The main point here is not to identify that God became man, but to show that in God becoming man, you have the supreme illustration of humility, an illustration which we are called to follow.
A.W. Tozer once said, Despite that, maybe you've heard that unity in the church is more important than anything else, and if that means staying away from controversial doctrines like spiritual gifts or the unique roles of husbands and wives, well, it's worth it for the sake of keeping a congregation together. But how does that sort of unity compare to the unity that Scripture calls us to?
Consider that today as John MacArthur continues his practical study, a plea for unity. And now here's John. Open your Bible, will you please, to the second chapter of Philippians, and I want you to look with me at verses five through eight, five through eight. Apparently from study of the Greek language of this passage, it was a hymn.
Very likely these verses were sung by the early church. No other New Testament passage could so completely and with so much detail in its presentation focus on the event of God becoming man. It is what theologians have called a Christological gem or a Christological diamond that sparkles brighter than perhaps any other passage in the New Testament. It is unparalleled in the New Testament in its strong statement about the incarnation of God in Christ.
But listen carefully. As strong as it is theologically, as profound as it is theologically, as unfathomable as it is theologically, the passage is first and foremost ethical. It has to do with motivation for Christian living more than just facts of theology as great as those facts are. The main point here is not to identify that God became man, but to show that in God becoming man you have the supreme illustration of humility, an illustration which we are called to follow. Here you see self-sacrifice. Here you see self-denial. Here you see self-giving. Here you see humble love. The key to understanding the ethical nature of the passage is verse five. If you want a model to look at to see how this humility works, then have this attitude in yourselves which was also in whom? Christ Jesus.
He's the model. He's the perfect ethical illustration of humility. Christ is the model of humility as He is the model of everything for us. That's why in Matthew 11 29 Jesus said, Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly. Learn humility from Me. That's why in John 13 He says, After having washed the disciples' feet, love one another as I have loved you.
And how had He loved them? By self-sacrificing humble service in washing their dirty feet. So Paul is drawing on Christ as the model of humility which is the means of unity. And here you have as if He comes from heaven to earth in a series of steps, climbing down as it were. The various factors of the descent of Christ to humiliation that is the model for us.
Let's follow the steps. Verse 6. It begins with this statement. He existed in the form of God. He existed in the form of God.
That's where it all began. And that means to say He is God. The word form has to do with nature, essence, innate being. He is God. He existed in the form of God. Before the incarnation He pre-existed as God. And this emphasizes the point from which His humiliation began. He is by nature fully God.
Jesus possessed the very being of God. And this is the high point from which He stoops. He descends, as you can well see, from a level which we will never know or experience, for we will never be as God. But He gives us a pattern to follow. Because He comes down from a lofty, lofty level, the highest in the universe, God.
But there's a pattern even for us in this. Are we not the children of God? Are we not the sons of God and the daughters of God? Are we not blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus? Are we not the chosen?
Are we not the beloved out of the world? Are we not the anointed by the Holy Spirit? Are we not those special people who have been given the promise of Heaven's eternal glory? Are we not priests? Are we not chosen vessels? Are we not the ambassadors of Christ? Do we not possess as Christians an exalted position as sons of God, indwelt by the Spirit of God? And so our humiliation too begins from a lofty level. It starts with a recognition of the fact that we have been lifted up by God's grace, and we too must begin our humiliation from a lofty starting point. Notice the descent now, the second statement. Although He existed in the form of God, He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.
Here's the second step. He did not regard equality with God, which by the way explains the phrase the form of God. We conclude that the form of God means the same as equal with God.
Isis, the Greek word, means exactly equal. But He did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. Now notice please, humility begins with a recognition of a lofty calling, and the first step down is an attitude. And the attitude is that this loftiness of my calling is not something to be clutched.
