Chapter 2:3-10
He then touches on that which they had to watch against. "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory." It is humbling, but too true, that the principle of the grossest evil outside works even among the saints of God. The traces might be so faint that none but an apostle's eye could perceive them. But God enabled His servant to discern in them what was not of Christ. Hence he sets before them the dangers alike of opposing one another and of exalting self, strife, and vainglory. Oh! how apt they are to creep in and sully the service of God! The chapter before had shown some elsewhere taking advantage of the Apostle's bonds to preach Christ of envy and strife. And there he had triumphed by faith and could rejoice that, any how, Christ was preached. Now he warns the beloved Philippians against something similar in their midst. The principle was there, and he does not fail to lay it upon their heart.
How is the spirit of opposition and self-exaltation to be overcome? "In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." What a blessed thought! and how evidently divine! How could strife or vainglory exist along with it? When one thinks of self, God would have one to feel our own amazing shortcomings. To have such sweet and heavenly privileges in Christ, to be loved by Him, and yet to make such paltry returns as even our hearts know to be altogether unworthy of Him, is our bitter experience as to ourselves. Whereas when we look at another, we can readily feel not only how blessedly Christ is for him, and how faithful is His goodness, but love leads us to cover failings, to see and keep before us that which is lovely and of good report in the saints—if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, to think on these things. This appears to lie at the root of the exhortation, and it is evident that it thus becomes a simple and happy duty. "In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves."
In short, it is made good on the one hand by the consciousness of our own blessing through grace in presence of our miserable answer to it in heart and way; and on the other hand, by the thankful discernment of another beheld as the object of the Lord's tender love and all its fruits, without the thought of drawbacks. Of their evil the Lord would not have us to think, but of what Christ is to and in them. For here there is no question of discipline, but of the ordinary, happy state of God's children. Certainly the Philippian assembly consisted of men who were full of simple-hearted earnestness in pushing out the frontiers of Christ's kingdom and whose hearts were rejoicing in Him. But toward one another there was the need of greater tenderness.
Besides, if one more than others was abused everywhere, it was the Apostle Paul. He was pre-eminently treated as the offscouring of all things. All Asia was turned away from him. Where was there a man to identify himself with his cause? Evidently this was the result of a faithful, self-denying, holy course in the gospel, which from time to time offended hundreds even of the children of God. He could not but touch the worldliness of one, the flesh of another. Above all, he roused the Judaisers on one hand, and on the other all schismatic’s, heretics, etc. All this makes a man dreaded and disliked; and none ever knew more of this bitter trial than the Apostle Paul. But in the case of the Philippians there was the contrary effect. Their hearts slave to him so much the more in the hour of his imprisonment at Rome, when there was this far sorer sorrow of an amazing alienation on the part of many who had been blessed through his means. This faithful love of the Philippians could not but rejoice the Apostle's heart.
It is one thing to indulge a fleshly dependence upon an instrument of God, quite another to have the same interests with him, so as to be knit more closely than ever in the time of sorrow. This was fellowship indeed, as far as it went; and it did go far, but not so far as the Apostle desired for them. He thought of their things, not of his merely; and accordingly, he now gives them another word: "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." If they loved him so much, why not love each other more than they did? Why so occupied with their own thoughts?
This egotism was another fertile source of evil. We all know that we are apt to value qualities which we possess ourselves and to slight those of others. This is unjudged nature; for, where there is power of love, it works in a direction quite the contrary. There would be the consciousness of how weak and unworthy we are, and the little use we make of what God gives us; there would be the valuing of what we see in another, that we have not got ourselves. How good for the Church to have all this and far more!
There he brings in what is the great secret of deliverance from all these strivings of potsherd nature—"the mind that was in Christ Jesus" (v. 5). In this chapter you will observe it is Christ as He was; in the next it is Christ as He is. Here it is Christ coming down, though of course He is thereon exalted. The point pressed is that we should look at the mind of Christ that was displayed in Him while here below. In chapter 3 it is not so much the mind or moral purpose that was in Him, as it is His Person as an object, a glorious, attractive object now in heaven, the prize for which he was running, Christ Himself above, the kernel of all his joy. Here (chap. 2) it is the unselfish mind of love that seeks nothing of its own, but the good of others at all costs; this is the mind that was in Christ.
The Apostle proceeds to enforce lowliness in love, by setting the way of the Lord Himself before their eyes. This is the true "rule of life" for the believer since His manifestation; not even all the written Word alone, but that Word seen livingly in Christ, who is made a spring of power by the Holy Ghost to his soul that is occupied with Him. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal [on equality] with God; but made himself of no reputation [emptied himself]," etc. vv. 5-7.
What an illustrious testimony to the true, proper, intrinsic deity of Christ! It is all the stronger because, like many more, it is indirect. Who but a person consciously God in the highest sense could adopt not merely the unhesitating assumption of such language as "Before Abraham was, I am," or, "I and my Father are one," but the no less real, though hidden, claim to Godhead which lies under the very words which unbelief so eagerly seizes against Him? Where would be the sense of any other man (and man He surely was and is) saying, "My Father is greater than I"? A strange piece of information in the mouth (I will not say of a Socrates or a Bacon merely, but) of a Moses or a Daniel, a Peter or a Paul; but in Him, how suitable and even needful, yet only so because He was truly God and equal with the Father, as He was man, the sent One, and so the Father was greater than He! Take again that striking declaration in John 17:33And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:3), "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Of course He was man, He deigned to be born of woman, else unbelief would have no ground of argument on that score. But what mere man ever dared, save the vilest imposter, calmly to class himself with God, yea, to speak of the knowledge of the •only true God, and of Him, as life everlasting?
