Jesus Is LORD !
by A. Gene Veal

Philippians Chapter 2:1-11

1  If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,

2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and GAVE HIM THE NAME THAT IS ABOVE EVERY NAME,

10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

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Verses 6 through 11 were probably not written by Paul originally. He was probably quoting a Christian song or one of the statements of faith that were known in the early church. He was not directing himself to telling us primarily that Jesus Christ was Lord. He was rather addressring the bickering and backbiting in the Philippian church.

Instead of bickering, they are admonished to let this same mind be in them which was in Jesus Christ.  Paul then plunges into this magnificent passage which recounts the heights of glory from which Jesus came, the death that He died, and the Name that He received in the Ascension. Paul immediately returns and says, "So," in light of that, "you work this out in your own life."

This greatest of passages was directed at a group of bickering, complaining, envious people. Paul is basically saying, "Behold God in Jesus Christ." Understand what He has accomplished for you. We have already established that Life, as we understand it, is Christ. Christ has come to live within us. He is in a living unity with us, because of His finished work.  Now Paul is saying, "That One is your life. Work out your life."  He means work out relationships one with another.

So who was the One Who comes among us? Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. This is going back to Who Jesus was before He was born of the Virgin Mary. I want us to stop awhile and weigh this. In fact, this is something that modern Christians rarely do. They rarely weigh Who He was. Who is this One?

First of all, it says that before He was born of the Virgin Mary, He existed in the "FORM" of God. Now what does that mean? The term "FORM" that Paul uses here means "THE SUM OF ATTRIBUTES THAT MAKES A THING PRECISELY WHAT IT IS." Read that definition again and keep it in mind.

This means you could have a piece of steel. You could form that into a sword. Then there would be certain things true about it as a piece of steel. Then there would be certain things true about that piece of steel that made it uniquely a sword. You could also take it and form it into the shape of a spade, but then it wouldn’t be a sword because it would no longer have those things peculiar to it that make it a sword. So the attributes are THAT WHICH MAKES A THING WHAT IT IS. Understand? It is very basic.

But when I come to ask the question, "Who is God?" I am coming back to Who Jesus was before He was born of the Virgin Mary: He Who was in the form of God, this One possessed all the attributes of God - EVERYTHING THAT MADE GOD WHO HE IS. But notice very carefully, it says, "THE FORM of God." When Paul said that, he was referring to His richness and His fullness. Paul said Christ possessed God's attributes in all the richness you imagine when you think of God. He could have simply said Jesus Christ was Deity or that He was the Son of God. That would be true, but he weighed his words: "The FORM OF GOD."  See what he is saying?  Feel it.  Let it roll around inside of you. Jesus Christ had all the attributes that make God God.

What do you understand these attributes to be?  Who is your God?  A good percentage of Christians can't really answer that question. They're quick to tell us what He has done for them, or they tell how they feel about Him, but that is not the question.  WHO IS YOUR GOD?  What are His attributes?  Very few know them. They have never thought about it.

We could spend a lot of time on this, but very briefly, when I say, "The Holy One," I mean He Who is separate and apart. He is completely OTHER. God is not just man taken to the highest degree. God is OTHER. He is HOLY. He is separate.

All of us began. So I can’t blame the little child when he looks up to you and asks, "Where did God come from?" Everything that child knows came from somewhere. He looks at the trees and we tell him, "God made the trees." We know where the trees came from. God made the birds, the fish, the sea, everything. Look in the mirror. He made you. So the little child says, "Where did God begin?" We all began.

Well, God didn’t begin. God is existence in Himself. Everything that is exists because of God. God exists because He is existence itself. He gives life. No one gives Him life. He is Life. So He is the basis of all being. That is why, when He introduced Himself to Moses, He said, "I AM THAT I AM."

Now, you can’t say that. You can say, "I am." But if you think about it, to be proper, you must say, "I am because He is." You only are because there is One Who says, "I AM." Because He never began and He has existence in Himself, He gives us existence. SO WE ARE BECAUSE HE IS.

