Rob Morgan - Child in the Manger
Child in the Manger
A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
______________
Robert J. Morgan
December 21, 2003
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:5-11).
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In our discovery of classic Christmas carols during this Advent 2003 season, we’ve sung today a quant little song with a Gaelic melody:
Child in the manger, infant of Mary;
Outcast and stranger, Lord of all;
Child who inherits all our transgressions,
All our demerits on Him fall.
The remarkable thing about Christmas—the thing that keeps this story as fresh and alive as when it first occurred—is the concept of the Eternal, Everlasting God becoming a human being and being born in a stable. There is no other story in all history like this one. The Gospels tell it to us in historical fashion, but Paul the Apostle gives us the same story in theological fashion in Philippians 2, and that’s our study today. Philippians 2 represents Paul’s version of the Christmas story.
To be true to the context, we need to notice why he wrote this passage to begin with, and that makes for a very interesting observation. It wasn’t primarily given to provide us a great theological explanation of the person and work of Jesus Christ, though he does that. His primary and immediate purpose is to help us get along better with each other.
Notice the way he begins the passage in verses 1ff: Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
Paul was writing his letter to a church he deeply loved, the church in the city of Philippi. If he had a favorite congregation, this was it. There is a tone of affection and devotion between church and missionary that we seldom see. But the Philippians were having some internal problems getting along with one another, and throughout this letter, Paul mentions the importance of being humble and working hard to develop harmonious relationships. It was in this context that he wrote this great second chapter. If we would just put Philippians 2 into practice, most of our marriage problems, our family conflicts, and our church quarrels would fade away like fog in the sunshine.
The problem is this: He is telling us to do something here that runs contrary to our human nature. It runs contrary to my own human nature. I had a disagreement this week with someone in another state, and after it was over I stayed awake in bed wondering how I could have been more assertive, how I could have been more difficult, how I could have pressed my point and gotten my way a little more effectively. Isn’t that just like the way we are—and isn’t that just the opposite of what Paul is telling us here in Philippians 2?
We’re highly self-righteous, self-centered, self-pleasing creatures, and we like having our own way. If someone crosses us, we’re highly offended. If someone offends us, we’re highly annoyed. We like to stay on top, and to do what Paul is suggesting here runs counter to our natures.
And so, he pulls out his ultimate motivating explanation. If we are really going to have harmony and peace and unity in our homes and churches and relationships, we’ve got to be more concerned about the interests of others than about our own interests. We’ve got to reverse the tendencies of our sinful flesh. And the only way to do that is to focus on the One who did that very thing for us—the Lord Jesus Christ.
And with that, Paul enters this profound passage about the incarnation and birth and human life of Jesus of Nazareth, saying in verse 5: Let this mind be in you that also was in Christ Jesus.
The word mind is the translation of the Greek word φρονέω (phroneō), which Paul used in the original. It means attitude or frame of mind. Paul is saying, “Look at things from the perspective of Christ.” It reminds us of Bill Gothard’s old definition of wisdom: “Seeing things from God’s point of view.” Let the point of view, the wisdom, the perspective, the attitude of Jesus Christ be your attitude, too.
I was just thinking Friday morning as I drove to the office how much more I need the mind of Christ. If we could only look at the complications in our schedules, the difficulties we face, the challenges before us, the conflicts we encounter from God’s perspective, how much less we’d be stressed about the concerns of life! And how much wiser we’d be in handling other people! Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus!
Then in verse 6, Paul enters into the greatest thing he ever wrote about the greatest Person who ever lived. Here he is going to tell us eight incredible things about the Lord Jesus Christ. He is going to make eight profound theological statements about Jesus Christ, about Christmas, and about the coming of God from heaven above.
1. Jesus Was in the Form of God (v. 6): Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God…
The Greek word is μορφή (morphē). People today are using a new verb that comes from this original Greek word—morphed. When we see someone on television, and suddenly his image changes into that of another person by the use of computer technology, we say that he was morphed. It has to do with image, visible form, outward appearance. The Greek word implied nature. It was a word that expressed the way that a thing or person actually was—its essential nature. Paul is saying that the essential nature of Jesus Christ was God. Jesus was God Himself, God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity.
