Deeper Waters

Welcome back everyone to the Deeper Waters blog where we are continuing our look at the doctrine of the Trinity. Tonight, we are still continuing our walk through Philippians 2 and right now, we are in the great hymn in chapter 2. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at verse 9 of this chapter.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,

This passage all throughout has been talking about Jesus. Now we have heard about the obedience of Jesus to God. From this point on in the second half of the hymn, we are going to see how God responded to the obedience of the Son.

We are told that God exalted the Son to the highest place. At this, we are caught in a paradox. Did not the Son have the highest place to begin with? However, we must quickly remind ourselves that that which was his by right he did not cling to and use as an excuse to not go forth with his mission.

This again doesn’t mean that the Son forsook his deity. He was always deity. He never used his deity however as an excuse to not come and save the world. I would say that he forsook the divine prerogative use of his deity. He performed supernatural acts as we would call them only when it was necessary for the fulfillment of his mission.

As he submitted, so he remained in submission not receiving that highest place again until the Father bequeathed it upon him. The Father was pleased to do so due to the obedience of the Son. God honored him for completing the task that needed to be done.

He was also given the name that is above every name. Now we can have a hard time understanding that in our 21st century American worldview. We live in a world where names are chosen out of baby books quickly and just with whatever sounds good usually or maybe a family name. In the ancient world, names were taken far more seriously.

Your name was wrapped up in your identity. It told the story of who you were. This is also why only God, or one who saw himself as deity, could change names in the Bible. Let us not forget that this is what Jesus did with Peter which means Jesus was making a claim even in changing Peter’s name.

What is the name that is above all names? It is the name of YHWH. No one could truly be given that name if they did not have it beforehand as no one else could be said to be eternally existing or to begin to eternally exist. The Son is given that name however in light of what he has done on the cross. Instead of a curse, God reveals his identity by the name that he is given. If Jesus truly does have the name that is above all names, as the text clearly says, then he cannot be anything less than God.

Tomorrow, we shall go to the next verse.

Welcome back everyone to the Deeper Waters blog. Tonight, we are continuing what has been titled a Trinitarian commentary on the New Testament. We are in the epistle to the Philippians at the moment and in the beautiful hymn in Chapter 2. Tonight, we are going to examine verse 8 of that passage:

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

Being found in appearance of a man points us back to the verse from yesterday. We said this is not denying that Jesus was fully human but rather indicated that to the people in the time period he lived, he seemed like an ordinary human. My Smallville obsession at this point is thinking that Clark Kent would be a good example of this as to the average onlooker, he would be just a man. To anyone else however who knows him, he is not just a man but is rather a superhero with the appearance of a man. (I will admit I do have a concern with the analogy as I sometimes debate back and forth if Clark Kent is truly human or not.)

There are different views on what this means. Some people think it refers to the Son of Man passage in Daniel 7. That just doesn’t strike me as plausible since Jesus certainly didn’t have the appearance of the Son of Man when he walked this Earth. Others however believe that it could refer to being like Adam, which to me makes much more sense as Jesus is the second Adam.

An interesting idea has been put forward that the idea of being obedient to death admits of the deity of this being. For other creatures that have a material component, death is not a choice. It is a necessity eventually. However, Jesus is described as one who was obedient to death.

Jesus could have avoided death at any time, but instead, he willingly underwent it. That was how far he was able to go in his obedience to the Father. His obedience was such a level where he did whatever the Father desired of him. Keep in mind that Jesus did ask if the cup could pass through him in the garden. If there was any other way, Jesus would have desired it, but he took the way that the Father had made.

It wasn’t just any death either. It was death on a cross. If you were a good Jew, death on a cross meant that you were being cut off from the covenant of God, which is what every Jew would have realized when Jesus was crucified. Since he died that kind of death, then there was no way that he could be the Messiah.

Yet Jesus was the Messiah and he went all the way to show it. As we will continue this passage, we will see how the Father responds, but the point is still relevant to Paul’s main reason for bringing this up. This is the kind of love Christians are to have for one another. Are we that obedient to God to love in such a way?

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are continuing our Trinitarian Bible Study. Right now, we’re in the book of Philippians and in the second chapter looking at the great hymn. I think JB for his comment based on last night’s post. I hadn’t heard that and I find it extremely interesting. Keep in mind based on that that this blog is not to be an end-all to study. I encourage anyone to look further and see what more can be said.

