Philippians 2:5-8. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, 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. And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
It was on my mind for some time to try to speak from these words this morning, and over the past few days I wondered about the appropriateness of keeping to this text. It was impressed upon me that nothing is more appropriate in any situation than being pointed to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We trust that the Lord may enable us to look to the Rock that is higher than we are and to find, in what Christ is and in what He has done and has suffered, the strength and consolation that is required at this time.
As the Lord may help us, we would like to think of: (1) Who or what Christ was and what He is, and that is God; (2) What He became; that is man; (3) Why He is both God and man in two distinct natures and one Person; and (4) What effect this truth should have on us.
1. What Christ was and is.
We notice that these things are said concerning a Person who is easily identifiable in history. It is the Christ of the gospel that is being set before us in these words, the same Jesus who was crucified.
What we are told about Him first of all is, “Being in the form of God”. Being is a word that not only refers to what He was, but also to what He is and what He will be. It looks back and looks onwards. It is applicable to this Person who can call Himself, “I AM”. As God, He has no past or present or future. He is the Eternal I AM. Being in the form is “having all the characteristics”, having what makes something what it really is. We think of form as shape, but shape is just part of the form of a material thing. God has no shape, but form is the sum total of all the characteristics that make something what it is and distinguish it from everything else. We are told of this glorious Person that He is in the form of God, and that brings before us the truth that He is God. All divine characteristics and attributes, honours and powers belong to Him. He is the same in substance, equal in power and glory, with the Father. He is God over all, and blessed for ever, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being and in all His attributes.
How we should endeavour to exercise faith in the fact that the Jesus on whom we rely is God, as much God as the Father is God, as much God as the Holy Spirit is God! He was, He is, He always will be. He is the same yesterday, today and for ever, and He did not cease to be God when He became man. He did not cease to be what He always is, although He became something that He never was before, and that is why He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. As a boy of about 12 years of age He asked, Did they not know “that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Lk 2:49). He thought as God; He spoke as God; He spoke as One who had a place in the counsels of eternity, who could think the thoughts of God, who had the prerogatives of God, who was equal with God in every respect. It was not robbery for Him. He was not claiming something that was not His own.
He was telling the plain truth when He spoke in any way that gave the suggestion that He was Himself God. “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8:58). In the garden of Gethsemane, when they asked Him if He was Jesus of Nazareth, He replied, “I am”, and they all fell backwards. There was a flash of divine glory, and that divine glory belonged to Him as a babe, as a boy, as a man. It belonged to Him on the cross and in the grave. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. So the first thing we notice is that Christ Jesus, the object of our faith, is our God, and that everything that is divine belongs to Him and belonged to Him even in the depths of His humiliation. It is only a Saviour who is God that could be a saviour for sinners. No mere man could undertake what had to be undertaken if sinners were going to be saved. That is why the second Man, the second representative of human beings, is the Lord from heaven, God manifest in the flesh.
2. What He became.
We are told that He made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant, was made in the likeness of men, and was found in fashion as a man. You notice His own activity in all these phrases: He made Himself of no reputation, He took upon Him the form of a servant, He humbled Himself, He became obedient unto death. The Lord came in response to the commandment of the Father. In the everlasting covenant, it was the Father’s will that the Son should assume the office of saviour and should assume human nature, which was necessary to carry out that office. But He did not come under any coercion. He came willingly, lovingly. If we can say so, the Lord came enthusiastically. His whole Being was in it. He took delight to receive this commandment from the Father, and He was active in every part of His condescension, His suffering, His death. Many people mistreated Him, and the Father caused the sword to awaken against Him, but there was no one more active than Himself.
He made Himself of no reputation. Sometimes people translate that, “He emptied Himself”. What we have to realise is that the Lord did not give up anything that He had or that He was. He made Himself of no reputation by taking upon Himself a nature that He did not have before. He did not let His Own divine glory keep Him from assuming human nature, although human nature was going to obscure, or cover, that glory, so that the world did not know Him; even His own Israel did not receive Him. In the beginning was the Word; the Word was with God; the Word was God; the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; we beheld His glory (Jn 1). For those whose eyes were opened by grace, the light shone in their hearts to show them the glory of God in the face of Christ. But others, who just saw His flesh, did not see His glory. He was willing to condescend – the God of glory, still in the bosom of the Father, still the glorious God of heaven – He was willing to take a nature to Himself in which that glory would be obscured for a time.
He took upon Him the form of a servant. Form has the same meaning here. The Son of God took upon Himself all the characteristics of, everything essential to being, a servant. The God of heaven, the God of glory became a servant. He took upon Himself the form of a servant. “My Servant”, “My righteous Servant”, God said. “To do Thy will I take delight, O Thou My God that art; / Yea, that most holy law of Thine, I have within My heart” (Ps 40:8).