2. Jesus Didn’t Cling to the Glories of Divinity (v. 6): Philippians 2:6 goes on to say that although He was in the form of God, He did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. What does that mean? Well, that sentence certainly needs some explaining because as it is worded here it is difficult to understand. The word “robbery” conveys the idea of something that seized or grasped. It later came to mean something to which we cling. Jesus could have clung to the glories of His divine position. But though He was God Himself, the Second Person of the Trinity, He did not seize and grasp and cling to that in such a way as to convey unwillingness to leave aside the glories of Heaven for His mission on earth.
3. Jesus Emptied Himself (v. 7): Verse 7 continues: …but made Himself of no reputation. This is a critical passage. Literally, the words are but emptied Himself… The Greek verb is κενόω (kenoō), from the word means to empty out or to drain. In exegetical jargon, this is called the Kenosis Passage. It has been a source of some debate throughout Christian history, for there have been those who said that when Jesus drained or emptied Himself, He drained out His divinity or deity and was no longer God. But Paul is not saying that Jesus exchanged His Divinity for Humanity.
The Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament Based on the Semantic Domains defines it this way: “To completely remove or eliminate elements of high status or rank by eliminating all privileges or prerogatives associated with such status or rank—‘to empty oneself, to divest oneself of position.”
He didn’t empty Himself of His deity, but He laid aside the glory and trappings and prerogatives of His divine office.
One of the best explanations for this that I’ve ever read is a simple explanation in John MacArthur’s Study Bible which says this was a self-renunciation in five different areas:
A. Jesus renounced His heavenly glory. While on earth, He gave up the glory of heaven for the woes of earthly life.
B. Jesus renounced his independent authority. He was willing to submit to the Father’s will. He said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not My will, but Thine be done.”
C. Jesus renounced His divine prerogatives. He once said that He could have called 10,000 angels to deliver Him from Roman execution, but He chose to defer.
D. Jesus renounced His eternal riches. While on earth, He lived a life of poverty and once said that even the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but that He Himself didn’t have a bedroom to call His own.
E. Jesus renounced His favorable relationship with God the Father. He was willing to be forsaken by the Father and to incur the Father’s judicial wrath in order to provide redemption for the human race.
All that is included in this phrase: He emptied Himself…. He made Himself of no reputation.
4. Jesus Took the Form of a Bondservant (v. 7): Recently I spent the afternoon over at Fisk University studying the history of the Negro Spiritual. Fisk University opened its doors in 1866, at the close of the Civil War. It was one of the schools established for liberated slaves by the American Missionary Association. As students and professors arrived on campus, they found themselves living in abandoned Union army hospital barracks built on the site of old slave pens. Among the arriving professors was a New York Yankee, a white man named White. As music instructor, George White became intrigued by the old plantation melodies and slave songs he overheard in the dorms and among the students between classes. White had trouble coaxing his students to sing him those songs; it seemed a particularly private type of hand-me-down music. There were no written scores or words—just plaintive strains passed voice to voice between the generations.
Within a few years, the old buildings at Fisk started rotting. The university found itself in crisis, without even money to buy food for its 400 students. The Missionary Association decided to close the school. When White approached the trustees suggesting a series of fund-raising concerts, the board refused. White gave it a try anyway. “I’m depending on God, not you,” he told the board. Selecting nine students (most of them former slaves), White and his wife sold their jewelry and personal belongings to finance the first tour.
On October 6, 1871, the singers boarded a train in Nashville for the Midwest. It was a hard trip, and at times the young people had to relinquish their seats to white folks. Other times they were evicted from trains or hotels. Sometimes the little group, braving threats, insults, obscenities, and indignities, sang in nearly empty halls and churches.
George White agonized about naming his group; but one day, after spending much of the night in prayer, he found the answer. They would be the Jubilee Singers, the biblical year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 being a day of liberation for slaves.
The tide turned during the Christmas season that year when the Jubilee Singers gave a performance at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York. The pastor was Henry Ward Beecher. When it was finished, Rev. Beecher, deeply moved, stood and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to do what I want every person in this house to do.” He turned his pockets inside out, giving all the money he had on his person that night to the Jubilee Singers. Others followed suit, and that night the offering was $1300! Newspapers picked up the story, and soon the Jubilee Singers had engagements around the world. That was the birth of the Negro Spiritual as a popular form of music. They were songs of slaves yearning to be free.
As I studied all this, I realized how greatly needful it us for us to be free, and how tragic and horrible to be enslaved. Yet when we look at the Lord Jesus, we see someone who operated in reverse of those desires. He was willing to become a servant, to be a slave. He took the form of a bondservant.
