Jesus submitted His life and Will to God in total obedience. This daily devotional looks at Jesus’ humility, God’s response, and mankind’s ultimate response.
Nuggets
- Disciples are to imitate Jesus in being humble and disinterested.
- Jesus gave up a lot to be our Savior.
- God will reward Jesus for His total obedience.
Devotions in the Joy in the Gospel series
The worldview tells us that, in order to be successful, we need to be independent. If that means we are arrogant and prideful, so what?
That is not the way God wants us to operate. He wants us to imitate Jesus, Who submitted Himself to God’s Will.
Let's Put It into Context
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
Jesus Our Lord
“Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.” (Phil. 2: 5-6 CSB)
Disciples are to imitate Jesus in being humble and disinterested.
Whoa! What?
I saw the disinterested when I was researching the last devotion, but the sermons really didn’t explain that. Does that really mean what I think it means? Let’s see.
But we have to get there first.
Jesus is the Son of God. If he hadn’t been divine, none of this would have mattered.
We are getting a little ahead of ourselves here. Paul’s description of “who, existing in the form of God …” (Phil. 2: 6 CSB) didn’t mean it was something temporary.
Jesus is the Son of God, yet He became a servant of God. “This is my servant; I strengthen him, this is my chosen one; I delight in him. I have put my Spirit on him; he will bring justice to the nations” (Isa. 42: 1 CSB). We call that His humiliation.
Lessey told us of several different aspects of this humiliation.
- Subordination.
- Human subordination.
- Obedient subordination.
- Self-sacrificing subordination.
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Jesus, a Deity in and of His own right, gave all that up to accomplish the Plan of Salvation. He became a servant to Almighty God. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt. 20: 28 NLT).
God came to Jesus before He even created us to set up this Plan. He knew we were going to need a Savior. He knew only Jesus could be that Savior.
Glossary
Jesus didn’t hesitate. He said, “That sounds like a great Plan. When do we start?”
The Plan included Him taking on human form. We probably don’t feel like that should be considered a humiliation, but considering Jesus was God, it was.
Raleigh reminded us that, because Jesus was a Deity before He ever got to earth, He did not become a Deity while on earth. There was nothing special about being human to make Him a Deity.
That means we can’t be made to be a Deity. We mere humans cannot become God.
Jesus was, therefore, both the Son of God and the Son of Man. He wasn’t just part of each. He was wholly God and wholly man.
That was the only way this was going to work. Jesus sacrificed himself because that was God’s Plan.
We should look a little closer at what “… in the form of God …” (Phil. 2: 6 CSB) really means. It means that Jesus had the nature of God.
Jesus is part of the Trinity. The Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct Persons within one indivisible Divine nature.
That means Jesus has all the attributes of God. We just had a series that looked at what those attributes are.
To read a devotion in the Finding Our Center series, click on the button below.
In plain English, that means Jesus is the image of God. “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (II Cor. 4: 4 ESV).
Pope stressed that, just because Jesus is second fiddle to God, He is not lower in status. I heard it described a long time ago as God couldn’t come down to be the Sacrifice. So, He took Jesus, as a part of Himself, and sent Him. Same with the Holy Spirit — He needed Someone Who could be the Guide living in us always.
But Pope brought up a good point. God isn’t the Father of Jesus who was around before the foundation of the world. Pope said, “The Father is literally the Father of the Eternal Son made flesh, and not the Deity in general.”
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Okay. The disinterested means Jesus was willing to give up the trappings of His Deity. Raleigh wrote, “Being thus Divine, He did not deem His equality with God a thing to grasp at and eagerly retain.”
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For right now, we are just going to say that didn’t make Jesus less divine. He was still in the image of God.
Jesus is God, so His glory was still in Him. Raleigh reminded us of the times it popped out: in the temple, the transfiguration, and in the Garden of Gethsemane.
We are made in the image of God, so His glory is within us. Jesus didn’t have to give that up to become human.
Glossary
This will come up again in verse 7. We’ll tie it up in a bow in the next section.
Submitting as Lord
“Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross” (Phil. 2: 7-8 CSB).
Jesus gave up a lot to be our Savior.
Okay, back to Jesus being disinterested.
This doesn’t mean Jesus was disinterested in saving us. Quite to the contrary.
It means Jesus gave up a lot of stuff to save us. Raleigh wrote, “He emptied Himself of His heavenly glory, and having humbled Himself as a common man He humbled himself yet more, becoming obedient to the death which only the lowest malefactors could die.”
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I think the New Living Translation explains it the best. “Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being …” (Phil. 2: 7 NLT).
Remember in the last devotion, we were talking about “Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others” (Phil. 2: 4 CSB). This is giving us a practical example of that.
