"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Phil. 2:5-11
"Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Eph. 1:20-23.
In our present meditation we are led
to the question of power in witness. It is perhaps the
major question for the church. It does not matter very
much what the church may have, if it is without power it
is without effect, and for the fulfilment of its purpose,
the justification of its existence, it must be an
expression, an instrument of the power of God in Christ
as exalted.
When we speak of the church, let us
not get far away ideas. We must remember that the church
functions in representation, though that representation
may only be in two. Peter and John, for instance, as in
Acts 4, were not just men by themselves, they were
functioning in relation to the church, and the church was
in expression by them at that time. You notice that the
Holy Spirit is very true to that principle in the whole
of that story. Being led they went to their own company,
and told them all that the rulers had said, and the
company, when they heard these things, took up the whole
matter in prayer before the Lord. They did the praying.
It does not say that Peter and John did it, but when the
company heard they prayed and took up the Psalm and
brought it to the Lord in relation to the present
situation. So that it was the church operating. The whole
setting of things there is that of the church, and it was
functioning by representation in just two. Two is the
divine meaning for representation, and the whole question
is that of the church functioning in power, even though
it may only be by two or three, or by a small company.
It, after all, is the church’s testimony which is to
be represented there, and that is to be an expression of
divine power.
The Lord would have us marked by
spiritual power. Not by mighty words, but by mighty
deeds. These are the tokens of God’s Kingdom, and,
of course, power always has been a very living matter,
question, interest for the people of God, and it is a
matter about which the Lord would exercise the hearts of
His people again in these days. We believe He is doing
that in many parts; we may say, perhaps, all over the
world the Lord’s honest people are exercised on the
matter of spiritual power. To put it another way, they
are concerned about the lack of power, the spiritual
weakness, the ineffectiveness, and they are crying for a
new visitation of the Holy Spirit, with the desire that
there should be a fresh manifestation of divine power.
Now the Lord has some light to shed upon this matter of
power, for He does not just give power willy-nilly, or as
something in itself, and He does not give the Holy Spirit
on any basis at all as the Spirit of power, but He always
has a background and a foundation for the exercise of
power, and we need to know, and the rest of the Lord’s
people need to know, what the Lord’s basis of power
really is.
Taking such a chapter as Acts 4 as
an illustration, you will notice that while power is in
evidence, and power is the feature of the church in those
days, that power was related to the Name of Jesus. Six
times in that chapter reference is made to the Name of
Jesus. “There is none other name under heaven given
among men, whereby we must be saved.” It was a
question of the Name, that by what authority and in what
name they had done this thing. Peter’s answer was:
“Be it known unto you all... that by the name of
Jesus Christ... doth this man stand here before you
whole.” It was a question of the Name which was also
the question of the authority that produced this, the
superior title, the superior authority, the superior Name
by which this power was being manifested. So that power
was bound up with the Name of Jesus.
When we turn to the letter to the
Philippians, and to the passage in Ephesians, we are
given an insight into the moral and spiritual basis of
the Name, and therefore of power in the church, and we
are given a very wide, a very vast range of insight. We
are told, first of all, that Jesus of Nazareth before
times eternal subsisted in the very form of God. You have
to go back there for your first insight into the question
of power, as to Who Jesus of Nazareth is from eternity.
He subsisted in the form of God; that is, all the
essential attributes of Godhead, of deity, were His. John
makes the thing utter, as we know: “In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.” There is nothing to add to that. Paul puts it
this way: “Who subsisted in the form of God”.
So that Jesus of Nazareth from eternity is Very God, and
nothing which has happened in the course of the cycle of
history, the history of His person, has altered that.
The next phase makes no difference
to that basic and eternal fact. When we see Him coming
out from His eternal place as God, and being found in
fashion as a man, taking the form of a servant, emptying
Himself, that makes no difference to the original, basic
fact. Let us be perfectly clear about this. I do not want
to enter upon any theological arguments, but we must be
perfectly clear about this, that Jesus of Nazareth is
still from eternity God in all the essential attributes
of deity, of Godhead, and He has not emptied Himself of
those attributes, He has not emptied Himself of Godhead.
When the Word says that He emptied Himself, that clearly
relates to form and not to person. He existed, or
subsisted, in the form of God; now He is in the form of
man, and that is all that is meant by emptying Himself;
and it is a big enough emptying for anybody to consider.
You cannot contemplate any greater emptying than that. He
Who had subsisted in God-form, now is in man-form, but He
is still God in man-form.