He was a servant for His people: “I am among you as He that serveth”, He said as He was washing the disciples’ feet (Lk 22:27). “The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). Do we realise the amazing truth that the Person who washed the disciples’ feet, who sweated great drops of blood in Gethsemane, who was crucified on Calvary, who was a Servant of God and of His people, serving their highest interests, is the Lord of glory? Not an earthly king, but the King of kings and Lord of lords. He took upon Him the form of a servant, but God cannot be a servant! Therefore He was made in the likeness of men. He had to become a man to carry out the functions of a servant. He took the likeness of men upon Himself. He was not made God; He always is God. But He began to be something that He never had been before – to be a man. His humanity is real humanity, the likeness of men.
It does not mean it was just the appearance. Likeness refers to the similarity there was between Him and other men, a real similarity – a human body, a human mind, a human soul. But it also points to the fact that this is a unique Man, who is different from others, but not in anything that is essential to humanity. He is not a mere man; He is not a sinful man. He is the Son of Man. He is unique. He is the Man who is God’s Fellow! (Zec 13:7). The Lord of hosts says, My Equal, My Companion. Yes, we should be thankful today that we have a divine Saviour who has a human nature, who has everything essential to humanity and yet is not a mere man. It is because He was made in the likeness of men that He could be a Saviour. We were saying that the Saviour must be God, but we must also say the Saviour must be man, because God is not able to be obedient and God is not able to suffer and God is not able to die! But we need a Saviour who can be obedient in our place, who can suffer in our place, who can die in our place, and therefore we need a Saviour who is human! This is the great mystery of the Person of Christ: God and Man in two distinct natures, and one Person for ever. He is not a human person, He never was a human person, He did not become a human person. The humanity of Christ never existed apart from His divinity. It is the human nature of a divine Person, so what He suffers in His humanity is the suffering of the Person. His divine nature cannot suffer, but it is the divine Person who is suffering in our nature. That is fundamental to the believer’s hope, because it means that all His obedience, all His sufferings, all involved in His death and resurrection and ascension belongs to Him as a divine Person, although it is in His human nature all these things took place.
I was thinking recently – trying to think is all we can do – about the mystery of the unity of the Persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – one God, three Persons. Here is another mystery at the foundation of our faith, just as fundamental to our salvation: the mystery of the two natures in the Person of Christ. It qualifies Him to be a Saviour. He was found in fashion as a man. He really appeared as a Man among the human race. Form and likeness refer to the inner essential reality. Fashion is the way in which that reality is seen by others. No one who ever met Him had any doubt whatever about the reality of His humanity. He was in all points made like unto us, apart from sin. Sin is not essential to human nature. Sin is a defect in human nature. Christ assumed a human nature which was perfect, and so He is a perfect Person, a perfect Saviour for sinners.
It is important for us to remember that this same Jesus who is the Son of God, who is in the form of God, was also found in fashion as a man. The humanity of Christ has to be thought of as part of the object of our faith, and that brings God very near! God was in Christ. God was manifest in the flesh. That is an encouragement for us to put our confidence in Him and to come boldly to the throne of grace. You remember the words: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted” (Heb 2:14-18).
3. Why Christ is God and man.
Why did the Son of God make Himself of no reputation and take upon Him the form of a servant, and be made in the likeness of men, and be found in fashion as a man? We see it in this: “He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”. It was only in human nature that the Son of God could humble Himself. God as God cannot be humbled, and man is not humbled by being man. He is the height of God’s creation, for that matter.
But the Son of God, in order to humble Himself, condescended to take to Himself this human nature, and in that human nature He humbled Himself. It was Himself He humbled. The Person is humbled in human nature. He is still God over all and blessed for ever. He is still the Son in the bosom of the Father, but no one can measure the depths of condescension from the glory of God to the experience of Christ in His human nature. He said Himself: “I am a worm, and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people” (Ps 22:6). No man was ever so little thought of as the Man Christ Jesus. You can hear the spite, malice and contempt in their voices when they say, “Away with Him! Crucify Him, crucify Him!” This is the Lord of glory!
Man sinned by trying to aspire to be God. If you eat of this fruit, you will be like God, the devil said. We do not know how that appealed to Adam at that moment, or to Eve. But here is the Lord of glory coming down into human nature! It is a response to the sin of man, a provision of righteousness and a covering. But in that human nature He humbled Himself. He did not come into human nature sitting on a throne but in a very lowly state.
He humbled Himself to be obedient. Obedience characterises the life of Christ Jesus from its beginning to its end in this world. Disobedience was our fall, our sin. Disobedience is in every sin of ours, rebellion against the authority of God, a refusal to let His will be our will. But here is Christ, in the place of His people, rendering obedience to the law of God. He came not to do His Own will, but the will of His Father, and He performed that will perfectly. His performance of that obedience was not a merely human act. It was in His humanity He obeyed. He obeyed His Own divine law, but His obedience has all the value that belongs to His Person, which is divine. Over against our human disobedience, there is the obedience of this divine Person.
Christ was obedient unto death. That does not mean He obeyed death, but He was obedient to the point of dying. This commandment He received from His Father, to lay down His life for the sheep, and He obeyed it. He went to Calvary to die the accursed death of the cross under the burden of His people’s sin and condemnation. He was obedient to death, even the death of the cross – that death which marked Him out as accursed of heaven. “My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Ps 22:1). “Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the Man that is My Fellow” (Zec 13:7). All the wrath of God against His people – all the demands of divine justice – met on Him, and He gave Himself to that; He was obedient, to the extent of dying on Calvary. “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt” (Mt 26:39).