It is not something to be grasped. It is not something to be seized and kept. It is not something to be selfishly held onto as such a prized possession that it is only to be exploited and never set aside for anyone else. That wasn't Jesus' attitude. As God, He had all the rights and privileges of God which He deserved and for which He had every right and from which He could never be disqualified. But He did not have an attitude that selfishly clutched all of His privileges.
And that's the first step down when you begin to loosen your grip on the possessions and the privileges that you have as a believer that provide that exalted identity and you become willing to start the process down. Think of Christ as God in a favored position with unimaginable privileges. That position was infinitely perfect, infinitely fulfilling.
He was infinitely worthy of it and could never be disqualified from it. But He didn't have an attitude to cling to it if by letting go of it He could serve someone else. That's where humiliation begins.
Sure, we see ourselves as called and set apart from the world and lofty and high and lifted up in a spiritual sense, but we have to hold that lightly for the sake of the needs of others. Anyone who stoops begins with that kind of attitude. I will not clutch my privileges, possessions, rights, blessings, no matter what my elevated position might be.
The next step down in the descent of Christ and the pattern for us, verse 7 says, But emptied Himself. Now the attitude becomes an action here. The attitude becomes an action. The attitude said, I won't hold on to these things.
I don't clutch them. I am ready to let go of them if for the sake of others I must stoop. The attitude then led to the action, and He emptied Himself. This is a profound statement. He divested Himself in some way of His privileges. He let go of some things in the process of coming down. He didn't cease to be God. That's abundantly clear from the New Testament. He even claimed while on earth to be God, saying things like, If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father. He was still God, but He had set aside and emptied Himself of some of His privileges.
Why? To come all the way down for the sake of unworthy sinners because their need was so desperate. That's how humility works.
It starts at a lofty point. It has an attitude that doesn't clutch what it possesses and releases those things, emptying oneself and coming down to meet the needs of others. What did He give up?
You ever thought about it? What did Jesus give up? For one thing, He gave up heavenly glory. In John 17, He prays to the Father in verses 4 and 5, and He says, Father, restore me to the glory I had with you before the world began, which means He must have given up His heavenly glory. He did.
He did. He longed for that prostan theon, as John calls it, that face-to-face communion with God. That's why He went so often to the Mount of Olives to pray, because He loved that intimate communion with the Father that He had in heavenly glory, but He gave it up. Secondly, He gave up the independent authority that He had as God the second person. He gave up that independent authority, and Hebrews 5-8 says that He learned obedience. And He said in John 5-30, I have come to do what the Father wants me to do, and I resign myself to His will. The third thing, He limited His own divine attributes. In Matthew 24-36, He said He didn't even know the time that the Father had in mind for the setting up of His kingdom. He said no man knows, not even the Son. And so He willingly set aside some of the exercise of His divine attributes.
He limited, in that case, His omniscience. The fourth thing He set aside were His eternal riches. It would be impossible for me to explain how rich He was, but I know what 2 Corinthians 8-9 says. It says He was rich, but for your sakes, He became what? Poor. And He was so poor, He said, The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head. Poor.
He gave up a lot. But that's what humility does, and that's what Paul is saying here. Humility recognizes its rights and its privileges as a child of God, but doesn't clutch those things, but rather, because it sees the need of another, is willing to divest itself and stoop. How far does it go?
Let's follow it down. It says in verse 7, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant. It comes all the way down to slavery. There's no condescension apparent in this, because Jesus is an illustration of one who literally became a doulos, a bond slave, all the way down, all the way down, from king to slave. And may I say to you, this is not theatrical.
This is not a Halloween costume. He didn't put on the garment of a slave, He became one. It says in verse 6 that He was in the form of God, and in verse 7 that He took the form of a bondservant. Whatever form means in verse 6, it means in verse 7, and in verse 6 it means essential character, and in verse 7 it means the same thing. He literally took on the essential character of a slave. This was not theatrical.
