What did he give up? Of what did he empty himself? He emptied himself of his Glory. The divine glory. His glory in this world was veiled.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, he pulled his flesh back and gave him a little glimpse of his glory, remember? But he veiled his glory when he came into this world. He set his glory aside. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
This time of year you're likely to see countless Nativity scenes and hear songs about a baby born in a manger, but do you know what it's all about? How could a child born in the lowliest of circumstances make such an astounding mark on history? Find out today as John MacArthur looks at amazing aspects of the birth of Christ that maybe you haven't quite understood. John's lesson today is a look at the theology of Christmas. That's also the title of the message.
It comes from a chapter that you may not associate with Christmas, Philippians chapter 2, but it is critical for understanding the significance of Christ's birth. And we'll get to that in just a moment. But before the lesson, here it is, Christmas Eve, and you may be really busy today, but as we look ahead to the Christmas celebration tomorrow, I want us to pause for a moment and hear some comments John MacArthur recorded a few years back. It's some helpful advice, and it's still so relevant for approaching Christmas with the right mindset. To put it mildly, Christmas is a little bit confusing to the watching world, I'm pretty sure.
I never really get over that. Year after year, I'm struck by the paradoxes of Christmas. The um strange. juxtaposition of Christianity and a kind of carnival Mentality. the humility and poverty of the stable confused with the wealth and indulgence of selfishness and gift-giving.
The quietness of Bethlehem with the din of the shopping mall. The seriousness of the incarnation with the silliness of the party spirit and party attitude, the blinking colored lights. Juxtaposed with the star of heaven. Just a confusion designed, certainly, by the enemy of men's souls, cheap plastic toys. mixed with the true gift of the wise men, Angels Confused with flying reindeer An ox and an ass in a stable confused with a red-nosed reindeer of all things.
Filth of the stable confused with the whiteness of fresh snow. And so it goes in your familiar With all of that, Mary and Joseph and uh North Pole elves. Kind of hard to look through this and see the reality. But it reached epic proportions for me, this confusion. When I read an article Written by A leader in Los Angeles.
And this representative wrote this. There are few causes to which I am more passionately committed than that of Santa Claus. Santa Claus deserves not just any place in the church, but the highest place of honor. Where he should be enthroned as the long-bearded ancient of days, the divine and holy one, whom we call God. He's not done.
Santa Claus is God the Son. You better watch out. You better not pout. Santa Claus is coming to town. He knows whether you've been bad or good.
He slips into the secrets of the heart as easily as he slips down the chimney. Santa Claus is God the Father. The Creator of heaven and earth, in whose hand is a pack, bursting at its seams with the gifts of his creation. Santa Claus is God the Holy Spirit, who comes with the sound of gentle laughter, with a shape like a bowl full of jelly. And He comes in the night to sow the seeds of good humor.
Santa Claus indeed deserves the exalted and enthroned place in the Church, for he is God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit. I've seen him in the toy store. I even saw him in his car on the freeway the other day. And when I saw him with his crazy beard and his baggy suit, I. I saw more than the seasonal merchant of cheap plastic toys I saw no less than the Triune God.
I hope you can see him too. Huh? I mean, have you ever heard anything more convoluted than that? Incredible. What chaos and what confusion.
After all, what is Christmas about? What is the celebration of the birth of Christ really about? We could approach it from the standpoint of the Old Testament prophets. We could approach it from the standpoint of Mary or Joseph. We could approach it from the standpoint of the angels or the shepherds or even the wise men who came later.
We could approach it from the standpoint of the innkeeper. We could approach it from the standpoint of Herod, who had a lot at stake in his own mind. But I want you to look at it from the view past the event That is given to us by the beloved Apostle Paul.
So open your Bible to Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter two, here's the theology of Christmas, okay? The theology of Christmas. My intention today It is to be straightforward and just tell the real story of the birth of Christ. And have you make no mistake about its genuine.
