Philippians 2:5-11 Incarnation And Humility

We walk through Philippians 2:5–11 to see why the incarnation is central to Christian faith and why Jesus is the perfect model of humility. We connect Christ’s self-emptying to real church unity and the daily practice of turning belief into action. 
• context for Philippi: external pressure and internal disunity 
• living worthy of the gospel through humility and service 
• why the incarnation matters and where groups go wrong on it 
• how Philippians 2 functions like a hymn for remembering truth 
• avoiding pedantic debates while keeping solid doctrine 
• attitude reinforced by action, not just knowledge 
• “form of God” and “form of a servant” explained in plain terms 
• the cross as the lowest death and the deepest humility 
• “therefore also” as the link between humility and exaltation 
• Jesus revealed as Lord and every knee bowing 
• imitating Christ in conflict by practicing WWJD 
• putting on Christ so the church can be salt and light 
• serving as everyday ministry that reaches where preaching cannot 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

We're in Philippians, and uh where we are, just for context, Paul has been speaking to the church in Philippi, and he's uh been addressing some issues that have been uh happening in the Philippian church. And first and foremost, he's touched on the importance for the Philippian church to

External Pressure And Church Disunity

SPEAKER_00 0:46

remain steadfast in following the Lord, even as the external pressure melts against them. If you recall correctly, Philippi is a very patriotic place, and uh which means that they they really appreciate their Romanness, their Roman citizenship. And so, whenever you sort of set aside your Roman citizenship to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, there might be some conflict, and there is. There's some outside pressure, and Paul, he's basically encouraging them to keep going in the right direction, keep doing the right thing despite the strife. And over the past couple of weeks, we have seen that he's turned his attention from the external strife to the internal strife. The church is experiencing some level of disunity. Disunity, and he's given explicit command to live in a manner worthy of the gospel, he says. And particularly for Paul, one of the ways that you live in a manner worthy of the gospel is that you've got to have a servant's heart. You've got to put away selfish ambition and conceit, and you've got to put away pride, and you've got to be humble, and you've got to have humility. That is the command. That's one of the keys to living in a manner worthy of the gospel for Paul. And over the past two weeks, uh, we've talked about this humility. And this week we talk about this humil humility once again, but through the perfect example of Jesus Himself. Now, what we're about to read, Philippians 2, chapter uh 2, verses 5 through 11, it's one of the most studied sections of Philippians. Right? There's more written about this little section of scripture than any other section of scripture in the book of Philippians. Um, and so there's a there can be a lot here. I promise you, I'm not going to get bogged down on all of this because I think it's relatively uh simple.

The Incarnation And Why It Matters

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But it provides foundational understanding of what it means for us to believe that God came in the flesh as Jesus. Another word for this is the incarnation. Raise your hand if you've heard that word before. The incarnation, it simply means God came to earth not just as God, but God and human. It's the incarnation. Came in the flesh, as the flesh. And it's a really big deal that he did that. A huge deal. If you're a Christian, that matters a whole lot. As a matter of fact, a lot of cults that are adjacent to Christianity get the incarnation wrong. And they are primarily cults because they don't get the incarnation. They don't understand it. And if you talk about context for this scripture, as Paul and others talk about the incarnation of Jesus, the the Greek philosophies that surrounds the early church, they also don't understand this. It doesn't make sense to them that perfect God, perfect God, perfect in form, would come and take form of imperfect human. So it's important for us to grasp the incarnation. And Paul not only uses this as a basically a teaching point about the incarnation, it also happens to support his argument about the importance of humility and service in the church. Because Paul's brilliant like that. Let's read Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11. Um, if your eyes are still young and good, you can read that without glasses on your paper. If not, I'm sorry. You can borrow mine, except for the not reading glasses. You can laugh about that later. Um, thank you. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not uh count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, but taking form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, everybody say, Therefore, 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, and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. I love this. I love this. This is wonderful for me. I read this over and over again and just had a lot of good days and good moments reading this, because there's a lot here. Here's what doesn't come across in the English. In the Greek, this flows almost like poetry or like a song.

unknown 5:13

Right?

