From Humiliation to Exaltation

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What does it mean when we say that Christ went from humiliation to exaltation? And we're going to do so by looking at a hymn, but it's not a hymn that one might think in a modern context.
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When we think about hymns, we often think about songs that we sing in church.
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Amazing Grace is the most popular hymn that was ever written.
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Joy to the World, a great Christmas hymn that we're very familiar with.
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And when we think about those songs in the Christmas season, we start thinking about wonderful examples of doctrine which are contained in those songs.
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Hark, the herald angels sing, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.
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We see these great historical theological principles which are found in these great hymns and certainly would be good to preach on any one of those hymns.
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We could go back to them and we could open them up and we can look at them and see what they have to teach us.
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But tonight, we're not going to look at any of those hymns.
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We're going to instead look at a hymn which is found in scripture.
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This hymn is called the Carmen Christi or the Hymn of Christ.
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It is found in the second chapter of Paul's letter to the church at Philippi.
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It is one of the earliest hymns that is referred to in scripture.
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It is one of the earliest writings that we believe to be a hymn of the early church.
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And it comes to us from the pen of the apostle Paul as a lesson that he has given to us on the subject of humility.
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And as we read it tonight, that's going to be the focus, because what should tonight cause us to do tonight, Christmas Eve, the night when we celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, we should humble ourselves before him.
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We should bow the knee before him.
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And that is what is taught in this blessed hymn.
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I do want to ask you to stand.
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We give honor and reverence to God's word as we stand to hear it read.
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So I'm going to invite you to stand with us as we read the text this evening.
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I'm going to begin in Philippians chapter two.
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We're going to read verses five through eleven.
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Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.
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He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
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And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father, our father and our God.
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We thank you for your word.
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We thank you for its truth.
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We thank you that it does humble us every time we open its pages and read its words.
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I pray, oh, father, that you would tonight, as I seek to preach your word, keep me from error, as I certainly am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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I pray that throughout this lesson you would draw your people closer to you, that you would also use this opportunity to convict and to convert.
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For Lord, oh, God, that is your prerogative, your ability to change hearts.
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And we leave it to you in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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You may be seated when examining a passage of scripture, it is vital that we understand the context in which it comes to us.
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The passage that we are looking at tonight comes to us in the context, as I've already mentioned, of Paul exhorting the church to humility.
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If you look a few verses up in verse three of chapter two, it says this, it says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves.
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One of the things that can destroy fellowship in a church very quickly and has destroyed fellowship in many churches is that of pride and a lack of humility.
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So the apostle Paul is concerned about this with his hearers.
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He's concerned about pride within the church and he calls the people to a higher standard of humility.
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He calls them to a humility that is above all things, one that would count others as more significant as themselves.
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He's calling his hearers away from a life of pride and toward a life of love and service.
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And he uses for this sermon that he's giving, essentially, that's what the letter of Philippians is, it's a message, it's a lesson, it's a sermon, and he uses for the sermon an illustration, a hymn.
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In fact, some could argue that Paul wrote this hymn, but there is a lot of scholars.
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There are a lot of scholars, rather, that actually believe that the apostle Paul is quoting one of the earliest hymns of the church that was already going around, that people already knew, that he was simply quoting an already understood song, that everyone was already singing, everyone already knew, because it taught the principles of who Christ was.
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And it comes to us in the form of a hymn.
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And we see in this hymn a progression of Christ's life from humiliation to exaltation.
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So tonight I want to look at those two principles.
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First, the humiliation.
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He says in verse five, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, basically saying, be like Jesus, have the mind of Jesus.
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And then he goes on in verse six to say this, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
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Now, there's a lot in that statement.
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There's a lot of power and truth and theology in that little sentence.
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This tells us of the divinity of Jesus Christ when it says he was in the form of God, that word was we don't think a lot about the word was we don't think about how important the word was is.
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But that's funny.
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The word was in the original language as it comes to us in English, it was written in Greek.
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And when the apostle Paul penned the word for was the word actually means existed.
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And if you read in the New American Standard Bible or the New English translation, it doesn't say that he was in the form of God.
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It says he existed in the form of God.
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And that's what it means.
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In fact, if you go to John one, one, it says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
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If you take that idea of the what that what word that word was means to exist in the beginning.
