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THE SELF-EMPTYING OF CHRIST JESUS by Roy O. Beaman, Th. D.
Text — “He emptied Himself” (Phil. 2:7) The Matrix of theological Affirmations. Generally, the great theological passages of the New Testament were not framed as theological statements. They arose, rather, out of efforts to drive home some practical truth. A living situation of need called them forth of a life-situation of what the gospel was doing. Two general illustrations must suffice. Luke 19:10 admirably illustrates the latter. The crowd murmured against Jesus when He planned to visit the house of Zacchaeus. Jesus showed that the chief of the tax-collectors was a son of Abraham and entitled to receive His saving mercy. He buttressed this opinion by introducing the central purpose of His incarnation — “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” Mark 10:45 forcefully illustrates the former. The sons of Zebedee sought a place of honor for themselves. The ten were enviously “much displeased.” “You are acting like the Gentiles,” remarked Jesus; to the world greatness consists in one's exalted position over others. Jesus would have it just the opposite among His own. Greatness for them should consist in being a servant of all. To set forth the supreme example and argument for such unselfish conduct, Jesus introduced another phrasing of the central purpose of His incarnation — “For the Son of Man also came not to be ministered to but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.” A Critical Instance. After Paul sought to enforce humility upon the Philippians by earnest exhortation, by forceful logic, and by appeal to social obligations, he climaxed the practical plea by referring to the supreme example of humility, the voluntary humiliation of Christ Jesus in His incarnation. Thus the person and work of Christ became the acme of appeal for practical living. This is the proper use of profound theological postulates. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy are conjoined, as root and fruit, as teaching and living, as argument and response. Sound doctrine that does not result in sound living and healthy attitudes fails of its grand purpose. Now hear the words — “Have this attitude among yourselves which was in Christ Jesus also; Who, though He was existing in the form of God, regarded not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied Himself, in that He took the form of a slave so as to become in the likeness of men; and since He was found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself in that He became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:5-8). Shortly, I shall center our thoughts around the words “He emptied Himself,” translated in the AV as “made Himself of no reputation.” For a moment, however, let us see the words in their full context. Start with the climax Paul reaches — rather the depths of humiliation to which Christ Jesus emptied Himself, that is, emptied Himself of glory. “The death of the cross” to which He became obedient to His Father’s redemptive will up to the point of death speaks more of its shame than of its suffering. The Lord of glory stooped to the most foul, most cruel, and most shameful way of dying yet devised by the customs of the Greco-Roman world. “Fashion as a man” is in striking contrast with the two instances of “form” in preceding statements. The word “form” speaks of that inner reality which shows itself outwardly. The word “fashion” (Greek schema, from which our “scheme” comes) emphasizes what men saw. It is equivalent to saying that in outward appearance He seemed to be a mere man and nothing else. Paul's Three Indications. The Apostle did not follow out the full ramifications of what he meant by “emptied Himself,” but three specific explications of what he meant mark out the lines of his meaning. My task will be to pursue these hints further in Paul’s writings and in the life-experiences of Jesus. Now ponder closely Paul’s three specifications. First, His self-emptying resulted in His becoming in the likeness of men. This includes His becoming a man, the central event in His incarnation or “en-flesh-ment;” but it gives a significant turn to this momentous event. It leads our thoughts up to the problem of discovering wherein He resembled other men and wherein He was unlike other men. This is one of the chief undertakings of my paper. Second, His self-emptying consisted of or resulted in his taking the form of a slave. The word “form” indicates that this was no mere seeming humiliation as the Docetics held. His humiliation was real, deep, and abiding. This, too, will form the topic of the investigations and correlations of truth attempted in this hour. Third, the strong adversative conjunction “but” sets His emptying Himself in opposition to what has just been mentioned. He did not do a certain way but did another thing; that is, the self-emptying. He could have held on to His equality with God in every sense; He possessed this in the inner depths of His person. He was existing in the form of essential essence of God. He did not have to grasp this equality; He inherently, spontaneously, underivedly, and eternally existed as such. No stronger statement of the essential and absolute deity of Christ Jesus appears in the Bible, nor can I imagine how words could convey such more explicitly than these do. The definiteness and the explicitness of this utterance portray forcefully the depths of His humiliation in His emptying Himself in any sense. The more extensive and intensive His self-emptying, the more forceful Paul’s appeal to this unsurpassed example for teaching saved people genuine Christian humility toward self, toward others, and toward the Lord. Threefoldly, thus, the great theologian indicates the specifications and limitations of Jesus’ emptying Himself. Whatever one seeks to make the words mean must be consistent with these three qualifications. No better clues as to his meaning are available than these indications. The remainder of this paper, therefore, will seek to follow these delineations into the broad ramifications of Biblical truth. Implications In Christ's Self-Emptying. Can we discover some phases of His emptying Himself? Can we discover some phases of His not emptying Himself? Can these be related to certain major attributes of His person? Can these limitations of His emptying Himself be traced through living situations during His incarnation and on into His present exaltation and intercession at the right hand of the Father? My conviction of the broad implications of this event in His life — He emptied Himself — alone justify my choice of this topic for your consideration. I. WHAT HIS SELF-EMPTYING DID MEAN Of two things Christ Jesus could and did empty Himself without any moral disqualification. 