“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place…”

You see it most frequently in football games.  Two teams are playing for the championship, but only one team wins.  Immediately after the end of the game a couple of the larger players from the winning team hoist the coach upon their shoulders and carry him toward the center of the field to shake hands to the losing coach.  What are the players doing to their coach?  Lifting him up … exalting him.

Philippians 2:9 says, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name…” Such exaltation is known by no one else.  The word therefore in this verse is strategic.  Verse 6 states that Jesus did not have to cling to the equality he had with God.  Then the following verses detail his downward path to reach us — leaving Heaven, making himself nothing, taking on human form, becoming a servant, humbling himself to the point of being “obedient to death—even death on a cross!”  We are talking about the author of life (Acts 3:15)!  He said he was “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25; also 14:6).  Becoming “obedient unto death?”  Death in the Bible always implies separation.  Death is the absence of life.  Physical death comes when the spirit departs the body.  Yet this text says that Jesus, the maker of Heaven and earth, “became obedient to death.”  Amazing!

What’s more, it was “death on a cross.”  This, too, is gripping.  John 3:14 tells us, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.”  Back in Moses’ day, the Israelites had been complaining repeatedly, so God sent poisonous snakes as punishment into their camp.  When they repented, God gave them a remedy:  have the craftsmen make a bronze serpent and put it high on a pole so that everyone in the camp could see it (see Numbers 21).  They lifted up an image of a serpent, and those who looked to the serpent were healed.

The verb lifted up is the same Greek word for exalt.  Jesus was lifted up, or “exalted” — the first

time — on a cross.  In nakedness and shame, in pain and agony, separated from his Father, he willingly held himself there to bear your sin and mine.  Lifted up for everyone in Jerusalem to see, followers and mockers could all testify to his death.  Here is the “the way, the truth, and the life” subjected to public scorn, ridicule and execution.  Yes, “death on a cross” was as important as it was painful in a myriad of ways.  It was the first time Jesus was “exalted.”

Then we come to the word therefore in Philippians 2:9.  “Therefore,” based on his first exaltation, “God has exalted him to the highest place…”  The Greek word literally means, “to lift up, over or above.”  God has lifted up Jesus over everyone else!  Notice that no man can do this.  This is something only God can do!  When we exalt him with our praises and worship, this does not make him any higher.  It simply agrees with and confirms what God has already done — exalted him to his right hand (Hebrews 1:3).  That name that is “above every name”, the one God gave him, is Lord: “every tongue [will] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…”  Jesus reigns from this lofty and unique position today!  And as contradictory as it may seem, his way of the cross is the way to life:  “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time” (1 Peter 5:6).

We have two paths to choose from.  Either I trust in my own efforts to exalt myself — in pride and ego and find death — or I choose the path of patience and wait for God to lift me up the first time, so that like Jesus I too can “learn obedience from what [I] suffer…” (Hebrews 5:8).  This is real life.  The former is like picking yourself up by your own bootstraps, which takes you nowhere.  The latter honors God and follows the way of the cross.  We can appear to be humble in man’s eyes, but only God sees humility of heart.  Others see it as your character develops on the rigorous way of the cross.

God doesn’t ask us to do what Christ did.  He only asks us that in our walk with him we reflect his Son in his first exaltation.  He takes care of our second exaltation, when and how, or even if, it happens on earth.  Are you seeking patient humility in your life or exalting yourself?  Do you eagerly seek the way of the cross, or will you find God’s displeasure early by trying to exalt yourself?