07/24/2010
Biggest Spiritual Loser
HOW TO LOSE LOVE
I’m going to un-ashamedly show-off some of what I learned over my sabbatical. One of my favorite courses was hermeneutics which simply means “how to interpret the Bible”. For someone with my personality type, hermeneutics is a blast! It reminded me of my days in engineering, frankly. There are processes, rules and procedures.
Yeah! Love it!
So stick with me, we’re going to take today’s topic in three stages, and the first is a review of our key passage for this series. Philippians 2:5-11 I want to begin by reading the whole passage:
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Now if you’ll look closely, you’ll see that this passage is broken into two basic parts,
there are verses 6-8 which describe the HUMILIATION of Jesus Christ, the DOWNWARD path he took. This section is broken down into two further sub-sections that we’ll look at later….
…but then there are verses 9-11 which describe Jesus’ EXHALTATION, the UPWARD result of his downward path.
There are two things that immediately leap out from this overview of the 2 halves:
1. The title of this series is derived from this passage. The Biggest Spiritual Loser. The whole up-is-down-paradox that Rick has been pointing us toward these last few weeks is spelled out clearly when you break this passage into its two halves at the word “therefore” in verse 9: Jesus traveled DOWNWARD, THEREFORE he moved UPWARD. Death on a cross THEREFORE exalted.
There’s the essence – it’s lean and inescapably clear. Do you see it? The Biggest Loser: Wins. What’s doubly interesting to me is that these words, recorded by Paul, perhaps first used by others (we don’t know for sure) perfectly reflect the teaching of the Christ himself. This upside down formula is confirmation that Paul was preaching the SAME message that was recorded in the Gospels. It’s like two scientists independently conducting the same experiment and coming up with the same result. Its confirmation of the truth.
2. Notice who provides the action in the first half, the HUMILIATION part? Who’s the subject of these two sentences?
That’s right it’s Jesus who chooses to lower himself. And notice in the EXHALTATION half, the subject changes… to whom?
From a simple overview of the passage we get a big pay-off: Lowering oneself is a personal act, but exaltation is God’s job.
How often do we see the opposite in our culture today? We want to do the humiliating TO each other: “I’ll show him!” “Someone needs to put her in her place!”
And we take on the job of exalting ourselves: Just listen to any legit rapper, professional athlete or talk show guru: they’ll tell you exactly how awesome they are.
The world (and let’s face it: CHRISTIANS) get this exactly backwards most of the time.
Another thing we learn is that this Loser mentality is not simply good advice or a hopeful suggestion from God. Let’s go back up to verse 5:
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus
The King James says, “Let this mind be in you...” which is really a better representation of the original Greek. We’re to have Christ’s mind on this subject.
When you were a kid, did your mother ever look at you after a remarkably stupid incident and ask with her big outside voice, “What were you THINKING!?”
The response was usually: what? “I dunnoooooo.” That’s right!
The truth is, our minds were so fully CONSUMED with jumping off the roof, or painting our little sister orange or setting something on fire that we couldn’t think of anything else.
Stories
Paul is telling us here that the world should be looking at us, at our upside down way of doing life, living the OPPOSITE way that athletes, musicians and politicians live, and they should be asking, What are you THINKING?!”
And our answer should be: …”like Christ.”
Having the MIND OF CHRIST isn’t about religious or even moral behavior…it’s about the very substance of our MINDS. How often can we really say we’re so focused on having Christ’s mind that we miss other stuff?
Verse 5 is saying that if you’re a Christian, you should think like Christ, and today we’re examining how Christ thought about love; how do we adopt Christ’s mind when it comes to love?
Now “love” may not be an explicit word in this passage, but if you look at verse 7 it’s hard to miss:
“equality with God” is an expression of intimacy, a union, an affection and oneness that is mysterious, yes..but un-questionably, love. The perfect relationship. There’s also an assumed affection in the phrase, “did not consider it something to be grasped”…meaning “anyone else would want this so badly that they would grasp “it”..grasp WHAT exactly? Love, togetherness, belonging.
And when it came to experiencing the most awesome kind of love, the most desirable and lovely intimacy imaginable…the mind of Christ was, “let it go”. Do you want to enter the “mind of Christ”? It starts in v6.
One additional thing that pops out from a review of the passage is that Christ made the choice to move downward in His pre-existent state. We know from the Gospel of John that Christ, the second person of the Triune God) has always existed (..in the beginning..) And we know he chose humiliation before he came to earth because the MECHANISM of his humiliation was to become human, and so the decision to be humiliated had to come before the act of becoming human. Make sense?
So the decision to serve was a pre-mediated act. It was not impulsive. The Christ did not just wake up one day in a meat bag and say to himself…”well while I’m here, I guess I’ll serve humanity…” Though no one knows the exact nature, timing and extent of Jesus’ divine awareness, we DO know that by the time he began his ministry, he knew who he was, and before his birth, he made the choice to serve.
