Oh, the Humanity!

“And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

“Oh, the humanity!” Herbert Morrison shouted these words into his radio microphone as the Hindenburg crashed and burned on May 6, 1937. He struggled to find the words to describe the disaster which killed 37 people in Elmhurst, NY. From his prison cell in Rome, Paul uses his pent to paint a picture of the earthly life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The Rabbi/Carpenter from Galilee sure looked like every other person. Yet there was something VERY different about Him. He was incredibly humble. He was obedient to His Father. And He paid the price for that obedience with the most humiliating form of execution the world has ever known. Oh, the humanity!

The Apostle Paul is writing to his friends in Philippi. Despite being behind bars, you can’t wipe the smile off his face. He’s stoked about what God is doing in and through the goofy little church he planted back in Macedonia. He has incredible joy in the joint! In the middle of his excitement, Paul breaks out into song. Yeah, you read that right. A song. A boatload of really smart folks believe Philippians 2:6-11 are the lyrics to a popular worship song in the early church. It’s a modern day preacher quoting a line from “The Stand” in his message. Since Hillsong United wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye, the apostle drops these lyrics to make his point. 

In the previous verses, Paul pulls back the curtains of heaven and gives us a picture of what folks call the preincarnate Christ (Phil 2:6-7). We learn that the Second Person of the Trinity has been around forever. The Son of God is seriously old school. Before anyone on earth ever laid eyes on Him, He was in heaven, just as much God as His Dad and the Spirit. But there was a crisis in God’s Creation. We rebelled. We broke His perfection. Something had to be done. Somebody had to come to the rescue. That Someone is our Savior Jesus. He dropped all the rights and privileges of being Almighty God and came to serve and save us. That’s what happened in eternity before Christ jumped into the river of time in a place called Palestine.

Here Paul uses one line of lyrics to sum up Jesus’ earthly life. “And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (v8). One sentence to sum up a sinless, selfless life of sacrifice. If you squint really hard, you can see teenage girl named Mary and her husband Joe the Carpenter giving birth to their first Child in a cave behind the Motel 6. He would grow up to be known as Jesus. Humble. Obedient to His heavenly Dad. But eventually crucified as criminal. If you’re looking for a thumbnail summary of Christ’s life on earth, you’ve found it here in verse 8. Oh, the humanity!

The first thing we see about the Son of God is He was “found in human form” (v8). Paul uses a Greek word (Gr. schema) that means outward appearance. The ESV translators have already talked about Jesus in the “form of God” (Phil 2:8) and “taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7). But this is a different term that describes what can be known about a person by just looking at them. At first glance, you’d think Joe’s Son is just like every other young Jewish man in Israel at the time. Can we stuff a sock in the picture of Jesus as with blonde hair and blue eyes in the middle of a brown world? There’s absolutely no basis to believe He looked any different than any other Jewish guy at the time. He was “found in human form” (v8). That would be Middle Eastern form. Jewish form. Oh, the humanity!

Jesus may have looked like every other man but He was so much more. “He humbled Himself” (v8). The original language (Gr. tapeino’o) describes how the Second Person of the Trinity readily and willingly got low. Nobody forced Him. Nobody tricked Him. He didn’t draw the short straw. He WANTED the assignment to come to our rescue. Paul’s point is that the One who is 100% God has done something miraculous. He’s now become 100% Man at the same time. The math makes my head hurt. The truth makes my heart soft. Picture the one and only Son of God leaving the heavenly palace and making a swan dive into the dumpster fire of our sin and rebellion here on Earth. It’s almost impossible to wrap our minds around what He left to where He went. Christ willingly left a perfect paradise to walk with us here in our broken world. To save us, He became one of us. “He humbled Himself” (v8). Oh, the humanity!

Jesus added humanity to His divinity in order to live for you and me. The apostle talks about how our Savior was “obedient” (v8). The Greek word here is hupekoos, which means to listen for and respond to a command when called. Picture a butler waiting for the knock at the door. The Son is happily obedient to His Father. As a result, He lives the life of obedience and sinless perfection that you and I couldn’t. Jesus is turning around all the crap that started in Eden when Adam bought the lie of a satanic snake. “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one Man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:19). But His obedience didn’t stop there. Jesus was “obedient to the point of death” (v8). He died the death for our sin that we should have died. In the hours before His own murder, the Lord pleaded with His Dad. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Mt 26:39). If there’s no other way, He’s ready and willing. There was one and only one way. And that road ran right to Skull Hill. Oh, the humanity!

Jesus added humanity to His divinity in order to die for you and me. The radical Rabbi/Carpenter died the most humiliating death our planet has ever seen, “death on a cross” (v8). The Romans didn’t invent crucifixion but they certainly perfected it. It was horribly painful. It’s where we get our word “excruciating.” It was hours if not days of torture. Bloody. Suffocating. If that’s not bad enough, it was meant to embarrass and shame the victim. Romans saved this form of execution for the worst of the worst. Rebels. Revolutionaries. Terrorists. It was a very public deterrent to anyone who got the bright idea of trying to overthrow the empire. One look at the dead Messiah from Galilee would certainly send a chill up the spine. 

But the Bible doesn’t stop after Philippians 2:8. Sunday’s coming. Something crazy is about to happen. Somebody is about to come walking out of the graveyard. Oh, the humanity!