So again, the scripture before us. Nothing can be conceived more conclusively to prove His own supremely divine glory than the simple statement of the text. Gabriel, yea, the archangel Michael, has no higher dignity than that of being God's servant, in the sphere assigned to each. The Son of God alone had to empty Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. All others were, at best, God's servants; and nothing could increase that dignity for them or lift them above it. Of Christ alone it was true, that He took a bondservant's form; and of Him alone could it be true, because He was in the form of God. In this nature He subsisted originally, as truly as He received a bondman's; both were real, equally real—the one intrinsic, the other that which He condescended to assume in infinite grace.
Nor was this all. When "found in fashion •as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." v. 8. This is another distinct step in His descent of grace to glorify God. First, it was humiliation for Him to become a servant and a man; next, being man, He humbled Himself as far as death in His obedience (the blessed converse of Adam's disobedience unto death). And that death was the extreme of human shame, besides its atoning character. Yet must we carefully bear in mind that it would be as impossible for a divine person to cease to be God, as for a man
to become a divine person. But it was the joy and triumph of divine grace that He who was God, equally with the Father, when about to become a man, did not carry down the glory and power of the Godhead to confound man before Him, but rather emptied Himself; contrariwise perfection morally was seen in this. Thus He was thoroughly the dependent man, not once falling into self-reliance, but under all circumstances, and in the face of the utmost difficulties, the very fullest pattern and exhibition of One who waited upon God, who set the Lord always before Him, who never acted from Himself, but whose meat and drink it was to do the will of His Father in heaven; in a word, He became a perfect servant. This is what we have here.
Christ is said to have been in the form of God; that is, it was not in mere appearance, but it had that form, and not a creature's. The form of God means that He has His and no other form. He was then in that nature of being, and nothing else; He had no creature being whatever; He was simply and solely God the Son. He, subsisting in this condition, did not think it robbery to be equal with God. He was God; yet, in the place of man which He truly entered, He had, as was meet, the willingness to be nothing. He made Himself of no reputation. How admirable! How magnifying to God! He put in abeyance all His glory. It was not even in angelic majesty that He deigned to become a servant, but in the likeness of men. Here we have the form of a servant as well as the form of God, but that does not in anywise mean that He was not really both. In truth, as He was very God, so He became the veriest servant that God or man ever saw.
But we may go yet further. "And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Mark that. There are two great stages in the advent and humiliation of the Son of God. The first is in respect of His divine nature or proper deity; He emptied Himself. He would not act on a ground which exempted Him from human obedience, when He takes the place of a servant here below. Indeed, we may say that He would act upon what God the Father was to Him, not upon what He the Son was to the Father. On the one hand, though He were a Son,
He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. On the other, if He had not been a divine person—the Son no doubt—He would not have been the perfect man that He was. But He walks on through unheard-of shame, sorrow, and suffering, as one that sought only the will and glory of His Father in everything. He would choose nothing, not even in saving sinners or receiving a soul (John 6). He would act in nothing apart from the Father. He would have only those whom the Father draws. Whom the Father gives Him, whoever comes to Him, He welcomes them; He will in no wise cast any out, be they ever so bad. What a proof that He is thoroughly the servant, when He, the Savior, absolutely puts aside all choice of those He will save! When acting as Lord with His apostles, He tells us that He chose; but in the question of salvation, He virtually says, Here I am, a Savior; and whoever is drawn to Me by the Father, that is enough for Me; whoever comes, I will save. No matter who or what it was, you have in the Lord Jesus this perfect subjection and self-abnegation, and this too in the only person that never had a will to sin, whose will cared not for its own way in anything. He was the only man that never used His own will; His will as man was unreservedly in subjection to God. But we find another thing: if He emptied Himself of His deity, when He took the form of a servant, when He does become a man, He humbles Himself and becomes obedient as far as death.
This is important because it shows, among others things, this also, that death was not the natural portion of our Lord as man, but that to which, when found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient. There was no death for Him merely as man, for death was the wages of sin, not of man as such without sin, still less of the Holy One of God. How could He come under death? In this was the contrast between Him and the first Adam. The first Adam became disobedient unto death; Christ, on the contrary, obeyed unto death. No other was competent so to lay down His life. Sinners had none to give; life was due to God, and they had no title to offer it. It would have been sin to have pretended to it. But in Christ all is reversed. His death in a world of sin is His glory—not only perfect grace, but the vindication of God in all His character. "I have power," He says, "to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." In the laying down of His life, He was accomplishing the glory of God. "Now is the Son of man glorified and God is glorified in him." So while God was pleased with and exalted in every step of the Lord Jesus Christ's life, yet the deepest moral glory of God shines out in His death. Never was nor could be such obedience before or in any other. He "became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."
In this chapter it is not a question of putting away sin. It is ignorance of the mind of God to confine the death of Christ, even to that astonishing part of it, while fully admitting that there is not, nor ever will be, anything to compare with it. But the death of Christ, for instance, takes in the reconciliation of all things, as well as the bringing us who believe unto God; for now that the world is fallen under vanity, without that death there could not be the righteous gathering up again out of the ruin that which is manifestly marred and spoiled by the power of Satan. Again, where without it was the perfect display of what God is? Where else the utmost extent of Christ's suffering and humiliation, and obedience in them? The truth, love, holiness, wisdom, and majesty of God were all to the fullest degree vindicated in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is not a single feature of God but what, though it expresses itself elsewhere in Christ, finds its richest and most complete answer in His death. Here it is the perfect servant, who would not stop short at any one thing, and this not merely in the truest love to us, but absolutely for the glory of God. It is in this point of view that His death is referred to here; and the Spirit of God adds (vv. 9, 10), "Wherefore God also bath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at [in virtue of] the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of heavenly, and earthly, and infernal [ones]."