Scripture: Philippians
2:5-11
The Lenten season focuses us on Jesus’ humble act of
emptying himself to serve us by giving his life for ours. The reading exults
Jesus for his humility and service and declares that God has exalted him and
placed him over all things. While this reading encourages us to imitate Jesus’
humility, it is also a a hymn of praise that exalts Jesus for who he is and
what he has done.
Teaching
This part of Philippians is a hymn of the early church
which, as all hymns should, proclaims the purest and most potent doctrine. In
this case it is the doctrine of Jesus Christ.
He who was the Son of
God, equal with God, he who communicated his divine attributes to his human
nature so that all the Godhead dwelt in him bodily (Col. 2:9), he died, died
hanging on a post of wood…, died as one accursed, hanging on wood…, the mark of
being accursed. Of his own volition. Hence, this is the most noble act the
world has ever seen; hence it is full of infinite merit, all this is bestowed
upon us. This is the mystery of the gospel, into which even the angels of God
delight to look. This is the historic gospel fact which the gospel attests and
publishes in all the world. This is the fact that saves to the uttermost all
those who embrace it in confidence and rest their very soul upon it.[1]
Life
Pause and ponder this amazing event: Jesus who is fully God,
made himself nothing, took the form of a slave, and humbled himself to the
point where he died the most gruesome, painful, and humiliating form of death
imaginable (crucifixion), for you. For you. To save you. To redeem you. Because
he loved you. So you could be forgiven and reconciled to God.
Sometimes people are tempted to focus on the last half of
this reading; that every knee in heaven and on earth shall bow to Jesus, and
every tongue confess he is Lord. Do not, however, lose sight of the cross in
this. It is by the cross that Jesus won our salvation, and it because of the
cross – Jesus’ obedient death – that we are saved and he is glorified. Ponder
that fact as you come to worship this week and as you sing praises to him.
Prayer
As the reading was an
ancient hymn, we’ll use a hymn as our prayer today.
Glory be to Jesus, Who in bitter pains poured for me the
lifeblood from His sacred veins!
Grace and life eternal in that blood I find; blest be His
compassion, infinitely kind!
Blest through endless ages be the precious stream which from
endless torment did the world redeem!
Abel’s blood for vengeance pleaded to the skies; but the
blood of Jesus for our pardon cries.
Lift we, then, our voices, swell the mighty flood; louder
still and louder praise the precious blood![2]
Amen.
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