Part 4 (2/2)

”Our glorious Leader claims our praise For His own pattern giv'n; While the long cloud of witnesses Shew the same path to heav'n.”

WATTS.

CHAPTER V

UNITY IN SELF-FORGETFULNESS: THE EXAMPLE OF THE LORD

PHILIPPIANS ii. 1-11

Dissensions incident to activity--Arguments for heart-union--”No plunderer's prize”--”The name”--The tone of the great pa.s.sage--What the ”Kenosis” cannot be--It guarantees the infallibility--Doctrine and life--”Only thou”

In the section which we studied last we found the Apostle coming to the weak point of the Christian life of the Philippians. On the whole, he was full of thankful and happy thoughts about them. Theirs was no lukewarm religion; it abounded in practical benevolence, animated by love to Christ, and it was evidently ready for joyful witness to the Lord, in face of opposition and even of persecution. But there was a tendency towards dissension and internal separation in the Mission Church; a tendency which all through the Epistle betrays its presence by the stress which the Apostle everywhere lays upon holy unity, the unity of love, the unity whose secret lies in the individual's forgetfulness of self.

Such dangers are always present in the Christian Church, for everywhere and always saints are still sinners. And it is a sad but undeniable fact of Christian history that the spirit of difference, dissension, antagonism, within the ranks of the believing, is not least likely to be operative where there is a generally diffused life and vigour in the community. A state of spiritual chill or lukewarmness may even favour a certain exterior tranquillity; for where the energies of conviction are absent there will be little energy for discussion and resistance in matters not merely secular. But where Christian life and thought, and the expression of it, are in power, there, unless the Church is particularly watchful, the enemy has his occasion to put in the seeds of the tares amidst the golden grain. The Gospel itself has animated the disciples' affections, and also their intellects; and if the Gospel is not diligently used as guide as well as stimulus, there will a.s.suredly be collisions.

Almost every great crisis of life and blessing in the Church has shewn examples of this. It was thus in the period of the Reformation, the moment the law of love was forgotten by the powerful minds which were so wonderfully energized as well as liberated by the rediscovery of eternal truths long forgotten. It was thus again in the course of the Evangelical Revival in the last century, when holy men, whose whole natures had been warmed and vivified by a new insight for themselves into the fulness of Christ, were betrayed into discussions on the mysteries of grace carried on in the spirit rather of self than of love. ”We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burthened.” The words are true of the believing individual; they are true also of the believing Church. That which is perfect is not yet come. In the inscrutable but holy progress of the plan of G.o.d in redemption towards its radiant goal, it is permitted that temptation should connect itself with our very blessings, both in the person and in the community. And our one antidote is to watch and pray, looking unto Jesus, and looking away from ourselves.

It was thus in measure at Philippi. And St Paul cannot rest about it.

He plies them with every loving argument for the unity of love, ranging from the plea of attachment to himself up to the supreme plea of ”the mind that was in Christ Jesus” when He came down from heaven. He has begun to address them thus already. And in the wonderful pa.s.sage now before us he is to develope his appeal to the utmost, in the Lord's name.

Ver. 1. +If therefore+, in connexion with this theme of holy oneness of love and life, +there is such a thing as comfort+, encouragement (_paraklesis_), +in Christ+, drawn from our common union with the Lord, if +there is such a thing as love's consolation+, the tender cheer which love can give to a beloved one by meeting his inmost wish, +if there is such a thing as Spirit-sharing+,[1] +if there are such things as hearts+ (_splagchna_, _viscera_) +and compa.s.sions+, feelings of human tenderness and attachment, through which I may appeal to you simply as a friend, and a friend in trouble,

Ver. 2. calling for your pity; +make full my joy+, drop this last ingredient into the cup of my thankful happiness for you, and bring the wine to the brim, +by being[2] of the same mind+ (_phronma_, feeling, att.i.tude of mind), +feeling+ (_echontes_) +the same love+, ”the same” on all sides, soul and soul together (_sympsychoi_) +in a+

Ver. 3. +mind which is unity itself+.[3] +Nothing+ (_muden_, implying of course prohibition) +in the way of+ (_kata_) +personal or party spirit;[4] rather+ (_alla_), +as regards your+ (_tu_) +humblemindedness+, your view of yourselves learnt at the feet of your Saviour, +reckon[5]

each other superior to yourselves+; as a.s.suredly you will do, with a logic true to the soul, when each sees himself, the personality he knows best, in the light of eternal holiness

Ver. 4. and love. +Not to your own+ interests +look+ (_skopountes_), +each circle of you, but each circle[6] to those+

Ver. 5. +of others also. Have this mind+ (_phroneite_) in +you+, this moral att.i.tude in each soul, +which+ was, and is,[7] +also in Christ Jesus+, (in that eternal Messiah whom I name already with His human Name, JESUS; for in the will of His Father, and in the unity of His own Person, it was as it were His Name already

Ver. 6. from everlasting,) +who in G.o.d's manifested Being[8]

subsisting+,[9] _seeming_ divine, because He _was_ divine, in the full sense of Deity, in that eternal world, +reckoned it no plunderer's prize[10] to be on an equality with G.o.d+;[11] no, He viewed His possession of the fulness of the Eternal Nature as securely and inalienably His own, and _so_ He dealt with it for our sakes with a sublime and _restful_ remembrance of others; far from thinking of it as for Himself alone, as one who claimed it unlawfully would have done,

Ver. 7. +He rather (_alla_) made Himself void by His own act+,[12] void of the manifestation and exercise of Deity as it was His on the throne,[13] +taking[14] Bond-servant's+ (_doulou_) +manifested being+ (_morphe_), that is to say, the veritable Human Nature which, as a creaturely nature, is essentially bound to the service of the Creator, the _bond_service of the Father; +coming to be+, becoming, _genomenos_, +in men's similitude+, so truly human as not only to be but _to seem_ Man, accepting all the conditions involved in a truly human _exterior_,

Ver. 8. ”pleased _as Man with men_ to appear.” +And+ then, further, +being found+, as He offered Himself to view, +in respect of guise+ (_scheati_), in respect of outward shape, and habit, and address, +as Man+, He went further, He stooped yet lower, even from Humanity to Death; +He humbled Himself, in becoming obedient+,[15] obedient to Him whose Bondservant He now was as Man, +to the length[16] of death, aye+ (_de_), +death of Cross+, that death of unimaginable pain and of utmost shame, the death which to the Jew was the symbol of the curse of G.o.d upon the victim, and to the Roman was a horror of degradation which should be ”far not only from the bodies but from the imaginations of citizens of Rome.”[17]

So He came, and so He suffered, because ”He

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