But in referring to Himself, God doesn’t say He is "because." He just says, "I AM." That’s it. He is "I AM," The ground of all being, the beginning of all life, Self-existent, dependent upon none. The HOLY ONE. Completely OTHER.

Do you understand what I mean when I say that when I come to God there is something awful about Him? He is a terrible God. Do you know what I mean by that? He strikes awe in my heart. I suddenly realize my creaturehood before the unbeginning Creator. That makes me feel very small. There is a very beautiful kind of fear and terror the Bible speaks of when we come to God.

If you were raised on those Southern Quartets you wouldn’t appreciate that. You think of God as "the Man upstairs." But that approaches blasphemy. There is something awful about God. If a song does not strike awe into your heart, there is something wrong with it. He is the HOLY ONE: Self-existent.

Would I shock you if I said, "God doesn’t need us?" It has been written that God was so lonely that He created the world. Oh dear, poor God. Lonely? If God is lonely, He is not complete. If He needed the world and us to complete Himself, by such logic, we are an extension of God.  We are part of God and He needs us to be Himself. NO!! God doesn’t need us. God was unbeginningly complete. Then why did He create us? Because He chose to do so. God doesn’t have to have a reason. He chose to do so. He chose to express Himself in creation. It is like a carpenter who makes a chair. The carpenter has all he needs. He needs to make nothing, but he chooses to make a chair. He chooses to do it for the sheer joy of expressing Himself.  He chooses to make the chair and let that chair prove how great a carpenter He is.

God did not need the world. He was not completed by His creatures. He chose to express Himself in the creation. So I can’t come to God and say, "You need me."  God does not need me. He chose to create the world. He chose to create me. And then, miracle of Grace, He chose to need me, but that is a different thing from needing me. He CHOSE to need me. WOW!! This is Who God is.

When we speak of God the Creator, we come smack-up against His power. He doesn’t HAVE power. He IS POWER. That is an attribute, you know. He is it. God doesn’t have power because if He has it, He got it from somewhere. And if He got it from somewhere, where He got it was God.

He is power. So we call Him the Almighty. He encompasses in Himself all power. As you open the door to Genesis one, you meet Him.  It is magnificent.  Slow, majestic - "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Can’t you feel His ALMIGHTINESS.  And He said, "Let there be light and there was light." If you read it in the Hebrew, it comes across stronger. It says, "God said, ‘Light be. Light was."

Notice there are no intermediaries. The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the world and when he speaks it is done. Well, after a fashion. He can speak in the oval office and someone else gives orders to someone else, and so on, until it is carried out. But when God speaks He gives orders to no one. He speaks and He is the Power in expression. It is done. God did not speak and then set many angels to work for Him to get it done.  No! When He speaks His Word is His power expressed and it is all over. God speaks and it is so.

In ten words and six days God creates all that there is. And then He continues within His creation upholding it with His power. So His power not only begins the world, His power upholds the world. It is His power that is at the center of every atom holding it together. (Doesn’t that remind you of our salvation? He that began a good work in you, shall perform it. See Philippians 1:6)

He is infinitely present in His universe. Infinite means without limit. Quite frankly, I can’t even think infinity. If I can think it, I have destroyed the word, because the moment I have thought what limitlessness is I have thought of it with a limited thought. So I suddenly don't have limitlessness any more. I have a limited concept of it. So I can’t think of infinity. I can’t think of limitlessness. I can only talk about it, and talk around the fact that God is limitlessly present in His universe. 

The nearest I can get to limitlessness is space. God only is limitless and, therefore, He contains space inside Himself. Even space is not limitless. God is. And He is limitlessly present everywhere. I don’t know what you think when you think of that. Many people think that God is sort of situated in heaven, usually on a yellow throne, and He is sort of present everywhere.

I am now present at this computer. I am, and my presence is sort of felt throughout my home. In other words, if you walk in the front door of this apartment, you will sense that I am present. But that doesn’t mean that I fill my home.  If I do, I truly have a weight problem. I don’t fill my home; my presence may, but I don’t.  When we say God is limitlessly present, we mean He fills everywhere. The totality of Who He is fills everywhere. That is something else. Infinite God, infinitely present.