Let It Go

“who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Philippians 2:6)

A couple of thousand years before Elsa sang “Let It Go,” Paul wrote about how Jesus loosened His divine grip on what it means to be God and came to our rescue. From his prison cell in Rome, the apostle makes it absolutely clear to his friends back in Philippi that the resurrected Rabbi/Carpenter from Nazareth is 100% God. But he goes on to write how Christ dropped it like it was hot in submission to His heavenly Dad in order to serve you and me. Was Jesus God? You betcha. But He let it go.

Paul is in the middle of one of the most beautiful and powerful passages in the entire Bible. He’s encouraging the followers of Jesus to step back and think of all that our Savior has done for us. There’s no doubt about our “encouragement in Christ…comfort from love…participation in the Spirit…affection and sympathy” (Phil 2:1). Remember all He’s done for us. Remember all He’s doing for us. Got it? Got it! Since all of that is a stone cold, lead pipe lock, we must get over ourselves (Phil 2:2). Nothing would make the apostle happier. Stop selfishly fighting to be number one and work your tail off for those around you. We can do this because God has pulled off a miraculous mind swap between Jesus and us (Phil 2:3). And a sure sign that we now possess Christ’s purpose and attitude is when we release our kung fu grip on our so-called rights. Let it go.

But let’s back up just a bit. Before Jesus empties His hands of His very godliness, Paul leaves no wiggle room about who He is and what He is. “He was in the form of God” (v6). The ESV translators gives us “form” when the apostle uses the Greek term  morphe. This word only appears three times in the entire New Testament. It can certainly mean shape, figure, and external appearance. That’s exactly what Mark describes when those boys ran into the risen Jesus on their long walk back to Emmaus. “He appeared in another form (Gr. morphe) to two of them as they were walking in the country” (Mk 16:12). But a better understanding of morphe deals with character or the intrinsic nature of something or someone. That’s the idea behind uses number two and three that we find here in Philippians 2:6-7. This is a picture of Christ BEFORE He left His heavenly paradise to dive into the big steaming pile of sin we made of His creation. According to Robertson, “In His reincarnate state Christ possessed the attributes of God and so appeared to those in heaven who saw Him. Here is a clear statement by Paul of the deity of Christ.” 

“He was in the form of God” (v6). It’s a powerful reminder that from square one the big story of Scripture is that Jesus is God. The Second Member of the Trinity didn’t just magically appear for the first time in a Bethlehem feed trough. He’s been around a long time. I mean a REALLY long time. Like forever. Jesus’ best buddy John pulls back the curtain of heaven for a glimpse of the eternal Christ whom he calls by the nickname the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (Jn 1:1-2). Christ was there before the beginning. He was right there with His Dad. He was and is God. If there was a mic for John to drop back in the first century, I’m sure he would have. 

Just in case you think John had an inflated opinion of his best Friend’s eternal divinity, there’s plenty of other evidence to support the idea. Jesus Himself said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58). Horrible grammar. AWESOME theology! If you want a jaw dropping description of Jesus as God, check out Paul’s description over in Colossians. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…For in Him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). If we want to know what God looks like, just take a gander at Jesus. The Father was stoked to make sure every bit of what it means to be God is in His Son. And in one of his notes to the Corinthian church, Paul simply and bluntly states “Christ, who is the image of God” (2Cor 4:4). Jesus had a firm grasp on His Godness.

If that’s not enough proof for you, check out why Christ’s enemies put a contract on Him.  “This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God” (Jn 5:18). They were certainly mad that Jesus was breaking their rules about what you could or could not do on Saturday. But they ordered their hit on Him because He saw Himself as God. “The Jews answered Him, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone You but for blasphemy, because You, being a man, make Yourself God’” (Jn 10:33). Jewish leaders didn’t want Jesus out of the way because He was such an awesome teacher. It wasn’t because He ran miraculous MASH units and healed hundreds. They got their undies in a bundle because this uneducated Preacher from the boondocks had the audacity to claim He was God Eternal in the flesh. 

But something amazing happened back at the heavenly palace. The Son of God “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (v6). Just because He was and is God, Jesus didn’t put His divinity in a death grip. The phrase “a thing to be grasped” is actually one Greek word, harpagmos. It paints a picture of that which is held onto by force. Something seized and held. An object of held and gripped tightly. An item forcefully taken and retained. Think of a football player covering the ball with two hands as the defense tries to rip it from him. While coaches are all about ball security, Jesus didn’t give a hot hoot about God security. He held it loosely. Christ was in willing submission to His Dad. “The Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28). That’s just one of many statements Jesus made describing His willingness to do whatever His Father asked Him to do. And if that means loosening His holy hold on His divine attributes, so be it. He let it go.

Paul’s point here is that once God executes our mind swap with His Son, we need to let it go as well. If Jesus is God and didn’t put the death grip on His divinity, what right do we have to hang onto our place or privilege? Who are we to play God and demand our way? Whenever I get cocky and think I’m God’s gift, I need to slow my roll and take a look at how the One who truly was God’s Gift saw Himself. He let it go. And I should to. Stop trying to weasel my way to places of influence. Quit leveraging relationships to work the system to my advantage. Stand down from using people to get what I want. Since He was God, Jesus had every right to do anything and everything He wanted. Instead, He let it go. If it’s good enough for Elsa, it’s good enough for me.