Philippians 2:6-8 The Tangible Heartbeat of Heaven - Part Two

Philippians 2

1 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.



OUTLINE: FIVE EXPRESSIONS OF INCARNATION

1. THE GLORY OF BEING A NOBODY
Seeing no value in earthly status
“…he made himself of no reputation…”


2. THE GLORY OF BEING A SERVANT
Seeing no value in self centredness
“…and took the form of a servant…”


3. THE GLORY OF IDENTIFICATION
Seeing no value in franchised systems
“..and being made in human likeness….”


4. THE GLORY OF OBEDIENCE
Seeing no value in self determined independence
“…he became obedient to death…”


5. THE GLORY OF REDEMPTIVE PURPOSE
Seeing No Value in Compromise
”…even death on a cross…”





DISCOVERING THE INCARNATION: ONE


THE GLORY OF BEING A NOBODY
Seeing no value in earthly status

“Who being in very nature God did not consider
equality with God
something to be grasped….”


1. Jesus was there when the world was created. On the night he was born the very stars that shone in the sky shone down on the small round face of their creator.

On the day that Jesus stood before Pilate he had the power to command legions of angels to come and deal with the petty derived human power vested in the Roman procurator and overthrow him completely.

When he was misunderstood, ignored, despised and rejected he carried in himself the stature of the godhead.

On no occasion did Jesus call on any one of these things. He came to the world without rank or station. He exercised a ministry totally devoid of human sponsorship

2. What we have to remember is that influence has nothing to do with status. We will never have influence because we have status. We are often going to fall short of understanding the incarnation if we assume that if we can only
Gain importance
Make a lot of money
Be successful in the world’s eyes
We will have influence for God.

The truth is we can have influence for God and those things may or may not follow. But the only influence we have for God will come because of God. It will come from a different source. (Daniel had no status).

3. Be careful of the way you apply the Scripture: “a man’s gift makes way for him.” We can often think that if we excel in the exercise and development of our God given talents, we will have influence for God. Not so. Talents can be useful. They won’t be useful because they are consecrated. They will be useful when they are anointed. It is a flow of the Spirit of God that creates influence.

4. We have the opportunity to represent the incarnation model Jesus gave us. When we accept our identity as sons and daughters of the living God and when we agree to avoid the exercise of human ambition thinking that if we make something of our selves we will have influence for God we will lose opportunity for that influence.




DISCOVERING THE INCARNATION: TWO


THE GLORY OF BEING A SERVANT
Seeing no value in self centredness

“…but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…”



It doesn’t take long for most of us to realize how corrupted the “files” of our humanity have become when we place the words “glory” and “servant” in juxtaposition. This world does not see any glory in serving. It sees glory in being served. This is not true of everyone on every occasion. That’s why I love the ways of God. God has set up our life spectrum so that we will be confronted with eternity without realizing it.
For example he has hidden the idea of indissoluble love in marriage. Not that every marriage demonstrates this, but almost every man and woman who fall in love and decide to be married have “indissoluble unity” in their hearts. They have a hope that this man/woman will ride off into the sunset and that they will grow old together. In all my years as a marriage celebrant I have only ever encountered one couple who didn’t want to be married for the rest of their lives.
He has hidden servanthood in parenting; definitely in loving mothers and very often in loving fathers. Have you ever considered the dramatic introduction to servanthood that occurs when a young woman is taken to hospital by her husband. No one realizes that their lives will never be the same again. And no one could ever adequately capture the life long call that will be made on their willingness to be servants. The little bundle of joy requires 24/7 serving. As the days turn into weeks they will invest unmeasured volumes of time, emotion, energy and money to serve the needs of this unique creature delivered to them via childbirth.

