Consider Him (1)

by J. Miller | Category: Voices From The Past - Extracted From Jottings | May 1981

There is no subject of such entrancing interest to the child of God as the consideration of the Person of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no truth which we should be able more valiantly to defend than that which touches the blessed Person of Him who is both divine and human. That He was divine in the fullest sense, being very God, the Scriptures abundantly show. And that He became Man in the fullest sense (yet without sin, and we know that man was man before he became sinful) by His birth in Bethlehem there cannot be the least shadow of doubt for any who believe the words of Scripture as they are written.

The Spirit of God, through Paul in writing to the Philippians, shows the exalted state in which the Lord Jesus was before His incarnation. The words as we have them in Philippians 2:6 are these: "Who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God". The word "being" we see in the marginal reading of the Revised Version is rendered "being originally", which truly expresses the meaning here. The word is huparcho, to be, or, to be originally; not the word ginomal, to become. The latter word is used in verse 7 "being made in (RV. margin, "becoming in") the likeness of men", and again in verse 8, "becoming obedient even unto death".

The word morphe, form (the form of God), has been rendered thus by a Greek scholar: "morphe is the form as indicative of the interior nature". This shows that the Lord was both in form and nature, in His essential Being, truly God in the fullest sense. The same word, morphe, is used again in verse 7, this time in association with the Lord's human nature; "but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant", or, "the form of a slave". Thus we see that, from being essentially and truly God, He became Man, and His human form indicated the interior human nature of One who had voluntarily become a slave.

What a stoop! The form of God, the form of a slave! How clearly the Spirit of God draws the contrast, that we may not misunderstand either the Being of that blessed One called Jesus of Nazareth, or the proper compass of our own being, which is indicated to us in our form, that we are meant to be slaves, that bond-servants carrying out the will of a Master! We are not to be slaves to our own vile passions, but slaves through grace in that happiest and highest of services, the doing of the will of God.

J. Miller | May 1981
Voices From The Past - Extracted From Jottings