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Existed the word and the word existed with God and the word existed as God.
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That's what it's saying.
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And so here he's saying about Jesus Christ, it's saying that who, though he existed in the form of God and by the way, the word form of God, their more faith, they who the Greek there simply means that it's his essential nature.
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We think about form is something that we would maybe create a form to make a mold of something or or a form of something we fill out.
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But that's not what the word here means.
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More faith, they who means the very essential part of his nature.
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He existed in his essential nature as God.
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In fact, the new international version gets it very right at this time because the NIV says being in his very nature, God.
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And that's what it means, James White, in his personal translation of this text, says that Christ Jesus, who, although he eternally existed in the very form of God.
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So what we see here is the apostle is making a point about the divinity of Christ.
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He's making a point about the reality that Jesus Christ is divine.
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And yet in that divinity and this statement of his divinity, he also tells us about his humanity because he says in verse six that though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped and the word grasp there could be kind of confusing, but basically means that he didn't count it as something to hold on to.
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He didn't count it as something to grasp a hold of.
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Now, here's the thing that we have to remember about this passage.
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I've already told you what the context is, right? It's humility.
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Paul is teaching his people about humility and he says, look at Jesus, he was by the nature he was by nature, God, he existed as God.
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And yet when he came to the earth, he didn't count that which he had something to be held on to.
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But he goes on to say, but he emptied himself, by the way, when it says he emptied himself, it does not mean that he gave up being divine.
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Jesus never gave up his divinity.
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What did he give up, though? This is called kenosis.
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This is a very important theological principle, the principle of kenosis, the emptying of the sun.
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What did he give up in coming to earth? What did he give up in coming in the form of a man? He gave up the privilege and the glory of his divinity.
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You say, well, how do you know that? Well, I go to John chapter 17 and verse five and Jesus is speaking to the father and Jesus says to the father, father, glorify me with that glory which we shared before the world was.
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You see, when Christ came to the womb of the virgin, when when Christ came into the world and wrapped himself in flesh and he became flesh, John 114, the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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He emptied himself of the glory of the of the divinity, which he shared with the father.
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And he came as a servant.
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In fact, the word to loss can be translated slave.
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He came as a slave, and that's why we say it's humiliation.
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The the one who called the world into existence.
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Empty himself of his glory and became a slave.
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He emptied himself of his majesty.
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And he took the robes of a servant, that's why Paul can say.
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If you've got pride, you need to give it up because the one who called the world into existence emptied himself of his glory and he came as a servant.
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Here's the thing.
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Some people argue Jesus wasn't divine.
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Their entire religious systems would say Jesus was just a good man.
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If Jesus was just a good man, this passage doesn't make any sense as an illustration for Paul's message, because it wouldn't be humble of Jesus not to consider equality with God, something to be grasped.
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If it wasn't something he already had, it wouldn't be humble for him to say, don't consider equality with God, something to hold on to if he didn't have that equality.
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That would be like.
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Somebody going to watch Michael Jordan play basketball, well, maybe that's an old who's a new who's LeBron James play basketball, be like me going to see LeBron James play basketball, and if the last shot, there's two seconds on the clock, they got one chance to score a goal.
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I hop up and say, LeBron, I got this.
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Would that be humble? I mean, the dumbest thing in the world for anybody, but especially me, it'd be very, very dumb.
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It wouldn't be humble for me to say, I let me take your.
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But if I went up and I said, you know what, LeBron, I'll let you take it.
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That'd still be dumb because, of course, he should take it.
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That's the point of this passage, it's saying that Christ existed in the very nature as God, but while he was here in the form of a man, he did not grasp hold of that which he had, but he emptied himself of that glory.
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You know, the only time while he was on earth that we really see his glory exposed was on the Mount of Transfiguration when he brings the apostles up and he stands there with Moses and Elijah and his face shines with glory.
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What are the apostles do? They fall down, they worship, they say we're going to build three tents.
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We're going to worship right here for the rest of our lives.
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We don't have to go any further.
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We have seen we have seen our Lord.
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But you see that most of the time Christ's glory was veiled because he emptied himself and came as a man.
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And he was obedient to the father.
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To understand this, you have to understand a little of Trinitarian theology.
