RICHARD BAUCKHAM: God Crucified

Phil 2.8 He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

---

On page 61 Bauckham says, in discussing Phil 2.8 (he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross):

The self-humiliation and obedience to which verse 8 refers are no mere ethical attitudes, but the repudiation of status, the acceptance of the slave’s lack of status, the voluntary descent to the place furthest removed from the heavenly throne to which he is then—and Paul says ‘therefore’—exalted. This is not the contrast of two natures, divine and human, but a contrast more powerful for first-century Jewish theology with its controlling image of God as the universal emperor, high on his heavenly throne, inconceivably exalted above all he has created and rules. Can the cross of Jesus Christ actually be included in the identity of God?

I agree that Paul’s point is not to contrast the two natures of Christ. And I don’t disagree with Bauckham’s discussion of “Can the cross of Jesus Christ actually be included in the identity of God?” What I disagree with is discussing these things without even mentioning the thing Paul was writing about.

The fundamental issue of Phil 2.6-11 is that of keeping intact a Philippian church in peril of collapsing under persecution—its own and what it knows is happening to Paul. Paul gives his reason for writing 1.27-28: “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, and are in no way intimidated by your opponents.”

Paul wrote the letter to bolster a sagging church. God preserved the letter so that we also would know how to remain faithful in the face of persecution—especially when that persecution seems to be accomplishing its purpose.

Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was in prison. This was a huge humiliation and defeat in the eyes of his friends—and conversely a huge victory in the eyes of his enemies.

But the believers at Philippi were suffering personally as well. Paul says so in 1.29, and goes on to say that their struggle is the same as he went through and is still having to face. So it was a protracted attack by the enemy that apparently was succeeding: They had Paul in prison and were going after the church at Philippi. The believers at Philippi had to wonder: If Paul has been defeated, what chance did we have?

Paul’s response is that his imprisonment is not a defeat; it is, in fact, actually exposing people to the gospel he otherwise would never have had access to (1.12-14).

But more than that, what has happened to him, and what is happening to them, is evidence that their enemies are being defeated. The very thing that the enemies of the church regard as success is the evidence that they themselves are being defeated (1.28). And the reason we know this is that God has graciously granted these believers in Philippi the incomparable privilege of following their Lord in suffering (1.29). They are guaranteed that if they continue down this path they will also be graciously granted the incomparable privilege of being exalted with him as well. Paul makes this point in 3.21: “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.” Notice that it follows exactly the sequence in 2.8-10. God’s guarantee is that following their Lord even to death will not be a defeat but will instead be a victory because that is what they have already come to believe as the heart of the gospel message.

So Paul is not asking, “Can the cross of Jesus Christ actually be included in the identity of God?” Such questions cannot be asked in the midst of persecution. Paul’s point is rather, “Since we know this to be true—that God acts in the most unexpected and upside-down ways (the first shall be last and the last first; those who want to save their life will lose it but those who lose their life for my sake will find it; I did not come to be served but to serve; the seed does not come to life unless it dies; we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles)—since we know that the way up is down, since we know that the most extreme humiliation results in the most extreme exaltation, since we know that God has proved this in Christ... since we know all these things to be true then we also know that God expects us to stand firm in our faith because, as terrifying as the path ahead may seem, we must not fear those who can only kill the body.

When Paul says in 2.17 that he is being poured out as a libation it is a direct parallel to Christ emptying himself in 2.7. This is not something he fears. It is, in fact, his joy to have a sacrifice worthy to be poured at the feet of his Lord. Paul is not making any dual-nature reference about Christ any more than he is making one about himself. The pouring out is the ultimate expression of his total devotion for his God and his complete trust in God to do with that sacrifice whatever he wants. There is no reason for fear: God can be trusted. Everything can be given up to him in wild abandon. Count it all as joy.

When Paul says in 3.17 that he wants “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,” he is talking about the kind of death Christ died: the ultimate humiliation, the ultimate emptying, the ultimate obedience, the ultimate trust. And he does not just wait for his enemies to find him: he presses toward this goal, he forces their hand. Suffering is not something he avoids; it is the ultimate honor: to know Christ in a way that few will ever experience: humiliation and obedience to the point of death.

So Paul’s answer to the fearful Philippians is this: Why are you retreating from the very thing I am pressing toward with everything in my being? God has granted you the privilege of suffering for Christ. He has granted you the opportunity of following your Lord. Very few are considered worthy of that honor. It is something you have to work to achieve! It does not come easy. But at the end you are allowed to stand before your God and say, “Here I am; here is my offering, here is my sacrifice. May it be pleasing in your sight.”