5. Jesus Came in the Likeness of Men and was Found in Appearance as a Man (vv. 7-8): Just as He was in the form of God, thus was God; so he came in the likeness of men, and was indeed a man. Jesus Christ was both God and Man. He was, is, and always will be God. And in Bethlehem He also became a man, a human being. And the next phrase says….
6. Jesus Humbled Himself (v. 8): This is a remarkable phrase. It tells us that not only did Jesus Christ not cling to His prerogatives as God; He did not even cling to His prerogatives as a man. He was willing to give up His normal human rights and to subject Himself to persecution and suffering.
7. Jesus Became Obedient to the Point of Death, Even the Death of the Cross (v. 8): It wasn’t simply that He died, but that He died under the most cruel and extreme form of torturous execution that has ever been invented.
8. Jesus Is Now Highly Exalted with a Name:
The result? Now, having sunk lower than any human being in His humility, He is raised higher than every name in His exaltation. Someone put it this way:
Our blessed Lord combined in one, two natures, both complete;
A perfect manhood all sublime, in Godhead all replete.
As man He entered Cana's feast, a humble guest to dine;
As God He moved the water there, and changed it into wine.
As man He climbed the mountain's height, a suppliant to be;
As God He left the place of prayer and walked upon the sea.
As man He wept in heartfelt grief, beside a loved one's grave;
As God He burst the bands of death, Almighty still to save.
As man He lay within a boat o'erpowered by needful sleep;
As God He rose, rebuked the wind and stilled the angry deep.
Such was our Lord in life on earth, in dual nature one;
The woman's seed in very truth and God's eternal Son.
O Child, O Son, O Word made flesh, may Thy high praise increase:
Called Wonderful, the Mighty God, Eternal Prince of Peace
All this means three things to us. He is our Master. He is God Himself to be feared, worshiped, and obeyed. The fact that He has a name above every name implies that He possess an authority above all other authorities. I can’t live the way I want to; He is Lord. He is Master. His is Boss.
Second, He is our Mediator. The word “mediator” is a common word today. We often hear it in the news when there are conflicts between labor and management, or conflicts between people. A mediator is someone who comes between two opposing parties and helps them reach a settlement. The Bible teaches that God is pure and holy, and all of us are sinful and dying. Jesus Himself comes between us. He is both God and Man, and He is able to bring us together through His blood. His death on the cross is the means by which we are reconciled to God.
There’s a wonderful article in the current issue of the Gideon Magazine that illustrates this. A man named Gary Linton recalled his fifth grade teacher in Tallahassee, Florida, who kept a copy of the Bible on the corner of her desk every day. Each morning after the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, she would read a passage of Scripture and have a prayer. (That’s before they branded such behavior as criminal and outlawed it.)
One day, a gentleman came and gave all the students Gideon New Testaments, and Gary said that he took it home and placed it in a drawer of his bedroom, but he didn’t read it very much at the time.
Several years later, when he was 17, he found himself in bed trying to figure out how many days of school he had missed because he had either been drunk or stoned. He couldn’t remember his locker number, and the other kids at school were tired of helping him get through the day. Going over to the chest of drawers, he pulled out his little New Testament and read John 3:16, the verse his fifth grade teacher had read so often. That night, he gave his life to the Mediator, to the Lord Jesus Christ, who forgave his sins and set him free.
Soon Gary was so on fire for the Lord that he was taking his New Testament to school with him and reading John 3:16 to all his friends. One day there was a knock at the classroom door, and the assistant principal pulled him out of class. “Son, have you been preaching and reading the Bible to students during the lunch period?” he asked.
“Yes, I have,” said Gary.
“Well,” said the assistant principal, “now we’re going to move you to the second lunch period…. The kids there need to hear the Gospel, too!”
Jesus is our Master and He is our Mediator. But to be honest, that isn’t Paul’s primary point here in Philippians 4. Paul wants us to know that Jesus is also our Model. See how he begins the passage in verse 3: Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you that also was in Christ Jesus…
And then he follows up in verse 14 along the same lines. Because Jesus was humble, we’re to be humble. Because He served us, we’re to serve others. We’re to walk in His steps.
How about you? Do you need Jesus Christ today to be your Master, your Mediator, or your Model? Or all three? Give the totality of your life to Him today, for He has been given a Name that is above every Name, that at the Name of Jesus, every knee should bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.