Philippians 2:5-11: Exalting Savior

Exalting Savior: Philippians 2:5-11

 Our Scripture Reading this morning comes from Philippians 2:5-11. Hear now the words of the Living and True God:

⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

 May God bless the reading of his Word.

Several years back, I helped put together a prayer breakfast at a military chapel at a base where I served. And one of the new chaplains—brand new to the Air Force, in fact—suggested to our Senior Chaplain that we give out the book The 48 Laws of Power to each of the prayer breakfast participants.  Now at that point I had not read the book.  But when the copies came in, I pulled a copy and began to peruse it.  And what I found disturbed me.  Again and again, the author suggested the use of manipulation, deceit, terror, taking credit for other’s work, and other Machiavellian principles that I found incompatible with Christianity in particular, but also with chaplaincy in general.  In that book, I got a glimpse of what I could come to expect from the chaplain who recommended it, who used all these manipulative tactics to simultaneously elevate himself and denigrate others. 

Within months of his arrival, he cleaned house within his faith group, including a contract chaplain, and two other civilian employees who had worked there for years who simply could not work with him.  He tended to act dismissively towards and disparagingly of anyone who did not serve his purpose.  He loved that book and lived out that book’s principles, in many ways.  Some have called that book “The Devil’s Bible.”  If you would like a copy of the Devil’s Bible, you can always find it at the local Barnes and Noble.  I see it on some end cap every time I go.  Now, in all fairness, I have not read all of it.  But from what I have read, I can say with certainty, that though it does offer a somewhat realistic perspective of the world and fallen human behavior, The 48 Laws of Power does not contain the sort of humility and sacrifice becoming of the sort of behavior we see in our text today.

 Our text would have us know that humility and sacrifice always come before exaltation. We cannot expect exaltation—we cannot expect God to raise us up—without humility and sacrifice.  Now ultimately Christ provides that humility and sacrifice.  But he would also have us humble ourselves and sacrifice our own personal agendas too.  But the world turns that sort of logic on its head, suggesting that if you exalt yourself, even at the expense of others, even humiliating others, if necessary, then you just might get ahead in life.  And if God, in his infinite justice, did not exist, then we could concede that these power tactics have their place, necessary evils to obtain the greater good.  But God does exist in his infinite justice.  And God has a different understanding of whom to exalt: according to Matthew 23:12, those who humble themselves. 

 Which brings us to the main idea of our text today: Because Christ obediently humbled himself to the point of death, humble yourself and exalt him. We do not need to exalt ourselves.  We need to humble ourselves.  And we need to exalt Christ, who not only humbled himself, but sacrificed himself.  And for that reason—aside from the fact that he is God—he truly deserves exaltation. 

 Paul, writing from prison to the church at Philippi, expresses joy in exhorting God’s people in ch1, vv1-11 to abound in love out of gratitude for God’s work in them and for the gospel partnership they share with one another. Indeed, God’s people have great reason to rejoice, because vv12-18 show us that despite trial we endure or motive we have, we can proclaim Christ.  In fact, vv18-26 show us that we can live for him, convinced that death is gain.  Therefore, in vv27-30 God would have us stand firm in the faith, unified with one another, even suffering for Christ’s sake.  But as we saw in ch2, vv1-4, how we stand firm together in unity requires that we pursue harmony and humility in the face of factionalism & pride.  Which brings us to v5 today, a transitional verse, a verse that looks both backwards and forwards: backwards to the humility required of the believer, and forwards to the humility of Christ himself.

It says, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”  Meaning, have the humility in vv3-4 to look to the interests of others.  Have that mindset.  Have that attitude.  Don’t think, “What can I get,” but “What can I give?  How can I bless others?”  Friends this does not come naturally.  Notice that it comes supernaturally.  It comes in Christ Jesus.  It’s yours in Christ Jesus.  We can only have this mindset if we are in Christ Jesus.  For we do not naturally look to the interests of others.  We look to our own interests, even if it looks like we have other’s interests at heart.  Even when we become Christians, we need constant reminders to have this mindset.  Remember, Paul writes this to believers. 