Jesus gave up His dignity. He went from being Prince Jesus to a little boy Who had to be put in a manger at birth because He was born to poor parents. That isn’t even scratching the surface of the loss of dignity on the cross.
Manton said that Jesus’ divinity was concealed by the flesh. He didn’t give up what He was. Rather, He became what He wasn’t.
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We must remember that, though Jesus was still divine like God, He became lesser than the angels. “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands” (Heb. 2: 7 KJV).
Okay. A little less Shakespeare. (The other versions left off the last part.)
The hierarchy is the Trinity, angels, and mankind. Yes, we are last.
Still, because of Jesus’ obedience, God honored Him.
One way of God honoring Jesus was giving Him authority over God’s creation. “Jesus came near and said to them, ‘All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth’” (Mt. 28: 18 CSB).
But this was Jesus’ choice. Even though God sent Him, He agreed to be sent.
God wasn’t going to force Jesus to be the Sacrifice and then give us free will. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2: 20 ESV).
Jesus did it all for us. “For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (I Pet. 2: 21 CSB).
Jesus became a servant. A servant, sometimes translated as a slave, meant something different back then.
Pastor Joey said this doesn’t mean someone who was kidnapped and sold into servitude. Instead, it means someone who made the choice to become someone else’s servant or slave in order to live. I see it more as an indentured servant.
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We should have been the servants. Mankind is low man in the hierarchy. We are the ones who broke God’s laws and commandments.
But we would never have been able to meet the needs for being a sacrifice. Mankind was not pure after Adam and Eve bit. Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
God had a covenant with Adam. He was to work in the Garden and obey God’s law to not eat fruit from one of the trees.
Nope. That didn’t end well.
Glossary
Because Adam and Eve had sinned and couldn’t rectify the situation, Jesus was called in to be our Savior. It was a hard road to walk, but He did it willingly.
Boston gave us a couple of great verses to remember.
- “Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir” (Gal. 4: 7 NLT).
- “For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do” (Heb, 6: 10 ESV).
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Vaughan explained that “Fallen man is the most servile thing in God’s universe — a bond slave of Satan, ‘Sold under sin’ — the servant of uncleanness.” Cleanness has to do with the Israelites remaining holy. Holy means to be set apart, perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
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Our Submitting to the Lord
“For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow — in heaven and on earth and under the earth — and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2: 9-11 CSB)
God will reward Jesus for His total obedience.
The exaltation wasn’t because He was skillful and successful. It was because He followed directions.
Pope said that Jesus wasn’t exalted in His humility. He was exalted because of His humility.
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It should give us comfort that Jesus will be exalted. He was faithful and obedient. That means we will be rewarded because of our faithfulness and obedience, too.
Jesus wasn’t exalted because He was climbing the ladder. He was exalted because he wasn’t — He was just doing the job.
Taylor said that there is a progression of Jesus’ exaltation. He wrote, “Jesus Christ in His resurrection was exalted; in His ascension “highly exalted;” in His sitting at the right hand of God “very highly exalted above all exaltation.” In His resurrection, He was exalted above the grave; in His ascension, above the earth; in His session, above the highest heavens.”
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Lessey reminded us that every person is going to be a witness to God rewarding Jesus. His dignity will be restored.
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Does “so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow …” (Phil. 2: 10 CSB) mean the literal bend the knee? I have always thought so.
Taylor thought it might mean submission. He equated name with power. That would read something like “because of the power of Jesus every knee will bow.”
I don’t know. That is above my pay grade.
What is important to me is that the ones doing the bowing will be “… in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2: 10 CSB). That means everyone — dead and alive, believers or not.
Every person who ever lived without any exceptions will bow to Jesus.
Making the Connections
Why did Jesus have to humble Himself? If He hadn’t, God would never have accepted His Sacrifice. If God didn’t accept Jesus’ Sacrifice, there would have been no acceptable Sacrifice.
We would have been destined to live eternity in hell.
To read a devotion in the Hell Does Have Fury series, click on the appropriate button below.
How Do We Apply This?
- Look to Jesus for salvation.
- Navigate the Sanctification Road to rise to God’s level — in Elaine-speak, going from milk babies to steak adults by working out our salvation on the Sanctification Road.
- Imitate Jesus by self-denial, humility, and reverence.
- Be prepared to suffer as Jesus did.
- Start bowing and confessing now.
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Because of His obedience, Jesus will be exalted. His obedience called for Him to be humble. We are called to imitate Jesus.
Father God. We kneel to You now. We humble ourselves in obedience and submission to You. We long for the day that everyone kneels before You. Amen.
What do you think?
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