Bur servanthood doesn’t come so easily. Jesus not only threw away access to the power and status of BEING GOD, but he took up the function and position of a servant. In actual fact the world used is the word “doulos” which is the New Testament word for “indentured slave.” It was a common and powerful image in the world of the first century. If you think it doesn’t come naturally to do the “servant” tasks around your household you need to understand that the carrying, washing and cleaning we might designate as servant tasks were nothing compared to the despairing hopelessness of slavery. It is hard for us to connect with the idea that a person could be bought and sold as the possession of another person. Think of the prospect of being owned by someone for the rest of your life to be used by that person to fulfill all the tasks that ordinary people didn’t want to even be paid to do. Think of have no rights, no freedoms, no opportunity and no chance of anything changing. No wonder there are so many “negro-spiritual” songs about heaven!

So take this image and apply it to the incarnational re-location of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Jesus talked about this a number of times. The most direct reference to the servant focus of incarnate ministry comes in the context of a discussion abut whether James and John should be given the seats next to Jesus when he kicks the Romans out and Israel rules the world (Mark 10).

35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” 36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. 37 They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” 38 “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” 39 “We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, 40 but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”


Just add a little context to this discussion by reading back in the chapter a few verses and you have Jesus talking about the fact that they were on their way to Jerusalem. The disciples were perplexed at the tactical value of this decision and other followers were simply scared. Jesus’ face was on “wanted posters” all over Jerusalem. To comfort the disciples he took them aside from the crowd and told them straight up that he was going to be betrayed, condemned, mocked, beaten and killed but that he would rise again after three days. Following that conversation is this conversation. The word “Then…” is a big word here. It puts this conversation in the context of what Jesus has just said.

To underscore the measure to which the disciples never got the message about Jesus’ death and resurrection but continued to believe that he was soon going to kick the Romans out and establish Israel as rulers of the world, James and John, the sons of Zebedee came to him. They knew that they were asking a cheeky question, so that pre-empted it by trying to get him to agree to what they wanted before they asked the question. With a full awareness of the limits on their appreciation of his mission and purpose, Jesus asked them what they wanted him to do. They came clean and admitted that they were wanting to get an inside running on the top jobs in the new kingdom he was going to set up. They wanted nothing less than being second in charge to Jesus as ruler.
Jesus responded by saying that they didn’t have a clue what they were asking for. He was going to be flanked by someone on his right and someone on his left on the cross, but he questioned whether they were really equal to the challenge.. When they professed that they were, he told them that the time would come when they would have to go through similar things to those he was about to go through. His dismissive line was to say that jobs in the kingdom of God were handed out by his Father, not Jesus himself.
The incident raised the need to explain an essential kingdom principle for the disciples. He pointed out that when unbelievers got hold of power they usually go to great lengths to show off their status and acquire all kinds of trappings that send a message to everyone as to their importance. They do this by imposing their misguided idea of authority on everyone and pulling rank all the time just to make sure people know whose the boss.
The kingdom of God works exactly the opposite. If you are going to demonstrate your greatness in the kingdom of God you do it by the zeal you have to serve and to exercise roles that this world would reserve for slaves. The person who is in charge in the kingdom will evidence this in that he or she will zealously serve all the people for whom they carry kingdom responsibility. It will be an indiscriminate servanthood.
Jesus replied that his own ministry modeled this core value. He had not come to make a big play of pulling rank on everyone, but had given himself to everyone as a servant. This servanthood would reach its climax as he literally gave his life to purchase salvation for those he came to serve.

To discover the nature of incarnational ministry is to discover the exalted status of servanthood. It is to discover the power of a life whose agenda is not set by one’s own preferences, predilections and desires. It is a discovery of the selflessness that focuses on other people before it focuses on yourself.

In the text of Philippians 2 we are given some examples of this attitude in action:


a. Do nothing out of selfish ambition
b. Do nothing on the basis of conceit (self importance)
c. Consider others as better than yourselves
d. Take responsibility for the interests of others


In order to attain this life quality we need to see it as something more than a duty. It is not a level of self control it is a change of heart. These things are in the Bible not because they are a personality type for some people. This is what we are designed to become as we allow the Holy Spirit to pour into our hearts and as we exercise faith. What we are after is a change of heart. We want to be different kinds of people. We want to be indiscriminate servants. We do that by exercising faith and we exercise faith by what we do, not what we think. We need to get ourselves into the sphere of servanthood and allow the Spirit of God to fill what needs to be filled and change what needs to be changed.