Significance. In Philippians chapter 2. Verse 5 ends by identifying Christ Jesus. Then Christ Jesus becomes the theme. of the next few verses.
So let's listen as Paul writes. Christ Jesus who although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped or seized. but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.
So that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. If we just squeeze those verses together, It's pretty clear. that we're talking about one Who is God? That's how it starts. And is Lord, and that's how it ends.
That's the real message of Christmas. That Jesus Christ is God and He is Lord. But let's break that down a little bit and See the component parts. This paragraph really in some way stands in unapproachable Majesty. This is one of the Pure Jewels In the New Testament, its beauties, its depths are beyond human.
Comprehension. And yet to understand it is necessary, at least to the degree that is possible by the aid of the Blessed Holy Spirit. What this section explains to us Is The condescension of the Son of God to come to earth. to die and then to return in exaltation to glory.
So again, I say it's the theology of Christmas. It tells us what happened from the divine side of the story. And I want to just give you five simple steps by which we can walk through this tremendous portion of Scripture. And we're just going to get a kind of a light view. I wish we could dig deeper, but that would take weeks and weeks and weeks to do.
But we'll at least understand the reality of it, if not all of the potential. Elements that could be examined. Five steps as God enters the world. Five steps. As Jesus comes to Bethlehem.
Number one. He abandoned a sovereign position. He abandoned a sovereign position. Go back to verse 6. It says in verse 6.
That he existed in the form of God. Thus he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. or seized. We're talking about Christ Jesus, who is identified at the end of verse five. And this amazing statement captures his essential nature.
Literally It reads this way. He being in the form of God. He being in the form of God. Just take the word being for a moment. Being denotes The person's essential Nature, essence.
That which is inalienably unchangeably true about him. That he possesses this nature. As God, that's his being. That is who he is. This refers to his innate, unchangeable, unalterable essence.
His nature is That of God. It describes that part of a person which we all understand, his very being. It describes that part of a person that can't be changed. It is essential to his very existence. And it always remains The same.
For Jesus Christ, it is to say that he is in being God, and that is unchangeable and unalterable. That is why we are instructed in the Gospel of Matthew that his name was to be Emmanuel, which in Hebrew means God with us. El being God. The name or the word for God. He is God with us.
He was God. He is God. He will always be God. In the beginning, writes John, was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That is unalterable.
That is unchangeable. That's why he said in John 8:58, before Abraham. I am. Before he ever existed. Yeah.
was in existence. In Colossians chapter 1. A similar testimony is given in verse 15. He is the image of the invisible God. That is to say, he is a direct representation, a direct reflection.
of the invisible And eternal. God. This is where you start with the person of Jesus Christ.
Now that's the word being, but let's just look again at this opening statement. It says being in the form of God. And that adds another component. That's the Greek word morphae. And it refers again to the characteristics or the qualities.
Or the attributes of someone. English really doesn't capture this word very well. The word form doesn't work very well. The word form has the connotation of something on the outside, something changeable, something that can be altered. That's not what this word means.
It means the essential, abiding characteristics or attributes that belong to someone. It is translated in the New Testament conformed or even transformed in 2 Corinthians 3.18, we being transformed into the image of Christ. It doesn't mean that we are physically, externally made to look like him. It means that we are internally and by characteristic and attributes being conformed into what he is. That's the concept of Of Morphe.
Paul even says, I want to gain Christ, I want to be conformed to His death. And literally, I want to become like him. I want to be like him in terms of Characteristics, attributes, attitudes not exterior.
So we begin then with the fact that Christ Jesus. As to being, is eternal God. As to form, he possesses all the attributes, all the characteristics that belong to God. He is no less than God in the fullest sense. And you remember the Jews condemned him in John 5:18 because he was making himself equal with God.
God. There was no mistaking about that, because that's precisely what he was doing.
