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.