Articles
BookstoreLibraryLinksMessage BoardsSermons
Peterson's Reformed World
ArticlesBookstoreLibraryLinksMessage BoardsSermons
Phil 2:5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. NRSV
The words of Blaise Pascal have often caught me by surprise. Their honesty and simple depth seem to send my mind into a whirl of thoughts and almost always my views come back to me enhanced and refined if not completely revised. This is not at all unlike the affect of his statement from the last time when we read him saying "The Church has had as much difficulty in proving that Jesus was man, against those who denied it, as in proving that he was God, and both were equally evident" The truth of this statement is remarkable and it's candidness is refreshing.
In the above passage when Paul writes that Jesus "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, . . ." he is expressing the central focus of this study. We have learned that logic would in some ways demand that Jesus have no attachment to divinity and no recall of his lost divinity once his mission was accomplished. If in fact he could recall his divinity, it is thought that he never let it go and therefore his "sacrifice" was a farce and his suffering the grand performance of a master plebeian. This is actually what those who oppose the church attempt to force it into concluding. For we will not say that Christ was not God, nor was he not divine. And that is where we become trapped. Yet we are only trapped if we reason with logic and not with scripture and divine wisdom.
I purposely entitled this study "The Mystery in the Kenosis (emptying) of Christ," because that is what it is. For Pascal to say that Christ was man and yet also God presents a great mystery to the human mind. We have not the capacity to grasp the idea of something being two things opposite at once. Yet that is the case with God. And in order to understand this mystery one cannot reason with the mind. Rather, one must be able to reason with the spirit. God will reveal the truth of this matter to all who have ears to hear and eyes to see. Let it be so with us.
At this point in every discussion concerning this topic the debaters make a fatal mistake in one crucial assumption. They almost always say either Jesus was man or God but he could not have been both. Our human logic does not allow such a thing to occur. A horse can no more be a pig and remain a horse than Jesus can be a man and remain divine, so the thinking goes. But is that true, is it impossible for Jesus to be all of two things at once and have no conflict with himself?
Paul wrote that Jesus "did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited." A literal translation of the original language renders this passage as follows: Jesus "who existing in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God." Speaking of the prehuman Jesus, Paul reveals two things in these words. First of all Jesus exists in the form or nature or shape of God. That is if I were to look at God and then look at Jesus I would not be able to tell them apart. They are exactly the same. Therefore, and secondly, Jesus had no reason to consider his equality with God as an ill-gotten attribute. No, in-fact he knew very well that it was not even a thing which he had obtained. Rather, it was his essence. He had always been equal, in fact if the truth were known, he and God were one and the same being.
Nevertheless, this portion of God we call Jesus, which is no portion at all, but the whole, "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness." And here is the critical point. When Jesus emptied himself what did he give up? Was any portion of his divinity relinquished? Is likeness to humanity equal to complete disassociation with God?
Some would say it is and has to be. Others would say it is not and cannot be. The former arguing the point of Kierkegaard, that latter arguing as follows. God is unchanging, in him there is "no shadow of turning." This being so, Jesus who is equal with God in all things cannot change. He cannot cease to be God. And therefore, as Matthew Poole writes, "he emptied himself, not by ceasing to be what he was before, equal with his Father, or by laying down the essential form of God, according to which he was equal to God; but by taking the form of a servant, wherein he was like to men . . . veiling himself, as the sun is said to be veiled, not in itself, but in regard of the intervening cloud."
The cloud in question in this case is the human body. By taking on the form, by being in the fashion of a man, Christ veiled his divinity, he made it of no use to himself. Nothing of Jesus's divinity or claim on divinity is lost in the incarnation. It remains with him always. This has to be so, for we are told that Christ is "the image of God" (2 Cor. 4:4). By image it is not meant that Jesus looked like God, as I have said before he is God, in every way. And since God is unchanging, Jesus must also be unchanging.
However for the sake of lost humanity Jesus placed himself behind the cloud of flesh. He limited and even more, he completely denied himself the use of his divine attributes. This too was necessary for Christ's sacrifice to be of value to lost humanity. The writer of Hebrews catches the flavor of this thought in the chapter 2:17-18 when he writes.
"Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested."
There is the truth of the matter, Jesus had to become like us in every respect. It is necessary that Jesus be susceptible to temptation and trials. Without a pure sacrifice our sins cannot be washed away. It is impossible. Yet without the possibility of the pure sacrifice experiencing the anguish and pain of the sacrifice, there really is no sacrifice. If I say that I am giving something up for another's sake and yet the giving up of that thing does not cause me to be without it (let's say there is plenty where that came from) then my giving up of what I don't need is not a sacrifice, it's simply a gift. And while the death of Christ on the cross, while the Grace of God, is indeed a gift, it must be a gift bought with a sacrifice.
You will remember that God is a just God. It is not for the want of amusement that he punishes, but rather it is out of his nature to be just. For when we were given a law by which to live, we were also given a system of justice by which to enforce that law. If I break the law with no fear of punishment then the law is useless. Yet as a body, we cannot live in a state of lawlessness. We must have guiding points and we must face justice when we fail to stay within those guiding points. And so God must punish for sins, he must in order to remain God, remain just.
You will also remember that God's nature is to love. These two natures are not in opposition to one another, rather they coexist both dependent on each other. Since God loved us, he desired to save us from ourselves. Yet, he could not do that unless justice was satisfied. And so in Christ justice was satisfied. God bid his son to veil his divinity to the point of having no use of it while in the flesh. He sent him into the form of a servant, the lowest of all human creatures that he might suffer and be tempted toward sin, yet never sin. He lead him through a despised existence in the flesh only to reward him with the anguishing separation from his father that our sins caused in us. He took away that separation and made it his own. And in that moment he was completely cut off from his Father, from his divinity. There was nothing to be had of it and he cried out in his loneliness "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matt. 27:46)
And so the answer to the question, "what does it mean to say that Jesus who did not consider equality with God something to be exploited, emptied himself" is this: Jesus being the very nature of God, never changing in any way, always was, is and will be divine. And Jesus being in the likeness of man, that he suffered and faced temptation, was like man in every way, completely separated from his own divine nature.
In His divine wisdom Jesus knew that his suffering and death would be meaningless unless he experienced in his own being their consequence. He realized that as divinity he could not be tempted to sin, he could not fall into sickness, he could not experience trials, and he could not die. And yet those were the very things he wanted to save us from, and so, those were the very things he had to know. In that frame of thinking Jesus veiled his divinity. He put a wall called flesh between himself and his divine attributes, a wall that could only be destroyed by death.
And there you have it. Jesus was both one hundred percent divine and human at the same time. His divinity never ceased to exist, he never destroyed it, he only constrained it for awhile in order that he could be the perfect High Priest who saved God's children from their sins. While he was in the flesh he possessed nothing other than an unstained heart without heritage to Adam. While we are born sinful in our lineage, Jesus was born sinless. Yet he suffered our pain, realized our loss, dealt with our temptations, and experienced our death, all in the confines of human flesh. And even so, he remained sinless in order to make us perfect in the sight of God