SPEAKER_00 5:13

You don't get that in the English, it doesn't translate over as well, but it's very flowy. It's very, it's got a rhythm to it that works really well. Now, whether it was actually a song that was being sung or not doesn't matter. Whether Paul made this up on his own or

The Hymn Like Flow Of Philippians 2

SPEAKER_00 5:28

he borrowed the structure of a different piece of poetry or song doesn't really matter. What this is is a fantastic example of the gospel and good theology being shared in a place where people could not read. Here's why that matters. If a people in place can't commonly read, how are you supposed to learn? What does it mean to be saved? What do we really believe about Jesus? How do you carry that information if you can't check Google whenever you have a question? If you don't have a Bible to turn and look through, how do you do that? The reality is that you use good language skills, songs and poetry, in order to transmit data because songs and poetry stick in your head better than prose. And prose is basically like I'm talking to you in prose right now. And you might catch a percentage of it, but chances are most of it will be out of the window when you out the out, this is out of your mind when you get out there, but a song might stick. So very early on in scripture, we we see Paul use tools to communicate a scriptural truth. Very early on in the church, by the way, this matters because there are um a good number of people who question Christianity or challenge Christianity who notice and point out that it seems that a lot of what we believe about the church and about God and about Jesus seems to be sort of solidified a couple hundred years later after Jesus. And unfortunately, that's just not the case. That's not that's not really, I don't have to take my word for it, but I am a history major. I did study this stuff. That's not really the historical picture we see, first and foremost, and even in the text itself, we see very early on what we believe about the incarnation is pretty much there from the very beginning. All right, so this is foundational to what we believe. I love this scripture. Now, if we're not careful, we can get dragged into weeds, the weeds of uh a 2,000-year debate about the scripture. And I just I don't think that's useful for us. I read through both sides of the argument. Some people view this as just an ethical example. Well, it's not really teaching you anything, it's just an ethical example for you to follow. And some people uh view this as a somewhat random event that Paul uses to make sure the Philippines know what they believe. I have no problem believing both of those things in conjunctions. That makes sense. Both can be true. A lot of theological debate that you will read about or see or experience, a lot of it is just pedantic, okay? Most of it can be combined or there's some truth to both sides, and so we just got to figure it out. That's what this is. Paul certainly wants to remind the church of the basics of why they can be unified. Why can the church be unified? Because we are unified in who? Who was God, who came to earth, who lived, died, and rose again. And so Paul is offering a reminder of the basis of why we can be unified, but also it is the strongest example we have of

Doctrine Versus Pedantic Debates

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perfect humility and sacrifice, which is what Paul has been talking about for the past several verses. It's both. It's both. Paul, at the beginning of this section of scripture, which we started at the end of chapter one, commands the church to live in a manner worthy of the gospel. And now he reminds the church of what that manner really means. He's getting down to brass tacks. You say live in a manner worthy of the gospel, what does that mean? This is what it means. In verse Paul, uh, he says, he literally tells the church, basically, pick up this attitude, this attitude of humility that we've been talking about, this attitude of Christ that I'm about to explain, pick it up and apply it to your life. He's referring to verses one through four, and he's referring to what he's about to, what he told us about Jesus. He doesn't want them just to have a cerebral understanding that we're supposed to live in a manner worthy of the gospel. He doesn't want us just to know something, he literally wants us to put it into practice. My children many times know exactly what they should do. The problem is that they do things they know they shouldn't do. It's the same thing that we deal with. At this point in our Christian walk, we probably know a lot of what we should do. We're probably very familiar with the standards of Christianity. So that's not the problem. The problem is in the action. It's the action. Attitude is reinforced by action. You cannot separate the two. We'll see this again in a second. Christ Jesus had this attitude, Paul says. In fact, he insists Christ Jesus had this attitude of humility, but not just an attitude, it was in how he lived. It played out in practicality. Jesus, who was God, did not use the advantage of his position and his power and his might and his sovereignty. He didn't use that to his advantage, but instead emptied himself to become man. He didn't have to do it, but he did. It was not just an attitude, but it was action. We read in the scripture here when we see this word form three times in conjunction with likeness. One

Attitude Must Become Action

SPEAKER_00 10:56

way to make sense of this form word in this scripture is to visualize basically construction site. You know what I'm saying? Even if you don't know what a form is, you know exactly what I'm talking about once I describe it. It is a wooden barrier or a metal barrier that is set up in a certain shape, right? And they pour liquid concrete, and that concrete takes the shape of the form. Right? So the form defines what that concrete is doing. Same thing, say you're a blacksmith and you're working with forms in that way, you pour molten metal into a form, and that metal takes the shape of that form. Um, if that's not clear enough for you, the Greek word that's translated form here is connected to something very specific. It's connected to the Greek idea that the gods and humans and animals all had different forms. Forms. It's uh it's uh it's ontological, it is a description of how something is. So the gods were vastly uh incomprehensibly different than humans, right? That's what that that means, and so Jesus was in the same form as God, and so he was God. That's what that means, and yet decided to take the form of a human, and not just any human, but the lowest lowly human, a servant, a slave, it says, Julius, which is not not a nice word. He was the form of God, so he was God, and yet he decided in that form to pick up the form of something lesser, and eventually even dies on a cross for us. Which was the lowest form of death for the lowest form of human. There's a reason why Paul says the cross is foolishness and a stumbling block, because the people who died on a cross were often slaves, often thieves, often the worst of the worst. They were people who were traitors, people who were were liars. And so in his human form, God allowed himself to be killed on the cross, for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as ransom for many. It was attitude and action aligned. We get attitude right. We

