Transcripción

I remember reading of a student who climbed up on the roof of a university building and was accidentally hurt in the process. He sued the school and won a large settlement. A teenage girl tried out for her high school football team. School authorities were concerned that if they prevented her from playing, they would be violating her rights, so they did not interfere. But in the first practice, she was hurt. Her parents sued the school, claiming that no one told them of the “potential risks of serious injury.” They won that lawsuit.

Today we seem to hear of all kinds of cases where people are demanding their rights. We never hear about people giving up their rights—especially for those who are undeserving. Well, as we set sail today into the book of Philippians, we discover that someone did just that for you and me.

Paul first challenges the church to adopt the Lord’s attitude of humility. He writes in Philippians 1:27 that he wants them to be “standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.” You cannot serve others and walk with them side by side if you’re always insisting on being first.

Then in chapter 2, Paul writes this in verses 3-4:  

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Where can you go to find that kind of example in life? Well, Paul describes the supreme example in the Lord surrendering His personal interests, His personal rights—and there are four of them.

First, Jesus gave up the right to live like God. Paul writes in verse 6, “Though he was in the form of God, [He] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.”

This word translated “grasped” means to “clutch or hold tightly.” God the Son—equal in essence with God the Father—opened his hands and released His divine privileges.

He did not cease being God, but He gave up His position and place of glory. He had been served by angels and lived in the splendor of heaven, but He willingly descended to our dusty planet and joined the human race. He was now both fully human as well as fully God. He gave up the right to live like God.

Second, Jesus gave up the right to act like God. Paul writes that Jesus “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (verse 7).

He did not come as a sovereign but as a bond servant—and bond servants had no rights and owned nothing. Indeed, Jesus owned virtually nothing. He borrowed a stable to be born in, a boat to ride in, a room to eat in, a donkey to ride into Jerusalem upon, and a tomb to be buried in.

He was the only person to walk the face of the earth with the right to have anything He wanted. Yet He never used His divine power to make His life more comfortable. He never claimed any special privileges. He gave up the right to act like God.

Third, Jesus gave up the right to look like God. Paul writes in verse 8, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself.” “Being found in human form” reinforces the phrase from verse 7, “being born in the likeness of men.”

Think about this: the Son of God was able to decide what He would look like as a Jewish man. The Creator had the ability to choose His complexion and His physical stature.

The only detailed, physical description of Jesus Christ in all of Scripture is found in Isaiah, where the prophet described Him by writing, “He had no form or majesty.” The word for “form” means bodily shape or figure; “majesty” refers to an impressive bearing. Jesus had no form or majesty, Isaiah writes, “that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). In other words, Jesus chose to look like an unattractive, unimpressive, run-of-the-mill, Jewish man.

But still, to us as humans, it does not sound all that humbling for God the Son to become the Son of Man.

When my wife and I moved to North Carolina to plant a church, we rented a little house in West Raleigh. When I went to see it, it was a mess. The current resident had a dozen cats, and they were everywhere. I do not particularly like cats, and this visit did not help. Later, after we moved in, we painted and scrubbed and vacuumed that little house until it sparkled. But a few weeks later, we found ourselves scratching our ankles, where little red spots were appearing.

One night we had our five-month-old twin boys lying on their blankets out on the living room floor. When I leaned down to brush a black speck off one of my son’s cheeks, that little speck jumped. Those cats had left me a parting gift—a house infested with fleas.

We tried everything to get rid of them. I went to a hardware store and bought one of those flea bombs. You set it off, and the smoke it emits is supposed to kill the fleas. Evidently it did not do anything but give them a little heartburn. I had the carpet cleaners come, but that did not work either. Finally, I went to the store and purchased one flea bomb for every room in that little house; then we left for a couple of days to visit our family. When we returned, there were no more fleas.

Now I don’t hate fleas. But how could I warn them that bomb day was coming and they were going to face my wrath unless they left our house? How could I let them know? There was only one way; I would have had to become a flea. I could not imagine condescending from being a man to becoming a flea.

Beloved, that is more like what it was for the Son of God to condescend in His incarnation to become a man. Yet, in His great humility, that is exactly what He did.

He gave up the right to live like God, to act like God, and to look like God. Why? Because there was one more right Jesus planned to surrender: He would give up the right to be treated like God.

Paul writes in verse 8, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Jesus lowered Himself all the way to death—and not just any death. Paul effectively says, “If you can imagine it, even death on a cross.”

But that is not the end of the story. Paul continues in verses 9-11:

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

One day, every knee will bow at the name of Jesus and confess—admit—that He is indeed the Lord of heaven.

We will praise Him forever. He gave up His rights to give us something in return. John’s Gospel tells us, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

He gave up His rights to give you an eternal right—the right to become a child of God.