From Glory to the Cross: He Emptied Himself Phil 2:7

The Humiliation of Christ in Philippians 2:7

He emptied himself. He kenosis himself. Meaning the individual of the most honor, deserving the most praise, deserving the most worth. You think of today for Mother's Day, who in here got flowers for their mother or their wife of their children?

I went to Fred Meyer, and we're gonna be giving out flowers later today, and oh my goodness, they were expensive flowers. They like to upcharge these things on a day like this, right? You might say that those flowers have value.

What would be taking a flower and making it kenosis, making it emptied? You take this flower that's of value to yourself, and you take it and throw it on the floor, and you stomp on it, and you bury it up, and you spit on it, and you smack it all around, all these things.

You make it of no value. Jesus himself being of the most value, being fully God, having the essence of God right then and there, the one that everyone should have been bowing down to and praising. What did he do for us?

Christ Made a Curse for Us

The king of kings was made the scum of scum, because you are dead in your sins, and he has risen again and died for you. That is the kenosis that we have in here. That is the emptying out, that his worth was made void, that his praise was not sung, that his admiration was not heard, but instead he was rejected and despised above all else, that he who had never sinned, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.

He has become a curse for us, so that we could be relieved of these things. So here in verse 7, but emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, meaning that these two natures have come together, again, not mixing, not adding, not taking away from each other, and brothers and sisters, the question of how does that happen?

How does this miraculous thing take place in the person and work of Jesus Christ? You just have to confess what the Bible tells you. Don't try to make analogies. Don't try to make it work in your understanding, because guess what?

You will lessen the value of Jesus Christ when you do this. Jesus is fully God. Jesus is fully man. How do those things come together? I can't tell you exactly how those things came together. If Don was here, he would tell us about Adams and these things, but even that does not answer for us the miraculous event that is the incarnation, that he who existed in the form of God was humbled and emptied himself of all value and worth.

That has nothing to do with attributes. That has to do with us recognizing his greatness. We were veiled, our eyes were covered, our hearts were deafened, our ears were deaf, all these things, and we rejected the infinite being, Jesus Christ.

The Obedience and Death of Jesus on the Cross

And because he was in fullness of man, he was nailed to a cross and he died for us, so that if we have faith in him, we would live again. So he emptied himself. This is a very biblical term. It does not mean he lost attributes, but that he become humble, that his value was not seen in man, because he was in the form of a slave and he was in the likeness of us.

And look at verse 8. So even though he existed in the form of God, how did we see him? How did we find him? Being found in appearance as a man. What's the text teaching? Humility. He humbled himself. And listen to this.

This is remarkable. By being obedient, you think about obedience and you think it should bring you good things. What did Jesus do for us in his obedience? By becoming obedient to the point of death. His humility didn't stop there.

It wasn't like he just lived a long life and died of old age. Death upon a cross. He lived a perfect life, an obedient life. A life that you and I can't live, and yet he died in our place. He died the death that you and I deserve.

He was buried and rose again on the third day, which we'll talk about hopefully next week, because that's what the next text has for us, is that therefore now he's been exalted above every name. So now in our hearts, though we rejected him and we saw him as scum and vile, we now recognize and profess that he is the King of Kings, that he is our Lord and our Savior and our God, that we recognize him as what?

The Humility of Christ and the Call to Confess Him as Lord

Fully God. And the life he lived, he's fully man. This is a text about humility.