It's an oldie goldie. A little boy is drawing a picture at home. His mother walks by and sees him drawing and asks him what he is drawing. He replies, "I am drawing God." To which his mother tries to correct, "Well, that is good, but no one knows what God looks like." Quick on his feet, the tot rejoins, "But they will after I get done."
One of Vance Havner's often used illustrations has a guest preacher at the pulpit one Sunday. The guest preacher was only 5 foot 5 inches, rather shorter than the 6 foot 3 inch pastor of the church, who was away on vacation. Behind the pulpit in the baptistery was the familiar artistic rendering of Jesus in a picture frame. A little boy had never seen the picture before because their tall pastor blocked the vision of it, but the shorter guest preacher made it visible for the first time to this boy. After it dawned on him just a little way into the guest preacher's sermon, the boy tugged at his mommy's dress and asked in a low whisper, "Where is the man that stands in the way so that we can not see Jesus?"
We know Jesus had a beard, and we know he had a dark olive complexion in all probability, but that is about it when it comes to his physical appearance (outside of the fact He also would have nail prints). The rest is just fanciful human imagination. No one knows what Jesus looked like, and no one for sure knows what God looks like, because God is a spirit, and He is invisible. (John 4:24, 1 Tim. 1:17) Mormons have it all convoluted, regardless of their new slick advertising campaign. They say God is physical and Jesus is not God. The Bible says God is spirit, and Jesus is the true eternal God (1 John 5:20). And furthermore, Mormons, men do not become gods; the gospel is that God became man.
Yes, in language we can understand, the Bible often describes God in human-like terms, like the fact He has eyes, feet, hands, etc. But the Bible also says "He covers us with his feathers", and that he is a rock, a fortress, a mighty tower, as well as some other metaphors. God is not Big Bird, nor is he alongside the Rock of Gibraltar, nor does he live in Fort Knox (although he does own it) or the Eiffel Tower. How can one describe God who is indescribable to the race of people who depend on descriptions so much? The wise God uses all sorts of literary devices that are commonly understood and used by the created species called mankind. That is how it is done. That is what we read in the Bible. God knows it all, therefore He has a "mind." God sees it all, therefore He has "eyes." God gets all things done in His created universe, therefore He has "hands." God is not static; He is always on the go, therefore He has "feet."
How is it, though, that "no man has seen God at any time" (John 1:18), and if one could see God, he would be obliterated in a flash (Exodus 33:20), and yet Moses saw God in a burning bush in Exodus 3, and the text says "Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God." Did he see God or not? It is written that Jacob saw God face to face in Genesis 32:30, and that Manoah and his wife had "seen God", so that later we read Manoah saying in Judges 13:22, "We shall surely die because we have seen God." Manoah knew about the death penalty. How can we reconcile these and other "appearances" of God to various people in the Old Testament with the verses that say that God is spirit, He is invisible, no one has ever seen Him, and if they did, they would be goners.
This passage in Philippians 2:1-11 and other passages as well do the reconciliation for us. God can not be seen, but Jesus can be seen. Jesus is the "form of God" (Phil. 2:6, "being in the form of God" refers to his eternal unchanging state). What Moses and Manoah and Jacob and everyone else saw (old King Neb in Daniel saw one "like a son of man" in the burning furnace) was Jesus, about whom it is said "being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person (Heb. 1:3)." Jesus gives form, as it were, to the invisible God. No wonder Jesus did say, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." (John 14:9) Moses & Co. escaped death because God revealed Himself to them in the pre-incarnation appearance of His Son. Does God save us from Himself? Yes, that is what substitutionary atonement is all about. That is why Jesus is our propitiation, the God-man who dies for man's sin and saves man from God's wrath.
Next up in Philippians 2 is the matter of what did Jesus empty Himself of when He left heaven to become a man? Some translations have verse seven reading, "but made Himself of no reputation." Skipping over the centuries of lengthy debate among scholars of what this consisted, we can cut to the chase by stating that the emphasis has been wrongly placed on what Jesus gave up when He left heaven. Instead, the focus here in this passage is not on what Jesus gave up, but what he gained. It is not a matter of subtraction; it is a matter of addition. He did not cease being God, He did not lay aside some attributes temporarily, He did not handcuff Himself so to speak; instead, Jesus gained or obtained a new outward appearance and all the experiences that go with it.