This was reality. He said, I am among you as one who serves, Luke 22, 27. Matthew 20, 28, the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve, to give His life. You see, He waived the exercise of His rights as God, and did only what God asked Him to do, came all the way down, emptied Himself, and became a slave. And He served men as one who was a slave. He even went to the point where it says in Isaiah 53, 6, that God laid all our iniquities on Him. Slaves carry burdens, and He carried the greatest burden any slave could ever carry, the burden of sin for us.
You can ask a slave to carry a lot of things, but only God could ask Christ, His slave, to carry the burden of your sin, which He carried. What a servant, and what a model, what a model. His service to sinners took the form of total identification, total identification.
Look at the next step down. Verse 7, being made in the likeness of men. He became like us. He had all the attributes of humanness. He became a genuine man, really the second Adam, truly human. He was not a reasonable facsimile. He was a man.
I want to say something to you that I don't want you to misunderstand. When God became man in the form of Jesus Christ, He did not become man as man was pre-fall. You understand that? He did not become man as Adam was in his innocence. He became man in the sense of partaking of the results of fallenness. You say, what do you mean by that?
Well, ask yourself some simple questions. Did he feel pain? Yes. Did he feel sorrow? Did he weep? Did he have strong crying and tears? Did he ever hunger? Did he thirst? Was he weary? Was he weak?
And here's the final one, did he die? Death was the result of what? The fall. This is not God taking on the unfallen character of humanity. This is God taking on the fallen character of humanity with one significant element eliminated.
What is it? Sin. Being in all points tempted as we are, Hebrews 4.15, yet without sin. Never sinning, but feeling the results of the fall.
He became one of us. Otherwise, how could he be in all points tempted like as we are? How could he suffer and be a sympathetic high priest if he had a pre-fall humanness? Because he wouldn't have anything to sympathize with. No, he went all the way down to walk in our skin, as it were, to sympathize and empathize, and he says that's the model. That's what humility does.
Sixth, the next step down. Verse 8, and being found in appearance as a man. That is most interesting.
I wish we had more time to talk about that. What that means is very much like what it says at the end of verse 7, but from another perception. Verse 7 says, as a fact, he was made in the likeness of men.
This one says, he appeared as a man, and it views it from the vantage point of the people who saw and experienced him. And what it is saying is, he was so much like them that they thought him to be no different than them, and that is the supreme compliment. They didn't have any feeling that there was one condescending to them.
They didn't have any feeling that this was a reluctant stooping down. They didn't have any feeling that this man did not understand them. No, what it's saying is, he appeared as a man to them. They found him in appearance as a man. So much so, by the way, that most of them didn't really know who he was, did they? So much did he appear as a man that they really thought him no better than themselves. That's tragedy on the one hand, but on the other hand, what an illustration of humility.
They didn't even see him as any different than them. But follow this, he hasn't even reached yet the bottom. There's a seventh step down. In verse 8 it says, he humbled himself. You say, wasn't it humble enough to be a man? No. Wasn't it humble enough to be a poor man?
No. Wasn't it humble enough to live the way they did with a simple life? He didn't ask for a palace, he didn't ask for a chariot, he didn't ask for servants, he didn't ask for a wardrobe, he didn't ask for golden jewelry, he didn't ask for anything. He lived as one of them, appeared as one of them to them. Wasn't that enough?
No. He stepped lower, down below that. It wasn't enough just to be one of them, he went below that. Think of it. The God who made the universe, standing alongside a man named Joseph, helping him make a wooden yoke in a carpenter shop in Nazareth.
What condescension. But he went even below just working alongside men, he went down further than that. How low did he go?
Verse 8. He became obedient to the point of death. He went so low that he was willing to die for men.
Now there is the epitome of humiliation. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. He didn't have to die, he volunteered. No man took his life from him, he gave it up. It was an undeserved death, and it was the death of a humble person. He went all the way down to die.
Why did he do that? Because that was the way in which men had to be served. Because there was no way to deliver them from sin apart from death. Since the wages of sin were death, somebody had to die. Since God required a sacrifice, someone had to be the sacrifice.