What does that mean for you and me? Well it ups the stakes on what constitutes servant-hood. If we want the mind of Christ in us (verse 5) our servant-hood should be thought out, agreed to before-hand, pre-meditated, decided upon prior to the act. This is not an indictment of spontaneity. Instead, it is elevating the value of CHOOSING a life style of servant-hood in spite of the potential consequences. Jesus knew EXACTLY what he was in for when he chose the role of servant.
Wayne Clinton is in the habit of praying at the beginning of his day, “God, use me today.”
Alright - this ends our review, and Part One of today’s talk. In part two we’re going to pull verses 6 and 7 apart:
Look at the phrase, “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped”
1) Do not consider love something to be grasped… Now there are three possible renderings of the Greek phrase “something to be grasped:
- Noun “ a thing to be held at all cost”
- Noun “a position which could be exploited”
- Verb “a robber grasping loot”
I wonder if it’s left a bit ambiguous for the very purpose of underscoring that under NO circumstances, should love be seen in a selfish light! If you hope to hold on to real love, don’t GRASP it like a life-preserver.
There’s a word for that in modern psychological parlance: co-dependency. It’s like a water balloon: the tighter you squeeze, the more it slips through your fingers.
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If you hope to hold on to love, don’t think you’re in a position where you can GRASP it because you deserve it like a Prince or Princess who by nature of their title, deserve the love of their subjects.
The world will tell you that you do. Let me be explicit: You don’t deserve to be loved. Oprah will tell you that you deserve it. The shampoo commercials and your Kindergarten teacher will tell you that you DESERVE love and so grab it and hold on. Well their wrong. You deserve death (Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and 6:23, the wages of sin is death..”) I didn’t write that. I didn’t make it up.
Here me now: if you’re not a Christian here today, I don’t say these things to scare you…this is not a TURN or BURN sermon. My intent is not to frighten you or guilt you. That’s not my job, and to do so is patently un-biblical, However speaking the truth boldly IS Biblical, and whoever you are here today you must know that the essence of the Gospel, at its core are the truths of complete human brokenness and God’s bestowing of completely un-earned favor; or Grace on those who will accept it. If you don’t hold to those core truths, you can call yourself anything you like, but you’re not a Christian, and by grasping onto the love you think you deserve, your hands are too full to accept the real love that God holds out to you.
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If you hope to hold onto real love, don’t grasp it like its stolen goods, like you “got away with something”. (drive it like you stole it)
Some Christians live their lives hiding the love they were given freely like it was loot from a bank robbery. What happens when you feel you need to bury your treasure, protect it at all cost because it might be taken back? You put it in hole, cover it up and proceed to live without it, don’t you? You never get to enjoy the very thing you grasped at.
Now verse 7 comes in two parts, and there is debate over the meaning of the phrase in the first part: “made himself nothing”. That’s the NIV translation. The NASB says, “emptied himself” and the King James says “made himself of no reputation”. Emptied himself seems to me the best rendering, but it could present problems.
Does it mean that Jesus stopped being God? There have been many heresies over the centuries built on that misinterpretation. But no, Christ did not empty himself of his divinity (his God-ness), he didn’t stop being who he was. He didn’t empty himself OF anything, he simply emptied himself INTO something else, poured himself out as it were.
Poured himself into what?
Into the form of a servant! Jesus divine nature maintains its integrity but simply moves into another container: poured out into what? “the nature of a servant”
The verb “taking” is a clue: it means adding something not exchanging. The divine Christ does not become something that he is not, he simply picks up or TAKES ON or adds to what He already is, the nature, or form of a servant.
Let’s look at that phrase more closely. The word servant is literally “bond servant” or “slave”. This isn’t simple submission to the will of God (though Jesus was always obedient to the Father. (John 14:31) Frankly, It’s more humiliating than that: he serves his own creation!
Matthew 20:28 “…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Are we getting this, AC3? He didn’t ransom himself for the FATHER but for those whom he created and who rebelled against him! To have the mind of Christ on love, we should enslave ourselves to those who owe their very lives to us!
Don’t think about children…that’s not comparable: any parent can easily imagine submitting themselves to hardship and humiliation for their children. (I think it’s part of the job description, frankly) but; in all but the most technical sense: you didn’t create your children.
No, the slavery Christ entered into would be more like giving your body over to a swarm of fleas, ticks and mosquitoes, submitting yourself to them, allowing them to feed on you so that they can live. Could you imagine loving a tick to the point of giving yourself up for it? Yet that is closer to the KIND of servant Jesus Christ is than the popular view that he was just some sort of holy-housekeeper, come to do our laundry and dust the living room a bit.
Alright : our third part of the talk: Principles. This is the stuff we can directly apply to our own lives, right now.
1. Love is not to be GRASPED. The be-all and end-all of your existence is not an intimacy that you create. It’s obedience that establishes an environment where GOD builds a BETTER intimacy (remember Exaltation 9-11 GOD does the work)
Jeanne Athey’s Pearl Story
2. We must maintain identity in order to serve, DON’T change identity in order to belong.
Jesus didn’t surrender his IDENTITY to serve, so why should you? For me, this principle is the essence of the passage. Jesus did not consider being welcomed and accepted more important than serving. But we humans will wear whatever uniform, take on whatever set of behavior’s, act like complete idiots even commit unthinkable violence in order to belong. We will give up our true selves in order to be loved and accepted. But then once we have become what we were never meant to be, we find we have now lost the capacity to take in the love we changed ourselves for to begin with. Conversely, you were designed by God to serve in a unique way, with a set of spiritual gifts, a personality and a set of passions. If you eject your God given design in order to gain love, you’ve left a hole in the line-up? Who’s going to do what God placed you here to do if you’re busy chasing love disguised as someone else?
