We measure love by three indicators. Indicator
number one is the identity of the lover. The greater the lover, the greater the love. Indicator
number two is the object of that love. The lesser the object, the greater the love. And the
third indicator is the expression of that love. The greater the expression, the more marvelous
the love. And so, when we speak about God so loving the world, we are actually speaking about,
if I can use the kind of language of Anselm of Canterbury, "We are speaking about a love than
which no greater can possibly be conceived." This is the love of the creator of the
universe for sinners like ourselves, expressed in the awe-inspiring gift of His beloved Son.
The object of the love of God is one of the realities that causes it to take our
breath away. The utter unworthiness of those who are the recipients of this love. God so loved the
world. Of course, for the Apostle John, the world frequently means not simply the community of the
old covenant, but men and women and young people and boys and girls who have not belonged to that
covenant, who are strangers to that covenant. And the love of God that His covenant people have been
promised has now been so gloriously expressed, not only to them, but also to others.
But it surely also has the nuance here, that God so loved this world. That is to say,
this world described in Old Testament terms, as a world that has gone astray from God, is in
rebellion against God, in Ephesians 2 terms, that is full of men and women who are rebels against
God and who are therefore dead in their trespasses and sins. This is the world that God has
loved and this is the world in which we live. There is one newspaper in the world that is
recognized throughout the world. It's one of those newspapers, unlike—if I may say
so, with no pejorative intention—unlike the great newspapers of the United States, that
have a geographical location in their title. The Wall Street Journal, the New
York Times, the Washington Post, but as I cross the Atlantic, I had in my
hand the greatest newspaper in the world. This is the BBC of newspapers, and to work for
the Times. It's like the Open Championship, that sometimes as maliciously
and mistakenly described as the British Open. But when the winner of the
Open Championship is introduced to the adoring multitudes, he is described as the champion
golfer of the year. It is a cosmic claim. So, this is the newspaper on which we all
rely. Here are its descriptions of the world in which we live. Its headline is a photograph
of Karl Lagerfeld at the Chanel show in Paris. Last week the Chanel show turned the
totality of their show into a supermarket in which everything you could buy, from wine
to tomato ketchup had a Chanel label on it. This is the passing form of this world.
This is what is the headline photograph in the Times of London, that is full of the
trivia of the universe, the worship of orders. And underneath, swaggering Putin
fires warning shots at the West. Child sex victim held in cells for twenty hours.
Eating too much cheese and meat in middle age increases your chance of an early death by almost
75%, scientists warned in an eighteen-year study. Don't know why they're studying
eighteen-year-olds who drink and eat cheese. Maury, Maury snubs the Royals—that
should be headline news. Simon's dark star as he seeks independence for
Scotland. The Dalai Lama needs to be reinstated. Savers are attacking a bank. Paul paints unflattering portrait of party
leaders. Tenfold increase in Scots resorting to food banks. Apparently, footballers—that's
the people who use their feet to kick the ball. Apparently, footballers are vain and overpaid.
The rich get richer and head to London. They're all reading the Times. More
cheese and meat. Suicide of bullied girl. Migrant jobs data row. Gay referee resigns. Don't
text at the till, or tweet at church. You've got to get to page five before there's a theological
statement. It's bad etiquette to tweet in church. Brooks, the lady who has been the editor of one of
the major-selling newspapers in the United Kingdom now on trial. Bukes' fury as husband hid his
lesbian porn. And that's the first five pages of the Times of London. And, that's the news today.
That's what's important in the eyes of the world. And you don't need to read your Bible. You can
read your Times of London to see how far away this world is from the God who created it.
God so loved the world of the Times. That's the point. God so loved the
world with these kinds of people, with these kinds of interests, with these kinds
of dysfunctions, with these kinds of derangements, that He gave His only begotten Son that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. I want us to think for
a little in that context about Philippines 2:5 to 11, and I do so for two reasons.
