The Mindset of Christ

Philippians 2:5-8
The Mindset of Christ

Paul points out the example of Jesus Christ. The Philippi Church belongs to Christ, and in his footsteps, the congregation must walk. He says, Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.

He wants us to express that the kind of mind which characterized the Lord when He had come into the flesh and walked the earth but was already present with Him in His pre-incarnated state.

Jesus did not become our Savior on the day that Mary gave birth to her first-born son but while as yet in the bosom of the Father, He was already our Savior.

He became Savior in the fullness of time because He was it from the beginning of time. 

Redemptive history may be realized in the world-time; it had its origin before the world began, when Christ Jesus was, as Paul writes "in the form of God.

His emphasis is on His glory and majesty; His radiant appearance which reflects the very nature of God.

When Adam and Eve and ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge,  It was pure rebellion, the attempt to take over from God and to place the law of good and evil over it, instead of submitting to it, and this is what Paul calls robbery,

We are obliged to God for everything which we are, and have, and receive, but God is not in any way obliged to us. He is free, as God alone can be free, to do with what is His and pleases Him.

Jesus did not take advantage of His being like God, instead, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men.

In 2 Samuel 6:12, we see King David laying down his royal mantle and dressed like everyone else and took his place among the people as one of them, leaping and dancing before the ark. This is an example that we can think about to help us to understand what happened a little better.

Jesus went a long way as well, from glory to shame, from majesty to servitude, from being in the bosom of the Father to being found as a man,  sharing the equality and the form of God to being humbled to death.

The reason is found in 2 Corinthians 8:9 where it reads, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake, He became poor so that by His poverty you might become rich.

Paul did not mention this here because he wants to focus all attention on that attitude of complete humility which was His, and which He showed, to the bitter, but at the same time the glorious end of having finished it all.

May our attitude be then as that of Christ Jesus. What He did we cannot do but we do not have to either. But that mind which was His, that attitude which He displayed, should be ours, as people who by faith are engrafted in Christ and are called to walk in His footsteps.

Let’s Pray:
Dear Lord, we ask that the Holy Spirit may apply these words to the practical situations of our lives. Whatever may be an estranged relationship, that we who have the mind of Christ would let it show. May we simply give way and let our stubborn will accept the conditions and bring us to peace. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.