1. The Outward glory of Deity The specific thing in the mind of Paul in Philippians 2 is that Christ Jesus laid aside the outward glory of deity and so veiled it in His humanity that it was hardly discerned by the onlooker. This should have killed any remaining self-glorification in the minds of his readers. Isaiah 53 develops this phase of His humiliation quite at length. “His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men” (Isaiah 52:14). The word “visage” refers to more than the countenance, though that is included. It speaks of the entire appearance of the Servant of Jehovah. The outward insignia of deity were laid aside. Men did not see this effulgence of brightness which was His. “For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground; He has no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:2-3). His beginnings were not with outward show. His birth was not heralded with earthly pomp. He resembled the plant growing out of ground poorly watered and tender because of lack of rich soil and moisture. Outward charm to appeal to the eye of man He did not have. His personality was not colorless, but no outward beauty reminded people that He was the Glorious Son of God. His grief and sorrow were written deep into all that He did. That does not mean that He never smiled, but beneath His outward appearance as a bringer of joy was a deep sense of the fact that He was born to die. Men, even the prophet Isaiah when he first looked down through the centuries, turned their faces away from Him. Until the truth of who He really was dawned on them, they did not regard His real worth and identity. “For ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye by means of His poverty might be made rich” (II Corinthians 8:9). The abject poverty of His earthly life is set in contrast with His glory with the Father before the world was. From riches to poverty, from glory to shame, from the fellowship of His Father to the loneliness He often felt among men — these steps into the abyss of humiliation He gladly took that He might lift us out of poverty, shame, and weakness into boundless riches in Christ Jesus. No work can fully express the depths of His humiliation from glory to shame that we might know His name and dwell with Him in glory evermore. 2. The constant Use of the Prerogatives of Deity While He lived in glory in eternity past, He exercised the full rights of deity. No limitation in the full exercise of these attributes did He ever experience. If, however, He had become as a man and still have exercised the full powers of deity, the very purpose of His incarnation would have been defeated. Incarnation meant laying aside the constant use of what He possessed and had through all eternity employed. The contrast is higher than the heavens; the humiliation is as deep as the weaknesses of mortal man. This laying aside of the exercise of the prerogatives of deity and His dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit were so complete that, in reading through the Gospels, one may err in his efforts to discern whether a specific activity of Jesus is to be traced to His humanity or to His deity. The actions of Jesus Incarnate fall into three classes. Many actions are clearly human actions; some are clearly actions of His deity; some are hard to categorize. His incarnation means that deity and humanity became one in His person. His nature was twofold — divine and human. His personality was single. The two natures acted through one center of consciousness. Evidently, He controlled the degree or amount of His activities from each nature. His consciousness could allow the divine nature to be dominant or this seat of consciousness could limit Himself to the inflow of purely human powers. Our inability to categorize every action of the God-Man as divine or human must not negative either of the qualities or sources of His actions. To insist that we must be able to understand and classify each and every action is to reduce the God-Man to the level of a mere man. The fact that two natures united in one person means a certain mysteriousness inheres in what He did and what He was. This blending of His activity, however, was such that He truly became a man and took our place and faced our problems so as to die for our sins and to be able to sympathize with us in our infirmities. Because of the limits of our understanding of the mystery of His self-emptying, faith rejoices in the fact and leaves to divine wisdom the balance of the operation of the two natures in Christ Jesus. Both are there; that is glorious. Both are evident; that is reassuring. Not all can be discerned about them by human intelligence, even the intelligence of redeemed sinners; that calls for the operation of faith and trust on our part.
II. WHAT HIS SELF-EMPTYING DID NOT MEAN Consistent with His moral perfection, His self-emptying had two limitations. The limitations were not externally imposed by an opposing force nor by an esoteric influence nor by a destructive fate. The limitations arose out of the spontaneous nature of what He was and must ever remain so or cease to be God the Son. Thus these limitations are not imperfections but the essential insignia and intrinsic qualities of the highest perfection. 1. The Possession of the Prerogatives of Deity He could not empty Himself of or lay aside the actual possession of the rights of deity. The prerogatives or attributes of deity are the very stuff of which God consists. Of these He subsists and exists. To renounce the possession of the prerogatives of deity would be for deity to pass into non-existence. That is a philosophical and logical impossibility. That Christ Jesus could not do and remain Himself. In becoming a man, His self-emptying process must not go to the extremes of disqualifying Him for the very purpose intended in His humiliation, That would be self-defeating. To lay aside His equality with God is one thing; to lay aside the constant use of that equality is an entirely different thing. The second He gloriously and self-forgetfully did; the first He could not do and remain the Lord from Glory. 2. The Transgression of Immorality He could not become a sinner in His humiliation. Two things would show the necessity of our accepting this limitation in all its ramifications. From the viewpoint of His mortal perfection, the Holy One could not become unholy, the Sinless One could not become an actual sinner, the Eternal Lawgiver could not break the laws which are the expression and embodiment of His perfect nature and mind. From the viewpoint of the mission which He came to perform, He could not become that which He came to eradicate. If He had been conquered by sin in nature, in thought, in word, or in deed, then such would have wholly incapacitated Him as redeemer of sinners from their sins. If He had broken in any wise the law from whose penalty He came to deliver us, then that law would have exacted His death unless someone could have been found to rescue Him. Not only is such logic impossible; such a fact or event in the life of the spotless Son of God is both unthinkable and impossible. │>Next│ |