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A True Hero
Philippians 2:3-8
In the United States, we have a kind of specific idea about what constitutes a hero. Who might we look to for as like a great example of an American hero, somebody like Abraham Lincoln, right? Abraham Lincoln starts at the bottom. He’s born in a log cabin. But through sheer grit and determination, he becomes president of the United States. And, of course, then the union collapses around him. He fights his way through the Civil war, comes out on the other side. The slaves are freed. The Union is preserved. That is the story of an American hero. Somebody who starts at the bottom and crawls their way up to the top.
It’s inspiring. We like that sort of story. What is a Christian hero, though? The Christian hero kind of goes the opposite direction. Let’s take a look at these verses in Philippians.
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:3-8)
These verses are describing Jesus in his state of humiliation. That is, a man who started at the top, right? He started off not even a man. The second person of the Trinity, God himself. And he becomes confined in a human being’s womb and is born of a human being. Even just the process of being born is suffering. He spends his whole life crawling down, becoming a servant, even to the people who are supposed to be serving him. He started on top and through sheer grit, determination and love for us, spent his whole life crawling downward.
We imitate Jesus Christ in His state of humiliation. It’s a challenging teaching of Scripture and we try to insulate ourselves from it. In fact, I hear Christians try to find ways to get out of this particular kind of obedience. You’ll hear things like, won’t people take advantage of me if I do this?
Yep. Yes. People are definitely going to take advantage of you.
Won’t that be really, really hard? Won’t that be painful? Yes, yes, that will be hard. That will be painful.
Well, what about me? When do I take care of myself? Who’s supposed to take care of me? Nope. That’s, that’s not your concern. God gave you the concern of looking after other people. He’ll send other people to look out for you. Your job is to think about other people as better than yourself. Put other people first.
This particular teaching of Scripture shatters any illusions of self-righteousness that we might have. This is not the way that we live. As soon as we start thinking about the life that we’re supposed to be living, it leads us really quickly into despair. And it leaves us with very few recourses except to turn to Jesus. This is the beauty of Theology of the Cross. Me carrying my cross directs me to Jesus on His cross. The devil might be able to torment me and say to me, you don’t deserve heaven. You have failed completely in this regard, and the only thing I have to say to the devil is “you’re right.”
You are right. I have not done what I needed to do. I’m not doing what I need to do now. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t even begin to approach what’s necessary of me for heaven. And yet, clinging to and leaning on my Savior, bracing myself against his cross, I have the assurances of his heaven. It’s the antidote to my self-righteousness to look at and compare what my righteousness is able to achieve, which is literally nothing against what Jesus’ righteousness has accomplished for me. This is how we are ultimately the beneficiaries of the true Christian hero, that he carried our self-righteousness and replaced it with his actual righteousness, that he carried our despair at everything that we deserved and paid the penalty for it, giving us instead the reward that he earned.
