The Works of God

Through a planned death!

So Christ was and is equal with God. He is God. He became also a human being. He obediently suffered and died. Obediently. That means God the Father told him to do it. That means it was a planned death. And the point of the plan was that the Christ be a substitute for the damnation of all human sinners who would trust in Jesus. As it says in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” He bore our damnation as a substitute. This was God’s loving plan for the salvation of sinners like us who deserve hell. That’s why it says in verse 8, “He was obedient to the point of death.” He wasn’t just dying. He was obeying. God had a plan. God gave a command. The Son was fulfilling it, willingly, obediently. The plan was, “Be a substitute for the damnation of all who will believe in you. Bear for them my holy and just curse, and I will make them my children—fellow heirs with you of everything I own.”

And then in verse 9, you see the greatest “therefore” in the Bible. “Therefore, God has highly exalted him.” In other words, because of his obedient and successful life and death, God raised him from the dead and gave him great glory as the Lord of the universe. That is the stupendous assumption behind Philippians 3:20-21.

So now let’s go there again. “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, (and now we know how he got to heaven: he was raised from the dead) who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body (and now we know how he has a body in heaven: he was raised bodily from the dead), by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”  John Piper, sermon on March 27, 2005, “All Things Subject to the Risen Christ.” (all emphases in bold are mine)