Thursday, March 23, Who is the Christ?
Asking the Questions
Who is the Christ?
In Philippians 2.6-7, Paul says that we are to
"Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus:
6 Though he was in the form of God,
he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
7 But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings."
The word translated as “emptied himself” (“poured out” or “set aside” in other translations) is κενόω, kenoo, in Greek. Some commentators are quick to say that this does not mean that Jesus “poured out” his divine nature. Boring and Craddock disagree, saying that Jesus set aside his claim to divinity when he came “under all the conditions of the human lot, becoming a servant obedient even to death. In this picture of the saving event, as in the letters of Paul and other NT letters, the earthly life of Jesus portrayed as empty of the divine power, nonmiraculous, like that of other human beings except for his total obedience to God.”[1]
The concept of kenosis, Christ’s outpouring of the divine self, is one of the most important concepts in all of Christian theology. The idea that Jesus, who is God, loved us enough to set aside his power, his divinity, in order to fully experience our mortal life, is a paradox that cannot be fully explained (though theologians have tried for millennia), only glimpsed. It is a central confession of our understanding, our reception of Christ's love for us, which we stand in awe of during this Holy Season.
O love divine! What hast thou done! Th'incarnate God hath died for me!
The Father's co-eternal Son, Bore all my sins upon the tree!
The Son of God for me hath died: My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
~~Charles Wesley
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[1] Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock. The People’s New Testament Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004. 618.
The Rev. Cindy Cox Garrard is an ordained United Methodist pastor, retired since 2019. She is now a "utility alto" in the St. Thomas choir and teaches the Thursday Women's Lectionary Bible study at St. Thomas. Her husband Spencer is the Senior Warden on the Vestry. They have two adult daughters: Sara and Lizzie.
