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"Jesus:
Discovery and Declaration" December
1, 2002 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower This morning we're going to begin a series of sermons leading us
through Advent on the subject of the incarnation. Now, that word "incarnation"--we're familiar with
that. It means that the Word became
flesh. And the
"-carnation" of "incarnation" is actually the same Latin
root as--it might surprise you to hear it this way--but "chili con
carne." Am I right?
Chili con carne is chili with what? "Meat." Chili with meat. And
the "carne," the "meat" or the "flesh" in Latin is
how we get that word "incarnation."
Christians down through the centuries have believed that Jesus Christ is
the second Person of the trinity, the Son of God, the Word of God--and that that
Word became flesh, that Word came into the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
We're going to look together and that very, very important doctrine as we
direct our attention and move forward in the direction of Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day. So you may want to turn with me--not always a usual
Christmas-oriented passage, but we're going to begin looking at the incarnation.
You may want to turn with me to Philippians chapter 2, beginning with
verse 5, because this is a very central, very crucial, very important passage on
the fact that the Word indeed became flesh and dwelt among us.
Philippians chapter 2. Paul
says this: 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. Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven, and on earth and under the earth. and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Now, as we begin this subject--looking at the incarnation of
Jesus--I want us to confront something that's very, very crucial and is a reason
for an awful lot of the misunderstanding at present on this subject in the
church today. And that is, when we
look at the Bible, and when we look at the New Testament, there is a hugely rich
and diverse set of things that are affirmed about Jesus.
Every book in the New Testament affirms wonderful things about Jesus, but
they are somewhat different from each other.
In fact, on every page in the New Testament, within books, different
things are affirmed about Jesus. So
we confront this immense variety. And
it doesn't mean necessarily that there are contradictions there, but it is just
wildly diverse the way that the name of Jesus is lifted up and honored in
Scripture. The New Testament is wildly diverse in what it affirms about Jesus
and, sad to say, that diversity in our day has given some scholars--and I'm
going to go ahead and call them "liberal scholars," not in a
pejorative way, but just to give you an idea of who I'm talking about.
You know, liberal scholars who will confront that diversity and will say,
"Well, you see, what we have in some New Testament documents are
affirmations about what a wonderful teacher Jesus was, what a wonderful man he
was, but he's only regarded as a human being"--so this story
goes--"he's only regarded as a human being, and that the later documents in
the New Testament increasingly lift him up into a higher and higher role."
You may have encountered this argument and, as a matter of fact, this may
even be the way you look at the New Testament.
I'm going to ask us to confront that and ask now, "Is that
really even true? Is it really even
true that the earliest New Testament documents--yes, there's diversity running
all the way through, but can you simplify that diversity by saying the earlier
documents look at Jesus just as a mortal man, a human being, and then
increasingly the church sort of exaggerated his exploits, turned him into more
of a legendary figure kind of like . . . I
don't know. Who's a legendary
figure? You know, there are
fanciful stories that are told about George Washington--you know, chopping down
the cherry tree, etc. There are
legends that sort of develop around famous people until finally at the end he is
this very, very exalted figure. Well, this morning I want to ask us, does that really, really ring
true? And the reason that I had us
begin with Philippians chapter 2 is that this is one of the highest Christology
passages in the New Testament. One
of the passages that talk about Jesus as originally, before being born in
Bethlehem, being co-equal with the Father and then becoming a man, and then
living humbly, and then being exalted by God the Father.
Just for starters, I want to call our attention to the fact that this was
not one of the last passages to be written in the New Testament.
This is not something that was written 90 years after Jesus lived,
or even 70 or 60. The letters of
Paul are the first New Testament documents to be written.
We know this. Before
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written, Paul was writing letters to the
churches. And Philippians is not
even one of his last letters! This
is an earlier document. And what we
find in the earliest writings in the New Testament, we find this: Jesus Christ, who though he was in the form of God
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, but emptied himself. . . What's being talked about is the preexistence of the Word of God,
the second Person of the trinity. Before
He was born as a human person, Paul is telling us, He was a part of the Godhead.
And the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit comprised the trinity
before Jesus was born. And that
when a baby was born in Bethlehem on a particular night--the night that we
celebrate as Christmas today, although we honestly don't know (maybe John knows,
but I don't really know that December 25th was the day--in fact, we have reasons
to suspect that the day we celebrate Christmas may not actually have been Jesus'
birthday, so that's just an encouragement to celebrate Jesus' birthday every
day! You can have Christmas all year round!) But when that took place, this was not one more natural birth like
all of the others. Paul is telling
us this was the incarnation of the Word. This
is the second Person of the trinity, who was preexistent and had an equality
with God but did not think of that equality with God as something to cling to,
as something to hang on to. When
the assignment from the Father came to go to earth and to live as a human being,
He did not count His equality with God as something to be exploited, but He
emptied Himself and He accepted that assignment.
