Thursday Devo

Philippians 2:3-8
3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to.
7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;
he took the humble position of a slave
and was born as a human being.
When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God
and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

2:3–4 There is always a temptation to be like Paul’s opponents in 1:17 and operate in a spirit of rivalry, looking to advance one’s own agenda. Such conceit (lit., “vainglory”) is countered by counting others more significant than yourselves. Paul realizes that everyone naturally looks out for his or her own interests. The key is to take that same level of concern and apply it also to the interests of others. Such radical love is rare, so Paul proceeds to show its supreme reality in the life of Christ (2:5–11).
2:5 The believer’s mind needs to reflect on the proper model, if life is to be lived for God. There is some debate as to whether this mind-set is something Christians receive by virtue of being united to Christ (which is yours in Christ Jesus), or whether it is to be based on the model of Christ (ESV footnote: “which was also in Christ Jesus”). (The Gk. has no verb; either “is” or “was” has to be supplied.) In light of the consistent theme of behavior modeling in this letter (Jesus, Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus are all held out as examples), many interpreters have adopted the latter meaning. Both ideas are theologically true. In either case, the central theme of vv. 1–5 is the same—that the Philippian church would be of one mind (v. 2), united by love (v. 2) and humility (v. 3), and looking out for the interests of others (v. 4).
2:6 Prior to the incarnation, Christ was in the form of God (Gk. morphē theou). Despite the assertions of some scholars to the contrary, this most naturally refers to the “preexistence” of Christ—he, the eternal Son, was there with the Father (John 1:1; 17:5, 24) before he was born in Bethlehem. “Form” here means the true and exact nature of something, possessing all the characteristics and qualities of something. Therefore having the “form of God” is roughly equivalent to having equality with God (Gk. isa theō), and it is directly contrasted with having the “form of a servant” (Phil. 2:7). The Son of God is and always has been God. “Form” could also be a reference to Christ being the ultimate image of God, “the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3). It might also refer to the fact that he is the visible expression of God’s invisible glory (Col. 1:15). Remarkably, Christ did not imagine that having “equality with God” (which he already possessed) should lead him to hold onto his privileges at all costs. It was not something to be grasped, to be kept and exploited for his own benefit or advantage. Instead, he had a mind-set of service. “Christ did not please himself” (Rom. 15:3). In humility, he counted the interests of others as more significant than his own (Phil. 2:3–4).
2:7 Made himself nothing has occasioned much controversy. Greek kenoō can mean “empty, pour out” or also (metaphorically) “give up status and privilege.” Does this mean that Christ temporarily relinquished his divine attributes during his earthly ministry? This theory of Christ’s kenosis or “self-emptying” is not in accord with the context of Philippians or with early Christian theology (see the article on The Person of Christ). Paul is not saying that Christ became less than God or “gave up” some divine attributes; he is not even commenting directly on the question of whether Jesus was fully omnipotent or omniscient during his time on earth. Nor is he saying that Christ ever gave up being “in the form of God.” Rather, Paul is stressing that Christ, who had all the privileges that were rightly his as king of the universe, gave them up to become an ordinary Jewish baby bound for the cross. Christ “made himself nothing” by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (roughly equivalent phrases). While he had every right to stay comfortably where he was, in a position of power, his love drove him to a position of weakness for the sake of sinful mankind (cf. 2 Cor. 8:9, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich”). The “emptying” consisted of his becoming human, not of his giving up any part of his true deity.
2:8 It is remarkable enough that God the Son would take on human form (Gk. schēma, “outward appearance, form, shape,” a different term from morphē, used in vv. 6–7 for “form of God” and “form of a servant”) and thus enter into all the vicissitudes of a broken world. But Jesus went much farther, becoming obedient (cf. Rom. 5:19) to the point of death, even death on a cross. Crucifixion was not simply a convenient way of executing prisoners. It was the ultimate indignity, a public statement by Rome that the crucified one was beyond contempt. The excruciating physical pain was magnified by the degradation and humiliation. No other form of death, no matter how prolonged or physically agonizing, could match crucifixion as an absolute destruction of the person (see note on Matt. 27:35). It was the ultimate counterpoint to the divine majesty of the preexistent Christ, and thus was the ultimate expression of Christ’s obedience to the Father.

2. Are there sources outside the Bible that confirm the Biblical account of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead? Many Roman and Jewish historians have confirmed that the apostles died as martyrs for preaching that they saw Jesus risen from the grave. No one dies for something they know to be a lie.
(Luke 1:1-4; Acts 26:26; 1 John 1:1-4, Josephus, Clement, Hegesippus, Tertullian, Origen, Polycarp)(Mark 3:21; John 8:58, 10:30-33, 14:9-11; Acts 9:1-6; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:2-3; James 1:1)