The Incarnation of the Triune God

I want us to see the Christmas story from the viewpoint of the Holy Spirit of God as revealed to the Apostle Paul, and I believe it gives us the real Christmas story. Bethlehem isn't the issue. Shepherds and wise men and Joseph and Mary and mangers, they don't appear in this perspective. But what is here is the reality of the Incarnation. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Even though it's still several weeks away, you've probably started thinking about your Christmas must-do list. Perhaps it includes shopping for loved ones, or visiting family and friends, or going to school plays, baking those traditional Christmas treats.

While those activities certainly have their place, how do you make sure they don't distract you from what matters most when it comes to your Christmas celebration? Consider that today as John MacArthur continues his study titled, The Real Meaning of Christmas. And with a lesson now, here's John. I invite you to take your Bible and turn to Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2. And I want to take as the text of our Christmas message verses 6 through 11. Philippians 2, 6 through 11.

Now before we read the text and specifically present what the Spirit of God has said, let me just set our thoughts in context. At Christmas, we are confronted again, and I'm sure you're aware of it, with the sometimes very difficult task of separating the reality of Christmas from the clutter that surrounds that reality. There is so much confusion that sometimes you feel like the real Christmas story is like a diamond lost in a haystack.

It just seems impossible to find. Christmas has really become a hopeless muddle of confusion. The humility and the poverty of the stable are somehow confused with the wealth and indulgence and selfishness of gift giving.

The quietness of Bethlehem is mingled with the din of shopping malls and freeway traffic. The soberness of the incarnation is somehow mixed with the drunkenness of this season. Blinking colored lights somehow have some connection to the star of Bethlehem.

The room in the inn, so obscure, so dirty with such meager fare, somehow embraces the thought of a warm house, a fireplace, and opulent feasting. Cheap plastic toys for little kids with which to play out their follies are mixed with the true value of the gifts given by wise men. Salesmen somehow get mixed up with shepherds. Angels are confused with flying reindeer, one of which even has a red nose. The pain of childbirth is mixed with the parties.

The filth of the stable is confounded with the whiteness of fresh snow. And then there's Mary, Joseph, Perry Como, and Bing Crosby. And so it goes. The great reality of Christmas, which is the glory of the Lord being revealed, is obscured by so much tinsel and activity and commercialism. And I think it's true that Santa Claus really has become the focus of Christmas for most people. And I've noted in the years that I've been ministering that more and more each year Santa Claus takes a dominant place. Now as we face the reality of Christmas, I want us to see the true story, and this time not from the perspective of Bethlehem or Joseph or Mary or shepherds or innkeepers or wise men or Herod or Old Testament prophets, but I want us to see the Christmas story from the viewpoint of the Holy Spirit of God as revealed to the Apostle Paul. And I believe it gives us the real Christmas story.

The scenery isn't there. Bethlehem isn't the issue. Shepherds and wise men and Joseph and Mary and mangers and oxen, they don't appear in this perspective. But what is here is the reality of the incarnation. This is one of the greatest texts in all the Bible.

It is perhaps the most profound statement of the Christmas story anywhere in the Word of God. Paul Reese said, the passage is oceanic, for the fathoms are countless and the tides are measureless. In it we enter the depths. F. B. Meyer said, it is almost unapproachable in its unexampled majesty.

Believe me, it's a greater challenge than I can handle to deal with its fullness, but if I can just scratch its surface, that should be infinitely satisfying for the time. Look with me at verses 6 through 11. And in these verses, we will see five steps in the Christmas story, five features as God enters the world, five great aspects to the incarnation. First of all, number one, the Lord Jesus Christ abandoned a sovereign position.

He abandoned a sovereign position. Verse 6, let's begin. Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men.

Now we'll stop right there. We find in verse 6, particularly, and then just at the beginning of verse 7, that the Lord, when he came into the world, abandoned a sovereign position. Now first of all, the Holy Spirit establishes that sovereign position. Look at verse 6. It begins with the relative pronoun, who, and that refers back to Christ Jesus in verse 5. Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God. Christ Jesus then is the theme of this passage, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now what does it say about him? The first phrase, being in the form of God.

Now listen to me. This is without question the heart and soul of the Christian faith. The affirmation of the deity of Jesus Christ is the sine qua non of all that we believe.

