It’s Orthodox Christmas. Let’s celebrate again the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth, was born in flesh, and lived among us!
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
Let this sink into your bones. This is the kind of thing that totally transforms our lives if we don’t quench what the Spirit is doing. And what’s he doing? Here it is.
Just prior to this passage, Paul has given us a call to live lives worthy of the gospel. Then he lays down an ethic, how we can live radically and supernaturally in the world. Now he shows us the way. The ultimate example of Jesus Christ.
Paul says, “Be like this.” Have this mindset.
Jesus is in very nature God. That’s the first thing Paul lets us know. All the power, glory, love, justice, and holiness since before time began.
But with all that, God the Son did not consider equality with God the Father as something to prop up his resume. Jesus didn’t horde his wealth. He didn’t walk away from his creation. He heard our cries and he laid it all down.
That’s ultimate humility.
Jesus was not selfish with his Godhood. He was humble. And one means of Jesus’ humility is described beginning in verse 7: “He made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
This is called the incarnation.
God who had everything made himself nothing. The glorious king gave up his crown and his throne and became an infant with skin and tears and dirt and pain.
My wife and I just had a baby. He is miraculous and beautiful and amazing and, also, this baby can’t do anything on his own. Nothing. This tiny boy is totally helpless. Can’t feed himself. Can’t soothe himself. Can scarcely lift his head.
And this is how Jesus came!
Jesus started out as a baby in a backwater tribe in treacherous empire, and as he grew, he was what? Paul says he was a servant. In Isaiah we hear prophecy about the suffering servant.
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Jesus sacrificed it all to live perfectly on our behalf. To point us to God and lead us into righteousness.
The incarnation is perhaps the greatest picture of humility we have in history. And its something about which we should have the same mindset as Jesus.
So how do we imitate Christ’s humility in the incarnation?
We lay down our rights and comfort and our privilege, and enter worlds not our own—of the poor and the lonely. For me that has looked like moving to a harder place and working with refugees. For some of my friends it looks like taking massive risks in their families. For others it looks like financial surrender, or fearless evangelism.
Maybe you’ve heard of missionaries like CT Studd in the 1800s or William Borden in the 1900s. They were both millionaires, but when they came to know Jesus, their hearts broke for the world’s lost. They both gave away all their wealth and privilege to be missionaries in China and Egypt. That is living out the incarnation!
I would challenge us in this. You can live into the incarnation wherever you are, but if it costs you nothing, we should begin to wonder how much we’re letting the Spirit lead.
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