Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1687
May 25, 2025
Philippians 2.1-11 Click here for audio worship.
Dr. Ed Pettus
(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)
“Jesus Christ is Lord”
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he 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, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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Name Above Every Name
I have advised people in churches, especially in the last decade, that the only healthy church is the church that is unified in biblical interpretation and theological agreement. Now, that does not mean that every single detail will agree, but on the whole, we all have to be on the same page, especially on the essentials of faith. One of the reasons I say this is because of the mistake that churches and denominations make today is to say that diversity is the goal of ministry and church growth. Even our own denomination, the EPC, has written some things that try to force diversity in ways that cannot be forced. There is room for diversity, but not in interpreting the Bible or in common consensus on Reformed Theology. Those two elements to church life have to point in the same direction.
There can certainly be diversity in things like race, financial means, interests outside of theology, even worship styles or arguments over where to place the flowers for a setting at a church function. None of that really matters when it comes to the peace, unity, and purity of the church. What really matters is that some churches and denominations believe that we have work together with radically different interpretations of the Bible or diametrically opposed views on theology. In our former denomination it was so severe, the disunity, that some people argued against the Lordship of Jesus Christ. How can a church continue to be the true church and not affirm, throughout the entire body, that Jesus Christ is Lord? It will not survive, certainly will not thrive as the body of Christ.
Paul writes to the Philippian church that his joy will be complete when the people in the church have the same mind, same love, and are in full accord and of one mind. That one mind is the mind of Christ. That one mind is agreement to who Jesus is and what Jesus has done and what Jesus requires of us and what Jesus has promised and what Jesus taught as our way of life and confession and profession. That is unity in the church on the Word of God and the theology that we believe best represents what God has revealed to us about Himself and all things pertaining to life and faith. A major part of the mind of Christ is His humility. He humbled Himself. He did not count His status in heaven as something that He had to hang on to but He was obedient to the plan of salvation for God’s elect, to come to this earth in human form, fully divine and fully human, the God-man, incarnate, born of the virgin Mary and all for the sake of reconciling us to God.
Now, let me take an aside here and relate this a bit to our mindset. There is nothing in this world and nothing in our lives that we need to grasp so tightly that we would refuse to humble ourselves before God and walk the way of discipleship, obedient to God’s Word and His will. We are called to this same mind as Christ’s – humble, obedient, crucified with Christ so that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2.20). This is the mind of Christ. This is the mind that does not hold on to the old self, but realizes the new creation that we are in Christ Jesus! The wage of our sin, which is death, has been overcome and conquered in the person and work of Jesus. This is the good news that we celebrate every day and why we come here to worship the One who has extended His grace and mercy to us in forgiveness and love. This is the unity we share. This is the like minded biblical rationale and theological direction that leads us to rightly handle the Word of God (2 Timothy 2.15).
After Paul writes of the humility of Jesus Christ, he proclaims the name that is above every name. He declares and basically promises that one day every knee will bow before the name. Let’s take a look at all the names or titles that are given just in this passage:
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Jesus – in Hebrew Yeshua, and the Latin pronunciation is Joshua. The name means “God saves”. Jesus as Savior – Joshua, savior, the name carries weight, the name has power, the name identifies attributes connected to salvation.
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Christ – meaning Messiah, the anointed One, ordained for a purpose, more a title than a name even though some people probably think it is Jesus’ last name! Christ = Messiah = Savior
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Lord – This is the final full confession Paul gives us, that Jesus Christ is Lord. (More on this in the last bullet of our outline!) Lord carries meaning of authority, master, sovereign, and more.
Let’s look now at how Jesus gets to this point of the name above all names.
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Humility to Exaltation
The way of Christ, the way of discipleship, the way of life that leads to life, is not the way of the world. People generally want immediate exaltation, we might call it a sense of entitlement. Many people in the world who are of the world see themselves and their lives out of a disposition of sin. One classic example is the narcissist who is constantly looking for others to look at them. The world revolves around me and everybody should be giving me everything I want and demand.
Christ gave up the greatest position imaginable, the form of God, equality with God. Jesus held a position and status in heaven that was like no other, certainly nothing on earth like it. He did not consider that status as important as following the will of His Father to take on the form of a servant, to be born in the likeness of a man, and humble Himself to the point of death on a cross. This is incredible, almost unfathomable for us to grasp because we cannot yet comprehend the place of heaven or the throne of God or the equality of Jesus with God the Father. Part of it is the Trinitarian nature of God and part of it is we have no comparable status on earth. Jesus gave His life in a humble manner like no other. That humble obedience led to the exaltation as Lord and Savior.