Christ died on that cross to make atonement for the sins of His people and to deliver them from the power of sin and the curse of the broken law. It was a death intended to deliver His people from the power and guilt of sin, and from all the curse involved in being sinners. That is the glorious truth before us today, that the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God in our nature, has destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14). It has taken the sting out of death for the people of God. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:55-57).
What a glorious victory that is! Outside inspiration, we can find little that conveys the wonder of it better than The Shorter Catechism. It states, “The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory, and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their grave till the resurrection”, and, “At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgement, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity”. The eternal Son of God made Himself of no reputation, took upon Him the form of a servant, humbled Himself and became obedient unto the death of the cross. That is why we can say, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me” (Ps 23:4).
4. The effect this truth should have on us.
The immediate context emphasises that the Lord’s people are to seek to have the mind that was in Christ and was manifested in His humiliation, His suffering and death. What a mind was in Christ! “Having loved His Own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (Jn 13:1). Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it, so that He could have it with Him in glory as a perfect Church. It is the love of Christ that constrains us: as He loved the Church and gave Himself for it. Even on the cross of Calvary you see His love manifested: He was even thinking about His mother’s temporal circumstances, putting her in John’s care; and He was thinking about those who would yet be His own people but were then crucifying Him: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). A mind of condescension and love took Him to the cross of Calvary. He loved them with an everlasting love, and therefore no cost was too great for Him to pay to secure their redemption.
“Let this mind be in you.” Love one another, be like-minded; look out for one another; think well of each other. “Let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Phil 2:3-4). That mind is to be in the Lord’s people. If we drink at the fountain of the love of Christ manifest on Calvary, surely the streams from this fountain will go out to our fellow believers and fellow sinners. That is what knowing the love of Christ does: it binds us together so that we weep with those that weep and we rejoice with those that rejoice.
But I hope it is not going too far from the context to say that, when we think of the mind that was in Christ, we should think of it for its own sake. Think of the love and care for His people that was manifested in His coming to die at Calvary. That is the mind of the Man who is God’s Fellow. Being in the form of God, that is always His mind towards His people. Having given Himself for them at Calvary, He is not going to abandon them, and He is not going to deal with them except with love and care.
There are circumstances in which we find it very hard to taste the love of Christ, but we have to believe that Christ’s love in these circumstances is just as in His death. Time may tell, but eternity certainly will tell that Christ’s love is in all the experiences of His people. We read in Romans 8, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (vv 35-39).
That love which took Christ to Calvary will not let His people go. It will hold on to them in every situation, in life and death, in time and eternity. The love of Christ! Nothing can separate His people from it. The kind of mind He had is manifested when you look to what He did at Calvary. Surely the One who did that for His people will never forsake them. So we are called to put our confidence in a divine Saviour who assumed human nature so that He could be the High Priest, the Sacrifice, the Saviour of His people, and secure their justification, adoption, sanctification and glorification. We can rely on the One who did that, and on His love and care in every situation.
I am just going to say to others: How can you think of facing death without Christ? It is bad enough when you have Christ, as far as the temporal aspects of it are concerned. But how can you face death without Christ? How can you meet God in your sins, with the curse of His law hanging around your neck, marking you out as condemned for ever? If the righteous are scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?
But the note I would like to leave with you is the mind that was in Christ. Think of the love of the Saviour. Think of the fact that “this Man receiveth sinners” (Lk 15:2). Think of the readiness of Christ to take in guilty, lost, ruined, hell-deserving sinners, and do you not feel an attraction to Him? Do you not feel an encouragement to come to Him? This same Jesus who was crucified is the Jesus who is saying to sinners, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). And, when we are under the shadow of death, should it not bring home to each one of us how necessary it is for us as sinners to flee to the Saviour! “Enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself . . . for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast” (Is 26:20).
It is glory for the Lord’s people, but it is indignation and wrath and condemnation for the ungodly who die in their sins. That was a terrible thing Christ said: “Ye shall die in your sins” (Jn 8:24). It is one thing to fall asleep in Jesus; it is another thing to die in your sins! And why will ye die, when such a glorious Saviour is set before us in the everlasting gospel? Does it not show how hard the heart of the sinner is? As was often said, suppose you hang him by a thread over the mouth of hell, he will not repent. He will not believe, although you confront him with the most dreadful providences. How we need to be born again; how we need to be changed!
But “God . . . commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30) and He is graciously inviting sinners to come to Christ. And if you come to Christ, you will find that this is the Christ that you come to: “being in the form of God, [He] 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; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”. And it is the death of the cross that distinguishes between one sinner and another. As you know, two malefactors were put to death with Christ at Calvary: one went to heaven, and the other went to hell. What made the difference between them? One came to know Christ as Saviour; he said, “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom” (Lk 23:42). Christ said, “Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise”. There is just a veil of silence over the other one. The last we hear of him was blaspheming the Saviour. What think ye of Christ?
1A sermon preached in Edinburgh on 6 February 2011.