Having said that, we’re going to be looking at verse 7 tonight:

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

This in fact fits in with the comment that our good friend JB made. Jesus definitely had the position of a great emperor and still does. However, he was willing to come and lower himself. We see this all throughout the epistles. We heard it in 2 Cor. 8-9 when Christ was presented as our example of one who was rich but for our sakes became poor.

The passage tells us that Christ made himself nothing which is the highest example of self-sacrifice. Christ took upon himself that which he did not have to have to save those who he did not need and undergo a pain that he need not have to have undergone as the most innocent one of all. However, he saw fit to come and give himself for his people. Rather than the people dying for the cause of the emperor, Christ was the first to die for his people. Many have died for him since, but only by following his example.

We also find that he took the very nature of a servant. The word is the same word that’s used in verse 6. In other words, if Jesus really wasn’t God in nature, then he really wasn’t a servant in nature either. We see at the start however that he is fully God and now we see that he is fully a servant. He is the God-man. He is 100% God and 100% man.

We cannot lose sight of this great contrast in the passage. Paul is talking about Jesus dwelling in Heaven as God and then saying that he came to Earth and lived as a servant. He didn’t come down as an emperor or ruler or some glorified figure. Instead, he came down as a servant. He came from the highest of all to dwell in the lowest of all.

Human likeness. Does that mean that he was not a human? No. He was fully human. It means that by his appearance, everyone would have assumed that he was just a man. The truth is however that he was more than a man. He was the God-man again.

What do we learn from this? We ought to learn humility as well. We should be willing to give up what we have to bring about the good of others. If we are not, then we are not living as Christ did. The great emphasis to do so is that we are merely walking in the footsteps of Christ.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to our Trinitarian commentary here at Deeper Waters. We are right now in the epistle to the Philippians and looking at the great hymn in chapter 2. It is often called the kenotic passage, although by this, I do not mean that I believe in what is known as the kenotic heresy, the idea that Jesus forsook his deity while he was on Earth. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at 2:6b. Let’s go to the text.

Did not consider equality with God something to be grasped.

Keep in mind in all of this that our passage has been focusing on the nature of Christ and how he is to be our example. We are to esteem others as better than ourselves and the basis for doing such is to look at what Christ did. He was one who came for the suffering of others. Note that he is not saying we are better than he is in doing so. We certainly are not. Instead, he is seeking our greater good. He is taking upon himself the evil in the world selflessly so that we might be saved.

What does this passage tell us about the nature of Jesus? It tells us first off that he had equality with God. Again, we see an implicit understanding that God refers to God the Father. There was already room for a Trinitarian idea even if that hadn’t been fully conceptualized yet at this point. The Jewish system of the day was open to the possibility of the divine nature of God including more than one person. This is something anyone should be open to as well. It is a strange idea that we assume that when we come to God, he must be one person. He can do anything at all that is not a contradiction, but yet, he cannot be more than one person. Now in saying that, I do not mean to say that he chooses to exist in three persons. He has always existed in three persons by necessity of his nature.

When Jesus is seen in relation to the Father, he is seen as an equal in his nature. We know this for certain because of the usage of the word form in the prior passage. It means that Jesus was in his very nature God. Yet we are also told that he did not consider that equality as something to be grasped. What does this mean?

The grasping means more of a clinging. This means that Jesus was not holding on to his deity as an excuse to avoid the incarnation and not come to bring about the salvation of man. He did not see being deity as a reason to not come to Earth and bring about the salvation of man. Instead, he took upon a position that would be lowering. This is a concept that we will explore further as we go through this beautiful passage.

It does not mean he gave up his deity. That would imply he was not God on Earth, which the texts as we have seen show he was. Theologians debate exactly what it was that Jesus forsook, because he did forsake something. I would argue that Jesus forsook a sort of divine prerogative. He came and in many ways played by the rules unless his very mission necessitated that he act in a different manner. Of course, this is a point that we can debate, but we must not say that Jesus forsook deity or ever lacked deity.

Tomorrow, we shall look at verse 7.

