Having the Mind of Christ

More Musings on Gospel Servanthood

Philippians 2:5-8

Before you can really follow the example of Jesus Christ as a model for your life and relationships you must first have a saving relationship with him.  I was once talking with a member of the Hari Krishna sect who told me that he was a Christian too because he sought to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.  I tried to point out to him that he had the cart before the horse.  He first needed to truly bow in faith before the Lord Jesus Christ and personally trust in Him as savior by looking to what he did on the cross for sinners.  He responded that all he needed to do to be both a Hari Krishna and a Christian is to follow Jesus as his example and that is what he was doing.   You cannot follow Jesus’ example in anything that he taught or did if you do not know him as your savior and Lord.  

However, if you do know him as your Savior and Lord then you must look to his example.   In fact what Paul is calling you to do in Philippians 2:2-4 is to walk in Jesus’ footsteps.  Before he brings you there he first reminds you of the Gospel.  This is what was stressed in the previous post on Philippians 2:1-4.  It is the impact that the Gospel should have on your heart and life, which is the first incentive to put off the garments of pride, self-importance and self-interest and take up the servant’s robe and towel of humility and obedience.  It takes real humility of heart and mind to consider others to be more important than you are.  It takes grace to put their interests before your own.  It takes obedience to do this because it is after all what you as a follower of Jesus Christ are called by him to do.

The second incentive that motivates you to be a servant to others is the example of the Lord Jesus Christ.  His example entails two realities that can really help you to overcome your objections to serve others and your fear in doing so – in taking the risk that serving others brings.  The first is the example of Jesus’ great humility and obedience.  The second is the example of his great deliverance and exaltation.   We will look at the first in this post. 

Paul says to us that we are to have the same mind as Christ.  This means that we are to continue to have the mind or frame of heart that Jesus had.   What he is referring to his the willingness of the pre-incarnate Son of God to deny himself and for our good become a human being for the purpose of being a servant and offering his life on the cross as the ultimate and sufficient atoning sacrifice for our sins.   We are to value the way the Son of God placed the interests of his people before his own.   He in essence did for us what Paul is calling us to do for one another in verses 2-4.

First he really considered or counted us to be more important than himself.  This is astounding.  Here the infinitely worthy and glorious Son of God who is inherently pure, holy and good and who shares in all the attributes of God considered those for whom he died to be more important than himself.  Who can fathom this!  On one level we certainly are not more important than the Son.  This is also true in terms of those we are often called to serve.  We are called to humble ourselves like Christ and in fact to consider others more important than ourselves.  Where this should take us is in putting the interests of others before our own.

This is indeed what Jesus did by humbling himself he put your interests before his own.  This is what Paul means when he says, “He who is in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but emptied himself taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men.”  This does not mean that by virtue of his incarnation he ceased to be fully God or that he emptied himself of some of his divine attributes or glory.  His incarnation was not a subtraction but an addition.  The glorious person of the Son of God who possesses all the nature of God took on a new nature – a human nature.  In doing so he denied himself.  The phrase “he emptied himself” is a metaphor describing his self-denial.  He denied himself his rights and divine prerogatives.   He considered you to be more important that himself and placed your interests before his own.  His human nature was the servant’s garment that he wore to accomplish our salvation.  He possessed a servant’s attributes of humility and obedience.  This frame of mind took him to the shameless death on the cross. 

Now the point should be obvious.   If this is what your Lord and Savior did for you then how can you in faith and with a clear conscience object to doing this for one another?  He is inherently superior to you as the glorious Son of God and yet he considered you to be more important than himself.  He did not hold onto his divine rights but put them aside and humbled himself placing your interests before his own.  This was the frame of mind that he possessed which led him to the cross for you.  So, how can you who have benefited from his great self-sacrifice refuse to serve those who are equal to you as fellow human beings and fellow believers?    

Here is further perspective from Charles Spurgeon.

Jesus is the great teacher of lowliness of heart. We need daily to learn of Him. See the Master taking a towel and washing His disciples' feet! Follower of Christ, wilt thou not humble thyself? See Him as the Servant of servants, and surely thou canst not be proud! Is not this sentence the compendium of His biography, "He humbled Himself"? Was He not on earth always stripping off first one robe of honour and then another, till, naked, He was fastened to the cross, and there did He not empty out His inmost self, pouring out His life-blood, giving up for all of us, till they laid Him penniless in a borrowed grave? How low was our dear Redeemer brought! How then can we be proud? Stand at the foot of the cross, and count the purple drops by which you have been cleansed; see the thorn-crown; mark His scourged shoulders, still gushing with encrimsoned rills; see hands and feet given up to the rough iron, and His whole self to mockery and scorn; see the bitterness, and the pangs, and the throes of inward grief, showing themselves in His outward frame; hear the thrilling shriek, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" And if you do not lie prostrate on the ground before that cross, you have never seen it: if you are not humbled in the presence of Jesus, you do not know Him. You were so lost that nothing could save you but the sacrifice of God's only begotten. Think of that, and as Jesus stooped for you, bow yourself in lowliness at His feet. A sense of Christ's amazing love to us has a greater tendency to humble us than even a consciousness of our own guilt. May the Lord bring us in contemplation to Calvary, then our position will no longer be that of the pompous man of pride, but we shall take the humble place of one who loves much because much has been forgiven him. Pride cannot live beneath the cross. Let us sit there and learn our lesson, and then rise and carry it into practice. 

Having the mind of Christ simply means that we like him consider others more important than ourselves and thereby put there interests before our own.   The pressure we feel against doing this is simply, "who will take care of our interests?"  For the Lord Jesus the answer was his Father.  For us the answer is that God in Christ has already done this for us in the Gospel.  Christ shepherds his sheep and through him we have the Father's love and the Spirit's fellowship.  The second incentive to take the basin and the towel of the Gospel servant is found in the fact that Christ had this very frame of heart and mind toward us when he became incarnate.  His willing humility for the sake of sacrifice remains a huge motivation to Gospel servanthood for the Gospel saturated heart!