A precious few are granted the privilege of doing that. Accept it. Embrace it. Christ is leaving his clear footprints for you to walk in. And the more you become like him the more you know how desperate the fate of your enemies is. They celebrated when they killed Christ, but hidden inside their hatred and scheming was God’s plan. They did it perfectly. Perfect stooges. Perfect pawns. They imagine they can do the same thing to you. But once again it is God who is at work, in you, to accomplish his purpose.

As in all of God’s gifts, they are given so that we may be God-like. Our wealth provides us a way to act God-like in giving. Our health provides us a way to act God-like in getting sick ( Isa 53.4). Our enemies provide us a way to act God-like in helping them. God gives. He could not be God and not give. He has commanded us to be holy as he is holy. He has commanded us to be generous as he is generous. He has commanded us to be forgiving as he is forgiving. He has commanded us to be self-abasing as he is self-abasing. All these things he is he has commanded us to be: opportunities for expressing our God-likeness.

So Paul, reminding the believers at Philippi what they already know to be true, what they have believed on as the heart of the Gospel message, sustains them in their trials by the encouragement of knowing that Paul has not faltered for one second because of his enemies, but instead has sought out the opportunity to follow his Lord is suffering, even unto death.

They know all these things, but like John the Baptist, now face-to-face with the danger, they need reassurance. And so Paul, lovingly but also with a warning, tells them they need to live their lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. That means not embarrassing their Lord by turning from the humiliation and the suffering. They have nothing to fear following in the steps of their Lord. God is at work. He is enabling you to emotionally, physically, and spiritually do this thing. He is giving your the opportunity to pour out yourselves as a sacrifice. A rare privilege. A great honor.

Why Bauckham misses the point

Bauckham has never known the fear of living by faith. He has never considered giving up everything in order to know Christ or of sharing in the fellowship of his suffering. He has never known the desperate pain of sacrificing something to his God so costly that he doesn’t know how he going to be able to live without it. He has never known the panic of quitting his job for the cause of Christ. It has never crossed his mind that he should search out ways to walk in the footsteps of his Lord: in humiliation, apparent defeat, and being a servant to people who neither deserve nor appreciate the sacrifice he has made. He doesn’t really see that Christ did this: that he purposely gave up everything in order to live in destitution and humiliation. Bauckham doesn’t know what it’s like to be alone in a place where he knows no one, has nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be considered an enemy by the people of God or to be considered a traitor to the truth by other scholars.

If Bauckham had suffered these things he would never have approached Paul’s letter to the Philippians as he did: as if Paul was writing theology. Paul was writing out of a desperate situation to desperate people who were being asked to withstand things that were humanly impossible. They were at the end of their ability to cope. Why was Paul in prison? Had his enemies won? Was he really telling them everything or were the accusations true? Other Christians were telling them things very different from what Paul was saying. People were at each other’s throats. The church was in trouble. Families that used to be friends were hostile toward one another. What were they to do?

What would you tell them? That Second-Temple Jewish theology allows for the cross of Jesus Christ to be included in the identity of God? That the kenosis of Christ does not mean that he emptied himself of his deity, only laid it aside? That there are 7 steps of Christ’s humiliation and 7 steps of his exaltation?

Paul cared nothing about Jewish theology allowing the cross of Christ to be included in the identity of God. This is what someone gets from the passage who has nothing in common with either Paul or his readers. This is what happens to the word of God when it is examined in a laboratory. This is what happens when people study theology rather than follow Christ, when people devote their lives to degrees and publishing: something neither Christ nor Paul did and something that is completely useless—and even offensive—to the Christian in crisis.

Paul’s answer to their desperation was, “This is only Friday. In Christ there is always a Sunday. God has told you what he expects. He is placing the obligation upon you to do the difficult thing. Accept it. Don’t waver. Let the other side think they’ve won. God has shown you in Christ how he works. Humiliation is the core of the Christian life. Suffering is the normal expectation of those who follow Christ. There is nothing unusual going on; this is the way it has to be. Your enemies are not winning any more than Jesus’ enemies won when they spit on him, beat him, and exposed him to public shame. Your suffering is, in fact, the evidence that you are exactly where God wants you to be. Stay in it. Step into it. I do, because this road leads to Christ, and the hope of knowing Christ in that intimate way is the only thing I desire for myself—and for you.”