That is why it is always under attack. Christ is in the form of God. It is the deity of Jesus Christ that is the substantive affirmation of the Christian faith. Now let's see what this phrase means. The word being is very important. The word being denotes that which a person is in his very essence. That which a person is in his nature. In other words, that which is true of a person that cannot be altered, it cannot be changed. That which someone possesses inalienably and unchangeably that cannot be removed. It refers to the innate, changeless, unalterable character and nature of a person. For example, men may look different, but they're all men.

That's their nature. They all have the basic same elements of humanness. The functioning of breathing and the heart, organs, mind, will, thoughts, emotion. These are the elements of humanness. You can change his clothes, you can do things to the physical form, but you never change the humanness. That is the being of man. And that is the meaning of this term. And it says of Christ that he is in the being of God. He is then unalterably and unchangeably God in his essence, in his essential being. In fact, in John 8, 58, Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I am. And he used the I am because he lives as an eternally present God. He is eternally in the I am mode, in the present mode. He is always and will always be. He isn't was and will be, he is simply I am. That is the basis of our faith. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word, what?

Was God. Hebrews 1, He is spoken in these last days by his Son who is the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person. 1 Timothy 3, 16, Great is the mystery of godliness.

What is it? That God was manifest in the flesh. That is the substance of our faith.

That Jesus Christ is God. Colossians 1, 15, He is the image of the invisible God. So the word being then has to do with his essential nature.

Jesus Christ then has his being, now mark it again, in the form of God. Now what do we mean by form? The English can't really help us with this Greek word. We have to go back and talk about the Greek term for a moment. It is not form in the sense that we think of a material shape or a resemblance.

It is completely different than that. The word in the Greek is the word morphe. And morphe has to do with a deep inner essential abiding nature of something.

It is not the external. That is the word schema. Schema means the outward, the passing, the changing, the fleeting, the external. And by the way, look at verse 8. Schema is used in verse 8. He was found in fashion as a man.

We'll talk about that in a moment. But fashion is the external, the changing. Form is morphe, the unchanging, the internal. For example, if you trace the use of the term morphe in its various forms, you will find that that is exactly where the emphasis lies. There are places where they seem to be used in an overlapping sense, but the specific uses of morphe in very important texts of the New Testament lead us to conclude that it means the inner nature. For example, in Romans 8, 29, whom he foreknew, them he predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son.

And it's morphe. It is a new nature, an inner change. The inside of man is conformed to the image of his son. It's talking about our nature. 2 Corinthians 3, 18, it says, as we look on the glory of the Lord, we are transformed into his image.

Again, it's morphe. We are changed on the inside, an abiding change that affects our inner nature. Galatians 4, 19, Paul says, my little children, I have birth pains until Christ be morphe in you, until literally he be formed in you.

He isn't talking about trappings. He's not talking about externals, but that the image of Christ would be manifest in the inner nature of man. In Philippians 3, 10, he uses it again. He says, that I may gain Christ and become conformed unto his death. So he's talking about a deep inner representation of the image of God.

On the other hand, the word schema, from which we get scheme, is something to do with the passing, fleeting external. For example, 1 Corinthians 7, 31 uses schema this way, the fashion of the world passes away. 2 Corinthians 11, 14, Satan fashions himself as an angel of light.

He isn't really, but he puts on that facade. 1 Peter 1, 14 says, as a Christian, do not fashion yourselves according to your form or less. In other words, you have a new nature, you are a new creation, don't put on the garments of the old life. You find both of these words brought together in Romans 12, 2. Stop being fashioned according to this world, but be transformed in your inner man through the renewing of your mind. So one is deeply related to the internal and one is to the external.

And the one of the internal is used here. It is being in the morphe of God. That is being substantively and essentially in his deepest inner man and nature in the form of God. He is God.

Don't let anyone deny that. That is the basic affirmation of the Christian faith. Consequently, look at the end of verse 6. He did not think it was something to be grasped to be equal with God. Now what does that mean?

Listen to this. Satan was a created angel. Satan was created by God, he was inferior to God, he was less than God. But in Isaiah 14, he said, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will five times and the substance of what he was saying was, I will be like whom? God. Satan thought it's something to be grasped at to be equal with God. He thought it's something to seize, something to grasp at. Jesus didn't.

Why? He was already equal to God. There was nothing for him to seek. There was nothing for him to grasp.

He is in contradistinction to Satan. Second way to approach it. The verb that is used there means to clutch or to snatch or to grasp tightly.