One of them is the slightly striking reason to me that I don't remember at a Ligonier conference
having an exposition of Philippines 2:5 to 11. The second is, because in a way it is the
bookend of the particular responsibilities that have been given to me to
try and paint a big picture of the marvel of this God who has created the
world, has shown His ongoing commitment to this world, and has the intention of
bringing salvation for this world. So, in a sense this is just the next point from
our study yesterday evening. The Father who has created the world, the Father who has made a
miniature Son in order to serve in the world, the Father who has remained committed to His prodigals
in the world, and now the Father who sends His Son in order to be the savior of the world.
And I want essentially to focus in terms of Philippians 2:5 to 11 on the question, who is this
one the Father sends in order to be the savior of sinners. Not so much on the unworthiness,
granted, the real unworthiness of those God has loved, and yes, with a view to what is the
outcome of this love in salvation. But to think a little about the measure of the love that God has
shown for us in the gift that He has given to us. And there are three ways, I think, that
Philippines 2:5 to 11 helps us to grasp this. The first is this, that the gift God
gives to us in His love is Jesus, the Son of God. The measure of the love is the
identity of the gift that has been given to us. And God gives to us. Yes,
He gives to us His own Son. And then you remember how Galatians 4 puts
it, "In order that we may have that Son, He gives to us the Holy Spirit." He has
nothing more to give to us. That's the point. He has no more to give to His people.
That incidentally is the reason why it is so blasphemous when people say that
they will find some other way of salvation, because this God has given everything, He has
to us. There is no other way of salvation than the one He has devised. And the way in which Paul
sees this in Philippines 2:5 to 11, whether these are words that were part of a tradition in the
early church, or as I rather think, words that are put here originally by Paul himself, he
says that this gift that God has given to us is the one who was in the form of God.
Now, God has no form. God has no form. And so, it's clear in this text
that Paul means the expression the form of God, not to invite us to think that God is some
kind of physical form, but to understand that Jesus whom God sends to us has in Himself
everything that characterizes what it means to be God. That's why the exegesis of the words
"He is in the form of God," is found in the other words that He didn't count equality with
God, something that He would claim as a special preserve of His own, that would shield him from
any willingness to sacrifice Himself for sinners. The form of God is equality with God. The form
of God is everything that it means to be God, oneself. And Paul is emphasizing of course here
the absolute equality of the Father and the Son. They are mutual possession of
glory and power and majesty, and wanting us to understand that, in a sense,
this is his own version of John 1:1, isn't it? In the beginning, with God the Word,
who was God, who was face to face with God, but in a sense even more
exquisitely, if possible, in Philippines 2, who is not only face to face with God, but His
Son in relationship to Father in the ever-blessed communion and community of the infinitely great
and wonderful and worthy of worship, triune God. It's one of the blessings of the time in which we
live. That if you have only been a Christian a few years, you probably would not have noticed
that in the church of Jesus Christ, there is, I think, among us an increasing sense that
we are actually Trinitarian, and that the God in whom we believe has a life of His own, apart from
our lives. And that in that life of His own, there has been an eternal blessedness of mutual
communion among Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the best illustration of which we have
and it's embedded in the creation narrative, is that kind of companionship and communion
in which, in a sense, we lose all sense of time and all sense of space in the reality of our
fellowship in communion with another human being. We are lost, we sometimes say, in another
person. We yield ourselves without reserve to another person in a world in which there
is one God in three infinite persons, so configured in relationship to one another
that we may think of them truly as Father and Son and Holy Spirit who have ever
been lost in admiration for one another, who ever joy in the exploration of one another,
whoever delight in what they see of one another, who hold no secrets from one another, where if we
can use the words of Genesis, all three are naked to one another and utterly unashamed, where there
is nothing in the being of the Father and the Son that the Spirit does not know and search out so
that He is conscious of the deep things of God. And you see it's—Paul has grasped this, that it's
when we understand the greatness of the triune God that we then are able to grasp the extraordinary
measure of His love for us in giving His Son to us who was Himself in the form of God. And as I
said, the other way in which you measure the love of someone for you is by asking yourself "how
low will you stoop for me." And Paul wants to say to us that the eternal Son of God has stooped low
for us. "There is no greater love," says Jesus, I think probably citing some common
proverb because the words are found both in religious and in secular writers.
