When I was a young boy the “Peanuts” comic strip was always my favorite.  I collected most of the Peanuts books that were published during my childhood.  I usually managed to get one or two every year for my birthday and Christmas, and I would pick others up here and there.  Consequently I accumulated 25 or 30 packed away in a box when DJ and I got married.  Now my boys are enjoying them.  Since they are lying around, I figure I might as well read them again.

One of the reasons adults enjoy Peanuts is because the humor is so true to life.  As I was preparing this message one comic was brought to mind:  Charlie Brown was telling Linus how we were supposed to love all mankind.  Linus responded by saying, “I do love mankind--It's people I can’t stand.” 

Have you ever felt like that?  People can be a problem.  People can misunderstand us, they can misinterpret our motives, they can hurt us by accident or on purpose and they can down right sin against us.  People can rob us of the joy we are supposed to have in the Lord.  Sometimes it can get so bad we might wish we could live on a deserted Island and just not have to deal with people anymore.

But did you know that there is a way to be able to live with people, problems and all, and still maintain the joy God wants you to have?  That way is shown to us through the cross.  In fact, it brings us to the fifth and final “Tremendous Result of the Cross.”  We have been doing this series to focus on the cross as we prepare to celebrate the joyous event of the resurrection. 

So far we have looked at 4 results of the cross; today we look at the 5th:

1. God cancelled our debt

2. We were reconciled to God

3. God crucified us to the world

4. God demonstrated the great divide between man’s wisdom and His wisdom

5. God set the limits of our obedience.

Turn with me to the book of Philippians chapter 2.  Philippians is a great little book that has as its main theme: the joy of the Lord.  But the people in the Philippian church were having their joy tested and so Paul wrote them this letter to encourage them.  And the crux of his challenge and encouragement to them comes in chapter 2.  We’ll begin by focusing on verses 5 through 8

Philippians 2:5-8 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

These verses are an illustration, in fact, the supreme illustration of a point the Apostle Paul is trying to make concerning church life--Christians living together with one another.  We will get back to this point Paul is making towards the end of the sermon, but for right now I want to focus on the illustration. 

In this illustration the main theme is the humble obedience of Christ.  And His humble obedience is nowhere more powerfully displayed than at the cross.  But it didn’t begin there it began at the incarnation.  Incarnation is a fancy word that theologians give to the mystery of the infinite God becoming a finite man.  That’s what verses 6 and 7 describe for us. 

Verse 6 starts out by declaring that Jesus existed in the form of God.  The Greeks had two words that are translated as ‘form’ in the English.  One is “schema,” which means the outward form that can change.  The other is ‘morphe,’ which means the essential nature or form that never changes. 

If we were to use both those words about a person we would say that the morphe never changes but the schema changes throughout life.  A child, from the moment he or she is first conceived is human and that form, the morphe, will never change.  No matter what happens, no matter what the child is like they will never stop being human.  But the outward appearance, the schema, changes dramatically throughout the life of that child.  They go from a tiny fertilized egg to squirming newborn to a leaping and running child to a strong and growing teenager to a mature adult and so on. 

The word used in this verse about Jesus is morphe, His essential nature.  Basically Paul is reminding us that Jesus Christ is God, and that even though He was here in the flesh His essential nature, as God never changed.  Jesus became a man but He never stopped being God.  That is the mystery of the incarnation.  Can we fully comprehend it?  Not really.  But the Bible states it as truth and therefore we accept it by faith. 

The last half of verse 6 says that Jesus “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.”  Even though, as a member of the Trinity Jesus was fully God He willingly laid aside that status.  He didn’t try to grasp or hold on to His rights as a glorious member of the Godhead.  Instead, as verse 7 says, “He emptied Himself.”  That does not mean He was no longer God, as we just got done seeing.  Rather, it means that He voluntarily emptied Himself of His heavenly glory and rights and of the full expression of His divine attributes. 

And instead of all that he became a bondservant.  A bondservant was a slave that owned nothing, not even the clothes on his back.  For a bondservant everything you have, including your life, belongs to the master.  Jesus went from the glories of heaven and divine prerogative to the lowest of slaves.  2^nd Corinthians 8:9 puts it this way, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” 

How is it that we can become rich through Christ’s poverty?

Philippians 2:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Jesus didn’t simply become a poor human.  He became a man so that He could die in our place.  His poverty was that He humbled Himself to the point of dieing as a common criminal in our place.  He humbled Himself and became obedient.  Have you ever thought about Jesus becoming obedient?  That is what the verse says happened.  Hebrews 5:8 says that “He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” 

Now that doesn’t mean that Jesus was disobedient before and had to learn how to be obedient.  What it means is that as a man Jesus had to choose to be obedient.  He never had to do that before the incarnation.  By being true to His character as God, and there was never any issue of Him not being true since one of His characteristics is perfection, but by being true to His character obedience becomes a moot point.  It is a non-existent issue for a perfectly holy and just God.

As a man Jesus had to choose to be obedient.  Had He not chosen perfect obedience He would have forfeited His right and ability to be mankind’s savior.  But, as our verse in Philippians says, He humbled himself by becoming obedient, how far, to the point of death, even death on a cross.

