Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Day Seven/Eight Philippians 2:5-6

(Now I have asked to lead of unity as a church through being humility to God and each other. We can’t follow human examples, look at the life of humility Jesus led…)


You followers of Jesus must let the same kind of thinking dominate you that dominated Christ Jesus: whose outward appearance belied the fact that He was the pre-existent Triune God. He had never in the pre-creation “world”, nor does He in this tangible present, nor will He ever until the end of ages consider the fact that he was in ALL ways equal to God something that he could claim as His own right or even hang onto! He would have thought that robbery!

This my friends is what a real “Amplified Bible” looks like. The popular one for sale expands certain words that have multiple meanings in Scripture. They are honest and true translations of the word used. How can it have so many meanings? Koine Greek, the guttural, colloquial language of the common person used to write the Greek New Testament from which all modern translations derived was a highly reflective language. That sounds more impressive than it really is! What that means is that words had different meanings in different contexts. A modern equivalent is the use of “bad” a number of years ago. Depending on the context of use, “bad” could be either awful, good, or even the greatest! Inflection and tone of voice aided as well. American Sign Language has some similarities in that some hand shapes may have the same shape but different meaning in context and the “degree” of meaning varies in how they are expressed.

Today’s passage is a prime example. If you read and Amplified Bible, you would find a number of different meanings for the word. But when you look at the word used in context throughout the Bible, it becomes clear that it has (as it only can) one very clear meaning (although interpretation may vary on what that is). When this is done, you see a power in the words that are “lost in translation”.

These two short verses tell us a number of the greatest truths in all of Holy Scripture as well as our reaction to them.
Our lives are to be an expression of our relationship with Jesus. The NEB translation states: “Let your bearing towards one another arise out of you life in Jesus Christ.” We are called to focus on personal holiness, to worry less about others sanctification and more about ours.
Jesus is in very nature God in a 1:1 relationship. Yet He chose to limit His glory to bring about the plan the Redemptive Salvation History
This glory was nothing He could steal
We are called to do the same with the aid of the Holy Spirit
What do you say, care to come along?

No comments: