Recently a friend of mine pulled up his stakes in suburbia, shut down his company, went to work for a not for profit, and moved his wife and new baby girl to a low income urban area near downtown Kansas City, Kansas. He told me how he and his wife viewed this decision as a sacrifice. They decided to ratchet down their lifestyle and move to a part of town where not everyone looked like them, or even spoke English; all in order to put flesh and blood on the Great Commission. What they have been surprised by is how much they are enjoying the sacrifice.
Which caused me to re-examine this passage in Philippians 2 regarding Jesus Christ’s humanity with one simple question in mind, did Jesus enjoy living?
Philippians 2:5-8 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!
If you carefully read these few verses you see the emphasis of humility is on His obedience unto death. Of course He had to be human in order to die. It is too simple to turn Him into a heroic Spartan like character who lived His entire life dedicated to His gruesome death. Perhaps He enjoyed living so much His cry, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”, was not merely because He did not want to experience the great pain coming His way; but that He truly did not want to die.
Life, Death, and Humility
Recently a friend of mine pulled up his stakes in suburbia, shut down his company, went to work for a not for profit, and moved his wife and new baby girl to a low income urban area near downtown Kansas City, Kansas. He told me how he and his wife viewed this decision as a sacrifice. They decided to ratchet down their lifestyle and move to a part of town where not everyone looked like them, or even spoke English; all in order to put flesh and blood on the Great Commission. What they have been surprised by is how much they are enjoying the sacrifice.
Which caused me to re-examine this passage in Philippians 2 regarding Jesus Christ’s humanity with one simple question in mind, did Jesus enjoy living?
If you carefully read these few verses you see the emphasis of humility is on His obedience unto death. Of course He had to be human in order to die. It is too simple to turn Him into a heroic Spartan like character who lived His entire life dedicated to His gruesome death. Perhaps He enjoyed living so much His cry, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”, was not merely because He did not want to experience the great pain coming His way; but that He truly did not want to die.