The humility did not begin when He
took man-form. The humility began before that: “...who,
subsisting in the form of God, counted it not something
to be grasped to be on equality with God...”. There
was no pride about His position. Of course, this is said
quite obviously as over against Satan in the first
instance, who grasped at equality with God, and that was
his pride. There was no personal, self-glorifying in the
position of the Lord Jesus, no self-exaltation, no
grasping at something for Himself. That is where the
humility of God is found. God is no vaunting, proud,
self-glorifying Being.
What we are seeking to make clear is
this, that humility is not just a feature of man, it is a
feature of God; it is a divine thing, a thing which
belongs to God. Humiliation and humility are two
different things. The humiliation of the Lord Jesus is
one thing; His humility is another thing. His humility is
eternal, it comes out of eternity, and it belongs to His
very Godhead.
Now you notice that He, back there
in eternity, was marked by this humility that counted it
not something to be grasped at to be on equality with
God; but then He emptied Himself, and being found in
fashion as a man He humbled Himself. You notice the
difference. There was humility in Godhead, but that
humility has come into manhood, and is going ever deeper.
There is a humility which belongs to heaven, but when you
bring that humility out of heaven here into a condition
such as this world is in, and humble yourself to this
state, that is getting very low, that is going down very
deep. He humbled Himself when found in fashion as a man.
As God He emptied Himself, as Man He humbled Himself.
What a depth! Satan and Adam sought to exalt themselves
to be equal with God. Here is One Who did not grasp at
this equality with God, but emptied Himself.
Then, (not as our translation says,
“...he... became obedient...”) “...becoming
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”,
we see that His whole life was a life of continuous
emptying unto the obedience of the cross. His whole life
here was a life with the cross in view, which required
continuous obedience unto death. Death as it were was
going on all the time, and He knew it. It was before Him,
and He was continually to be obedient unto it. How often
temptations came to Him, to turn Him aside from that way
of death. A disciple would say to Him: “Far be it
from thee”. It is a temptation not to be obedient
unto death. In the wilderness the devil three times
tempted Him along the line which was other than a line of
obedience unto death, to reach His end by another course.
He was becoming obedient all the time up to the final act
of obedience unto death, and that meant constant humbling
of Himself as a Man, when He might have been exalted,
when they would have exalted Him, when they would have
made something of Him, when He could have made something
of Himself. Satan said, “Cast thyself down...”;
if You do You will be preserved, and You will come down
among this people and everyone will come to You and say,
This is God! But He was obedient unto death, by the way
of humbling, obedience, emptying.
“Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every
name.” He subsisted in God-form, He took the form of
man; now in a strange way, which is always the mystery of
God and of the person of Christ, which you and I will
never understand in this life, there has come about a
union between God and man in Christ, so that here in the
exaltation it is not the exaltation of God to glory, it
is the exaltation of Christ as Man, Son of Man: Man with
God allied, God joined, God and Man together. So that
Jesus still bears the Name, but it is Jehovah-Jesus, it
is God and Man united, Jesus of Nazareth with God’s
Name resting upon Him, Jehovah. It is a difficult thing
to explain, and a very dangerous realm. It is necessary
to protect that when you talk about God and Man joined in
one, but in His case it is true. It only becomes true in
any measure in our case by reason of our union with
Christ; it never becomes true of us in ourselves. We
shall never have the attributes of Godhead and deity, but
in Christ God allies Himself with man, and, as we have
already said, to meet the man in Christ who is living on
the basis of Christ exalted is to meet God. To meet the
church, though it be in representation in two or three,
when that representation is on the basis of Christ’s
exaltation, is to have to reckon with God. That is shown
in Acts 4: “...Who by the mouth of thy servant David
hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people
imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and
the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and
against his Christ. ...And now, Lord, behold their
threatenings...”. It is the ground of appeal on the
part of a little company. What happens? The Lord comes in
and shows that He is allied with this; the place where
they prayed was shaken. God comes in on that ground of
the exaltation of His Son, and on the basis of that there
is power.
The point, of course, is just this,
that power in the church—and for our present purpose
that is power in the church as represented in two or
three or more—is a matter of our standing upon the
spiritual and moral ground of Christ’s exaltation.
What is that? Humility. What is humility? Utter emptiness
of self. There is a tremendous power about humility when
it is of this kind, when it is the humility of Christ.
Christ is exalted by reason of His humility. There are
various reasons given in the Word for the exaltation of
Christ. In chapter 5 of the book of Revelation He
receives glory and honour on the ground, or in virtue of,
His redemption and His Blood. In the letter to the
Hebrews it is because of the suffering of death, and
having tasted death for every man, that He is crowned
with glory and honour. In John 17 He says that He is
glorified because He has glorified the Father on the
earth. But in Philippians, while all that is involved,
included, it is the Father Himself coming in and
glorifying Him, exalting Him, honouring Him, on the
ground of His humility. He humbled Himself, He emptied
Himself. “Wherefore (on that ground) God hath highly
exalted him...”. It is a peculiar spiritual and
moral basis of exaltation. The apostle takes hold of that
and applies it to the situation at Philippi, and he says:
“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus”.
