He Made Himself Nothing

Imagine a king taking off his crown. Setting down his robes. Walking out of the palace in a servant's clothes, to kneel and wash the feet of the poorest people in his kingdom. Now imagine he did not stop there.

Paul is in chains. He is a prisoner, probably in Rome, waiting to find out whether he will live or die. And he is writing to the church he loves in Philippi, a Roman colony in northern Greece. They have sent him gifts and a friend to help him. But Paul has heard that some of them are squabbling. Some are proud. Some are thinking only of themselves. So Paul says: let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. And then he writes lines so beautiful and rhythmic that many scholars think they were a hymn the first Christians sang.

It begins at the very top. Christ Jesus, Paul says, existed in the form of God. Everything God is, he was. And yet he did not think equality with God was something to cling to, to hold on to for his own advantage. Instead, he emptied himself. He made himself nothing. He took the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. That is Christmas. The one who had every right to glory chose a cattle trough in Bethlehem, a carpenter's bench in Nazareth, the life of a servant.

But the song keeps going down. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death. And not just any death, Paul adds. Even the death of the cross. In the Roman world, crucifixion was the most shameful death there was, kept for slaves and rebels. The people of Philippi, proud Roman citizens, knew that no citizen could be crucified. Yet the Son of God went lower than a citizen, lower than a free man, all the way down to a slave's cross. There was no lower to go.

And then the song turns, and rises. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name. God lifted him up, higher than anyone. 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. The one who went the furthest down is lifted the highest up. Paul borrows these words from the prophet Isaiah, where God says every knee shall bow to him. Now they are said of Jesus.

We have an outside witness to early Christian singing. Around the year 112, a Roman governor called Pliny the Younger wrote to the emperor Trajan about the Christians in his province. He reported that they met before dawn on a fixed day and sang a hymn to Christ, as to a god. Songs like the one in Philippians may be the kind of thing he heard.

He Made Himself Nothing. You'll find it in Philippians chapter two, verses five to eleven. Christians read it at Christmas because it shows how far down the Son came for us, starting in a manger. So here is a question to carry with you. Where could you choose to serve this week, instead of demanding your own way?