PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11 THE MIND OF CHRIST

 

INTRODUCTION

 In verses 1-4 of this second chapter, Paul wrote about "The Unity

   That Produces Joy", in which he described:

1. The MOTIVATION for having this unity
2. The NATURE of this unity
3. The ATTITUDES necessary to have this unity

 In describing the latter, he called upon the Philippians to:

2. Do nothing through selfish ambition or conceit
3. Have lowliness of mind in which they esteem others better than themselves
4. Look out for the interests of others, and not only those of their own
5. In verse 5, Paul continues to exhort them to have "this mind" (the attitudes of verses 3-4), pointing out that this is also the "mind of Christ"
6. In verses (6-11), Paul defines the "mind of Christ" (or the attitude of Christ

 

1. v6 Jesus did not have SELFISH AMBITION OR CONCEIT

He abandoned a Sovereign Position

1. PRIOR TO HIS INCARNATION or coming in human flesh
2. Jesus was "in the form of God" The word form in Greek is morphe- the essence or literally the essential nature of something
3. In other words, He has always existed as God – John 8:56 "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad." 57 Then the Jews said to Him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?" 58 Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM."
4. John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, "This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me. 16 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Col 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

2. He was also "equal with God"

     John 1:1 3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

1John 5:7 For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.

 V6 YET CHRIST DID NOT CONSIDER SUCH EQUALITY "ROBBERY"...

1. Literally, "a thing to be grasped"; that is, something to be laid hold of, and retained jealously

Isaiah 14:12  "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! 13 For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ 15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit.

2. The "glory" of equality with God which Christ enjoyed from eternity was not something He felt like He HAD to cling on to
3. A true demonstration of a lack of selfish ambition and conceit on the part of our Lord!

 

1. Jesus LOOKED OUT FOR THE INTERESTS OF OTHERS (7-8)

He took a servant’s place and approached a sinful people

 WHEN CHRIST BECAME FLESH...

   V7   1. He "made Himself of no reputation" John 4:24 "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

1. Some versions say, "emptied Himself” this is the Kenosis or self-emptying

Jn 17:5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

First of all, He gave up His heavenly glory. He gave up His heavenly glory. He dove into the water and went all the way down to the black cold water to the slime and the ooze of this world. And that's why He cries out in John 17 and says, "Father, restore Me to the glory I had with You before the world began." Glory when He was face to face with God. He gave up His glory for the muck of this earth. He gave up the worship of angels, the adoring presence of angels for the spittle of men. He gave up all of the shining brilliance of the glories of heaven for the dark prison where He was kept before His death. Yes, He emptied out His glory in that sense.

Secondly, He emptied Himself of independent authority. I don't understand how the trinity operates. I know it operates in perfect harmony. In addition, I know that in perfect harmony, there would be no discord and no disagreement and that would be the way it is in the trinity. Nonetheless, in some way mysterious to my mind, which I will never understand, He completely submitted Himself to the will of the Father. I will never understand that and I don't want you to even think about it too long or you'll be under the bed saying the Greek alphabet because it does not compute. However, the point is He laid aside a voluntary exercise of His own will and He learned to be a servant and He submitted Himself. In addition, He was obedient, it says in verse 8. He was obedient. I don't understand that but He was obedient. In the garden He says, "Not My will but Thine be done." He learned obedience by the things He suffered, Hebrews 5 says. He said I am...I am come to do the Father's will, John 5:30. Therefore, He set aside His independent authority.

Thirdly, He set aside the prerogatives of His deity. Alternatively, He set aside the voluntary use of His attributes. You say, "Did He stop being omniscient?" No. "Did He stop being omnipresent?" No. "Did He stop being unchangeable God?" No. He didn't stop being anything; He just didn't use those attributes. Some have said He gave up the prerogatives of His deity. I know He was omniscient. He knew everything because He knew what was in the heart of a man, John 2. I know He was omnipresent because He saw Nathaniel when He wasn't even where Nathaniel was in His human form. He didn't give up any of His deity but He gave up the free exercise of those attributes and limited Himself to the point where in Matthew 24:36 He says, "No man knows when the Son of Man will come," not men and not even the Son of Man. He restricted His omniscience. So He gave up the rights of His deity.