Now, back to verse 6, even though that is his. Essential nature, and he possesses all the attributes and all the characteristics that belong to God. The next phrase says, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. That's a very interesting statement, and it can carry a couple of Connotations. The verb grasped as a rather broad Possibility of interpretation.
It can mean. to seize something. to snatch something. To take hold of it and pull it away, or it can mean to hang on to something, to cling to something, to clutch something.
So let's look at it both ways. There was in heaven a being by the name of Lucifer, right? Lucifer was the worship leader of heaven. He was the anointed cherub. He was the highest of the angels.
But that was not enough to satisfy him. And according to Isaiah chapter 14, He said, I will. Be like the most high. I will be like the most high. What did he want?
He wanted equality with God. He wanted equality with God. So, equality with God for Lucifer was something to be seized. It was something to be snatched. And he tried to snatch it unsuccessfully, didn't he?
Tried to seize it, and he was instantly cast out of heaven and turned into the devil and Satan. Jesus didn't need to do that. For him equality with God was not something he needed to snatch. It was not something he needed to seize. It was not something he needed to rip away from someone to whom it legitimately belonged.
Because it was his by nature. By nature. Secondly, You can interpret it this way. That having equality with God was not something he clung to. The fullness of that equality with God is described in John's prosthon, a Greek phrase that means face-to-face.
It's talking about absolute equality and fullness. He possessed equality with God. But he was willing to let go of it.
So, on the one hand, it wasn't something he had to snatch because it didn't belong to him. And on the other hand, it did belong to him, but it was not something that he clutched with a death grip, if you will. He was willing. to give it up.
So willing that verse 7 says He emptied himself. He emptied himself. Just exactly of what did he empty himself?
Well, some people might think he emptied himself of his deity, but he didn't because he couldn't. That's his nature. That's his being. That's his essence. And some might think that he Divested himself of the form of God and became only a man.
That's not possible because the very essence of God's nature is manifest inseparably from its characteristics and attributes, and so he didn't give up. His nature as God, and he didn't give up his attributes as God.
Well what What did he give up? Of what did he empty himself? Well, the New Testament lays it out for us. He remained fully God. But for example, John 17, 4, he said, Father.
Give me back the glory I had with you before the world began. He emptied himself of his Glory. The divine glory. His glory in this world was veiled. On the Mount of Transfiguration, he pulled his flesh back and gave him a little glimpse of his glory, remember?
But he veiled his glory when he came into this world. He set his glory aside. He gave up his honor. According to Isaiah 53, there was no beauty in him that men would desire him. He was despised.
He was rejected. We know that unfolds in the New Testament. He was hated, he was treated with scorn. He was shamed, he was spit on, he was beaten. He gave up his honor.
Those are the things that he emptied himself. Of This is the nature of his humiliation. This is the nature of his love.
So, the story of Christmas begins with the Son of God abandoning a sovereign position. Secondly, He accepted a slave's place. He accepted a slave's place. Back to verse 7. Taking the form of a slave.
It's dou loss. Slave. There's no such word as bondservant in the Greek. It's the word for slave. This, of course, is what the Old Testament promises.
Look at Isaiah, the last part of Isaiah, where the Messiah is designed to be the servant of the Lord, the servant of the Lord. He is called that again and again and again and again. He is a slave. He takes on the form of a slave. Here's that word morphé again.
He takes on the attributes, takes on the characteristics. Of a slave. He literally becomes a slave, a slave of God. And a slave of sinners, if you will. He came not to be served, but to serve.
I am in the midst of you as one who serves, Luke 22:27.
Son of Man came not to be served. But to serve and how By giving His life And so he takes on Not just a masquerade as a slave, not just a superficial costume, not just the garments of a slave. He takes on the very attributes, the very characteristics of a slave. And what is that which is characteristic of a slave? Absolute, total submission.
to the will of another. and in his case it was the will of his father. that he gladly Submitted to. He became the slave of God. That he might Serve us.
