His state was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 14:15-24
Paul exhorts the Philippians to have the same mind as Jesus. He then goes on to explain the nature of the mind of Christ: “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God, but emptied himself to assume the state of a slave and became as men are, and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross”. What does it mean for a human to imitate Christ’s mind? We do so by letting go of that which is dear to us. For him that was his divinity, for us it is our humanity. For him and for us it is surrender in obedience to the all-knowing and all loving will of the Father.
This surrender ends in glorification. It ends in having all that which we let go of given back to us in a much fuller measure. Christ could not be raised higher than he was before. His reward is our redemption to the glory of the Father, “so that all beings, in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus...” All creatures will worship him, not so much because of his majesty as God, which he had before, but because of his self-sacrificing love. For us it is the privilege to have a share at the Messianic banquet which we hear about in the gospel reading.
We have the possibility of refusing the invitation and of hanging on to our humanity like the invited guests in the gospel. One had bought land; another had bought cows, and another was on his honeymoon. What is it that I am hanging on? What is it that is making me give excuses to God? The tragic irony is that whoever hangs on to his life loses it, and the marvelous truth is that whoever loses it for the sake of Christ and in imitation of him gains it and much more.