I should probably comment a bit on the two terms here, Lord and Savior. These are commonly used words to define who Jesus is, and last Sunday we looked at the understanding of Jesus as the Savior of the world. When He met the woman at the well, He revealed to her that He is the Messiah, the Savior and when the people from the town came out to hear Jesus speak, they too believed that He was the Savior. Savior means to be saved from something. We are, in Christ, saved from the consequences of our sin. We have entry into the kingdom of God and we are justified through this saving work of Jesus.
I wanted to speak a little more about Jesus as Savior because many people want a Savior, they want a ticket to heaven, but they do not want Jesus the Lord. Some people want to claim Jesus as the Savior of their life but they do not want to take the next step of humility and obedience to follow Jesus the Lord and Master of their life. When people just want a savior, they diminish the saving act of Christ by denying His Lordship. They just want to do enough or learn enough or confess enough to get saved, to get to heaven, to get a pass, an EZ pass to heaven. But Jesus is not only our Savior, He is also our Lord. This is where having the same mind as Christ comes into play with this Philippian passage. Jesus humbled Himself, was obedient, and followed the will of His Father. In our obedience to Jesus Christ, we know and acknowledge Him as Lord.
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Jesus Christ is Lord
Jesus Christ is Lord! I want to share part of Peter’s sermon in Acts 2.29-36,
“Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Jesus is Lord and Christ. The Christ is the Savior, the Lord is the Lord! He is Lord in that He is sovereign over all. He is the Lord God, second person of the Trinity, the God-man, Ruler of our lives, ruler of the universe. Savior gets us saved from sin and death and gets us to heaven, Lord gets us a King, ruler, commander, the One to follow. He is our Master and we must submit ourselves to Him for He is our authority. The Bible distinguishes the term Lord in a particular way in the Old Testament. Most English translations renders the term Lord with a change in font. When we see the term Lord in small caps it is indicating the name of God from Exodus 3, the name Yahweh. When Lord appears with lower case “ord” it means Adonai, which means sovereign, or majesty, or glory. But Lord also appears in the Bible in simpler meanings, as when some come to Jesus and address Him as lord, not a capital “L”, but the meaning here is like our saying “sir”. Lord also appears as a term between master and slave. The master is the lord over the slave.
All that is to say that the term “lord” has different references depending on the context in which it is used. For our purposes today we are talking about Lord, capital “L”, in all the ways of Lord, Yahweh, Lordship, Master, Sovereign, Authority, the One we follow in obedience and faith.
The name that is truly exalted in Philippians 2 is the fullness of the name in the whole confession that Jesus is Lord, not just Jesus, but what we are called to confess is Jesus is Lord. The full confession is that Jesus is Lord, His name is Jesus, His title is Lord. What is confessed is the very reason why Jesus’ name is so vitally important. Think of it this way, in New Testament times people were required to claim “Caesar is Lord”. Christians would be persecuted because they would not acknowledge that claim. The term Lord is what was used to attempt to give Caesar authority and power. It is the fact that Jesus is Lord that His name has true authority and majesty and sovereignty. What this text affirms is that one day everyone will see that Caesar was not the lord, but all will see and have to acknowledge, no matter how reluctantly, that the true Lord is Jesus Christ. All the Romans will come to see they were mistaken all along. Caesar was not lord, only Jesus Christ. That is what all world leaders will come to see one day, whether kings or presidents or dictators, any politician, any business president, any church leader, anyone who holds a position of authority over another. Every knee will bow before the Lord Jesus and bow at the name!
The name means something. It has weight, density, meaning, power, purpose, and Paul says in Romans 10 that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. The Lord in that context is Jesus for Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord of lords – that is Lord over all the rulers and masters and “little l” lords. The synonym to that is Jesus is King of kings.
In the Greek the term for Lord is kurios – literally means Lord, and it is interesting that the Scottish term for church, Kirk, and the English word church both derive from kurios, which means “ones who belong to the Lord” or “house of the Lord”. We are His people, the flock of His pasture, the sons and daughters of the Lord – 1 Peter 2.9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” His own possession means that we belong to the Lord. He is our master and we are His servants and we are to yield ourselves to Him, offered as a living sacrifice, “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12.1).
Jesus Christ is Lord whether we acknowledge it or not! We do acknowledge His Lordship today. We do want to give our lives over to Him by taking up our cross daily in self-denial and following the way of the Christ our Lord. There will come a day when all will see the Lord and bend the knee and have to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We look forward to that day, but we also look forward to a daily confess of the Lordship of Jesus Christ as we follow Him in humble obedience and all to the glory of God. Amen.
