Philippians: God in the likeness of Man
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who,
being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
But made himself of no reputation,
and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name
which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven,
and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5ff (Spoke 6, Cycle 3)
As discussed at length above, God established the Number 6 as the Number of Man.
This is the universal consensus of Biblical scholars and has been written about so much over the last two millennia of Church history
that there is no need to cite the endless sources. It is therefore a great wonder to behold the doctrine of
the true humanity of Jesus Christ joined with the doctrine of His Divinity
here in Philippians on Spoke 6. It is the premier passage in all the Bible that explicitly states
the union of God and Man in Christ Jesus. It reveals the ultimate spiritual meaning of the
Sixth Letter, Vav, and in so doing, the Divine design of yet another Spoke upon the pattern of the Alphabet.
Note the thematic symmetry; Man was created in the likeness of God on the Sixth Day
just as Philippians declares God's incarnation in the likeness of Man on the Sixth Spoke of the
Bible Wheel.
The passage above moves so quickly from Christ's humiliation and death on the Cross to
His subsequent glory that it would be all too easy to overlook the depth of pathos – the unspeakable horror – implicit
in the incarnation, suffering, and death of the wholly righteous Lord of History ΑΩ/את
in our sin-soaked world. The Book of Hosea corrects for that, as we shall presently see.
The Humiliation of God (Hosea |