And it can also be interpreted this way. He thought it not something to cling to. Not so much that he didn't have it and he snatched it, but that he had it and he might lose it, so he clutched it. But Jesus didn't hang on to this thing, fearing he would lose it.

Why? Because he was essentially God and could never cease being God. So it wasn't something he had to snatch to get and it wasn't something he had to hang on to to keep.

You see? It is a classic statement affirming that Jesus is God in his inner nature so much so that he didn't seek it and so much so that he never feared he'd lose it. He's God. That is the great heart and soul of the Lord Jesus Christ. But then this, verse 7. But he, the authorized said, made himself of no reputation. The Greek says this. He emptied himself. Kanao, from which we get the theological term, the kenosis, the self-emptying. He emptied himself. The verb means to pour out everything until it's all gone. He poured out himself. He emptied himself. He divested himself. He rendered up.

Now what is this saying? Well, what I pointed out in the very first statement I made, as you begin to move through the steps of the Incarnation, first of all, the Lord Jesus Christ abandoned a sovereign position. The sovereign position is affirmed in verse 6 and the abandoning of it is in verse 7. Now notice that I did not say he abandoned his deity. He did not give up his deity. He did not give up his divine attributes.

He abandoned the position. He could never give those things up. They were his essential being. And if he ceased being God, he would be no one. And God could not cease anyway, for he's eternal. Now what then did he give up? What did he pour out? What did he empty out? Some people have tried to say he emptied out his deity. That's ludicrous because then he would cease to exist. That's who he was.

He could never lose that. Some writers put it, I think, this way. He stripped himself of his privilege. He gave up the insignias of his majesty and so forth.

But let me put it to you very simply. I can tell you in the New Testament what he gave up because the New Testament tells us exactly what he gave up. First of all, he gave up his glory. He gave up the manifestation of his glory. He gave up the radiance of his eternal effulgence and brightness. The full manifestation of all of his attributes and glory. That's why in John 17, 5, he says, And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

Give me back the glory which I once had. Which means at that point he didn't have it. He veiled his glory in human flesh. He set aside the full expression of his glory. Secondly, he gave up his honor.

He gave up his honor. Isaiah 53 says he was despised. He was rejected.

The New Testament tells us he was hated. He was mocked. He was spit on.

His beard was plucked. He was defamed. He was dishonored. He was discredited. He was accused. He was murdered. He gave up his honor, clearly. And the prophet Isaiah said in his despising and rejecting, there was no beauty in him that men should desire him. Thirdly, he gave up his riches.

2 Corinthians 8, 9 says, He who was rich for our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might be made rich. Fourthly, he gave up his favorable relation to the Father. And he did that only in a moment of time when he died on the cross and said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

But he lived with the anxiety of coming to that point through all his life. He also gave up his independent exercise of authority. He said, I will do only that which the Father shows me. My meat is to do the Father's will. What the Father says I will do.

What I see the Father I will do. In other words, he gave up his independent exercise of divine authority. He gave up his very special relationship to God. He gave up his riches. He gave up his honor. He gave up his glory.

He emptied all of those things out. And yet he continued to be God. It wasn't that he lost any of his divine attributes. It is that he chose not to use them.

That he gave up the prerogative or the privilege of using them. Was he still God? Yes, that's who he was.

It's a deep mystery, people, by the way, and I can't fathom it all. John Milton wrote, That glorious form, that light insufferable, he laid aside, and here with us to be, forsook the courts of everlasting day, and chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. He was God. But he gave up all his privileges. Boy, does that say volumes about his character?

Does that say volumes about his love? A reporter was interviewing a successful job placement counselor who had put people in positions and they had succeeded so well. He had such a high rate of success that the reporter said, What's your secret? How do you evaluate people? How can you really find out what a person is like? He said this, If you want to know what a person is like, don't give him responsibilities, give him privileges. You give him responsibilities and most everyone will fulfill responsibilities if you intimidate them enough or pay them enough. But if you want to find out the real character of a person, give him a privilege.

A person with real character and real selflessness and real leadership will use his privileges to help others and to build the organization. A lesser man will use his privileges only to promote himself. Jesus had all the privileges of glory and he had no obligation to us. He was equal with God and yet it says so much about his character that he chose to use his privileges to build the Father's kingdom and to reach lost sinners. So like a king who takes off his robes of majesty and puts on the garment of a beggar, the Son of God abandoned a sovereign position. Second point, he accepted a servant's place. He accepted a servant's place. Back to verse 7, He took upon him the form of a servant. When he became a man, he didn't become a king as a man or a great ruler or a great leader or great master, he became a servant.