Form Of God To Form Of Servant

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know what to believe, we know what we ought to do, but sometimes it's the action part that's the struggle, including when we're talking about service and humility. We know we should be humble, we know others matter just as much as we matter. We know we should serve, we know it, we know the proper attitude to have, but sometimes the struggle is getting into the action portion of that. Therefore also. Everybody say therefore. Therefore. Verse 9 begins with two Greek words. Doikai. Doi chai. And those words together means therefore also, which we don't really, that's a little, it's archaic English. We don't use that anymore, right? But it's therefore also, it is a strong way to show that what comes next after that phrase is in direct connection and response to the first part. So, in direct connection to the selflessness and humility of God Himself taking human form in Jesus Christ, that that part is directly connected to the next part. In direct relation to Jesus' humility and service, and in direct relation to the sacrifice divinity, God raised him up and exalted him. Meaning, not that God, not that Jesus wasn't God before he was, not that God is exalting him to a new position as some sort of uh reward or anything like that. That's not what that says. But what this is is that through Jesus' actions,

Therefore Also: Exalted Name Of Jesus

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he has been elevated in relevance and in fame and in practicality across all of creation, really for the first time. Right? There is, if you read the Old Testament, there are of course hints of the Trinity, right? There's hints that there is something more, but it wasn't until his arrival and his death and his resurrection that something was attached to his name, the Lord. And the Lord is always capitalized in most scriptures. Do you want to know why? Because it's not just a title, it's a name. It means Yahweh, which is the personal name of God. So what Paul is saying here is that out of Jesus' humility and his sacrifice, the revelation that he was the Lord is birthed in this moment. For the first time, God became man, sacrificed himself for us. And out of that that that pain and that problem was birthed a reality for the cre all of creation, right? Heaven, earth, everything below earth, it says, is a revelation that he is the Lord. Capital T-H-E, capital L-O-R-D. I'm glad I spelled that right. I can't spell out loud. Thank you. Appreciate that. Jesus does not force God's hand nor is the exaltation and granting of the name a payment for deeds performed. Instead, God initiated the exaltation of Jesus and freely gave to him the most superior of names, so that now Jesus' name is synonymous with the Lord, with Yahweh. And one day, at the mention of that name, every tongue will confess. Everyone! Everyone! And let me go ahead and tell you, not every single person who confesses and bows that Jesus is the Lord is gonna be happy about it. Now we'll be happy about it, hopefully. We'll be joyful about it, but there's gonna be some people that it will be a painful reckoning. They're gonna experience a painful reckoning whenever the evidence is so in front of them they can no longer be ignored, that they are forced to bow in their arrogance, forced to bow in their sin and their shame and their pain, and admit once and for all that yes, you are the Lord. Why does Paul share this poignant gospel example with us? It's not just so that we can know this about God, that's part of it. But we also know that from other scriptures. But this is not just empty knowledge, as I've already already talked about. This is knowledge that has to find an outlet in our actions. In particular, Paul gives us this example so that we can follow it. It's not just there

Every Knee Bows And Every Tongue Confesses

SPEAKER_00 17:47

for us to look at it, like this wonderful picture right here. Right? That's not what Paul's doing. Do we need some prenatal vitamins in the house? Right? Yeah. All right, but that's not what this is. This is not just a picture on a wall. This is an invitation. It's an invitation. C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, which we talked about not so long ago, um, has this little example in there where C. S. Lewis talks about children pretending to be moms and dads, uh being nurses, soldiers, uh, police officers, postmen. They pretend. They pretend to do things. Benjamin pretends to be an archer all the time. He walks around with a little fake bow and arrow, and he tries to shoot the cat, he tries to shoot the ceiling. Um, normally they're not in here. So normally I don't feel bad for using examples of my children, but they're in here. I don't think he's not even paying attention, so it's fine. Anyways, but he pretends. Your kids pretend. They all pretend. And here's the thing about pretending one day the pretending ends, and what they were pretending becomes in some way, shape, or form a reality for their life. Why does Paul uh why does C.S. Lewis mention this? Because there is an invitation that sometimes, as we are dealing with stuff inside a church, right? Because that's the context, disunity in a church. Sometimes when we're dealing with disunity and problems and strife in a church, what we have to do is take a step back and pretend like we are Jesus and legitimately ask ourselves that old school WWJD thing, what exactly would Jesus do in this moment? I don't feel like doing that. I don't want to do that, I'm uncomfortable doing that, but I'm going to pretend like I'm Jesus and I'm going to do that. And eventually, just like with your children, the pretending ends, and who you become is more like Christ. You have the mind of Christ because you have practiced it, you're pretended it, and it part of it is working its way into who you are. The next time you're struggling in strife and pain and there's difficulties in your family, at work, at home, but especially in church, take a step back and let's have the honest conversation about what exactly would Jesus do in the situation. Because a lot of times Jesus would either walk away, Jesus would say his peace, or Jesus would relent because he is the perfect image of humility and sacrifice for the betterment of the people

