Lent Midweek

Philippians 2:1-18 - Midweek Lenten Round Robin

 February 10, 17, 24, March 2, 9, 16, 2016   
Searching the Mind of Christ

+

As we ask these questions we learn the mind of Christ.  What punishment so strange is suffered yonder?  What law hast Thou broken?  Of what great crime hast Thou to make confession?  But especially this question: Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish?  Here we see the mind of Christ.  And this question especially because while the other questions are easily answered — he has broken no law, he has committed no crime — it is this question that invites us to search out why and for what purpose such a strange punishment would be suffered.  He is the Lord God of unapproachable glory who in himself can neither suffer nor be debased.  So then, whence in the world come these sorrows and mortal anguish so seemingly unbecoming of God?  (Whence means where do they come from.)  They come from the eternal counsel of God.  That’s where.  They come from the Father’s heart as he extends himself [from his secret place] to you for your salvation.  He gives his only begotten Son to become a Man in order that he might suffer, at the hands of cruel and malicious men, the torments and punishment that your sins have merited from God.  And he does this in order that, having made satisfaction, he may gain you as his own possession and cover you forever with the innocent obedience of your Brother and God, your Redeemer Jesus Christ. 

Whence come all the things that this holy servant of God suffered?  Well obviously they came from you.  “This I do merit!”  Your sins have earned the punishment that looks so strange and unjust when endured by so holy a victim.  And yet in God’s eternal wisdom and love for sinners, God reveals his justice in the appearance of injustice – he reveals his love in the appearance of hatred.  God reveals his salvation where the Father demands perfect payment for your sin from his perfect Son whom he has loved from eternity so that he might keep you for eternity.  He himself is the express image of God.  We have rebelled from the image in which we were made.  And yet the mind of Christ remains for us the mind of God.  On the cross he makes this mind known by revealing thoughts far too high for us.  And how?  By descending lower than us.  That’s how.  In this divine love shared between Father and Son, God desires to rescue you from your sin and from his own wrath and judgment against you – from death and hell – so that he might have mercy on you and give you a new birth – so that he might remake you in the glorious image of his Son.  And so he sent his Son, the eternal King of glory, to take on the form of Suffering Servant – for you! 

So to answer the question simply — whence come these sorrows? — Yeah, your sins have caused such suffering.  True.  It was your sin for which the Lord did languish!  But your sin alone could not compel the almighty God to cloak himself in humility and bear your load.  No.  Your sin can only incite justice.  And that is not what you want.  Rather, it is the unfathomable love of God who sees what your sins have earned – this love draws him down to you.  This is what you want. 

God descends beneath you to teach you two things:  1^st, He desires to show you how severely he hates your sin – how utterly your lusts and greed and empty words and laziness and sneering judgment of others offends him to the very core of his holy and transcendent being – so as to demand such payment be made.  And yet he reveals all this, dear Christian, dear weakling, dear you who know to some faint degree the depth of your corrupt spiritual state and that God is right to hate it – you O man, who know that you are but dust and to dust you shall return – you who repent in ashes – he reveals all this to you in the same place that he shows how profoundly he loves you.  God dies for you.  It is all for you.  Are you the cause of Christ’s labor?  Yes, in one sense.  But this cause is nothing to brag about.  It is something to repent of.  Christ’s humility, on the other hand, his willingness to labor for you in obedience to his Father’s love for you – yes, this dear brothers and sisters, this is the cause in which we boast. 

It seems absurd.  And to the natural man it most certainly is.  And so it must be.  Because the natural man cannot receive the things of God for they are foolishness to him.  The natural man is the Old Adam.  He is the image of corruption into which we were born – that is unbelief.  Old Adam has some sense of justice, though.  He knows what innocence deserves and he knows what sin deserves.  And he knows that that is offensive if that Man is indeed innocent.  For this reason Adam and Eve hid themselves in the Garden.  And ever since, their children have been vainly seeking ways to uncover themselves and present their own righteousness to God as something that he must reward.  Though God promises a better covering, the blood of Christ – though God promises a better refuge, the wounds of the God Man – yet the natural man will have none of this.  He will rely on his own wisdom.  Who would not know him? we ask.  The Shepherd dies for his wandering sheep.  The master pays his servants’ debt.  Who would not know him?  Who would choose to find his own way to God?  Who would presume to pay his own debt?  What foolish thoughts!  He who thinks he’s got it in him.  That’s who.  He who does not believe – and be warned O Christian – he who does not remember – how thoroughly corrupt he is who does not consider what it means that we return to dust and why.  The natural man – that is the Old Adam – that mind of yours that is set on worldly things and that is so easily distracted, those powers of yours that the world praises – your reason and strength, your piety and kindness, your devotion and patience – those things that receive earthly rewards.  No, by nature you would not know him.  