Because he knows that even as believers, we do not have this humble, service-oriented mindset automatically.  We need to constantly remind ourselves of who gives it, praying that we appropriate what he gives.  Personally, I failed at this a couple of weeks ago, and even several times since.  I failed at this… at church.  Someone needed help.  But instead of helping, I passed them to somebody else.  And I didn’t pass them to somebody else because somebody else could have done it better, or that somebody else needed the experience, or some other benevolent reason.  I just didn’t feel like it.  Forgive me, Will.  Friends, this mindset needs minute-by-minute, day-by-day renewal.  This mindset requires Christ’s intervention.  And knowing this causes the Apostle Paul to pause and worship Jesus Christ.  In fact, for the next several verses, he will go on to focus all his attention on Christ, particularly on both his humility and his exaltation.  And because both of those are yours in Christ Jesus, you should first…

I. Humble Yourself, 6-8

Christ Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.”  In other words, though Jesus Christ is God himself, co-equal with the Father, existing from all eternity with the Father, he did not use that to his advantage.  He did not exploit his Godhead, demanding worship, demanding obedience of all peoples during his time on earth, though he justifiably could have.  Instead, he came humbly in his incarnation, in his time on earth, to look to the interests of others.  Can we imagine the sacrifice Christ made, not only on the cross, but in the very act of leaving heaven to come to earth?  He reigned over the cosmos, constantly and forever.  He received worship from the angels, constantly and forever.  And he put that aside to both glorify his Father and reconcile his people unto himself.  What a contrast with humanity.  To use the same words Paul uses: though we are merely in the form of men and women, we do count equality with God a thing to be grasped.  We question God as if he answers to us: we question his fairness, his justice, his patience with sin.  We put ourselves on his level, or even above his level, grasping for that which does not belong to us.  No wonder we feel so miserable.  We have stepped out of our place and put ourselves in his place.  But Jesus did not do that.  Though equal with God the Father, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

Well, how did he not do that?  Verse 7 tells us.  He, “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”  He emptied himself.  Some translations say, “He made himself nothing.”  He divested himself of every privilege he ever had.  The King of kings became the Servant of servants.  Mark 10:45 says, he came to serve, not to be served.  Do you know how many times I misquote that?  I say it the opposite way, probably because subconsciously I want it the opposite way.  I did not come to serve, but to be served.  God forgive me.  What about you?  For most, we want service.  Because we live in a service-oriented culture.  If you have enough money, you can not only make much of yourself.  But you can get others to serve you.  We live in a culture that simultaneously pays for lawn service and personal trainer service.  Think about that for a second.  Instead of cutting our own grass, we pay someone else to do it.  Then we pay a different someone else to force us to work out, instead of just cutting the grass ourselves.  Now maybe you don’t do that.  But if you look anything like me, you like comfort.  We want service.  Humanity has lived this way from the beginning.  But not Jesus.  

The one who owned the cattle on a thousand hills, became a working-class man in one of the most inconspicuous, inconsequential parts of not only the Roman Empire, in Israel, but one of the most inconspicuous, inconsequential parts of Israel, in Nazareth.  He had grown up in a village that had such a poor reputation, that one of his future disciples asked in John 1:46, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  This reminds me of the shirts you find in the Strip District about Cleveland.  Can anything good come out of Cleveland?  Surely.  And as a servant, Jesus owned little to nothing: nowhere to lay his head, no boat of his own, not even a donkey.  He had to borrow both of those: the boat to preach from, the donkey to ride into Jerusalem upon.  He barely had the bare necessities.  Friends, Jesus made himself nothing, so that his people could have everything, spiritually speaking.  He emptied himself to fill us.  In Hebrews 4:15, he identified with us, tempted in every way, yet without sin.  In calling him a servant, Paul points us back to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.  How do we know this?  Because v8 tells us what that servanthood entails.

Verse 8, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself.”  How?  “By becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  Here we find the whole reason we gather each week.  We gather to celebrate and worship Jesus making a way out of no way.  Prior to his death and resurrection, the only way we could approach God came through continual death and sacrifice.  For God required sacrifice, the death of an animal substitute to show us the costliness of sin.  Now, Jesus did not come as a typical sacrifice.  Not only did that typical sacrifice never completely atone for sin.  But it also died quickly, after the priest cut its throat.  Jesus, on the other hand, died slowly upon a cross, the most agonizing kind of death you could imagine, where he suffocated and suffered for hours, to make complete atonement once and for all.  Why did he suffer in this way?  Galatians 3:13 tells us why, quoting from Deuteronomy 21:23.  Jesus redeems us from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’  What humility, what condescension, what selflessness.  Jesus humbled himself.  Jesus made himself nothing.  We, on the other hand, do the very opposite.  We tend to seek the best possible outcome for ourselves.   

