The Lord Jesus Christ | Philippians 2:1-11

Since the time of Christ, people across the world have wrestled with who Jesus really was. No serious historian would ever deny that he lived on earth some 2000 years ago. The real issue is a matter of his identity. The twentieth-century Christian thinker, C.S. Lewis put it aptly in his classic, Mere Christianity:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Today many people are willing to acknowledge that Jesus existed, that perhaps he was a spiritual man, a prophet, or great teacher. That sort of Jesus you can ignore. But if Jesus is who Scripture reveals him to be - the Lord himself – then that has immense implications for all of us.

In our passage this morning, Paul bears these implications upon the Philippians. Instead of being consumed with their own sense of self-importance, selfish ambition and arrogance, they are to look to Christ’s humiliation unto death on a cross, and his exaltation as Lord of all. Only response – not indifference to Jesus, but to bow down and worship him!

Preacher: Rev. Antonio Coppola.

For more information about Covenant Waterfall Presbyterian Church, please check out our website: http://covenantwaterfall.co.za or email us: info@covenantwaterfall.co.za. We'd love to hear from you!