Thanks goodness it’s Christmas, because we know that the people around us will finally understand the true meaning of Christmas. The message is everywhere, so how could they miss it?! They can see Jesus in a rubber duckie nativity (see pictures above), a penguin nativity, a snowman nativity or the popular chicken nativity. If they can’t see Jesus here, surely the cat lovers will know Jesus through the cat nativity (which is actually called a “cativity”). To be fair, there is also the dog nativity, and to be completely politically correct, you have the dog and cat nativity (though the cats get the coveted role of baby Jesus. What are the theological ramifications of that one?). Everyone is making Christmas cookies this time of year, so why not witness to your neighbors with the baby Jesus oven timer. I really think this one needs a caption which says, “Hey mom, baby Jesus says the cookies are done!

Then you move into the really bizarre, like Santa on a cross. Thankfully, there is help for Christian parents. I read this helpful tidbit in an article on Christian parenting. “Santa should be known as the one that brings the gifts to us one time each year. It would be easier if your child actually sees Jesus in order to tell the difference in a picture comparison.” So I guess we should make sure our kids see this cute picture with Santa visiting baby Jesus. At least Santa has enough reverence to take off his red cap.  The article also went on to give a caution for Christian parents. “Separating Santa from Jesus is one of the hardest tasks a parent will have to do.”[i]

At least we have churches and pastors who are continually sharing the true meaning of Christmas. One well known pastor recently appeared on the Today Show and offered the following insight. “I think you have to understand that Jesus Christ came for your greatest benefit.”[ii] Is that a true statement? I wouldn’t say it is a false statement. Obviously, our greatest benefit from Christmas is our rescue from eternal judgment into eternal life with Christ, but the statement is at best, only a starting point.  You could say, “Jesus Christ came for your greatest benefit, and let me tell you why.”

The next two weeks is a Christmas series called “He Made Himself Nothing.” But some of you might wonder if we really need more Christmas sermons. How many times can we hear about Jesus being born in a manger? Well, I sincerely hope that you never grow tired of hearing about it, but we are approaching the Christmas story from a different angle. We will look at the Christmas story through the eyes of the apostle Paul in one of the most famous passages of Scripture, Philippians chapter two.

The poetic part that we know best begins in verse six. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped… Before we get into that verse, let’s look back at the linking verse before it. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. The next six verses of this theologically rich and treasured passage all stem from Paul’s main emphasis in this chapter—he is trying to align our attitudes to match the gospel. Do you recall verse three? Do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit. It is painful to admit, but the very presence of this verse assumes that we routinely operate out of motives of selfish ambition and vain conceit.  

I live large chunks of my life with an underlying and usually hidden motive of selfish ambition and vain conceit. I have a great interest in myself. Don’t tell my wife, but I am having a deeply romantic love affair with someone other than her—myself! Am I overwhelmingly narcissistic? I hope not. If you asked me to pray for you after the service, would I say to you, “Boy, I really would like to pray with you, but I’m dying for a cup of coffee right now. Can you stop in the office some time this week, or maybe next week?” I can truthfully say that I am not that hideously selfish, but that’s the insidious nature of selfishness, is it not? The selfish ambition of the average Christian is not some Hollywood, megalomania who constantly says to the world, “Look at me, everyone! Take pictures of me. I am beautiful. I am more important than you. You are an insignificant twit. Why don’t you just skip going to see my movie and instead deposit the price of the movie ticket directly into my bank account.”

Our selfishness is usually not that obvious, but instead is more like a stealth bomber—it flies under the radar of everyone, including us, and it drops bombs on unsuspecting innocents. We do certain things and say certain things to other people and afterward we wonder, “Now why did I say that?” The stealth bomber of selfishness, that’s why. Two thousand years ago in this church in Philippi, a church filled with people who were known for their joy and their generosity, Paul wrote to them and said, Do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit. Some of them probably read this letter and thought, “Can you imagine the nerve of that guy calling us selfish. Don’t you remember Paul, that we were the first to give to the church in Jerusalem when they needed money? Don’t you remember, you even bragged about us? You said that our extreme poverty welled up into rich generosity. Don’t you remember Paul, you wrote that. We gave sacrificially. We gave until it hurt. How can you say that we are selfish?”