The passage goes on (and if there's time, we'll look at it), but
right now I'm just calling your attention to the fact this is not one of the
last passages, after years have gone on and people had sort of forgotten that
Jesus was only a mere man. This is
one of the earliest New Testament documents that we have! And if you're going to base your ideas about Jesus on the
evidence, you have to reckon with the fact that the earliest Christians
did not see Jesus as a mere man. The
earliest Christian documents talk about Jesus as having a pre-birth equality
with God that He emptied Himself of in order to be incarnate in human flesh--the
incarnation. Well, if that's true, then how do we account for the diversity in
the New Testament? And just as I
was puzzling over this recently, I came up with a new thought and I want to
share it with you in this message this morning as an introduction to the subject
of the incarnation. We have some authors who, right from the get-go--some of our New
Testament authors--who right from the get-go want to declare this is who
Jesus Christ was, and Paul is certainly among those authors.
Paul wants to declare that Jesus is Savior and Lord, and he does not want
there to be any mystery about it, he does not want there to be any uncertainty
about it. Paul always began with
the declaration that Jesus is Lord. And
we have other authors in the New Testament who are exactly like that.
The classic example would be John in his gospel.
You know, John begins his gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. So there's no mystery there. There's
no uncertainty. Just from the very
first verse, John is telling us about Jesus.
So Paul and John are like that. Now, we have other authors who take an entirely different approach.
Mark is a good example. In
Mark's gospel, we encounter Jesus the way that the disciples encountered Jesus.
We learn about who Jesus is by seeing what He can do, by hearing what He
says. And we are led, like the
disciples are, into a discovery of who Jesus is.
And so the gospel writers like Mark allow us to go through a learning
process, the way the original followers of Jesus went on a learning process.
I think we can assume that when Jesus originally said to Peter, James,
and John, "Leave your nets and come and follow me and I will make you
fishers of men," they probably didn't turn to one another and say,
"It's God! Let's go!" No, they were very much attracted to His personality, surely,
but who this figure really was was probably not something that they fully
understood in that first instance of dropping their nets and deciding to go and
follow Him. But they began to see miracle after miracle.
A leper is healed. A blind man is restored to sight. A lame person who can't walk . . . They see these things and they start to go, "Hmmm.
My last rabbi couldn't do that . . .
What's going on here?" And
they listened to His teaching. And
He is discovered to preach not like the Scribes and the Pharisees, but as one
with authority. What that means in Mark's gospel is here's somebody talking
about God who does not need to say, "rabbi this-person said that . . . and
rabbi the-other-person said . . . and so I'm going to go kind of right in the
middle and I'm going to land right . . ."
No. He just spoke like God
gave Him permission to freely say, "This is what God is like.
This is what God wants you to know.
Receive this word about God right now."
He spoke with the authority that could only come from God.
And so they were able to say, "Hmmm.
My last rabbi didn't teach like that."
And over time a dawning awareness built up in their consciousness.
We're treated to the story of Peter's conversion experience.
When Jesus took the disciples away (in Matthew, and in Mark, and in
Luke's gospel) to Caesarea Philippi, they basically go on a little retreat.
And at that point Jesus says, "Who are people saying that I
am?" And they're going, "Well, man! Some people say you're John the Baptist, you know, back from
the dead . . . And other people are
saying you're one of the prophets . . . And
some people don't have a clue who you are. . ." "Well, who do you say that I am?" And Peter says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God." Now, this is Peter after walking with Jesus, after following Jesus,
after observing Jesus and hearing Jesus for an extended period of time.
We can't say exactly how long the period was, but we know that this is
something that Peter came to after a while. Now, we have writers in the New Testament that tell the story that
way. So we get to go on a journey
like the disciples went on, so that we get to make discoveries about who Jesus
was as the disciples did. And
instead of beginning their gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God," instead, we're sort of given the
chance to see for ourselves, to hear for ourselves, to weigh the evidence for
ourselves. And only at a late point
in the gospel are we given declarations about Jesus as the only begotten Son of
the Father. Now, John's gospel is very, very different.
In John's gospel there are several declarations of Jesus' Messiahship
early, early on. In the first chapter, John front-loads things and declares,
and declares, and declares. But I'm
asking us to look at the diversity in the New Testament as falling into
categories where there's an emphasis on declaration versus categories
where there's an emphasis on discovery.
And our passage this morning is one of those where the emphasis is not on
slowly being able to discover who Jesus is, but just everything is declared
immediately, as we said just a few minutes ago. Paul begins by saying Jesus is the one who had an equality
with God before He was born in Bethlehem, but He emptied Himself of that.
And picking the passage up right in verse 7:
He emptied himself
and taking the form of a slave
being born in human likeness . . . That's the incarnation, you see.
In the earliest documents of the Christian faith--we don't have any
Christian evidences earlier than this-- and in the earliest Christian documents
what we have is a very, very high view of Jesus, perfectly conforming with what
we now understand is the incarnation. The
word "incarnation" is not used in the New Testament.