There is no greater love than that a man should lay down his life for his friends, but Paul's
understanding of the gospel is that this one, who is not merely a man but the Son of the eternal
God, has come and laid down His life for His enemies. God, he says—this is Paul's version of
John 3:16. God demonstrated His love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, for us,
Christ died. For a righteous man, some will dare even to die. But what the Son of God has done
coming into our world is that He has given Himself for sinners. And not just given Himself for
sinners, but given Himself to the extent of becoming a servant, taking human likeness and
dying a death, even the death of the cross. And not grasping in His hand His equality with the
Father and with the Holy Spirit and saying, "Send someone else." Is it beyond the power of
God to send an angel to take human flesh? But you see, if that conversation had ever
emerged in the inner life of the Trinity, the Son would have said to the
Father, "Father, I understand that no unfallen angel can ever take
human flesh and pay the price of human sin in order to reconcile human sinners to God."
They might perchance reconcile human sinners to the angelic creation in relationship
to which we are also in alienation, but only God Himself can reconcile us to God. And
the sheer wonder of this, the mystery of this, the mystery of the God who knows
all things from the beginning, the mystery of the God who never discovers
everything new, because everything that is new to us is known by Him. We never fathom the mystery
of this point, and we have no words to describe how the reality of God exists in
what we call the passage of time, but that as far as we can speak, there should come
a moment in eternity when the Father would turn to the Son in the communion of the Holy Spirit. And
there would be that deep eternal profound divine instinct.
Now. Now. And in concert with the sending of the Father
and the conceiving in the womb of the Virgin Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Son
of God, we are told here, comes into the world and He who is in the form of God 'morphe theou,'
enters into the form of a servant, 'morphe dulou' and although He had everything, as the one
who was in the form of God, we are told that He made Himself nothing (English standard
version), or in other versions, emptied Himself. Now, you understand there is more
than one way you can empty yourself. And Christians and theologians in the past have
gone all wonky and strange as they've tried to understand what does it mean that He emptied
Himself. And what it means when Paul says He emptied Himself is not that He emptied out
of Himself, but that He emptied Himself into our humanity. He did not cease to be anything
that He was eternally. Even as He was a child in the manger, as the theologians have
said, He was upholding the entire universe. But the wonder of the incarnation is, that
He emptied Himself into this embryonic form. You remember how the children say
Lewis's Narnia Chronicles. Yes, in our world too there was something in a stable,
in a manger that was bigger than the whole world. That's what Paul is speaking about here. This
is the ultimate mystery of all history. And its mystery lies in the grandeur of the person who
comes and in the way in which He empties Himself into that which is almost infinitesimally small,
without losing anything that He is in Himself. And He comes down from heaven as the creed would
say, for us men and women, and for our salvation. And then He stoops even lower and takes
the form of a servant and a slave, and stoops even lower down to death. He
shares the nadir of human experience. And then even further to that death that was never
to be named in polite company in the Roman Empire, even the death of the cursed cross. That's
the measure of the gift that God gives to us. He gives all He has to me. He gives
to me Jesus who is the Son of God. But there's another way, I think, that Paul is
thinking about this. And I think it's pretty clear in the statements he makes that there are
Biblical shadows behind his teaching here, that help us to grasp the significance of this, that is
really beyond our imagination to try and capture. One of the shadows behind, if I may speak
this way—although it was probably written afterwards—one of the shadows behind Philippines
2:5 to 11 is John 13:1 to 11, isn't it? Jesus knowing that the Father had given all
things into His hands, that He has come from God and that He was going to God, rose from
supper having loved His own to the very end, took off His outer garments, girded
Himself with the slave's towel, knelt down before the disciples, including
as is obvious in John 13, Judas Iscariot, the Chanel order in reverse in the apostolic band.
