Gospel News · January - April 2016

2
seems so simple- perhaps the subconscious,
psychological reason for its mass rejection is
that it actually demands so, so much from us.
For He there, crucified naked with the mind
of God within Him, is to be us here today in
the hot blood of our situations and tempta-
tions. “Because Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example, that you should
follow in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21).
Throughout Philippians, Paul develops this
theme- that we, here and now, can have the
mind of Christ, and pass through the essence
of what He passed through in His humiliation
and exaltation. The central passage in Philip-
pians is the hymn of Phil. 2:5-11: “Have this
mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, though being in the mental image of
God, did not consider grasping at being equal
with God, but poured himself out, taking the
mental attitude of a servant…”. But the
context begins in Phil. 1:27, with an appeal to
be “standing fast in one spirit, with one
mind…”.This doesn’t mean we should all think
about everything the same way- for Biblical
unity is not uniformity. And the New Testament
history is evidence enough that the early
believers were far from uniform in everything.
The “one mind” we should strive for is the
mind of Christ- He is the “one” whose mind we
should each seek to emulate. Our unity is on
the basis that you here and she there and they
over there in Australia or Kosovo or Nairobi are
all seeking above all to think and feel as Jesus
did, having His mind. That is the law of our
being, thinking and action which all in the
body of Christ have signed up to as the para-
mount aspiration of our whole lives and being.
The hymn of Phil. 2:5-11 (see below) matches
the seven stages of the Lord’s humiliation,
climaxing in “death, even the death of the
cross”, with seven stages of His exaltation. His
path is to be ours- progressive humiliation
climaxing in death, as a prelude to our exal-
tation.
Paul wrote that the Lord “humbled Himself”,
but uses the same Greek word to speak of how
we too shall have “the body of our humiliation
[AV “this vile body”] changed that it may be
like unto the body of His glorification” (Phil.
2:8; 3:21). So you see how the argument is
developing. His body, His mind, is to be ours.
Our death is His death. He “tasted death for
every man” in Christ (Heb. 2:9). So that His
resurrection shall be ours. We are made, in an
ongoing sense, con-formable unto His morphe
or ‘form’ in death (Phil. 3:10). The end point
of the humiliation process is that by our
deaths, we shall have the mind which Christ
had in His death on the cross. Our weekly
remembrances of Him in bread and wine are
intended to be stakes along the path which
leads us to that final point of mental, spiritual
maturity. Paul saw this process happening in
his own life, for he concludes his letter to the
Editorial | Our Humiliation
Philippians 2:5-11
1 Being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
2 But made himself of no reputation, and
3 took upon him the form of a servant, and
4 was made in the likeness of men:
5 And being found in fashion as a man,
6 he humbled himself, and
7 became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Phil. 2:5-8)
1a
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and
2a
gave him a name which is above every name:
3a
That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
4a
of things in heaven, and
5a
things in earth, and
6a
things under the earth;
7a
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:9-11).