10/17/13

From Jim McGuiggan... Of Gods & Lords

Of Gods & Lords

It's all about "power" isn't it? If you're a "god" it's about how much power you have and if you're a king it's about how many people you have under you. As unsettling as that can be and as little as we may like the notion, I suppose there has to be that element in godship and lordship. The "power" thing I mean.
What kind of a god is God? Well he has more "power" than we do because he can will and speak universes into existence. The last time I looked not even my Ethel could do that. But maybe it's not the existence of power that's the real question. Maybe it's the way we think power should be exercised.
Paul says (2:3), "Do nothing out of selfish ambition." Which assumes they had some "power" with which to do some things. He goes on to say that if they have entered into what it means to be in Christ certain things should follow, will follow. There'd be self-giving, humility, the bridling of ambition and the like. The test of Christ-likeness is having his attitude, his way of seeing things. And what way was that?
He thought Godhood should result in self-giving. The attitude and actions ascribed to Christ in 2:5-8 were not what he felt and did after the incarnation they are what led to the incarnation. The incarnation was the result of what he thought and felt before he became incarnate. He who was God thought about Godhood in such a way that he became a servant and gave himself for creation. That entire movement, from pre-incarnation to incarnation is what Paul means by "he emptied himself". He doesn't mean that God emptied himself of something that was part of God's nature (say, omnipotence or omniscience); Jesus wasn't God "minus something" being a man; he was fully God being a man. No, that move, from pre-incarnate God to incarnate God as a servant, is what the phrase "he emptied himself" means.
And the Father saw that and agreed that this was the truth of his own heart. In raising Jesus from the dead and making him Lord of all God was stamping this way of seeing things with his own approval. God exalts that kind of Jesus? Astonishing thought, but it's a God who is like Jesus Christ.
But is such an attitude the attitude a God should take? It's the one that the only true God takes. But does this not cheapen God? The one true God didn't think so. But does this not lessen his power; does it not somehow weaken him? No, it doesn't! But it lets us know what true Godhood is and it teaches us that in a world in need of rescue, power should be exercised from a position of weakness.
If we're impressed at all by what we have found in Jesus Christ, Paul says (2:1-4), then we are to think and feel the way he did. And God will see and stamp our lives with his own stamp of approval. He will say, "There's a heart like my own heart."

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.