He knows all things, too. Nothing taught Him what He knows. For if someone taught Him, that someone would be God. He IS, you see. We are back to the IS again. It is not what He has. It is Who He IS . He IS infinite knowledge. Put it together this way:

• He knows all things.
• He knows all things that were.
• He knows all things that are.
• He knows all things that will be.
• He knows all things that could have been, but weren’t.
• He knows all things that might be now, but aren’t.
• He knows all things that could be, but won’t be.
• He knows all things instantly.
• He knows all things effortlessly, without anyone ever teaching Him.
• He has always known all things.

I can’t grasp all this concerning His omniscience regarding me, let alone regarding you. And then multiply that by the billions who fill the human race, multiply that by the whole spirit world (which we know very little about), multiply that with the whole material universe - WOW!!!  Let me say again, God knows all things. He knows all things about me multiplied by the entire human race. He knows every person as if that person were the only person, everything that person did, everything he does, everything he will do, everything he might have been, could be, might be. HE KNOWS IT ALL.

No wonder David said, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me."  One more time, I can’t grasp it. I can ponder it. I can study it, but I can’t fully comprehend it.

I’m not the man I was. I’m a bit lighter, but I’m not the man I was. In my character, I’m not the man I was. Every experience has changed me, molded me. See me again in a year and I won’t be what I am today.  In fact, I don’t know anything that is what it was. If you really want to think about it, we are not even what we were this morning. We are in constant change.  Some of us are better than we were.  Some of us are worse, but we are all in a state of flux and change.

One more time, I can’t think of  someone Who says, "I AM." Instead I am waiting for them to say what they were, or are, or will be.  But just "I AM" takes me outside of every dimension I know. I stand on the thin line of time. From that line of time, everything must be a "was," an "is," or a "will be."  It is even difficult to catch the present moment because as I write "present moment" it suddenly becomes the past moment.  You can’t grasp it. We are always moving. We are always changing.

When Jesus spoke in the eighth chapter of John of his pre-existence, He said, "Before Abraham was, I AM." Did you get that? Before Abraham was "I AM." You see, He places Abraham on the ‘timeline.’ On the timeline Abraham is a "was." If Jesus had said, "Before Abraham was, I was," He would have simply put Himself before Abraham on the timeline. But He said, "Before Abraham was, I AM." He said, "Before Abraham was, I’m in the present tense." Can we really grasp this? God unchanging. God always the same? Everything He was, He is and always will be.

He rules completely. There is no part of His universe that He does not rule completely. He is present and is sovereign even to the Devil. That is why I can’t subscribe to much that is said about the Devil these days.  In some churches he is presented as a god equal to God, only a dark one. Not at all!!!  That is heathenism. That is not in the Bible. The Scriptures tell us God is God, Sovereign, and not a spirit moves in this universe without His permission. God is Sovereign.

He is pre-eminently GOOD. He IS Goodness. Here we go again. He doesn’t have it. HE IS IT.  A Goodness that is manifested just in the fact that He is "friendly," that He has anything to do with us. Can you imagine, why some say piously, "God loves me" but they have enormous problems saying, "God LIKES me." "GOD IS LOVE" sounds religious, but God is FRIENDSHIP?  I back off from that. That gets too close and too personal.

The reason I bring this up, is He is good to animals and birds: to His whole creation.  Have you ever considered how He looks after it all?  Have you ever thought how He put branches in trees for birds to perch on them?  To Job He says, "I look after lions, you know. I make sure they get their food. When the baby ravens cry, guess Who feeds them? I do. I’m the one that cares for all creation."

When it comes to us humans, it is not only that beneficent care He bestows on all creatures, but that He loves us. He is grace and mercy which means that He deals with us, not according to our deserts, but according to Who He is. That’s a relief. If God loves me because I am nice, I’ve had it. OR if God loves me because I am a pitiful object, it might be that I will stop being pitiful and He will lose His motivation.

