I’m posting a series on Philippians based on some talks I gave to the York Christian Union.

“Christ is our Lord. This for Paul is the good news, this is His gospel – the good news is that Jesus is Lord, that He sits at the right hand of the father (Php 2:9) and that everything is being brought under His control in His new kingdom (Php 3:20-21.)

You might be wondering whether I’ve missed something from that statement of the Gospel, what happened to the cross? Where are mentions of sin and repentance and the forgiveness of sins? And I will be very clear about this –they are not the whole Gospel. They are the result of the Gospel. How so?

Tom Schreiner puts it like this:

“Since Jesus is the Christ, the exalted Lord over all, the Son of God, the Prophet and the Servant of the Lord, he is to be preached and proclaimed to all. Because Jesus is the universal Lord, salvation is available only through him. He will judge the living and the dead on the last day. Hence people receive forgiveness of sins by believing in and trusting in Jesus Christ the Lord.”

For Paul Christ is Lord because God raised him from the dead and so it all hinged on the resurrection, but the need for forgiveness and salvation is a response to the news that Jesus is Lord. If God truly has appointed this Jesus to rule and reign over all things, if this Christ is going to put right what has gone wrong then there really is only one way to be right with God and that is through faith in Jesus and his finished work on the cross.

It’s important to get this right because it has massive implications for the way we respond to and live out our Christian lives, but we’ll come to that. But let’s look at the hymn to the Lordship of Christ (Php 2:6-11). This is probably one of the earliest hymns of the early church that we know of.

This is Paul’s reminder to the Philippians that above all else there is Christ. The hymn works in two parts with first the humiliation of Christ and ends with His exaltation. It’s a statement of belief in the deity of Christ – that in his very nature Jesus is divine, yet is fused with humility – there is no power struggle in the Trinity, the Son serves the father and brings him glory through His service.

Paul here states Christ’s divinity and his humanity as well as his humility. He was God and He was a servant and one willing to be obedient to death on a cross and because of His self-sacrifice and because of His total and perfect obedience God did not let his body see decay but raised him to life and exalted Him – made His name greater than all other names and put all things under His control and all this brings the Father glory.

Everything else flows out from this simple fact – Jesus is Lord.

The Lordship of Christ is an easy thing to say and a harder thing to put into practice. So if I were to ask you this question, ‘Is Jesus your Lord?’ Assuming you say, ‘yes’ what evidence would you give to support that answer? How is the Lordship of Christ put into effect in your life? Because it must, right?”