Why don’t you just try and do some servant tasks indiscriminately for a day. Do them by a faith decision. Just choose to do it. As you make that choice you will find how impossible it is. It may not flow at first. If you keep at it looking for God to change your heart you will find yourself doing it without it being a burden. You are looking for the royal road. That road is to see the status of servanthood like you now see the status of certain positions, certain possessions, certain characteristics etc. Servanthood must rise to be the most desirable thing …..because of the fact that it proclaims incarnational love.

Jesus said that his life modeled this servanthood. He had choices to make the same as you and I. What drove him was the servant heart of God. What directed his choices was the fact that he

“made himself nothing and took upon himself the nature of a servant.”

So what you have do now do is to allow the ministry of Jesus to define for you what a servant is and what a servant does. We have four whole New Testament books that define the heart of servant love. When you see that definition you can begin to desire this and exercise faith for this. Nothing less than this will do. It may be difficult at first because you may not think like a servant or desire like a servant or respond and react like a servant. But for a person to be a follower of Jesus, getting other people to serve you is never going to be satisfactory. Only when servant love flows in your veins will you be satisfied.

And when servant love directs your choices in a given situation, you have discovered what it is like to be incarnational. When you can’t be bought off by ambition that only thinks about yourself, you are touching incarnation. When you enter a room and find yourself wanting to treat every other person as being more important than you, you are touching the incarnation. When you seek what is best for them you touch the incarnation.




DISOVERING THE INCARNATION: THREE

THE GLORY OF IDENTIFICATION
Seeing no value in franchised systems

“..being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man…”


Isn’t it amazing that so many oppressed people in the world have found it so easy to belong to Jesus. The ones who have found it hard are the people who have status and money.

Isn’t it a tragedy that so often the institutional church has missed this completely and has found itself identifying with the oppressor rather than with the oppressed.


Isn’t it amazing that we can see a clear case for identifying with the outcast, the despised peoples through the generations and across the nations but when it comes to making a choice in the day to day experiences of our life we shy away from the despised and rejected people and side with the popular and prestigious people. We can find ourselves vying for their friendship just because they have some kind of human importance.

Jesus was totally human….. but his identification was not with the set of values that drove humans apart from one another: the values of wealth, education, ability, personality, occupation. Jesus identified with the sinners of his day, he embraced the lepers, he had meals with publicans, he took the side of the woman caught in adultery. He didn’t become an adulterer to identify with adulterers, he simply stood with them and offered them redemption. He suffered as a human person; he was numbered with the lowest of the low criminals in his final hour. He was divine, but people saw that divinity through the language of his humanity. It was true divinity that drove him toward humanity. It was divine love that touched the leper and slept beside the road to Judea. It was love that came from heaven, not the tainted self obsessed, self gratifying lust that earth has created and so often hallowed.

We can see this attitude reflected in the heart of Moses as we read what happened to him one day when he was walking in the place of highest privilege and opulence in his own day: the palace of Egypt:

Hebrews 11

24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. 26 He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.

The important thing to notice for a person seeking incarnational love is the realization that we are not talking about something that people see as “noble.” Moses choice was a choice of identity. He chose to become one of them because he was one of them. When he made that choice is was like coming home. Do you think Jesus woke up on any morning and said,
“Could I just visit heaven for a while, because that’s who I really am.”

Do you think he said,
“Only three days to go before I get out of here and get back to heaven.”

Not once did he talk to his disciples about what it was like to be in heaven even though he had been there. We have people who talk about their experiences of going to heaven. They sell tapes and books about it. Jesus could have made the odd tape series to say what it was like to be in heaven but he never did. He was too excited about the prospect of bringing heaven to earth every day that he lived.


Hebrews 2
11 Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. 12 He says,
“I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.” 13 And again,
“I will put my trust in him.”

And again he says,
“Here am I, and the children God has given me.”
14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.