God doesn’t love me because of who I am. He loves me because of Who He is. That means the love of God is unchangeable. That’s Who God is.

God is just and in that sense He is wrath. He is angry with a beautiful anger, a beautiful justice. He is the final absolute. Any justice or sense of justice on earth has meaning because God is ultimate justice.

Can you stand back from all of this we have only touched on and just feel it in your spirit? Feel it in your inner being ... THAT GOD IS THE HOLY ONE - THE ALMIGHTY - THE ALL PRESENT, ALL KNOWING ONE - THE UNCHANGING - THE SOVEREIGN ONE - THE GOOD ONE - THE JUST GOD.

That is just a little of what Paul meant when he said, "He Who was in the FORM of God." He Who was the fullness of the attributes of God. It says He enjoyed them. He didn’t have to GRASP after them. It was not something that He clutched at and said, "It’s mine."  It was Him.

As a president of something, I have to hold on to that position . It is not me, it is a position that I have, but it is not me.  Here Paul is saying that Jesus didn’t have to hang on to being the Almighty because HE WAS THE ALMIGHTY.

He doesn’t need anyone. He is the fullness of these attributes that make God God. Paul says, "He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasp but emptied Himself." He looked upon our condition. He, Who was fullness in Himself, looked upon us, the rebels of His universe.

We so often take that lightly. "God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son ...." Have you ever turned that around? Have you thought of what it might have said? What if it had said, "God so loved His Son that He gave Him the world?" We would be in bad shape if that is how it was.

"God so loved the WORLD" that He gave His Son. I begin to shake my head in wonder. The Father and the Son, co-equal (Paul just said the Son has all the attributes of the Father) and He doesn’t have to grasp at equality with the Father God; He is God. But He doesn’t cling to His Otherness and let the world be.

He empties Himself. I want you to notice what that means. "EMPTIED HIMSELF TAKING THE FORM OF A SERVANT." To empty Himself does not mean getting rid of all the attributes. Remember, the attributes of God are Who God is. That’s what makes God God. If He had gotten rid of those, He wouldn’t have been God anymore.

What happens here is something else. To empty Himself was taking the form of a bondservant. He emptied Himself by "taking." How can you empty yourself by taking? Surely you empty yourself by giving. This One emptied Himself by taking. What did He take? The FORM of a bondservant. God? This God taking the form of a bondservant? Yes. He didn’t empty Himself of His attributes, He emptied Himself of self and took the form of a bondslave.

The word "FORM" here means the same thing it did in the previous verse. He took on all that which goes to make a bondslave what a bondslave really is. Paul is saying that He didn’t just "look" like a bondslave. He wasn’t pretending in the ultimate charade. No. He took the "FORM" of a bondservant, everything that makes a bondslave a bondslave, He became one.

He never laid aside His deity. He rather took to Himself our humanity. The limitless God entered into the experience of the limited. You might think that if He did, He stopped being limitless. No. If He is limitless, He can even enter into being limited. If He couldn’t, He wasn’t truly limitless. Think about that for a week.

Of course, God can be limited and not cease to be God. He took on Him the form of a bondslave. He entered into our humanity for REAL. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know. There are some things that if we knew them, we would be God. Only God in His omniscience could ever know how that could be. And only His Almightiness could do it.

As the angel said to Mary, by that which shall come upon her: the very hand of God, she would bring forth a Son. The Son of the Most High would be born in her womb. And when He was, it was so perfect that He Who was God and had freely, deliberately chosen to so enter our humanity, did it so perfectly that when He did it, He didn’t know it was done. Can you catch that?

He is for REAL. That Baby is for real. Did you know when you were born? No. I didn’t know I was here for some time. When that Babe was born into the womb of the Virgin Mary, He was so real that He didn’t know He was there. His face would have looked like Mary’s, for He bore the family image. He was not a visitor to her womb. He was born of her humanity, a humanity that goes back all the way to Adam (see Luke and Matthew’s genealogy). The genealogies are in the Bible to show you He is One descended from our human race. He partook of her humanity which was the humanity of the whole human race.