Knelt before the one who was betraying Him and demonstrated the marvel of His love to him. You
know, if ever there was an illustration in the gospels of the free offer of the gospel, this is
it. This is the picture that sticks in the gullet, of a misconceived hyper-Calvinism that will
not offer the gospel to all men and women, that Jesus washed the feet of the one who would
betray Him in the process of giving a dramatic acted parable of what He had come into the world
to do. And once He had washed the disciples' feet, without which, of course, Peter would have
no part in Him, He puts on His clothes and He goes back to the seat of the host, and He
says, "Do you have any idea what I have done?" And the truth is, they've actually no idea.
In a way the best He can hope for is that they'll see He's done something that they should
follow as an example, but He is to say to them, "You do not now understand what I've done, but
afterwards you will understand"—and it's almost as though Paul is saying in Philippians 2:5
to 11, "Now, we understand what He's done." But there's another shadow behind
this. It's a more ancient shadow. And it appears in some of the thought forms that
Paul has, about this one who is in the form of God, who throws into reverse gear what the first
one who was made as the image of God has done. Because Paul's picture here is not only of Jesus
as the Son of God, isn't it? It's of Jesus as the second man and the last Adam, as he
calls our blessed Lord in I Corinthians 15. And contrasts the grace of His Son with
the gracelessness of the first Adam. Adam, who grasped for equality with God, Jesus, who does
not count the equality with God that He possesses, as in any sense defending His soul from a
willingness to come and be treated as not just unequal with God, but as the off-scouring
of all things. Adam, who is painfully disobedient to his heavenly Father, Jesus, who becomes
obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Adam, who turns the garden project into a
wasteland, Jesus, who comes into the wasteland, and begins to turn things back again into
the garden. You know, I'm fascinated—and one can only speculate about these things—I'm
fascinated by how much interchange there may have been between the apostle Paul writing
his letters and his beloved friend, Luke, writing his gospel. He must have been collecting
the material for the gospel in times when he was in companionship with the Apostle Paul.
And, one of the most striking themes that runs through Luke's gospel is the way he presents the
Lord Jesus as the second man and the last Adam who has come into the wasteland and is
tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, in order that being baptized by the Holy Spirit He
may come into the wastelands of the lives of men and women, and begin to garden
where Adam has brought destruction, and so the blind receive their sight, the
lame are made to walk, the evil one is bound and Jesus has come to revert to
the language of the apostle John, to destroy the works of the Devil.
But the point that Paul sees as important is that He does not destroy. He could destroy the works of
the Devil by divine fiat, but He could not bring salvation by the destruction of the Devil without
Himself entering into our flesh, taking our nature. The early fathers in the church
loved to play with this idea that got so lost somewhere in the history of the church,
that Jesus was the second man and the last Adam. That He was the second man because there was
no man in between Adam and Jesus appointed to do what Jesus was appointed to do. The
last Adam, because after this Adam, there is no more need for another Adam because
He accomplishes what the first Adam failed to do. And how they both came to a tree, and they both came to the tree
because of the woman they loved. That's been one of the things that's fascinated
Christians through the years. Why, when we speak about the fall of Adam, is the serpent spending
most of his time with Eve? Because that's his strongest leverage to get to Adam. That's the
whole point of it. This is God's best gift to the man, and if you want to destroy him, you destroy
the best gift first, and then you have him. And what seems to me to be played out,
especially actually in Luke's gospel, in the passion narrative of our Lord Jesus, that
just as Adam would look upon the tree of the knowledge of good and evil through which He was
to mature and to grow in the service of God and in His vocation to be the gardener of the earth,
I think it's pretty clear in Genesis 2 and 3, there was nothing about that tree that would
distinguish it from other trees. There was nothing about that tree that would create an
instinctive reaction in Adam's soul that would make him stagger back and say, "Eve, let's turn
away from that tree." The whole point of that tree was that there was a simple command of God
attached to it, "Don't eat its fruit in order to demonstrate that you love Me because of who I
am and because you obey Me because of what I say and because you want to give yourself to Me
knowing that I have your best interest at heart." But you see, to put into reverse their
willful choice, to destroy humanity by taking the fruit of that tree requires that our
savior in the garden of Gethsemane would look into the contents of a cup, which as holy man, He
would find there could be no instinct within him that could possibly make him
desire to drink this cup. He had to not want the contents of that cup.