Incarnational love is the love of identity. Jesus took on the identity of humanity. There is a man in heaven. Jesus was not a man before Nazareth and has been a man ever since and will always be a man. He took his eternal identity as a man. This was no tourist trip, staying at a tourist hotel and visiting all the tourist locations. This was total identification. You can’t get any greater identification than taking humanity forever. When Jesus was walking the streets of Jerusalem and the dusty paths of Galilee he was home. He wasn’t making a few public appearances and doing a talk shows to sell his next CD. He was home. He was being totally himself.

We often subordinate incarnation to mission: We have this idea that we want to reach people and so we take note of what it says in 1 Corinthians 9 about becoming “all things to all men that we might win some.” This is what made colonial missionaries go and plant colonial culture in foreign countries in order to “reach the savages.” What people saw was nineteenth century British culture transported all over the world. That’s why the so many British missions organizations could live alongside the traders who were ripping the heart out of the local people for their own gain. That’s why Samuel Johnson could preach the gospel to convicts on Sunday and be a cruel magistrate on Monday. That’s why aboriginal people could be hunted and shot. It was based on the idea that to become a Christian you had to adopt the cultural package. They would have preached against the Jewish believers wanting to make Gentiles into Jews so that they could experience full salvation but would have made the same mistake as they assumed that to be Christian was to enshrine their culture in the form of the gospel.

The focus of identificational love is not to make you like me. The challenge of identificational love is for me to become like the person God wants you to be. People loved Jesus because he WAS them and he wasn’t acting out a role. He actually was them.

This process takes time. We don’t become something that we don’t start out as just by showing up. There is learning to do. We need to research and read and listen and absorb. Incarnation demands that we take up our identity AS the people we are called to exercise ministry to. That’s why the church has made such hash of it in the west. We have become la franchised version of someone’s tapes and books and conferences. We read a book and get excited about it for a while so we can read another book. We listen to some tapes and get a few good stories to tell other Christians but it doesn’t get us closer to our destiny. It doesn’t make us more like the people God has given us responsibility for. We listen to each other so much we don’t know how our neighbours think and when we hear them we just notice how much we want to be different from them. We don’t hear them to understand. We don’t listen to learn. We often listen in order to judge and we hear to condemn.

Just think what Jesus heard. Just think what he knew. Not once did he pull divine rank. Not once did the conversation turn to how good he was. He spoke life to people because he had become “like his brothers in every way.” (Hebrews 3:17) He didn’t invite them to his home. Their home had become his home. This is why we must offer people more than something we can produce here in this building on Sunday or some other day. It may well be an achievement to create a loving community to bring people to. Jesus didn’t seem to think that was particularly important. He could have got chosen his musicians well and rented a great building to invite people to.

John 1
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

It is this identificational love that can produce church anywhere simply because it is not a matter of a worship team and spiritually choreographed symphony. Jesus made his home with us because he was human. His humanity was not validated by sin any more than ours is. There is an idea spread around by some that to be human is to celebrate being sinful. Being human has never been about sin, it has always been about redemption from sin. Jesus’ humanity was the model of redemption. He walked it, talked it, thought it and desired it. It was his modeling of redeemed humanity that gave people hope simply because it was redeemed humanity, not degenerated divinity.

Jesus lived redeemed humanity every day. What is more important is that he lived it in the company of his disciples. Because of this identificational love he was able to build church every day. He set up church in every place. Church happened where he was when he was there. That’s why we need to re-study the gospels to find out how far away from identificational love we have MADE CHURCH.

I think the key is to focus on identification. Let your identity be forged by your understanding of who and what other people are supposed to be. Become that and you will make the presence of Jesus known wherever you are. You will make it known because you will be speaking and living it in a language people can understand. We have missed the identification bit and have lost the power to communicate Jesus. We proclaim church as a sub-culture, not Jesus the cultural revolutionary.



DISCOVERING THE INCARNATION: FOUR

THE GLORY OF OBEDIENCE
Seeing no value in self determined independence

“…he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.”


