The Long Way Down

Paul is settling a quarrel in a small church — people jostling for position, "rivalry" and "conceit" fraying the fellowship (Philippians 2:3) — and to heal it he does not scold. He sings. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5), he writes, and then breaks into one of the oldest hymns of the church, tracing a single staircase that runs all the way down and then all the way up.

Watch the descent. The one who "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" (Philippians 2:6-7). He emptied himself not of his deity — he could not cease to be God — but of his rights, his privileges, the open display of his glory, taking the form of a slave. Then lower: "being born in the likeness of men" (Philippians 2:7). Then lower still: "he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death" (Philippians 2:8). And then the bottom rung, named so it cannot be softened: "even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8) — a slave's execution, the accursed tree (Galatians 3:13). Step by step the Lord of glory goes down to the one place we could never climb out of.

Our native motion is the opposite. We climb, we grasp, we guard our standing, we keep the ledger of who owes us honor. And Paul's cure for that restlessness is not "try harder to be humble," as though we could manufacture a lowly heart by effort. It is "have this mind" — receive the mind that is already ours in union with Christ, letting his self-forgetful love loosen our white-knuckled grip on ourselves.[^1] Humility grows not by staring harder at ourselves but by being caught up in Someone worthier. It is not a demand that we feel small; it is release from the exhausting labor of keeping ourselves large, a burden we were never strong enough to carry anyway.

Then the hymn turns on a single word: "Therefore" (Philippians 2:9). "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name" (Philippians 2:9). The way up ran straight through the way down; the name of Lord is given to the one who first took the name of servant. And the honor now laid on Jesus is God's own honor — for when Paul writes that "every knee should bow" and "every tongue confess" (Philippians 2:10-11), he is quoting Isaiah, where the LORD swears that to him alone every knee shall bow (Isaiah 45:23). The servant is the Lord; the crucified is enthroned.

So we do not climb toward God, hand over hand, hoping to arrive. He came down to us — all the way to a cross — and rises lifting us with him. Our security is not a rung we have gripped but a Savior who has gripped us, and who will not let the fellowship of the lowly be shamed. And because he was exalted after going down, the way of descent is no longer a dead end for us either; the path he walked to a throne is the path he now walks us along.

[^1]: Timothy Keller, "Imitating the Incarnation" (sermon), [Gospel in Life](https://gospelinlife.com/?s=Imitating%20the%20Incarnation): the passage gives us not merely an example to copy but a mind to receive in Christ.