)

Paul doesn’t leave us hanging.

How did he “empty himself”?

So Jesus emptied Himself by becoming a servant and by being born.

Listen to how Thomas Schreiner explains:

The emptying consisted not in the removal of Christ’s deity but rather in the addition of his humanity.

Paul uses paradoxical language by describing Christ’s emptying in terms of adding.

(Schreiner, Thomas R. New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ.

Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2008, 325.)

So verse 7 could read:

but “divested himself of his prestige or privileges” by taking a form of a slave, by being born in the likeness of men;

So Jesus chose service over self-exaltation.

So as we have the mind of Christ we will choose service over self-exaltation.

2. The Mind of Christ chooses humble obedience.

Jesus not only came as a servant but he obediently went to the Cross.

Jesus could have came as a servant and then been crowned king of the world!

He certainly is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

But Jesus came with the specific purpose to die in the place of sinners.

Jesus lived a sinless life, obedient to God’s will in every way.

Jesus died a death where He took on the sins of humanity.

Through Adam, we are all sinners, but through Christ the many who will trust in Jesus alone for salvation will be made righteous.

Paul doesn’t want us to miss what kind of death Christ died:

a death on a cross!

One commentator says of these verses:

“Here is where the one who was “equal with God” has most fully revealed the truth about God: that God is love and that his love expresses itself in self-sacrifice — cruel, humiliating death on a cross — for the sake of those he loves.”

(Fee, Gordon D. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.

Edition Unstated.

Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1995, 217.)