That is why it's in Gethsemane that we come to the nearest point in the story of the ministry of
our Lord Jesus, when His Father says to Him, 'No.' "Father, let this cup pass from Me, if it's
possible." I think we don't begin to grasp the horror of Calvary until we understand that
everything in the holy humanity of the Lord Jesus must have found the very concept, utterly,
mentally, spiritually, emotionally repulsive, because He understood that whatever the mystery
of this may be, on the cross He would cry out, "My God, My God, I am forsaken. Why?"
And so, you see, the gospels are painting to us this amazing picture of Jesus as
the second man and the last Adam, as Adam in reverse in order to help us to grasp
the glory of what our Lord Jesus has done. You remember how John Henry Newman, at least
in his better theological moments, put it, "Oh, loving wisdom of our God, when all was
sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. Oh, wisest love,
that flesh and blood, that did in Adam fail, should strive afresh against the
foe, should strive and should prevail." You remember towards the climax of Shakespeare's
Hamlet, the troupe of actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet thinks with a little grace else, "The
play's the thing, wherein to catch the king." And there is this marvelous and dramatic technique of
the play within the play. I sometimes think that Jesus parable of the prodigal son is the play
within the play. A certain man had two sons. The two sons go astray. One goes astray by leaving
home. The other goes astray but never leaves home. They both have the same disposition
towards the Father. The son has this mistaken sense of restrictiveness, and
he wants his inheritance. He grasps for that inheritance, and in the process,
he loses everything. The other son to whom everything belongs, as his father said, has
the same disposition towards his father. "All these years I have been slaving for
you, and you never gave me the feast." Neither of them grasps the wonder and the grace
of the father, because they're blinded by their sinfulness and their willful rebellion.
But that's only the play within the play. The parable of the two sons is at the end
of the day the parable of the three sons. There is the son who goes astray. There is the
son who stays at home, and there is the Son who is telling the parable, who
Himself has come into the far country, who has said to His father, "Father, I
will arise and go now and rescue these prodigals." "But, My Son, if You go and
rescue these prodigals You have to enter into the debts of alienation that their prodigality
has led to." "Father, I am willing to go." "But My Son, You are equal with Me." "Father, I do
not regard that as a reason why I should not go." "Then, My Son, if You are willing, go. Go now. Do the work. But, My Son, My Spirit
will attend You, and You will come back to glory." And that of course is the third thing that Paul
is speaking about here in Philippines 2:5 to 11, Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the second
man. And thirdly, Jesus is the Savior of sinners. And we mean this in the broadest sense now, not
just that He is the Savior of my sinful soul, but that there is something grand
and cosmic about what He does. And it's clear in the conclusion of the passage,
isn't it, that having died the death of the cross. Now, where is the atonement? In Philippines 2:5 to
11. It's in the words, "The death of the cross." The cursed death of Galatians 3:13, that the
blessing of the gospel promised might come to the nations. And now, because He has come from
the battle. The other Sunday in our church we did something that I'm not sure I've ever done in
the United States. It's an old Scottish tradition among Reformed people who don't
have any old Scottish traditions. That at the communion service, the
service would end with the singing of the last verses of Psalm 24 as an expression
of the exultation of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Ye gates, lift up your heads on high. Ye doors
that last foray, be lifted up, that so the King of Glory enter may." But who is this King of Glory?