At the point of our Deepest need.
So he abandoned a sovereign position, accepted a servant's place, and thirdly, he associated with sinful people. He associated with sinful people. We begin to get to the depth of his Slavery in verse 7. He came down. As a slave, he came all the way down to being made in the likeness of men.
And it repeats it in verse 8: being found in appearance as a man. being in the likeness of men, That that's That's again. The verb to be, being. Genamenas, that's being. He literally became human.
He became human. Likeness. Homo omati. Homo, the same. The same as humanity.
A real man, true man, 100% human, as a 100% God. This is the mystery of the incarnation. He's not half God, half man. He's not all God masquerading as a man. He is fully God and fully man.
He takes on the likeness of men. That's why I say he approached. A sinful people. Yeah. Verse 8.
tells us That this likeness to men Was not only true on the inside, he was truly human. But it was manifest on the outside, being found in appearance as a man. Here's the word schema. Schema simply means The external. The external.
It is not the same as Morphe. Morphe describes the attributes, the inside, what is true of a person by nature or. By attribute, characteristic. This word This word Is the word for the exterior, the outer manifestation, being found in fashion as a man. Schemati, we get the word scheme or schematic from it.
He was made in the likeness of men, but he also looked like a man. He also looked like a man. This is uh This is important for us to be reminded of. Jesus didn't walk around, by the way, with a halo on his head. He didn't walk around with a gold aura around him.
He didn't float a foot off the ground. He didn't glide that way through life. He didn't have a robe that never got dirty or feet that never needed to be washed. He looked like a man. He talked like a man.
He acted like a man because he was fully human, both in terms of attributes and characteristics and also in terms of appearance. Nobody knew that he was God by looking at him. He didn't stand out in a crowd like he does in medieval paintings, which are silly. He looked like everybody else looked. And he experienced the things that human beings experience.
Had they come into this world? Through the natural process of A mother's womb, so had he. A day Changed over their lifetime from being an infant to being an adult, and all the stops in between, so had he. Had they originally, when brought into the world, been wrapped in cloth? That's what they did with babies.
That's what everybody does with babies. Read it in Ezekiel 16:10. They were doing it way back then. That's always been the way.
Well, he was wrapped in cloth. Did they have brothers and sisters, these human beings?
So did he. Born to Joseph and Mary. Did they work?
So did he. Did they learn a trade?
So did he. In fact, for thirty years he plied his trade in the little village of Nazareth, working in a family business with his father, who was a carpenter. And nobody knew who he was. Nobody knew who he was. You couldn't tell by looking at him.
Was he hungry? Of course, he was hungry. Was he thirsty? Of course he was thirsty. Did he go to bed at night and sleep?
Of course he went to bed at night. and slept. We know that at one time he was so tired he fell asleep in a boat in a storm. As we shall soon see. Was he ever angry?
Sure. Was he ever grieved? Yes. Did he ever shout? Because he was angry?
Yes, did he ever cry? Because he was. Grieving? Yes. He was a human being.
He dressed like people dressed. He put his sandals on. He put his robe on. He had an undergarment, and that's the way everybody looked. In that day?
That Christmas Carol says The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes. But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes I don't buy it. I don't buy it. Crying is a signal that all babies have given them by God to let. Dad know he better go get mother.
If nothing else. It is his code to the father. that you have just reached the end of your usefulness. Of course, he cried, but it wasn't a sinful cry. He was Fully human.
You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. Today, John looked at an amazing truth: the eternal God took on flesh to save sinners like you and me. John's message is called The Theology of Christmas. A friend, thanks for remembering that your support helps keep this broadcast on the air in your neighborhood and on thousands of stations around the world. Your gifts are especially important as the year comes to an end.
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Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phoenson. Thanks for joining us today. Tune in again tomorrow when John looks at amazing truths in the Christmas story that many people, and even some churches, often miss. It's another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on grace to you.