Obedience is such a dirty word to most post-modern minds. It is an offense to humanistic spirits. Obedience in our society is considered tantamount to servitude. We have made such a virtue of independence that obedience is seen as its thief. It’s simply a dirty word. To ask someone to obey makes you a tyrant and to offer to obey makes you a lackey or some kind of sycophant. In Australia we have made a virtue out of bucking authority and we have written a liturgy to immortalize the idea:
“No one’s going to tell me what to do!”


Part of the experience of Jesus with regard to his incarnation was the role of obedience. This has been highlighted in recent years as John Wimber reminded us that the key to Jesus strategic operations was to do only what he “saw his Father doing.” There are five separate references in the gospel of John to this phenomenon:

John 5
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.

John 8
28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am └ the one I claim to be┘ and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.

John 12
49 For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. 50 I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”

John 14
10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

John 15
15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.


1. Because Jesus was simply obedient to his Father he lived a life of freedom and innocence
He wasn’t swayed by the opinions of others
He didn’t get embroiled in a game of playing favourites
He wasn’t compromised by personal or personality issues.
He wasn’t drawn in any form of retribution (payback)

2. Because Jesus lived a life of obedience to his Father he was not limited to doing only those things that he could understand.

3. Because he lived to do the will of his Father Jesus could embrace what was difficult, painful and what seemed humanly disastrous. He was free to cross the lines created by his emotions, his personality and his ignorance.


4. Consider this piece of amazing revelation in Hebrews Chapter Four:

7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered 9 and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.


Because Jesus was obedient to his Father the only option was to complete the work not simply make a contribution and then leave. Jesus was a Son who would only be satisfied when he could say: “It is finished.” The only way out of where he was was completion of the task. There was no idea of just preaching a few sermons and making a bit of impact. In this light so many people make a mockery of this when they tie obedience to what is gratifying, or to what they prefer, or to some human system that bows at the altar of convenience and comfort.


5. Because Jesus was obedient he was dependent on his Father. At no time was communication with his Father, or his relationship with his Father an expendable commodity. The Jesus brand of obedience was not simply sticking to a few wise rules. He was as dependent on his Father for the next thing he was to do and say as he was for the last thing he did and said. That’s why legalism is such a travesty when it tries to express genuine Christian faith. On no occasion did Jesus simply follow a “golden rule.” What he did flowed out of the relationship with his Father. That way he could be found laying his hand on one man and spitting on another. We want rules and systems because we find intimacy a burden and obedience a source of aggravation. Cast your eyes over the ministry of Jesus and see how often reverted to what was systematic and customary. Almost never if ever at all. What he had was a relationship with his Father. He didn’t parade it. He didn’t presume upon it. He didn’t use it as a manipulative tool (how many times do you hear Jesus saying, “Thus says the Lord…” in order to get people to listen to what he had to say, or to bolster his credentials. He had authority to do everything that was necessary simply because he was obedient to his Father at any point in time.


6. Because Jesus was obedient to his Father he was freed from the need to be religious. Jesus was spiritual but never religious. He was full of faith but never had to revert to the system. He didn’t simply blast the system out of existence the way some of our brothers and sisters seem to need to do. He focused on providing the genuine article. While Jesus did have things to say about the system it wasn’t his major focus. There was a time toward the end of his ministry where he articulated the failures of the religious leaders of his day: Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, teachers of the law. They all got a serve. But he didn’t build his ministry on this brand of revolutionary behaviour. He didn’t demonize the religious leaders in order to canonize his own ministry the way some Christian leaders do and have done. He got up the noses of the religious spirits of his day simply because he was not prepared to play their game. He simply got on with the job of preaching the kingdom and doing the works of the kingdom of God. He did that because his sole objective on any one day was to do his Father’s will.


7. Because Jesus was obedient to his Father’s will he didn’t have to have a three year plan. Consider the following possibility. Jesus calls twelve men to be his followers and companions in the ministry. When they gather on the shores on Galilee for the first time he gives them the full run down own what he expects of them and what they can expect from him. He tells them what hours they are going to be working and what hours they will have to themselves for personal recreation. He establishes pay scales and hands each one of them an employment contract to sign. The contract is because his insurance company will not pay workers’ compensation unless there is a contract. He then sets out a timetable of dates and events for his meetings and hands out job sheets for all the disciples according to their spiritual gifts.