The moment that he divested himself of his robes of majesty, he donned the servant's apron. This is exactly as the Old Testament prophet had said, Isaiah 52 verse 13 said he would be a servant. Hebrews 10, I am come to do thy will, O Father. And notice again in verse 7 that he wasn't just acting like a servant, he wasn't just pretending to be a servant, he wasn't just playing the part of a servant, he really became a servant. Verse 7, and being, look at this, in the form or having taken upon him the form, and there's the word morphe, he took on him the inner essential nature of a servant.

He became a real servant, a true servant, a genuine servant. Luke 22, 27, I am in the midst of you as one who serves, he said. Mark 10, 45, the son of man is come not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom.

John 13, the disciples had dirty feet and he put on a towel and he washed their feet and then he said the servant is not greater than his Lord. We see him in service all the time and the ultimate act of service when he died on a cross to save sinners. He served his father, his father invited him to come into the world as a servant to work out the plan of redemption and he willingly became that servant. So truly he abandoned a sovereign position and accepted a servant's place. Thirdly, he approached a sinful people, he approached a sinful people. In his perfection he was willing to be a servant to the father, in his perfect harmony with the father he was willing to be a servant. That service meant that he had to approach a sinful people, he had to enter this sin cursed planet, he had to render his service here on this earth. He couldn't do it from outer space, he couldn't do it from the edge of heaven. He had to come into this world and he had to touch sinful man at his own level.

So that abandoning a sovereign position and adopting or accepting a servant's place meant approaching a sinful people. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary and the title of his current study, The Real Meaning of Christmas. John, it seems every year we talk about the real meaning of Christmas and it makes me lament the way Christmas has been burdened with so many trivialities, things like presents and decorations and lights and music that makes no mention of Christ. In fact, some people may wonder if it's wrong for Christians to get into any of the secular aspects of this holiday. Some say we shouldn't celebrate Christmas at all. What are your thoughts about that? Well, first of all, let's start with the fact that Jesus wasn't born on December 25th.

We know that's not the case, but there's nothing wrong with the whole world recognizing that he was born. So in that sense, you sort of take what you get and I think my approach has always been this. If the world is going to stop and pay attention to Christ for one day, I'm going to make the most of that. Why would I fight that? Why would I ignore that?

Why would I downplay that? I also would even go so far as to say if that's an opportunity for families to get together and express love, share gifts, have meals together and strengthen their relationships and the normal things that families do and friends get together for good and healthy and wholesome social reasons. Nothing wrong with that either. For the church to have special meetings, special events, special music, that's all wonderful. I think it's foolish to recognize that the world literally stops dead in its tracks on December 25th and recognizes the birth of Christ and somehow come up with the idea that you ought to fight that.

Why would you do that? Take every advantage that you possibly can. Make Christ known.

Make him the focus of Christmas. It doesn't mean you have to eliminate the other things because many of those things are good things. I know in our family, Christmas is Christ and it revolves around him, but it's also a wonderful time when the calendar slows down and everybody can be together in a more extended time. We want to make the most of it. The same with the church.

Yeah, that's a great point, John. And, friend, to help you take advantage of that greater openness to the gospel this time of year, I would encourage you to pick up a few copies of John's book, God's Gift of Christmas, to give away to friends and family members. Contact us today. You can call us at 800-55-GRACE or shop online at GTY.org. God's Gift of Christmas costs $12 and shipping is free. And as you consider Christmas gifts for your loved ones this year, keep in mind our flagship resource, the MacArthur Study Bible.

It's reasonably priced in a variety of translations and covers, and you're sure to find a great option for your loved one. To pick up the MacArthur Study Bible or God's Gift of Christmas, order today at GTY.org or call us at 800-55-GRACE. And thanks for letting us know how this broadcast has encouraged you spiritually. If Grace To You has helped you better understand God's Word, or if you or someone you know has come to faith after hearing John's teaching, we'd love to hear about it. Send your email to letters at GTY.org or write to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. And thanks for mentioning this station's call letters when you get in touch. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Look for Grace To You television Sundays on DirecTV channel 378. Then be back tomorrow, don't miss the next half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace To You.