3. Service is Pre-meditated
Recently, someone told me that they thought they had the spiritual gift of giving because when they clean out their closet, they give the stuff they don’t want anymore to the Goodwill. Now that’s not bad, there’s nothing wrong with it; it’s kind and prudent. It’s just not sacrificial GIVING. GIVING requires sacrifice.
Servant hood is like that. It’s not simply an act that you leap into when it grabs your fancy and the opportunity presents itself. It’s not a hastily thrown dollar bill at a homeless person when you feel a pang in your conscious. It’s a pre-mediated commitment to a way of life that exists despite circumstances. Servants don’t stop serving when they get “too busy” or it’s inconvenient. Service is a lifestyle that they choose BEFOREHAND. It’s a vocation.
4. It’s all about motive. We had a long talk about this at our annual AC3 Staff retreat just a couple of weeks ago. We’re seeing a drop in servant-hood at AC3 these days and we’re asking why? We realized that there is more than one reason, but of particular interest was when we realized that there are a lot of folks who serve because they’re SUPPOSED to, and that are a lot of folks who serve to be close to people they think are cool and there are folks who serve primarily to get applause (literally and figuratively). Here’s the deal AC3, we all have mixed motives. The truth about me is I get up here and sometimes it’s ALL about the attention. This is not about singling anyone out, or making you feel guilty..the LAST thing your Staff wants is a group of volunteers who show up because they’ve been beaten into submission. That’s not the mind of Christ. At the same time we recognized that to the extent our motives for serving are mixed up, is the extent to which our spiritual growth has stalled. Serving for the wrong reasons, or not serving at all is one of the single biggest indicators that a disciple is stuck. Any motive other than the mind-of-Christ-motive equals a grasping after something…and we’re told explicitly, that’s not good. You can tell your motives are sliding when you spend time applying the upside down formula to everyone ELSE’s servant-hood: “They never call, I do all the work, no one else volunteers, no one said thank you” = GRASPING.
Manute Bol was born in Sudan, the son of a Dinka Tribal Chief.
He once killed a lion with spear when the cattle he was tending were threatened. But at 7’-7” tall, he seemed destined to find his way out of cattle herding in one of the poorest regions in Africa, and into professional sports.
Bol was brought to the US and rushed out onto the college basketball courts without even being able to speak English. From there he spent 10 years in the NBA with a number of teams. Though he rarely scored points, he is still tied for the most shots blocked by any NBA player.
But the real story of Manute Bol, begins after his basketball career. You see Bol was a committed Christian, and like you and me, he was called to serve. Life in his native Sudan was hard, and Bol threw all of his resources toward changing things there. Estimates are he spent more than 10 million dollars of his own money in an effort to alleviate suffering in the Sudan. At one point, while visiting, he was offered a plush job by the government as National Minister of Sport. He turned it down because they required that he renounce his faith in Christ and become a Muslim. They actually held him hostage for 6 months in an effort to get more money out of him, but after pressure from the US government, he was eventually allowed to leave.
By the time Manute was able to return to the States he was broke. He had given the fortune he earned in the NBA to the needs of the people in his home land. He had almost nothing left. But that didn’t stop him.
Manute Bol, being in very nature the son of great chief, and a sports celebrity, made himself a clown, a laughing stock, just to raise money for the poorest of the poor.
He let the media play on his height, mock him really, in a series of stunts
like a boxing match with “refrigerator” Perry,
playing hockey when he couldn’t even skate,
and posing as a jockey.
Bol didn’t consider his dignity something to be grasped. He would do anything, even play to our culture’s twisted and corrupt sense of humor if it meant food for his people. The man who was a proud prince of a proud people, a global sports celebrity and a one-time millionaire, laid it all aside, and emptied himself for the people he loved, let himself become a side-show freak, while we laughed.
If that weren’t enough, in 2004, he was severely injured in a car accident, but again…he had given everything away. The great Manute Bol lay in a hospital bed with no way to pay the rapidly mounting bills. Some of his former team mates had to come to his aid.
Manute died just last month at the age of 47. Just a year older than me.
At his funeral Kansas Senator Sam Brownback said of Bol, “He literally gave his life for his people. He went over (to Sudan), he was sick. He stayed longer than he should have. He probably contracted this ailment that took his life while in Sudan, and he didn’t have to do that. He was an NBA basketball player. He could have stayed here and had an easy life. I’ve never seen anybody use his celebrity status more nor give his life more completely to a group of people than Manute Bol did. It makes me look at efforts that I do as not enough."
Thinking of Bol’s 7 and half foot frame makes this quote just a little more poignant for me:
“God has a place for you to fill, but it will take all of you to fill it.”