What did Paul have to say about sacrificial giving and selfishness? He said, “If I give all I possess to the poor…and have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Co 13:2) Selfishness is the very opposite of love, so yes, it is very possible, probable even, that we can give sacrificially to our church project and still be selfish. We can give of our money, our time, our food, our skill—we can give all we have to this project and still be selfish. If you think that you have moved beyond the stealth bomber of selfishness, then we want to do something special for you this morning. There is a little room behind the stage that we have reserved specifically for unselfish people. You don’t have to rush there right now, but next Sunday you can report back there and have a little Bible study together. You can be promoted to the unselfish room where you won’t be tainted by ordinary, selfish Christians. The rest of us are going to say right here, because we are still burdened with selfish ambition and vain conceit.

But I hope you don’t want to be, and that’s why Paul wrote this wonderful passage: Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. Paul is saying, “So you want to learn about humility? Come here and sit at the feet of Jesus and I will tell you a story about humility.” So he begins,

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. What is Paul describing here? This is the Christmas story, the incarnation of Christ—God taking on human flesh and human limitations. True, he did not include the parts about Mary, Joseph, Simeon and a baby in a manger, but it is no less the Christmas story.

Jesus humbled himself and was eventually humiliated by others, but Paul did not start this passage with Christ’s humility, but rather with his majesty. Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Why is it important that Paul began with the deity of Christ? Because he did not want anyone at any time to be confused about the true nature of Jesus. Jesus became a man, but first he existed in the nature of God and was equal with God. This was necessary two thousand years ago and is just as necessary today. We know that Christmas is not exactly a God-honoring season, but even in our churches Christmas has been reduced to a romantic image of a helpless little baby.

Away in a manger,
No crib for His bed
The little Lord Jesus
Laid down His sweet head

That’s a sweet song, and after all, who doesn’t love a newborn baby? I would love to see a survey about this, but I would guess that most people do not even realize that little baby Jesus was fully God. They might know that he was “God’s son,” but not God himself.

We don’t just need to put Christ back into Christmas, but we need to put the deity of Christ back into Christmas. The first thing Paul did in this passage was to drive a stake in the ground called the deity of Christ. Paul is taking us on a journey in this passage. He will get to the incarnation, he will get to humility, humiliation and death on the cross, but first he firmly established the deity of Christ.

As soon as we see a verse like this, Christ in the nature of God and equal with God, the first thing that came to my mind was God the Creator. When my sister was here we all went for a flashlight walk one night. We noticed the planets Venus and Jupiter aligned close by. We were not able to find and sign of the moon that night, but some people saw a smiley face in the sky with the two planets and a crescent moon. As we were being amazed at the numbers of stars, I summed up all of my knowledge of astronomy into a single sentence. “Did you know that there are over 100 billion stars in our galaxy and over a hundred billion galaxies in the universe?” It turns out I was wrong. The number is actually a little higher—70 sextillion—7 followed by 22 zeroes. Where did it come from?

In the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the foremost proponent of evolution, Richard Dawkins, eloquently describes how space aliens put life on our planet. Is this is the very best that evolution has to offer—space aliens?

OK, where did it really come from? Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God. You tell me—which is the more accurate image of Christmas—Santa Claus visiting baby Jesus or a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars? Creation is not the totality of the Christmas story, but it is the necessary beginning.

So what did Jesus do with this preexistent divine nature? Jesus could have created hundreds and hundreds of universes, taken them apart and put them back together, like my kids do with Legos. He could have ruled form on high and forgotten about the messy part of his creation called people. But he did not. Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Now what in the world does that mean? Remember that part of what Paul is doing here is illustrating what it means for us to grow out of our selfish ambition and vain conceit. Therefore, for Jesus not to consider equality with God something to be grasped, among other things it has to mean that for him, being God was not a matter of selfish ambition or vain conceit. It was not possible for him to cling to his power or in any way abuse his infinite power for his own selfish benefit. It is not his nature to do so.

