JULY 22

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

NAMES FOR GOD:

ELOHENU OLAM—EVERLASTING GOD

ELOHIM OZER LI—GOD MY HELP

EL ROI—GOD WHO SEES ME

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This month we will read the book, “Whatever Happens – How to Stand Firm in Your Faith When the World is Falling Apart.”  By a contemporary author of many best-selling Christian books, Robert J. Morgan.  He took care of his wife when she had MS, until she went home to her Savior.  “He knows of which he speaks.”  I pray that this book blesses you.

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Philippians 2:6-11

“who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.  And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,  and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

WHATEVER HAPPENS…..CULTIVATE THE MIND OF CHRIST

Opinions.  Everyone has them.  We all have a lot of opinions about a lot of things.  We’ve never had more ways of sharing them.  Billions of people sharing trillions of opinions in quadrillions of ways.

But most of them are wrong.  Just because someone is sincere, thoughtful, and intelligent – doesn’t mean their every opinion is correct.  I think mine are correct, of course;  if I didn’t I would change them, right?

 But I’ve lived long enough to know I’m not ALWAYS right.

How about you?  Do you sometimes find yourself clinging to your opinions out of sheer stubbornness?  That’s a common human trait.  Only one person thinks correctly about every issue all the time – infallibly, unfailingly.

  In Isaiah 55:8-9, the Lord Almighty said:  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways ….As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

God’s omniscience and truthfulness merge with infinite brilliance.  He knows everything, and every word He speaks is true.  There are no mistakes in His thinking and no confusion in His mind.  He has revealed some of His thoughts to us through Scripture.  The  passage in Isaiah continues:  “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth:  It will not return to me empty”  (Isaiah 55:10-11)

Only by taking our Bible in our hands and studying it, pondering it, and meditating on its verses can we begin to see and understand the world as God does.  Only as we understand love and life and relationships from His perspective can we experience love and life and relationships that are healthy and whole.

There’s a New Testament phrase for this – THE MIND OF CHRIST.  It’s found in one of the most glorious passages in Paul’s writings.  Many people believe it’s a song, likely one Paul composed to teach people the true nature of Jesus Christ.  It begins, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).

The word “mind” comes from the Greek term “Phroneo,” which occurs several times in Philippians.  For example, in 3:15, Paul said, “All of us, then,  who are mature should take such a view of things.”  The phrase “view of things is the same word as “mind” in verse 2:5.

Wisdom is having a view of things that mirrors the thoughts of God; it’s thinking about things as Christ does.  We should see one another with the same attitude as Jesus has toward us.  I wish I always reflected the thoughts of Jesus.  When I do, I’m always in the right;  when I don’t, I’m always in the wrong.  Oh, how I long for you and me to grow in the wisdom that belongs to Christ Jesus.  We need to think of ourselves as He does.  What He thinks of us is revealed in the history of His life, in the story of what He has done. 

In explaining this, Paul presented four great phases of the life of Jesus Christ.  They demonstrate the cycle of Christ’s redemptive career.

CHRIST’S PREEXISTENCE

Philippians 2:6 says:  “Who, being in very nature God.”  According to this declarative verse, Jesus Christ was, is, and always will be, in His very nature, God.  He is God Himself.  The word “nature” is the Greek “morphe,” from which we get our word “Morphology,” a branch of biology devoted to the essential nature of living beings.  According to Philippians 2:6, Jesus is, in His essential being, the almighty, eternal God.

This is why I’m bemused when people claim the notion of the deity of Christ was invented by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.  No.  It was articulated there, but here in Philippians, 250 years before the Council of Nicaea, Paul described Jesus as being in very nature or essence – morphe – God.

The teaching of the deity of Jesus Christ cascades like a massive system of waterfalls, flowing through the Bible.  The entire message of the bible depends on it.

Thank goodness it does!  If Jesus were anyone less than almighty God, we could never find in Him the ultimate help, comfort, pardon, and eternity we crave.

CHRIST’S INCARNATION

Yet being God, Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7).

Jesus didn’t just come in the form of a  man.  He BECAME a man.  He became human.  The New Living Translation says, “Though He was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.  Instead He gave up his divine privileges; He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being.”

In His essence, his nature, and His eternal attributes, He was equal with God and was God.  But in His infinite love and humility, He did not take undue advantage of his position.  He didn’t want His God nature to keep Him from doing something redemptive.  He didn’t want the glory of His throne to keep Him from the duty of His mission.

Verse 7 is one of the greatest mysteries of Scripture:  “He made himself nothing.”  Some translations say he “emptied himself.”  No one fully understands this.

The word “nothing” comes from the Greek word “kenosis,” and this passage is known among scholars as the “Kenosis Passage.” In simple language, God the Son stripped off the prerogatives and privileges of His glorious throne.  He stepped away from heaven to enter human history.  There is no evidence that Jesus stopped being God; indeed, that would be a rational impossibility.  God cannot stop being God.  But He emptied Himself of His privileges and prerogatives, temporarily abdicating heaven’s throne to enter human history through the womb of a virgin.

He did not empty Himself of his DIETY, but temporarily of His GLORY.  He took upon Himself the nature of a servant.  He has always possessed His divine nature but now He added to it.  He took on something new. He assumed a new nature.  According to Philippians 2, Jesus now had two natures.

Jesus, who is in very nature, God, took upon Himself the additional nature of a servant.  He did not simply become a God who appeared in a human body.  He actually became a human person with a human body.  There are two great mysteries at the heart of Christianity:

First, the Trinity –one God in three persons, and Second, the duality – one Man with two natures.

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