 Shakespeare’s Macbeth seeks the same.  When three witches meet Macbeth returning from battle, they greet him with three titles: the lord of one land, the lord of another land, and king hereafter.  Now the first title he already had.  So, these witches know something about him.  The second title comes true as soon as he gets home.  So, Macbeth has every right to believe the third title will also come true: King Macbeth.  “I like the sound of that.  Why not?”  But rather than wait for that title to come true, Macbeth takes matters into his own hands.  Like Adam in the garden, Macbeth abdicates leadership to his wife.  He follows her wicked advice.  And he kills King Duncan to take his throne.  Instead of humbling himself, waiting for the prophecy to come true, he makes it come true.  He does the opposite of what Jesus does.  He makes himself something.  And he also does the opposite of what David did when David had a chance to kill King Saul to become king.  David did not do that.  Instead, he humbled himself.  But Macbeth lets pride overtake him.  Eventually that pride results in his downfall.  He will come to see the emptiness of what he gains.  

Friends, the same thing will happen to all of those who make themselves something, who grasp for that which does not belong to them.  But the Son of David, Jesus Christ, the God of all the universe did not do that.  He did not make himself something.  Instead, he made himself nothing.  He did not grasp for equality with God the Father.  Even though he had every right to grasp it.  Because he also had every reason to set it aside: to both glorify his father and reconcile his people unto himself.  He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Does that cause us to worship?  Does that cause us to stand in awe of the glorious condescension Christ showed by obediently humbling himself, even to the point of death?  What glorious condescension.  He did not put us down, though by rights he could have.  He put himself down—he condescended, in a manner of speaking—to lift us up.  And now that he has lifted us, what do we do, as a result?  We have this mind among ourselves.  We humble ourselves.  We do what vv3-4 call us to do, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”  In short, humble yourself.  Friends, you will have to do that for the rest of your life.  And one of the primary ways you can do that comes in the next section.  You best humble yourself, when you…

II. Exalt Christ, 9-11

We see that even…

A. God the Father exalts Christ, 9

“Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”  So, because of Christ’s humility, in becoming obedient to the point of death, God the Father exalts Christ.  Because Jesus humbled himself, the Father lifts him up.  He gives him his rightful place.  And all those in Christ share in that.  Spurgeon says that “[Christ’s] exaltation is our exaltation.”  Without him we remain low and abased.  With him, we get lifted up.  And notice how exaltation works: humility precedes exaltation, both ours and Christ’s.  At the outset of his teaching ministry, in his very first beatitude, Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the exalted, blessed are the self-assured, blessed are the self-possessed, blessed are the self-sufficient who don’t think they need God because they’re doing well enough on their own,” but “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  In other words, blessed are the humble.  God blesses those who find their assurance in Christ, possession in Christ, and sufficiency in Christ.  In other words, we get happiness and satisfaction when we see our utter bankruptcy before God, when we humble ourselves before God, when we confess our utter need for God.

If humility preceded exaltation for Jesus, then surely humility must precede exaltation for Jesus’ people.  And because of this, God gives Christ the name above every name: a name more identifiable than any celebrity, a name more important than any world leader, a name more impactful than any historical figure.  And so, we sing: Jesus, name above all names.  Even God the Father exalts Christ.  But it does not stop there.  Because as we come to vv…

B. Everyone should both exalt him and confess him, 10-11a

“So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”  Notice the two requirements of every creature when it comes to Christ: (1) reverential submission, with every knee bowing, and (2) verbal confession, with every tongue confessing.  Now in our reality, we often see one without the other, if we see anything at all.  We often see a generic confession of some unidentified God out there who orchestrates reality, that we would do well to occasionally acknowledge verbally.  People say, they believe in God.  People say they pray.  But what they believe about God and what they believe about prayer has a generic quality to it, like the generic products found in our grocery stores back in the 1980s.  Do you remember the white labels with black text?  Let me just say that they were nothing to look at.  But a brand name God will not allow such a generic confession.  He says at the name of Jesus: a specific person, who specifically did something to save us from the utter bankruptcy and corruption of living life our own way.  No.  A mere generic, general confession will not do.  We must specifically, and verbally confess Christ.

