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By Bill Lawrence, President of Leader Formation International

Paul, the apostle, the spokesman for Jesus, the one-time businessman, one-time Sadducee, one-time persecutor of Christians, was in prison for being a proclaimer of Jesus.

He was on his way to Spain, the one major part of the Roman Empire where he had not proclaimed the Gospel, when he was arrested and placed under house arrested in Rome for his faith. He was held there for about two years before he was released and then he did go to Spain as he had planned the Gospel before he was arrested a second time and executed for his faith. However during his first imprisonment he wrote Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians as he dealt with issues in those churches.

Thus it was that he wrote to the church in Philippi, one of the cities east of Ephesus that grew out of his time in that major city, the second largest city in the Roman Empire. It appears that Paul received word that there was a division in the church he started in that city. He doesn't say what caused that division, only that there was a division that he wanted them to overcome. It doesn't appear to be a theological difference of any kind, just a division that could only be overcome if they began to think together with the mind of Christ as they learned to think the Jesus way.

To have the mind of Christ they had to do what Christ did, which was to humble themselves, so they could empty themselves the same way He emptied Himself. Jesus is God, fully God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in every way. But He could not accomplish their purpose unless He worked together with them to redeem us. Each of them had a role in delivering us from sin. The Father over-sees the Son as He became one of us and lived on earth as His servant and made us one with Him and delivered us from ultimate and final judgment. The Son became one with us by becoming fully human and paid the price for our salvation through the cross, thus redeeming us. The Holy Spirit lives in us and enables us to live the Son's way even as He did when the Son was on earth, so we become one with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nothin could be greater than this.

To overcome the division that was in their church Paul wrote and told them they must

Have this mind in yourselves that was also in Christ Jesus.

This is short and simple until we begin to explore it and work to accomplish it. Then we realize that we cannot do it on our own. After all, consider what it meant for Jesus. At His very essence He is God, but He did not regard His core essence as something He should keep for Himself. He did not choose to grasp it, to hold it, but, as we have seen, He emptied Himself of His identity. He did not cease to be God because He could not cease to be Himself, but He could limit Himself and become a human being, a man, in order to redeem us.

To become a human being He limited Himself by laying in a manger and growing up as a child.

He who was sovereign over all authority put Himself under ultimate human authority, Roman rule, and became subject to a Roman declaration to be born in Bethlehm, a tiny, tiny village south of Jerusalem, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy. He was nobody born in nowhere. He went from a throne to a manger and He was going from a cradle to a cross. His first step in redeeming us and pay the price for our salvation and deliver us from the penalty of sin was to lay in a manger under His mother's care.

Yet even though He was the sovereign Lord, He was in danger as He was subject to attack from Herod. Thus it was that Jospeh and Mary took Him as a two-year old and they fled to Egypt until it was safe to return to Nazareth, an out-of-the way city where He grew up. This also fulfilled the Old Testament.

Thus it was that He grew up as a boy, a little boy who became a growing up boy who became a learner who was taken to Jerusalem, by Joseph and Mary, his godly parents, who went to the Passover where He could ask uncommon questions and impress the teachers and learn even more. So He had submis-sive parents who raised Him to know God's word and be God's man as well as be a carpenter in His home town of Nazareth in Galilee. He stayed there until He was thirty, and then He began an amazing ministry, first in Syria and then in Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and even in Samaria.

Because He was totally human and did nothing as God, He was desperately dependent on the Holy Spirit who enabled Him to bear fruit. As He was dependent on the Spirit to be fruitful so He is calling us to be dependent on the Spirit. This is how we  live His way and bear fruit according to His will.

If you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and into John, you discover that Jesus was prayerful, even radically prayerful. There were times when He focused on prayer, especially when He made major decisions such as who would be the twelve men He trained to represent Him when He returned to His throne. As He approached the cross, John takes us into the depths of His very soul and His heart when He poured out His concerns. John knew that because he stayed alert and entered into the essence of Jesus's heart and wanted His readers to be there with Him. He opened up the door of our Lord's deepest being and revealed the essence of His heart to us. Nothing could be greater.

This is why the Living Prayer, the walking prayer, the prayer Jesus raised up to His father as He walk-ed into the Garden, is so essential for us to grasp. It was here that He poured out the depths of His being and prayed for Himself to reveal the Father's glory and ask for our well-being. John wanted us to know this prayer in addition to the prayer that the other three books wrote that Jesus had been made known. John knew that Jesus was totally obedient against His own desires. Calvary was something He wanted to avoid if he could, but something He would do if that was the only way to redeem us. He wanted to redeem Man, that is man and woman, but we had to be delivered from the penalty for sin, and He wanted to do that. So He prayed and so He confirmed: it meant Calvary and He learned to obey through His prayer. He obeyed even the cross! From a crown to a cross. From life to death. From condemnation to forgiveness. From temporal to eternal.

Thus it is that obedience for Jesus came through prayer, even as obedience for us comes through prayer.

He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Phil. 2:8