And so for this reason – so that we might know him as he desires us to know him – God reveals his heart and mind where it is inaccessible to the natural man.  He discloses his secret place.  Old Adam will never discover it.  He avoids suffering.  He seeks his own.  So it pleased God to reveal his mind – to reveal this ancient mystery – where his Son suffered and where he sought above his own welfare the welfare of those whom he sought to make his own – even those who killed him.  As the Scriptures teach us,

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him”
(1 Corinthians 2:9). 

O wondrous love, whose depth no heart hath sounded!  So true!  It is a divine love so pure and good that it evokes divine love within us whom he loves. 

St. Paul asks, “what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11).  And it is this Spirit of God who proceeds from Father and Son together who instructs us.  He sounds the unplumbable depths of divine love in the voice of the gospel.  What natural man cannot receive, the Spirit of God plants deep within our hearts.  He gives us a new, spiritual birth through the incorruptible seed of reconciliation.  By teaching us what our Baptism indicates, he slays the Old Adam and raises us up as new men created in the image of him who humbled himself for our salvation.  And he does so by forgiving our sins. 

And what is this image?  What is this new man that the Holy Spirit has made us?  Can we see its glory?  Is it some power within that we must tap into?  Is it some stronger will that we must feed with our own holy thoughts, or some discipline that we must perfect?  No.  It begins and ends with knowledge – we learn his word – knowledge borne in humility.  As St. Paul follows, “For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).  We have the mind of Christ!  We have the mind of God who so humbled himself as a lowly servant – who joined us in dust and ashes to guide us through suffering, temptation, guilt, death, and into life.  So that our status and identity as new men in Christ consists therefore in knowing Christ and so thinking like him. 

We think like Christ first by acknowledging where God is pleased and why.  He is not pleased with what Adam might suppose or invent, or with works that the world praises.  He is pleased rather with what he conceived in his own mind from eternity.  He is pleased with what his Spirit conceived in the womb of Mary in the fullness of time.  He is pleased with him who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider his equality with God something to be grasped.  Instead his equality with God – his identity as his own beloved Son from eternity – would be manifest where he fulfilled his Father’s plan to rescue poor sinners from hell.  In so doing he fulfilled his name, Jesus, the Lord saves.  And at this name every knee will bow. 

In his deep love for you, before every knee will be compelled to bend at his glorious return – before then he first teaches our hearts to lower themselves in true repentance.  In the humility his own has taught us, he prepares us to find our glory, our honor, our reward, our heritage as children of God not in the strength of our will, but in the weakness of our lowly frame.  From this posture of humility proceed the works of a Christian that God is pleased to acknowledge.  Just as the Spirit of God lead Jesus in his journey to the cross, so he leads us to bear our cross, to pursue and do what pleases our God in good works and patience.  But all the while, he teaches us to depend on Christ alone who did for all the world atone.  It is he who clothes us and shelters us.  It is Christ who exults us. 

And so what sacrifice of praise do we offer?  What gift might we proffer?  Can we requite [repay] this love of God so pure, when this mercy continues to transcend our wonder?  Oh no. But we can confess it.  And we can embrace it.  And we can risk everything on it since it is all dust and ashes compared to what Christ has won and bestowed on us through faith and what is reserved as our eternal reward in the secret place of the Father.  So then, since our own strength cannot possible suffice to quench unholy desires, since our Old Adam will continue to incite doubt and impatience within us, not to mention prideful thoughts and feelings, what sacrifice can we be sure our God will accept?  The sacrifice of a broken heart – the sacrifice that thinks upon Christ’s mercy without ceasing that the vain joys of earth may cease to be pleasing – the sacrifice of faith that finds in Jesus the endless streams of mercy and life.  It is the sacrifice of praise that throws itself wholly on that singular sacrifice in which we boast, and which we can be sure God has accepted – that of Jesus. 

Whatever lowliness of mind, whatever humility we exercise, whatever generosity expressed for the sake of this our Savior, our faithful God accepts in love.  Unrequited though he be – who can repay him?! – worthless, we own it! – what have we but what he has worked in us for his good pleasure?  Yet for love’s sake he accepts both us and our meager tokens of gratitude.  In his meekness that bore the weight of human guilt, he will not shame you in your weakness to overcome it.  Rather he is honored in bearing with you in unresentful patience.  He accepts kind words spoken toward and about others as kind words to him.  He accepts the honor we render to husband or wife or parents as honor rendered to him.  He accepts our offerings, our hymns, our prayers, our often ineloquent defense of what is right, and our often nervous defense of pure doctrine.  Our Father in heaven accepts it all for Jesus’ sake – as surely as he accepts us.  So today our praise is mixed with suffering and grief and the constant struggle with pride and bitterness.  But we have God’s word.  By it we search the mind of God.  Through it we share the mind of Christ.  And with it we hold fast to what is ours by faith until by grace we bow our glorified knees to the Lamb of God who shall crown us with his own honor once hidden from sight. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.