We have already been reminded in the past couple of weeks of the fact that crucifixion was the worst, most gruesome, most agonizing form of execution.  If there   were anything that a person wouldn’t want to do it would be being crucified.  And that includes Jesus.  Remember the anguish of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane?  He pleaded with God “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.”  But because He chose obedience He continued His prayer and said, “Yet, not as I will, but as You will.” 

What were the limits of Jesus’ obedience?  None.  What did Jesus allow to distract Him or get in the way of total obedience?  Nothing.   Of what person did Jesus say, “I could do this if it wasn’t for him or for her!”  No one.  And that is the point of this whole illustration.  Jesus is the perfect and supreme example of complete obedience.  He is our example that we are to follow. 

Now please do not misunderstand me here.  I am not saying we can accomplish what Jesus accomplished on the cross.  What He did there is something we could not do for ourselves.  He purchased our salvation by making atonement to God for our sins.  We can’t ever follow that example or do that.  It is His action of total obedience to God the Father that is our example.  Jesus’ death was the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual devotion to God’s will.  We can’t make atonement for sins for ourselves or for anybody else, but we can be obedient.  We can be devoted to God’s will.

One time Jesus was teaching what it really meant to follow Him.  He told the people, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”  Now obviously Jesus did not expect us to walk around and go through life with big pieces of lumber formed into a cross on our backs.  His meaning is clearly metaphorical, and multiple suggestions have been made concerning what exactly Jesus meant by taking up our cross.

To take up your cross means to grasp your own death

I think that whatever else it may mean, at the very minimum it has to mean choosing a life of humble obedience even as Christ displayed by being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  The cross is an instrument of death.  To take up your cross means to grasp your own death. 

We are not speaking physically here, but spiritually.  As Christians we are called to die to self and to live to Christ.  That is the basic meaning of Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” 

The key phrase in that verse is “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”  When we can get rid of “I” in life that is when we have truly embraced humble obedience.  When that happens our life will no longer be run by “my thoughts", "my plans", "my agenda", "my goals", "my pride", "my ambitions", "my preferences" or any other "my."  Instead it will be “not my will, but your will be done,” the supreme example that Christ set for us at the cross.

Are you willing to die to self?  Are you willing to humble yourself in obedience?  Those are the questions Jesus had to wrestle with in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they are the questions each and every Christian must answer.  You too will have to wrestle, you will have to sweat it out as you determine, Will you daily take up your cross and follow Jesus?" 

The word ‘daily’ is rather important in this context, because this isn’t the sort of thing you can simply decide once and then be done with it.  Every day, throughout the day in every new situation you face you will have to decide if you will take the path of humble obedience.  Will you do what God calls you to do?  Will you live according to His ways and His plans? 

One of the tremendous results of the cross is that we can choose to do that.  We can obey God because our old selves were crucified with Christ and now we are new creations.  So the question is never ‘can we’ but ‘will we.’ 

Then the application, of course, is “in what ways will that be displayed in our lives?”  And in one sense it is applicable for everything, right.  After all, obedience is obedience and whatever area or situation you might be facing we need to have that attitude in us that was in Christ Jesus.  An attitude that says no matter what the cost, no matter what personal pain may come, I will obey the voice of God.

But remember, I began this message by saying that Paul wrote this section of verses as an illustration.  This passage began with those words, “Have this attitude in yourselves.” In other words, Paul was urging the believers in the church in Philippi to have the same attitude of humble obedience that Christ showed in His life and especially in His death.

Paul had a very specific application in mind for those Christians, and it is good for us as well.  To find his application we need to go back and place these words in context:

Philipians 2:1-7  If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men

It could be argued that of all the places where it is needed, humble obedience is most necessary when it comes to interpersonal relationships.  Paul was pleading for the Philippians to live a life in which disunity and discord were dead.  If Jesus humbled Himself the way He did for us, can’t we choose to humble ourselves by putting other people before us?  And in this case Paul is speaking specifically about our brothers and sisters in Christ, our own church family.

That is not an easy thing to do.  And its not like most of us are purposely mean or hard to get along with.  But the truth is none of us are perfect.  Even when we are trying hard to do it right, things happen that can potentially cause discord, strife and disunity.  I can say the wrong thing and not even know I’ve said the wrong thing.  I can misunderstand someone or misinterpret their motives.  I can get my feelings hurt because of what someone else does or doesn’t do, or what they say or don’t say.

Beyond that, I can down right sin.  I can let my emotions get the best of me and end up saying something mean or hurtful.  I can be careless, cavalier or caustic in my speech.  I’ve put all this in the first person because I know it is true of me.  But guess what else I know?  It’s true of you as well.  And since it is true of all of us disunity and strife can easily sneak into a church family. 

So what do we do to combat that?  All of us must have this “attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus.”  We must be eager to go to one another, one on one, and repair broken relationships.  We must be ready to reach out to that person that, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to like us.    When there is any type of discord or disunity that involves us we must be willing to work through it and work it out.  It may mean humbling yourself to take the initiation in restoring a broken fellowship even when you believe the problem is 95% the other person’s fault. 

This can be hard.  It can be humbling.  But no matter how hard or humbling it is, it can’t be any harder or more humbling than the cross.