 But it does not stop there.  Our text conveys that verbal confession and reverential submission—every tongue confessing and every knee bowing—go hand in hand.  We need not merely confess some generic God, or merely confess Christ specifically, but also bow to Christ in reverential submission.  In other words, we need to conform our lives to his.  We need to submit ourselves to him, asking that he not only save us from an eternity in hell, but a lifetime of hellish decisions and hellish lifestyles.  All of us “bow” to something.  All of us “confess” something.  Some of what we bow to and confess to leads down the primrose path of destruction.  And sometimes, we bow and confess multiple and contradictory things.  We bow and confess Christ; and we bow and confess something antichrist.  Our text calls us to confess the name above every name.  Not the name above every name along with some lesser name.  No.  Our walk must match our talk.  Our knees and our mouths need to convey the same thing.  We both bow and confess. 

Friends, in James 2:19 even the demons confess.  In fact, throughout the gospels they confess that Jesus is the Son of God.  But do they bow to him?  Not in a saving way.  Not in a way that joins God the Father in his exaltation of Christ.  If they bow at all, they bow in fearful rebellion.  But there will come a day when every creature, in heaven, and on earth, and even under the earth will bow and never get up.  They will confess and never say otherwise.  Every angel, every demon, every human, living or dead, will acknowledge Christ’s right to rule over them.  For some, that realization will come too late.  They bow only in time to receive their due punishment.  So, bow now.  Confess now.  John 6:37 says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”  Everyone should both exalt him and confess him.

C. Christ’s exaltation brings glory to his Father, 11b

This answers the why.  Everything Christ did, and all that we do in response to Christ—every knee bowing and every tongue confessing—we do, “to the glory of God the Father.”  We exist to glorify God.  1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”  As a young man, I used to wonder what God would call me to do in this life.  And while I sought a specific answer, I don’t think I really understood the main point of my life.  The main point of my life, and the main point of your life, is not to find a particular job, or a particular spouse, or live in a particular place, or drive a particular car.  The main point of my life, the main point of your life is to do what your Lord and Savior did: glorify God.  Christ’s exaltation ultimately serves to glorify his Father.  Your exaltation will ultimately serve to glorify the Father.  So, exalt Christ, to the glory of God the Father.

We read in 2 Chronicles 26 the story of a faithful king in Israel, Uzziah.  Uzziah did right in the eyes of the Lord.  And the Lord blessed him and gave him victory over his enemies, and he reigned for 52 years.  So long as he humbled himself, God left him in an elevated state.  But, “when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.”  Uzziah decided to not only serve as king, but also as priest.  So, he entered the temple sanctuary—a place forbidden for anyone but the priest—to burn incense to the Lord, a priestly duty.  When confronted by the priests, Uzziah got angry.  But before he could exorcise his anger, leprosy broke out upon him.  And he lived as a leper, separately from others, until the day of his death.  His sin, his pride, his exalting himself, excluded him from the house of the Lord. 

 He tried to exalt himself when he should have humbled himself.  Again, Jesus reminds us in Matthew 23:12 that “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  So, humble yourself.  But don’t just get low. Get low and look up.  And lift up, Christ.  In other words, put Christ in his proper place.  Exalt Christ.

 What would it look like for us to truly live this out?  And what might God do in our midst if we humbled ourselves and exalted Christ?  I can think of nothing more unacceptable than seeing pride in others and nothing more acceptable than ignoring pride in myself.  Meaning that, what I tolerate from myself, I do not tolerate from others.  But if we can reverse that—if we can count others more significant than ourselves—then we can extend grace to others, while simultaneously addressing and ruthlessly cutting off pride in ourselves.  We need God in Christ to do this in us.  Because Christ obediently humbled himself to the point of death, would you humble yourself?  And would you… exalt him?