There’s no problem showing how Phil 2 answers the question, “Can the cross of Jesus Christ be included in the identity of God?” Bauckham makes an excellent point. But to not say first that Phil 2 provides the answer to Christians in crisis makes the word of God sterile: something for theologians and teachers and students to discuss from a safe distance.

Christ left his place of glory to die on a cross. Paul endured floggings and stonings and abandonment. Bauckham is wrong to explain to us what Paul is saying without ever doing anything like what Paul did. Bauckham is wrong to dismiss their persecution as irrelevant simply because he has nothing in common with it. Bauckham is wrong to explain Christ from a safe place.

The God Who is Self-Giving

A good point on page 61:

Since the exalted Christ is first the humiliated Christ, since indeed it is because of his self-abnegation that he is exalted, his humiliation belongs to the identity of God as truly as his exaltation does. The identity of God—who God is—is revealed as much in self-abasement and service as it is in exaltation and rule. The God who is high can also be low, because God is God not in seeking his own advantage but in self-giving. His self-giving in abasement and service ensures that his sovereignty over all things is also a form of self-giving.

And on page 68:

Because God is who God is in his gracious self-giving, God’s identity appears in the loving self-service and self-abnegation to death of his Son. Because God is who God is in his gracious self-giving, God’s identity, we can say, is not simply revealed but enacted in the event of salvation for the world which the service and self-humiliation of his Son accomplishes.

I think we can go even farther than this. The more emphatic way to say this is that an essential—in fact indispensable—part of who God is that he is giving. It is an attribute without which he would not be God. He continually reveals himself as the giver of gifts. In fact it could be said that his entire revelation, both in nature and in his word, is an expression of this gift-giving.

How could it be any other way? God has never needed anything and man has always needed everything. Part of being a creature is being needful. Part of being Creator is needing nothing. So God’s activity in creating is in fact an act of giving, and his activity in sustaining and caring for his creation is giving.

Bauckham’s statement, “His self-giving in abasement and service ensures that his sovereignty over all things is also a form of self-giving” would be better phrased as: “His self-giving in abasement and service is one expression of his gift-giving; his sovereignty over all things another. Everything God is and does is expression of his self-giving.”

That may seem like a small critique, and maybe it is. But it is a point often overlooked that God’s giving dominates the divine revelation in overwhelming terms. You cannot read Scripture without seeing it, yet so few do. We talk about it, celebrate it, and are grateful for it, but only see it as sort of, “we thank you for all your many gifts” rather than as an inherent and essential part of who God is. God is self-giving in the same way as he is holy or eternal or omnipotent. On purely arithmetic terms, God’s self-giving appears in Scripture as much, if not more, than any of his other attributes, yet we don’t ascribe it nearly as much weight as God intended. If he repeats it so often the reason must be that he wants us to catch the import of it.

So to return to the issue: God’s self-giving in the form of self-abasement does not ensure that his rule will also be a form of giving, as if conduct in a past event ensures similar conduct in a future, or that by giving in self-abasement he has proven he can rule with equity and complete selflessness. Both his abasement and his sovereign rule are profound expressions of his self-giving. His rule is an expression of his self-giving, not because he has first been self-giving in humiliation and service but because he is by nature self-giving and everything he does is in accord with and an expression of this.

God Crucified

A very good point: On page 65 Bauckham says that the cross is Jesus’ exaltation. You need to read the entire section to get his very correct and profound point, but his statement should give the non-Catholic, non-Orthodox church pause to consider how it presents Christ. There has always been a reaction to Christ on the cross, as though to leave him there is to deny his resurrection. But possibly the Protestant churches have it wrong. In removing Christ from the cross have we denied him the exaltation that he gave so much to accomplish? If the cross is Jesus’ exaltation but we refuse to present him in that way and instead show the cross empty and cleaned up, are we not overlooking something that is terribly important to God?

I have often thought it a strange architectural thing to go into a Catholic church and see Christ on the cross everywhere and go into a Baptist or Presbyterian church and see Christ on the cross nowhere. The empty cross is not proof of the resurrection, so why do this? And the empty cross also dulls us to the awfulness of our sin. The fact that our sin is forgiven should not blind us to the fact that it is so repugnant.

And now Buckham gives another reason: Removing Christ from the cross denies Jesus his exaltation, an exaltation that came at great cost and an exaltation that deserves to be constantly in front of his people—and the world.

We need to return Jesus to the exaltation of his cross.

He earned it.