And if he was to help man truly, he would have to die in man's place and pay the penalty for his sin. Humility, you see, goes as far as it has to go to meet a need. It goes as far as it has to go to meet a need.
What a model this is. How far did it go? To the point of death. That's not even the final rung in the ladder coming down.
Look at the last one. Even death on a cross. That is the worst form of tortured death man has ever devised. The incredible pain, the unbelievable shame and nakedness and disgrace. To say nothing of the spit of people and their blows and their punches and jeers. And beyond that, the desertion of God, the guilt of sin, the excruciating experience of the cross.
But that's how far he went. For sinners who didn't deserve it, who didn't even want it, and who still don't want it, except that God in His free, sovereign grace gives it to them. And sometimes humility is painful and sometimes it's unfair and sometimes it's misunderstood and usually it's very costly. But Jesus is the model.
He's the example. Let's bow together in prayer. Lord, we confess right now that we love to live on level one.
We love to exist as children of God, blessed, chosen, gifted, graced, empowered, called, set apart, priests, a royal family. We love that. But Lord, how hard it is to let go and come all the way down where we look on the things of others, not just our own, and where we consider others more important than ourselves. That's what you've asked us to do. Forgive us, Lord, for not doing it.
Please forgive us. And strengthen us that we might humble ourselves. May we see in our dear Christ the pattern for our own humility. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.
Thanks for being with us. John's a writer, a conference speaker, and chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. He has titled our current study, A Plea for Unity.
John, as a way of wrapping up this study, let me go in this direction. You've been in church ministry for basically your entire life, and there have been ups and downs in terms of unity. And for that person who's listening who attends a church that, well, maybe is in a rough patch in terms of unity, what would your encouragement be? What practical steps can we take to help bring about unity, whether you're a leader or a layperson?
Well, I think it starts, first of all, with humbling yourself, because humility is the ground in which love flourishes. So you don't think on yourself and the things that concern you. You don't get angry. You don't become hostile. You don't become critical. You don't start gossiping. You don't start tearing down.
I was just saying this to somebody the other day. You find those people that you think are maybe the troublemakers in the church, and you find a way to humbly love those people. That's how you begin to make the steps in the right direction. If the issues of disunity and discord are coming from leadership, I think in a gracious and kind and loving way, you go to the leader and you confront. You know, the Bible only knows one way to deal with sin in a church, if you're in sin, this is right in the book of Matthew, you go to the person and you call them to repentance and you offer them forgiveness, and if they don't, here you go with two or three others and finally you tell the church. I mean, the pattern of dealing with sin in the church is always direct.
You go to that person. Our Lord said, you know, make sure your own life is right and go in love and speak the truth and go to restore that one in love, as the Apostle Paul says. So don't sit back and complain, don't sit back and gossip, don't criticize, express love. Find the person that's maybe even the cause of that division and in humility love that person and lovingly confront the issue if it's at a leadership level from the heart, and then be patient and prayerful to see what the Lord does. If you follow the path of humble love, you're much better off and you're not going to have that bitterness and that hostility that just keeps elevating, and you're going to maybe, in God's kindness, be part of the restoration of the church to the unity that you desire. Well, that's the closeout on our series on a plea for unity, but that's just the beginning of applying it, isn't it, in your life and your ministry.
So we would love to get this series into your hand. It's on five MP3 downloads from the website gty.org. You can get a transcript or you can get it in audio form, or you can order a five CD album if you would prefer that material that we would send to you. Glad to do it if you can find it helpful in ministering to the folks in your life.
That's right, friend. Cultivating true biblical unity will not only bring more joy to your church, but it will also strengthen your church's testimony in the community. To order a plea for unity on five CDs or to download all five messages for free, contact us today. Call our toll-free number anytime, 800-55-GRACE, or go to our website also anytime, gty.org.
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