To illustrate this, if I take a big jug of grape juice and pour all the contents of it into a very large drinking glass, has the grape juice changed at all? No, the content has remained the same. What has changed? The container. If we take it a step farther, what if the new container is dark, and not a see-through container. From a distance, a person could not tell what the contents are in that container. Is it iced tea, Pepsi, Gatorade, milk, what?
What we have in Jesus is a concealed container. The content is the same. His identity has not changed. We could say that He emptied Himself of "heavenly glory" when He became man, and there is some definite truth in that. (John 17:5) Later on, Jesus would say in that same prayer, though, "and the glory which You gave Me I have given them. . ." Yet again, we read, "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me."
John Calvin probably summed it up best: "Christ, indeed, could not divest himself of godhead, but he kept it concealed for a time, that it might not be seen, under the weakness of the flesh. Hence he laid aside his glory in the view of man, not by lessening it, but by concealing."
To those whom God revealed Himself (Matthew 11:25-27) in the person of Jesus while He was on earth, these chosen eyewitnesses could write, "and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14) They were able through God-given eyes of faith peek into the darkened container to see the content. Later on in Matthew 17, a few of the disciples saw with bigger eyes what Jesus would look like in fuller glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, like a sneak preview of more to come. Peter, one of those few, would write about that experience in his second epistle, chapter one, verses 16-18.
Philippians 2 is not then about what God gave up, but what God "gained." It was a series of the biggest step downs ever that led all the way up to the highest exaltation ever. First, He took the form of a bond servant. Well, an angel would qualify for that categorization, and if God took on the outward form of an angel, that would be a serious step down. But the passage does not stop there. Second, He came in the likeness of men. Not an angel, but a man. Wow, what condescension! He became a human bond servant, and not an angelic one. He really was a man, but not a sinful man. The likeness of sinful flesh, as some translations have it, refer to the fact that "he was tempted at all points, yet was without sin." Well, he could live a pampered life here on earth, born and raised in royalty or aristocracy. Still, that would be an incredible step down from what He once enjoyed. But the story continues its decline.
"And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself. . ." His life was the very opposite of plush royalty or sheltered aristocracy. From the account of His birth to His upbringing to what Jesus said about foxes and birds had it better than Him, He volunteered Himself to put Himself so low that He had to look up to see the bottom of the proverbial ladder. Isn't that good enough? Hasn't Jesus done enough, stepped down enough, emptied Himself enough?
He could live the rest of His life on earth in poverty and ridicule, being a hunted man, but He would have nothing to worry about because He had done nothing wrong, so therefore there would be no wages of sin for him. Death would elude Him. He was the Fountain of Youth; He was Life Eternal. He was blameless, spotless, pure, undefiled. Jesus has not gone down far enough yet, though.
He humbled himself to the point of death. The only one who ever lived that did not deserve to die died. He must have paid somebody else's wages. But, we can come up with a sanitary death, a painless death, a death in old age, a death in one's sleep, a peaceful departure from this life. Jesus would have none of that. He must go down farther. He must gain something more than just dying by itself.
The last step down is that he became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Jesus was willingly obedient to carry out the Father's intent all along, and it was not just a peaceful, painless death. It would be the most hideous kind of death ever invented by man, but it was far more than the torture and excruciating pain. Mel Gibson's controversial movie could only pretend to show that side of the cross. Cursed is every man who hangs on a tree, as Galatians 3:13 puts it. He became cursed for our sake. He took the full brunt of God's wrath against sin. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?" No sedatives, no nurse by his side, no hospice care, no around-the-clock medical attention. It was the death of the cross.
He had to die this way, because no other way would reveal the depth of man's depravity and the greatness of God's mercy and grace.
Jesus could not have gone down any further. He made the last step down. He "gained" the cross, the purchased redemption of His people. He "added" to His resume the title, the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep.
How low can God go? How low did He go? Philippians 2 informs us. But it also tells us how high all these step downs took "the form of God", a name above every name. So high, that every knee should bow, of those in heaven, of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. No greater humiliation, no greater abasement, no greater lowering. Yet, no greater exaltation.
The form of God was emptied into a new container, and now we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. (2 Cor. 8:9) Now look what we can gain!
While we can not draw or paint a caricature of God Himself, and while we do not know what Jesus looked like (for many obvious reasons), we can take heed from what the second little boy said. After all that we have gained due to grace, we should not stand in such a way so people can not see Jesus .
Yours in Christ,
Chris