An Invitation To Imitate Christ

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around him. That's why elsewhere Paul says, put on Christ. You got to pull him on. It's almost like a covering. You put on Christ. You aren't Christ, but you put him on, and there is this image that you are sort of like, I don't want to, no, I'm not even going to use that example. It's a bad example, but you put him on, and you sort of are him, even though you aren't him. And elsewhere in Colossians it says your life is hidden in Christ. So even though you aren't Christ, you are hidden inside of him. And so he starts defining who you are and what you do, your actions, your mindsets, your attitude, and your ability to set aside selfish ambition and conceit and to be someone who is humble and seeking to serve others. I'm almost finished. If we can practice doing that in the church, and as the church, then we will be propelled into the world that we right as a church. We are separate, of course. In very technical sense, we are separate and different than the world. But we are in the world to impact the world. And if we can get the mind of Christ, if we can put on Christ, if we can pretend like we are Christ in our situations, there is basically, I don't, there's no limit to the impact we can have when we walk into the selfishness of the world. We're going to be so different. People are going to have to take notice. Our job to be salt and light, as as the Sermon on the Mount tells us, is much easier whenever we are walking in this attitude of Christ. We are called to make a difference. We are called to be salt and light. We are called to share the gospel. We have the Great Commission. How do we do that? Sometimes, sometimes maybe you preach, maybe you teach. But sometimes, maybe what you have to do is be humble and serve. And in that humility and in that service, you are speaking in terms and ways that I can never speak from the pulpit. Some people, listen, some people, I've said this before. Sometimes when people find out I'm a pastor because I'm bivocating. And so I rub elbows with all kinds of people outside the church. And you know, things come up. They what do you do? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, well, I'm pastoring. And immediately they turn off. Immediately a wall goes up. Immediately they they are they're they are guarded. They're different. They go from from cursing and saying uh horrible jokes to like I I have literally seen embarrassment roll over people when they find out that I am a pastor after they have been saying a certain thing, and I have to say, it's okay. It's all right. Anyways.

unknown 22:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

So there's this barrier between what I can do and what you can do. And listen, you may never be called a pastor. You may never be up here on stage. You may never be teaching or preaching anybody, but you are called to minister. And sometimes your ministry is birthed from humility and sacrifice and service. In fact, one of the greatest Christians that modern Christians we know, she never really preached all that much. She wrote one really small book. Her name's Mother Teresa. She is famous for what? Serving. Serving. There are Christian communities in India, not because she got up and preached on a stage, but because she served. Serve. Be humble. We have the perfect example of Christ. And you're not going to get it right. You're going to have flare-ups. You're going to have moments where you get it wrong because we

Putting On Christ In Real Conflict

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are selfish and it is hard to let go of what we want. It's hard to let go of our ideas and our desires and our designs, but you can do it through the help of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, the humility and service that burst out of our genuine attempts to imitate Jesus will elevate Jesus. Well, elevate his name. And everybody one day will bow to that name. You have a calling in your life. You have a calling on your life. Pick it up. Use it. Be humble. Serve one another in a church so that the church is strong, so that we can do what we need to do out there. Amen. If you don't mind, let's bow our heads and close in prayer. And just as we pray, obviously, you I just don't like the idea of people just listening to me as I talk or as I pray. But as I pray, pray with me. Specifically, that God gives us his heart. That through the Holy Spirit, he helps us become who we need to be and to help this community. Heavenly Father, we love you once again. And I pray right now in the name of Jesus that through your grace and through your mercy and through the power of the Holy Spirit that you would build us up into who we need to be. Give us your heart, give us your vision for others, give us the humility that we need, give us the heart for service, kill selfishness in our lives, kill conceit in our lives, kill selfish ambition in our lives, and let us become ambitious for things that bring you glory and honor. Help us. You've called us to this life, and so we believe you will also help us achieve what you're calling us to do. And so we put our trust in you. We pray right now that anything that's standing in the way from us following you more closely, that you would take care of it. Help us, God. Help us, Lord. Lord, we submit ourselves to you. We submit this church to you. I pray that you'd bless every single person in this room. Give them a good day. Give them a good week. And I pray that you would give them uncomfortable moments to stand out for you, Lord. In Jesus and we pray. Amen.