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There is one God who exists eternally in three persons, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.
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And the father sends the son who wraps himself in flesh, becomes a man.
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And in becoming a man, he is able to be obedient to the point of death.
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God cannot die, but Jesus of Nazareth can die.
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And he does die and he dies the most heinous of deaths.
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Not only was it humiliating for him to come to earth as a man, not only was it humiliating for him to be born in Bethlehem in a stable and a feeding trough, not only was it humiliating for him to walk the very earth that he created and get the dirt of his feet dirty with the dirt that he himself created, but it was humiliating when they stripped him naked, beat him almost to death and nailed him to a cross and let him hang and die.
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But it says in this passage, he was obedient.
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He did it in obedience.
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He didn't do it reluctantly.
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He didn't do it hating it.
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He did it willingly and he took upon himself the wrath of God, the father.
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All of the sins that we have done, all of the sins that are due, the retribution of the wrath of God were nailed to the cross, the Bible says, for he made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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But you see that becoming sin, that's humiliation.
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And he took that for us, he took every drop of humiliation for us, but God did not leave him humiliated.
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God did not leave him in a state of decay, but God raised him up.
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And that's what we see in verse nine.
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And therefore, God has highly exalted him.
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And bestowed on him the name that is above every name.
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That at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.
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And you might say, well, that ain't true.
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Because there's a lot of people who don't bow the knee to Jesus.
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You say, well, that's not true.
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There's a lot of people that just don't bow.
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There's a lot of people who don't believe in Jesus.
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There's a lot of people who repudiate Jesus.
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There's a lot of people who reject Jesus.
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There's a lot of people who pay lip service to Jesus.
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There are billions, countless people who don't bow the knee to Jesus.
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What you have to understand is this passage is looking eschatologically, meaning this passage is looking forward.
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There will come a day when every knee shall bow.
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And that's why it says in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
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What does that mean in heaven? The knees of the seraphim and the cherubim bow.
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To the same on earth, the knees of the faithful bow to the Savior.
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And in hell.
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Knees will be broken.
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And even those who repudiated Jesus all their life will bow.
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Not in love and obedience, but in fear and trembling at the face of the Savior.
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Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess at that day when that day comes, there will not be a doubt in the mind of any man.
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I don't care, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens.
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I don't care who they are.
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Dan Barker, you show me the most ardent atheist today.
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On that day, his mouth will be shut and his tongue will know nothing but this.
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Jesus Christ is Lord.
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What we must never forget when we read this passage, this great hymn of the early church.
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Is that it comes to us in the midst of an illustration about humility.
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Paul is telling us our need for humility and he gives us Christ to look at.
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And might I go as far as to say this.
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The very reason that tonight many men are not bowing their knee to Jesus Christ, men and women are not bowing the knee to Christ is because of pride.
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They have yet to give up their pride.
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They have yet to learn to trust fully and completely in Christ instead of themselves.
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And on this night, as we focus on the humility of the manger, as we focus on the humility of Christ who came to the womb of the Virgin, as we focus on the humility of him who came without even a crib, but a feeding trough.
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Let us be reminded of our own call to humility.
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That we would renounce our pride.
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And look to Christ.
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Pride will keep us on our feet, but Christ should take us to our knees and I pray.
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I pray for everyone that hears my voice tonight.
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That you would bow the knee to Christ.
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That you would never know the depth of punishment which comes from rejecting him.
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But instead, that you would know the love and the peace and the joy and the comfort which comes through repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The Bible says, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved other than that of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Him, I proclaim to you.
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And him, I seek that you would trust tonight.
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Our Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that you show us in this great passage the humility of Christ and also how you exalted him to glory.
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Not that he gave up his divinity, but Father, that he emptied himself of glory, that he might come in humility and love and accept and change us.
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Lord, I don't know who's here tonight.
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I know we have many guests tonight.
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I pray, O Lord, that in this time that they would know two things.
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Number one, pride will keep them from you.
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And two, your word tells us that you resist the proud, but give grace to the humble.
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I pray for humility among us all tonight as we look into the manger, as we look up to the cross, as we look within and see our sin and look above and see our Savior.
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Father, forgive our pride.
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Humble us tonight.
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In Jesus name and for his sake, amen.