Fourthly, He gave up His personal riches...He gave up His personal riches. Though He was rich yet for your sakes He became poor, 2 Corinthians 8:9, that you through His poverty might be made rich. He became terribly poor in this world...terribly poor. He had nothing...nothing.

And then lastly, , He gave up a favorable relationship to God. "He who knew no sin was made sin for us...He who knew no sin was made sin for us." And as a result, He says, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He gave up a favorable relationship to God.

Though He gave up the full expression of his heavenly glory and the full enjoyment of it, though He gave up independent authority and exercise of His own will and learned obedience, though He gave up the prerogatives to express all of the majesty of all of His attributes which He could have done, by the way, and though He gave up personal riches for the poverty of this world and though He gave up a favorable relationship with God when He was made sin, He never ceased to be God, never. He remained fully God. He remained fully God.

 He took upon Himself "the form of a servant" – same word Morphe, literally became a servant. John 13:3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, 4 rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. 5 After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.

Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

• He came in the likeness of men He was the same as a man, but different in that He was sinless

Likeness means He was truly human, wept, got hungry, tired in all ways like us but without sin

1. He could experience their temptations and sufferings –

He 2:17-18 17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.

V8 And being found in appearance as a man – He looked like us because He was like us.

He "humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross"

Galatians 3:13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree")

1. DO WE HAVE "THE MIND OF CHRIST"?
2. We do, if we are looking out for the interests of others

• We do, if we are willing to humble ourselves, even sacrifice ourselves if it be in the best interests of others

 1Jn 3:16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

III. Jesus is HIGHLY EXALTED BY GOD (9-11) – He ascended as a Supreme Prince

V9 JESUS is a good example of Matthew 23:12:  "He that humbles himself shall be exalted"

1Peter 5:6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time,

2. For God has highly exalted Jesus

By giving Him "the name LORD which is above every name"

Ac 4:12 "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

V10 that at His name "every knee should bow...that every tongue should confess" He is Lord! -

2Th 1:10 when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe, because our testimony among you was believed.

V11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 Romans 8:18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

 We have seen in this passage that "The Mind Of Christ" involves...

1. Humility
2. Obedience
3. Sacrifice
4. Great Reward

 It was Christmas Eve in the Midwest. There was a man who had been in a family where his wife and his children were Christians but he was not. And he rejected it. He sat home that Christmas eve in front of the fire. It was cold out and the snow was blowing. His wife and the little children had gone to the chapel in the nearby village for a Christmas Eve service to honor the Christ they loved. He sat by the fire reading the paper.

All of a sudden, he heard a loud and repeated thumping. He thought someone was banging on the door. He went to the door and opened it but found no one was there. By the time he got settled back into his chair, he heard it again and again. And he was bewildered as to what was causing it until he realized that something seemed to be smashing against the window. And so he went to the drapes and he pulled the drapes aside and to his amazement, a flock of birds was flying into the window. A snowstorm, you see, had blown in. And the birds had been caught away from their shelter and they couldn't find their way back. They couldn't fight the wind. They saw the lighted window and the warmth of the light had attracted them. And they were literally flying into the glass trying to get to the light to get warm. They would freeze to death, you see, if they didn't find some shelter.

Well, the man who had refused to go with his family to the Christmas Eve service because he had no interest in the Christ of Christmas was all of a sudden very compassionate for these poor birds. And so he wondered how he could help them. And so he opened the door, went out in the cold, and tried to chase them away so that they wouldn't kill themselves against the window. And then he ran to the barn and he threw the doors open and he whistled and he shooed them and did everything he could to get them to fly to the barn, they wouldn't do it. He even went so far as to take some corn and some bread and make a big trail from the window to the barn. And they wouldn't follow it.

In frustration, he said to himself, "If I could just communicate with them. If I could just tell them that I don't want to hurt them, that there's warmth and there's shelter and that they'd need to stop beating themselves to death against the glass. But I'm a man and they're birds and we don't speak the same language. Oh, if I could just become a bird, I think I could tell them."

And then it hit him. And in that moment, said Paul Harvey, the whole meaning of Christmas dawned on that man. Mankind had been beating itself to death against the barrier that kept him from the warmth of God's love until somebody became a man and told us the way.

Mark 8:36 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Have you trusted Him as your Savior? He can Save you if You ask Him based on His death, burial, and resurrection for your sins. Believe in Him for forgiveness of your sins today.

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  -John 8:32

 

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