What is power? How shall we know
power? Power is bound up with the Name of Jesus. What is
the Name of Jesus, the Name which is above every name,
above every name in this age and that which is to come?
It is that in which you find God and Man united. God was
so with Him, that when you met the One you met the Other,
when you touched the Man you touched God, when you came
up against the Man you came up against God, when you
dealt with the Man you dealt with God. That is what is
meant by the Name of Jesus. What is the basis? He humbled
Himself. It is humility. We sought to define humility in
our last meditation. Humility is selflessness in every
sense, and in the fullest sense.
It seems that it was necessary for
the disciples to break down, and to be allowed to break
down. Some of us have bitterly complained to the Lord
that He has allowed us to break down, but there is
another point of view. All these disciples had a very
close association with the Lord Jesus in the days of His
flesh, and yet every one of them broke down: “They
all forsook him and fled.” “It is written, I
will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered.”
They all broke down, and it is a sorry picture that meets
our eye after Christ had been crucified and buried. It is
a sorry picture of those disciples, but it would seem
that it was necessary. Peter had a good deal of
confidence in what he could do, and how far he could go.
He was very sure of himself. They all had to come to the
place where it was perfectly clear to them that there was
nothing in them that could go through, that they could
not stand up to things, that they were as weak as water
when it really came to the crucial test. That had to be
demonstrated in their very experience. It was essential
to the afterward. If we have complained that we have
known weakness and failure and breakdown, there is a
divine providence in that. It is the Lord’s way of
bringing us to the place where we may know power, because
power is not in us, it is in Christ, and we can never
know power in Christ until we have discovered the depth
of our own impotence, the reality of our own
worthlessness. We have to be humbled in order to learn
humility, dependence upon the Lord.
You notice that afterwards the
Spirit makes perfectly clear the change. There were the
marks of power, the marks of triumph. Where was the
secret? In the Name of Jesus. It was all Christ, it was
all in the exalted Lord that was the basis, and they had
learned their lesson and knew that in themselves there
was no power, no strength. There was a wonderful change
after the emptying of those men by the cross, and then
the bringing of them to the place where, not in
themselves but in Him as exalted, it was possible to go
on and to triumph.
The Name, with all its glory, and
all its majesty, and all its power, is based upon
humility. It derives its strength, its gain, on the very
ground of humility, self-emptying. If you and I did know
and realise it, humility is one of the greatest, if not
the greatest and most important thing for any life that
is going to be used by God as a witness to the power of
Christ. Unless God has that basis it is a desperately
dangerous thing for us to know power. There is all that
in us which will use power and turn it to our own glory
and our own exaltation. It is a terrible thing to taste
of the heavenly gift unless there is a right foundation,
and the only foundation which makes us safe is that of
self-emptiness, humility. Let us seek from the Lord
continually much humility, true humility, the meekness of
Christ. This is the moral basis of power. The opposite of
that was the pride of Satan, and the pride of Adam, and
that was the moral (or the immoral) basis of the ruin.
When we talk about power we must not
think of God just baptizing us with something we call
power, or with the Holy Spirit for the purpose of power,
but we must remember that God must have His foundation,
and that foundation is provided by the cross, the cross
which smites us, and smites all in us that would take
hold of the things of God to use them for ourselves, unto
our own ends. The cross must do that work and bring about
a true humility. We must, therefore, ask the Lord to keep
the cross operative continually in our life: “Always
bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus...”.
“I die daily.” This cross of Christ was a
continuous thing with Him. It operated by various means:
“Lest by reason of the revelation I should be
exalted above measure, there was given me a thorn in the
flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me...”. It is
the work of the cross, the principle of the cross, to
break that “I”, and to keep it down so that no
pride should mar the vessel and destroy the power.
In the humility wrought by the cross
we are brought into oneness with the exalted Christ, and
oneness with the exalted Christ means that God is
committed to man. That is a tremendous thing. Two or
three, on the basis of the cross, on the moral basis of
Christ’s exaltation, who are emptied, weak, but
confident in Him, should mean that when they bring God
into a situation, that situation encounters God, the men
involved encounter God. It is a tremendous thing to
realise God is committed to us. That is what union with
Christ means, and the moral basis of union with Christ is
death to self and the centre of self: that is, pride.
May the Lord teach our hearts anew
with His Word.
I am quite sure that the emphasis is
a very necessary one upon the matter of humility, as the
way of exaltation, the basis of divine power. May the
Lord speak it to our hearts.