And if you wanted to find it and you looked in your concordance in your
Study Bible and you look under the letter "I" for
"incarnation," you won't find that word because that's the term
that the church has invented to describe passages just like this.
You will find teachings on that subject.
Jesus took human form. Verse
8: and being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross. Who was it that died on the cross? Paul wants to make very, very clear--he does not want there
to be any uncertainty: This is not
just one more man, one more human being suffering a martyr's death like so many
did. No.
This is the one who had previously been co-equal with the Father.
That's who died on the cross. That's
why His death is really, really different than the death of, let's say Socrates,
the death of say Mahatma Gandhi. Any
of the wise and noble figures that we might be able to think of who were
assassinated or who were wrongly executed because of an injustice.
The death of Jesus is not like that, and Paul wants to declare
that very, very clearly right from the get-go.
Verse 9: Therefore God also highly exalted him and
gave him the name that
is above every name so that at the name of Jesus . . . Now, what he's telling us here is that Jesus' death on the cross
was not an accident, it was not a tragedy, it was not a surprise.
It was not that God the Father was looking down and said, "Oh!
My gosh, the arrested my son! What
am I going to do now?" No.
This was in God's plan all along. God
knew that sending His Son to earth, this was going to happen.
This was part of the plan. And
because of the obedience of the Son, God is highly exalting Him so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue should confess
that Jesus is the Lord, We begin with a very exalted view of Jesus, His humiliation, and
His death on the cross, and we end with every knee bending, every tongue
confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord. Now,
remember, in a Jewish context, who alone could you call "Lord" to?
Tell me. For the Jews, who
alone could they say that they applied the word "Lord" to? "God." That's good. Did we
know that one? Let's say it
together: Who alone is Lord? "God." Now, Paul is still, you know, operating within the Jewish milieu
when he says, "Jesus Christ is Lord." And in the Jewish understanding, that is not one bit
different than declaring "Jesus Christ is God." There is no difference.
We do have a distinction made between "Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father," but remember "Lord" is reserved only
for God. And to say "Jesus
Christ is Lord" is the same thing as saying "Jesus Christ is
God." He's not confused with God the Father. He's not identified with God the Father.
But the Son and the Father are both called God.
Now, it took the church several hundred years to sort of figure out how
that could be. And when you throw
in the Holy Spirit, it gets even more complicated.
But the reason that the church had to wrestle with issues and come up
with things like the doctrine of the incarnation, and (even more confusing than
that) the doctrine of the trinity--the reason that the church had to chew on
that for a few hundred years in order to understand how do we bring all of these
diverse passages into a single understanding, is because of passages that say,
"every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory
of God the Father." Now, I'm inviting us this morning, as we begin thinking together
about the incarnation, to the extent that we've been influenced by philosophies
that would say, "Oh, well, after all, Jesus was just a man like Socrates,
like Mahatma Gandhi, like Geronimo, like some of these other famous figures from
. . .(you should be going, "Geronimo?!"
I'm just seeing if you're paying attention).
You know--like some of these influential figures from the past.
To the extent that we have been influenced by that, I want you to
question that and say, "Now, sure, I've been told that, but is there any
reason in the New Testament itself to think that there was ever a time--you
know, from right after Jesus' death forward or even from before, was there ever
a time, once the disciples really saw who Jesus was, really heard the power in
His teaching, really saw the power in His miracles, was there ever a time when
they were not having to wrestle with the fact that this man is more than just a
man? And what the New Testament documents show us is, "no."
No. There was never a time
when the original followers of Jesus were just following this man as a rabbi
like one more rabbi. I mean,
certainly, yes, when they first dropped their nets and began to follow--but
right away, they realized that they were following someone different than anyone
else they had ever, ever seen. Today, this morning, we gather in the name of Jesus Christ and
we're invited to maintain the memory of that Man not as a martyr to an unjust
political situation, but as the One who, though He had equality with God, did
not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but He emptied
Himself, humbled Himself, died on the cross, and therefore is now exalted so
that every knee should bend, every tongue confess that "Jesus Christ is
Lord"--which means "Jesus Christ is God."
That's where we're going to be studying over the next several weeks as we
move in the direction of Christmas: The
incarnation, which means Jesus Christ is God. Let's pray. Dear
Heavenly Father, we confess that your Word does confuse us sometimes, Lord,
because there are new and surprising things on every page. Lord, we ask that the diversity in the New Testament would
not put us off and cause us to be confused.
Lord, let it be that the wonderful truths that your Word has to share
about who Jesus was, and who Jesus has been, and who Jesus is now, and who Jesus
will always be--He is our Savior and our Lord, to the glory of you, our Heavenly
Father. And it's in the strong name
of Jesus that we pray. Amen. The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the
worship service on December 1, 2002.] |
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