Who is this? And the answer that comes back to the battlements of heaven is that it is the Lord of
glory. Lift up the gates and receive your King. And so, having finished His work, the Lord Jesus
ascends to continue His work from His throne in glory, so that as Paul says here, "God has highly
exulted Him and given Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father." Now, that's salvation. That's restoration.
Speaking of English literature, one of C.S. Lewis's best but least read books is his
little book 'Preface to Paradise Lost,' on Milton's great poem. And Milton has this
marvelous line, as Eve leaves the tree, having taken the fruit, Milton describes in
pictures what has happened theologically, and says that having taken the fruit of the tree
as she leaves the tree, "she low obeisance made." Worshiping the created things, rather
than the creator. And Lewis comments that she who refused to worship the god of
heaven now bows down and adores a vegetable. But now it's all thrown into reverse. Men
and women who have worshiped vegetables or animals or minerals, reputations and cars and
bank balances, and perfumes, and worshiped sin and worshiped sex. And such were some of you,
but you were washed. You were justified. You were sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus. And so,
now every knee will bow and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord and it will be,
says Paul, to the glory of the Father. It's the reversal of Eden. It's the
reversal of the Tower of Babel, isn't it, where every tongue speaks against God and is sent
into disarray. And now already, wherever you go on the face of the earth, there are men and women who
know two words in whatever language they speak, that if you use them will bring a smile of joy to
their faces. And those two words are Jesus Christ. Every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is
Lord, the blessing of God promised to the nations now reaching the nations, the wonder of dominion
reestablished through the second man and the last Adam, so that now in heaven and on earth
and under the earth, every knee bows. And restoration, glorious restoration takes place. There will be knees that will bow. The knee of
Satan will bow. The knee of the lost will bow, and the knee of those who have trusted
Jesus Christ as Savior will bow, the knees of angels and cherubim and seraphim will
bow. There will be a knee that will bow in glory, that will cause wonder and awe throughout heaven,
when the knee of the cherubim with the flaming swords, that meant that whoever sought to enter
back into Eden would be slain in the process. That knee, as it were, the very instrument of
God's execution of the Son, that knee especially will bow. And we, who have been alienated
from one another, from God, and yes, from the other side of that family to which
we belong in heaven, alienated from angels and archangels and cherubim and seraphim, we
together will bow, and call Jesus Christ Lord, to the glory of God, the Father.
And you remember how Paul, when he speaks about all this in I Corinthians 15
says, there will be another knee that will bow. Not a knee that will bow to Jesus,
given the name above all other names, but the knee of Jesus Himself
who will bow before the Father. When He has subdued all things and exercised the
dominion of the second man and the last Adam, then says Paul, the Son Himself
will do obeisance to His Father. You understand Paul is speaking there
about the Son in His capacity as our Adam, as our restorer. He's not saying the
second person of the Trinity as God will then in a sense transfer His
equality to some second rank deity. But that with all creation surrounding Him,
with all heaven around Him, with all the saved being led by Him, He will as the second
Adam (to the fight and to the rescue came), come and say to the Father: "The garden is
complete and we give it as our love gift to You." That's what people nowadays
call the grand narrative. And it's the grand narrative into which your
life as a Christian believer surely fits. At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow,
every tongue confess Him, King of Glory, now. It is the Father's pleasure we should call Him
Lord, who from the beginning was the mighty Word. Brothers, this Lord Jesus shall return again
with His Father's glory, with His angel train, for all wreathes of empire meet upon His brow
and our hearts confess Him, King of Glory, now. Hallelujah, what a Savior.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the thrill of the gospel that comes to us through
this God-breathed word, for the expansiveness of the vision of life it gives to us, we who were
dead and trespasses and sins, who have such a glorious Savior Oh, we pray that we may truly
know what it means to belong to Jesus Christ, to live for His glory in the world into which
you send us to serve you for His pleasure. Forgive our sins, we pray. Strengthen our
hearts and help us, for Jesus's sake, amen.