Hello everyone! Welcome to Deeper Waters again! I am really looking forward to this next part of our Trinitarian blog. We are going to be going through the Philippian hymn in chapter 2 of that book and this is such a powerful place to go to demonstrate the deity of Christ. I was so excited that for one brief post I skipped over Ephesians to get to this one. Well we’ve taken care of that now. Tonight, we’re going to start in Philippians 2:6, but we’re not even going to read the whole verse. Instead, we’re going to read just the first part of that verse.

⁶Who, being in very nature God

I was actually on a chat program once where someone made the remark that Jesus could not be God because if you are equal to something, you cannot be that thing. He referred to that as simple logic.

Bluntly, I call that simple stupidity.

Paul here is also telling the Philippian church about unity. Now disunity was not a major problem in the church, although we do see signs of it in Philippians 4 where one member is urged to help two others to get along. Philippians by and large is a church that Paul highly commends and is very pleased with.

It will also be helpful for our purposes through this study to keep in mind that Philippians is one that the scholars will grant you is Pauline. This passage in the middle is believed to be an early Christian hymn. It could have been written by Paul himself for all we know. However, it was a hymn and it indicates a high Christology at an early point in church history.

Let’s look at this however. It’s not a shock that the early church was called to follow the example of Christ. This was in the context of esteeming others as better than yourselves. Notice this. Christ did seek the good of those who were less than him. How do we know this?

The passage tells us that he was in the very nature of God. The word is morphe and it refers to the form of something, the nature of it. What he is telling us is that the nature of God was that which was found in the nature of Christ.

As we go through this passage, we’ll deal with the kenotic idea that Jesus forsook his deity, a belief that no Trinitarian can hold. However, let us look at the very beginning of this passage for now. Paul states that Jesus existed in the very nature of God.

Is there an argument for this? No. What does that tell you? It tells you that this was something that was well-established and self-evident to the early church. It would be like thinking you had to explain to a Muslim that Muhammad was a prophet. (It is not a position I hold of course.) They already believe that by virtue of being a Muslim.

When Paul wrote to this church, he appealed to what they already knew. They already knew that Jesus was fully God which means that we can place this in the line of the early Christian teachings. What does this reveal to us then? From the very beginning, the message had been that Jesus is God. This was not a later development in the church. This is fact that has been going from that time on.

Tomorrow, we shall continue this wonderful passage.

Hello everyone. Welcome to Deeper Waters again. We’re in the middle of what’s been called our Trinity commentary. What we’re doing is going through the Bible and studying many texts relevant to the Trinity. Naturally, this isn’t exhaustive. I would recommend going to your local library or bookstore or Amazon for more books on the topic if you’re interested. We’re in the Pauline epistles now and in Ephesians 5. We’re looking at verse 14 tonight, but we’re going to start at verse 8.

⁸For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light ⁹(for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) ¹⁰and find out what pleases the Lord. ¹¹Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹²For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. ¹³But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Paul is talking again about righteous living. Much of the last half of Ephesians is applicational while the last half is doctrinal. On a side note, I believe our sermons should be the same way in church services. I believe we should start with the doctrine and basis for our beliefs and then move on to the application.

The contrast is between light and darkness, which was a common motif. It’s one we find in the gospels often, particularly you may recall from the prologue of John. It was a point the evangelist made in John 3. The light is equated with what is good and righteous, which is fitting since God is described as light in the Old Testament.

But what of this last part? Paul is quoting something here for he says that there is a saying that is said. It does not correspond to anything in the Old Testament explicitly so most likely, we are dealing with an early Christian hymn here and one made to Christ! Is there any evidence that this took place?

Yes!

Here is how Pliny the Younger described it in a letter to the emperor:

They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so.

Hymnology was an important part of Christian worship and they did sing hymns to Christ. Of course, Pliny describes this in the language of his pagan worldview, but the point is still the same. Note also the parts of the hymn. We will wake. We will rise. The light of Christ will shine. The waking refers to turning from sin. The resurrection refers not to physical resurrection in this case but spiritual, coming from the deadness of sin, which indicates that this could have been a baptismal hymn, and the light shining refers to the righteousness of Christ.

So what do we have? We have a hymn to Christ where he is seen as the reason Christians turn from sin. Their resurrection is based on a ritual that depicts his death and resurrection in identifying with him, and his light is said to shine on them.