I don’t think so. Jesus’ introductory talk may have indicated that he wanted them to follow him and that he was going to do everything his Father told him to do.



OBEDIENCE ASSUMES INCARNATION

Jesus obedience was part of what made him like us. He demonstrated a life of obedience because that was the way it was meant to work for created beings. He didn’t have access to the full story while he was on earth. He deferred to the Father on numerous occasions, saying that the particular matter was something in the hands of the Father and therefore not worth speculating about. He wasn’t play acting in saying that. He really didn’t know “the times and season set by the Father’s authority” when he was walking on the earth. Jesus didn’t concern himself with them. On that occasion he pointed clearly to what we should be concerned about: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:7,8)

There is something beautiful that happens when we use our knowledge and understanding to make it easier for people to know and understand, not harder. Some writers are so concerned to make you aware that they know a lot that they rob many of the very opportunity to know what they know. Obedience to his Father was what put Jesus’ intimacy and experience of the Father within the reach of every many and every woman. He once rejoice that the Father had made it possible for babies to understand what was important. (Luke 10)



DISCOVERING THE INCARNATION: FIVE

THE GLORY OF REDEMPTIVE PURPOSE
Seeing No Value in Compromise

“…even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”



Jesus didn’t set out to become the greatest leader the world has ever known. He wasn’t conscious of the fact that he had to be the goodest person on the face of the earth. He didn’t think about gaining a reputation as the leader of a movement. He came give his life as a ransom for many. It was redemptive purpose that lay at the bottom line of the whole experience. The cross wasn’t just a sad turn in the road. It was far more than a great injustice. We shouldn’t find ourselves getting angry with the religious leaders or with Roman brutality. Jesus life was a redemptive mission. He spent three years modeling what it was like to be a child of God and three days making it possible.

The cross will always be the symbol of God’s redemptive purpose because it will always be a reminder to us of what we needed to be redeemed from. It is a reminder of what the alternative is: the alternative to receiving forgiveness is a way of life that takes the world’s only innocent man and putting him to death as if he were a shameful criminal. It is what unleashes systems of human jurisprudence on the innocent as a convenient tool for people wanting to preserve their position and power.


Jesus never compromised this purpose. He didn’t find friendship with his disciples as an alternative. They were such good friends. He called them friends. They stuck around like friends. But friendship was not the core value. Jesus was there to give his life as a ransom for many. That was the goal. For this goal their friendship and loyalty would be questioned and tested in the fires of violence and political intrigue.


Jesus did not compromise this purpose with the opportunity to ride the wave of popularity. He didn’t publish his ten best healing stories in the magazine distributed to all those on his mailing list. He didn’t stand on the side of the mountain and allow his fans to honour him. When they wanted him to run for Prime Minister he slipped away before anyone could sign him up to their political party.
Even though he rejected the idea of using his popularity, he is the many who more people have died for in more generations from more nations than any other single human being. The fact that right now Christianity claims a billion more adherents than any of the world religions is testimony to the fruit of his daily decision to follow after redemptive purpose.


Jesus did not compromise redemptive purpose with political expediency. You only have to think about what Jesus could have done to “win over” the support of the religious leaders. He was a rabbi. He had done the training. He could have had effective influence by cultivating friendships with key people at the temple in Jerusalem. He never saw the idea as having any merit. The reason was because he was primarily about redemptive purpose.
Even though Jesus refused to buy into the political power games of his day, his life and teaching has influenced more political systems than any other in the world. It has challenged many and its wisdom has undergirded many more.


Jesus didn’t compromise redemptive purpose with family obligation


Jesus didn’t compromise redemptive purpose with populist teaching


Jesus didn’t compromise redemptive purpose with cultural compliance.


Jesus never sacrificed redemptive purpose on the altar of career opportunity