But this is completely the opposite of what every powerful person has ever done. When Paul wrote this letter, Nero had risen to power as the Emperor of Rome and he clung to his power by killing anyone he got in his way. Power always has the inherent temptation toward corruption. Generals, presidents and politicians all tend to like power and cling to power. Power is their lifeblood. Power is the meat and potatoes of their existence. If they don’t have power, they desire it and seek after it, and if they do have power, they cling to it with a white knuckle grip. But Christ did not have to seek out power, he was already in the nature of God and equal with him.

He could have rightly held on to his power. Instead, he made himself nothing, taking the very nature^ of a servant, being made in human likeness. The NASB says that Christ “emptied himself”, which comes from the word kenosis, which means to empty. Among theologians, this passage is usually called the “kenosis” passage. I sit on a regional ordination board and every candidate for ordination must always be able to answer the question, “Of what did Christ empty himself—what did he give up in order to take on the nature of a servant and be born in human likeness?” It’s a serious question that needs to be answered, but it is also one of those trick questions because you can stumble into all kinds of heresy and not even realize it. Unless a candidate is really ready for this question, they inevitably slow down and begin to ponder the question very carefully. For if you say that Christ gave up being God to become a man, you have just removed his divine nature. He could not have emptied himself of too much of what it means to be God without losing his deity. On the other hand, if you are not careful, you could end up claiming that he didn’t give up anything at all, thereby denying his human nature. It’s like stepping through a theological land mine and it’s not uncommon to see pastors get one of their proverbial legs blown off.

So what did Jesus give up, of what did he empty himself? It is safe to say that he was no longer omnipresent when he took on bodily form. Just before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” So it is clear that Jesus had given up his full glory. If you have your Bible open to this passage, in the margin next to verse seven, write the word “slave.” The English word slave and servant both come from the same Greek word, and who Christ became was every bit as much a slave as a servant. He gave up his rights. He was a slave in the sense that he laid aside his full rights as God. He became nothing. He did not cease being God in any way, but to be born in human likeness, he had to take on the nature of a slave. King James says “he made himself of no reputation.” The distance that he traveled from preexistent God to a man was an unfathomable distance. Men may one day walk on the surface of Mars. We have sent probes beyond our solar system and we have telescopes that can peer to the edge of the known universe, but those relative distances in space are nothing compared to the distance between the preexistent Jesus and the God-man Jesus.

He made himself nothing. Why? Why go to such extremes? We have already established it was not for the mushy sentimentality of seeing a cute little baby in a manger. God would not make himself nothing for such a flimsy reason as that. The answer comes in verse eight. He humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! It was necessary that Jesus become man so that he could go to the cross, and it was necessary for him to go to the cross because, as Ephesians says, We were dead in our transgressions and sins. We were by nature objects of wrath. We were in eternal trouble.

So how does this help with our selfish nature? It changes us in three ways.

First, when we receive Christ as Savor, our sinful nature is killed. Before we were dead in our transgressions and sins, but at salvation we become dead to sin. We can now choose not to sin. We can choose not to be so selfish. The gospel is the power to transform.

Second, as we see the true nature of Christ and the infinite sacrifice of his self-humbling in order to go to the cross, we can get lost in worship. When you meditate on these things and enter into the presence of such an utterly perfect God, you can get so taken up in the wonder of Christ that you are automatically humbled by his greatness. If you walked to the edge of the Grand Canyon, would your first thought be about how great and important you are? No, you would be taken in by the massive beauty of the place. The greatness and largeness of the Grand Canyon would make you seem smaller and would make you forget about yourself. In a much greater way, this is what worship is all about. When Christ increases in worship, we decrease. In worship, we are not important, and he is all-important.  We are swallowed up in Christ.

Third, we have the clear example of Christ’s humility. Paul said, Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. He became nothing. He gave up his rights. At its core, selfishness is holding onto our own rights. We want what we want because we like the wanting of what we want and we will have what we want no matter what others may want. Some of you are having all kinds of problems with other people because you are not willing to give up your rights. Do you really want to celebrate Christmas this year? Then let go of your rights. Let go of the power or influences of rights that you have been clinging to.

Rich Maurer

December 7, 2008