He was born into the race of Adam and they called Him Jesus, the most common name of that day. It was like Smith, Jones, Brown or Tom, Dick or Harry. Many were called Jesus at that time (like it is in Mexico today).  Jesus means "Salvation is of the Lord" or "The Lord Our Salvation." Since everyone was looking for God’s salvation, they called their children by that name.

God took to Himself our humanity, God wore coveralls and they called him "Jesus." Jesus is the name of His humiliation. When God entered into the state of our humility, they called Him Jesus. That is why when you read the Gospels you read that the demons called Him Jesus. His enemies chided, "Jesus of Nazareth." It was the name they called Him. Disciples, demons, enemies, friends, publicans and sinners, the rich and poor, all called Him Jesus. They said that He was Jesus "of Nazareth" to distinguish Him from so many others with that name.

He was a real man, tempted in every way as we, yet without sin, but He looked like a man. None of that halo or light shining from His head like you see in religious art. That is from pagan Babylon.  The halo is 5,000 years old and it is pagan. Nobody has lights coming out of their head in Christianity.

When someone met Jesus, He looked every bit like a carpenter from Galilee. I understand how people around Him had a problem, when He said things like He was God in the flesh among them. Suppose you had been raised with Him. You went to school with Him. Then He took over His dad’s business. Everybody knew Him.  He fixed your door last week. He made the gate at the end of the garden. You saw Him chopping the tree and making the lumber for building the shed. Imagine hearing Him claiming to be the Son of God. You would try to explain what He said to your neighbor and you would say, "You know, Jesus. His mother is Mary up on 3rd and Main. He has a carpenter shop on 2nd Avenue. He thinks He is God."

He was real. You could touch Him. He was real flesh. He was real US. He was GOD. I can understand why they had a problem with Him.

So, Paul said He took the form of a bondslave. If we had time we could go to Isaiah and see his description of Jesus as the Perfect Servant. Read Isaiah chapters 14 thru 54. You will see picture after picture of this ideal servant of God. Jesus is called the Bondslave: the Perfect Servant.

By identifying Him as the Servant spoken of in Isaiah, they knew Who He was. The Hebrews called that servant of Isaiah the ‘Messiah’ and the Greek for the Hebrew Messiah is CHRIST. So when you say, "The Christ" you mean "The Messiah." It was the title of the One Who would fulfill every prophesy of the Old Testament.

Disciples called Him the Christ. Demons called Him the Christ. It was the title that He bore, this Jesus, God in coveralls among us. Jesus = His name. Christ = His title. Paul said, "He humbled Himself." I can’t imagine it. Some have tried. They speak of a person loving ants and becoming an ant to save the ants. NO. That would just be a creature becoming a lesser creature. I didn’t make the ant. I am a creature, too.

What we are saying is that the Creator entered into the full experience of His creatures. He Who is the fullness of attributes of our God took upon Him the fullness of the attributes of man and a bondslave. Now that is illustrationless. That jump is too big. Creator to creature is beyond illustration.

He humbled Himself to death. The self existent One, with life in Himself, on the cross embraced death.  Can you see how difficult it was for the Gospel writers to describe the struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane?  He was so overcome by sorrow that He said it was going to kill Him. He nearly died in the garden because He Who is Life was approaching death. Perfect Man took to Himself the sin of the human race.

He was to bear the wrath of God as if He were every elect sinner. He would experience the fullness of that wrath so that the justice of God against our sin would be fully satisfied. When He considered that in the garden, He said "the sorrow, the horror, the despair, the distress of considering it, is about to kill me in this garden."  The real battle of the cross was fought there when this One, a REAL man, freely chose to take to Himself our sin. When He came out of that garden, His blood already began to be shed, the agony of that choice shed blood from the pores of His skin, He was the Man in control. He had chosen to take our place.