Do we have language of deity for Christ? It’d be difficult to call it anything else.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another Deeper Waters blog. As you should know by now if you’ve been reading regularly, we’ve been going through the doctrine of the Trinity. We’re in the Pauline epistles now and we’re in the book of Ephesians. We’ve spent much of the time covering the deity of Christ, but all good Trinitarians know that you need the deity of the Holy Spirit as well. For that, we have the 30th verse of the fourth chapter of the book. Let’s take a look at it now.

³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

I’m well familiar with this phrase. We had a preacher at our church preach three sermons on this verse and we kept hearing the phrase about grieving the Holy Spirit of God. He’s a great guy and a good preacher, but after that time, I thought I’d scream if I heard that phrase again.

Well I guess I’ll have to scream at myself now.

Paul is talking about righteous living and self-control. All of these are aspects of the Christian life in which we are to live as members of the body building one another up to holiness so that all can attain to the fullness of Christ.

When we do sin however, it grieves the Holy Spirit of God who sealed us. Why? He is grieved because he is doing his part to present us before the Father and here in response to the work that he has done on our behalf, we are returning to our old sinful ways. In essence, we are saying we do not want to be a part of that body. We do not want to live like redeemed people.

Now I don’t comment on secondary issues, but I will say that I do not believe anyone is saying that one sin means that the Holy Spirit goes away and lets you be on your own. No one think in saying this that I’m saying that if you commit one sin, then the Holy Spirit will remove himself from you.

Notice that we grieve the Holy Spirit. The point is that you do not grieve a force, as the Witnesses teach the Holy Spirit is. You grieve a person. The Holy Spirit has emotions in a divine sense. I say in a divine sense due to my view on the impassibility of God and that he does not experience emotions the way we do.

It is also our sin that does this and this is done for every Christian. Every Christian is warned that their sin grieves the Spirit of God. This isn’t an isolated and individual case and we have no reason to believe that Paul could only say this to the Ephesian church and no other church. Every Christian around the world can grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

We Christians today are in the same position and we should see our sin so seriously. We take it as a light matter when it really grieves the heart of God that in all that he did to deliever us from the bondage to that sin, we so often are the proverbial dogs that return to our vomit.

Today and into the future Christian, remember that a recognition of who God is also implies a recognition of the holiness he values. Don’t grieve the Spirit.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are continuing our study in the doctrine of the Trinity. I’ve been pleased to hear a lot of you are appreciating this and seeing it as practically a commentary. If anyone does get to use an argument like this with success against a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon or Arian of another brand, then please contact me here and let me know! I’d love to hear about it! Tonight however, we’re going to continue our study in the book of Ephesians. We’re in chapter 4 still and we’re going to be looking at verses 7-13:

⁷But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. ⁸This is why it says:
“When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men.” ⁹(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? ¹⁰He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) ¹¹It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, ¹²to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Notice at the start who is apportioning the grace. It is Christ. Right at the beginning of this part we have a high Christology in that grace, the forgiveness that was seen coming from YHWH, is seen to come through Christ.

Paul quotes the Psalm to speak of Christ’s victory over evil and how he came and conquered the forces of darkness and set free the children of God. There is much debate about what all is going on in this passage. My take on it is that he descended into death and then ascended bodily back into Heaven.

Notice how high he ascends however. Christ ascends so much so that he fills the universe! Paul is giving omnipresence to Christ. What does that tell us about Paul’s Christology? Plenty. It lets us know that Paul was including Jesus within the divine identity by giving him attributes only applicable to YHWH.

The purpose of all of this was to equip the saints for service. He has given them the ability to go forth and to do his work. The goal has been to build up his body, the church. What a view of Christ we have here! He is ascended on high filling the universe and we are the ones behind doing his work as his body. We are reminded of how Acts 1 talks of all Jesus began to do and teach among the people when Jesus left in that same chapter. We are the continuation.

What is the goal? We all reach fullness in the Son of God. We are to become like Christ. It is to be understood that we are not to be ontologically like Christ. We are to be like him in moral nature but we will never partake of the divine essence.

But isn’t that enough good news? Because Christ is who he is, we will be who we were meant to be someday.