They came running after Him to take Him. He asked who they were looking for and you remember what He said. "I AM." Remember how it says they fell backward? What power!! Jesus let them get up again. No man arrested Jesus. He gave Himself into their hands.

He stood before the High Priest. An official earthly justice placed the Son of God into the hands of the official of sacrifices and offerings.  At the hands of these two He was put upon a cross.  Paul emphasizes that by saying, "... even the death of the cross."  Feel that. The cross was where they executed the worst criminals. The Romans abhorred it. They would never put a Roman citizen on the cross. That was reserved for their worst enemies. The Jews said anyone on a cross was the accursed of God. He died - even the death of the cross.

In His final breath, louder than a dying man could cry, He said, "It is finished." God has done it in that Person, that Person Who IS God, and yet Who took to Himself our humanity and then became our sin. God has finished the putting away of our sin. He said, "It is finished." "I did it." And the Father said, "AMEN!" BY RAISING HIM FROM THE DEAD. Jesus would have never been resurrected unless He had indeed finished the work He came to do.

In the upper room, He was man and yet He had entered into the full consciousness that He is God. Then He ascended into heaven. He had finished the work. So it says, "Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every name. That at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that He is LORD."

The name that Jesus received at His ascension is not the name "Jesus."  The bumper stickers are wrong that say every knee shall bow at the name of Jesus, as if Jesus is the Name. No. It is saying their knees shall bow and their tongues shall confess His NEW Name, the NEW NAME LORD. That is the new Name.

Devils called Him Jesus. His enemies called Him Jesus. Everybody knew He claimed to be Christ. Jesus Christ has even become a curse word. Jesus Christ is the name and title of His humiliation. Anyone can call Him that.

1 Corinthians 12 says, "I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit." You can mouth the words but you don’t know what you are talking about unless the Holy Spirit has opened your eyes.

What does it mean that He is Lord? It means that God Himself entered our flesh and took our sin and paid for it so that there is not a thing left for us to pay. And He also ascended and has received on our behalf the gift of the Holy Spirit.

In that He was called by a new name - LORD. Lord? That doesn’t sound like a name. Ah, yes. In the Old Testament LORD was the way they wrote the sacred name of God - YAHWEH or "I AM WHO I AM." He Who was LORD said, "I do not clutch at that or grasp it. I’ll go." And in going He is humiliated as a man and as a man is humiliated by men. And now He ascends and there is given to Him that which was always His, but now He receives it as He has never had it before. For He Who was God and took our humanity into the heavens, is still there - glorified human but He has received His name "LORD."

When you say, "Jesus Christ is LORD" you are saying all of that. You are saying He is God. He’s always been God, but He is God Who became my Savior. He is God Who now gives to me the Holy Spirit having wiped out my sin. He is LORD!

Romans 10 tells us, "... if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." None of this stuff that you get saved and twenty years later you confess Him as Lord. You don’t get saved until you have confessed Him as Lord. For until you confess Him as Lord, you haven’t seen what He did.

When I confess He is LORD, I take in everything He did and only the Holy Spirit can open my eyes to that.

Now we Christians say, "Jesus Christ is Lord."  That is, everything we ever knew of God, everything God has ever revealed of Himself is now focused in that Person of Jesus Christ - He is LORD!  Suddenly God in His goodness is no longer a word - HE IS A PERSON.

The first man, Adam (creature), clutched at being God. That is what he wanted and he crumbled to ruin. The last Adam was God, but HE didn’t clutch at it.  In fact, He became as nothing for us and our salvation.  Now that One has been raised and is declared "THE LORD." That is His Name.

In these verses, Paul says, "Philippians, behold your God." You want to be #1.  See all your envy and clutching at being the top one. He said, "Look Who you worship. Look Who God is. For He Who was in the form of God, came all the way to death, even the death of the cross. Then God did the exalting. Philippians, this One, in that He is LORD, has given the Holy Spirit and is therefore your life. This One is your life. Therefore, let this mind be in you that was also in Him.

He is your life. Let Him be your life, because  
TO LIVE IS CHRIST
and
Jesus Christ is LORD !

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