The King Who Climbed Down

Caesar had still not decided Paul's case when a dusty traveler from Philippi knocked at his door with a bag of money.

"From the church," said Epaphroditus, setting it down. "They heard you were in chains. They want you to have what you need."

Paul hugged him, as well as a man can hug with one wrist chained to a soldier. (Philippi was weeks away from Rome, by road and then by ship. That is a long way to carry a bag of money without losing any of it.)

Then Epaphroditus told Paul the rest of the news. The believers in Philippi were brave and generous. But some of them had started pushing to be first. Two women named Euodia and Syntyche, who had once worked hard beside Paul, now could not agree about anything.

Paul sat a long time without speaking. Then he called Timothy to bring a pen.

"Write this," he said. "If Jesus has ever comforted you, if his love has ever warmed your heart, then make me glad. Love each other. Want the same things. Do nothing just to look important. Treat the others as more important than yourselves. Don't look after only your own things. Look after each other's."

Timothy looked up from the page. "How will they learn to do that?"

"By looking at Jesus," said Paul. "Write this too." And Timothy wrote down words that the first Christians may already have been singing:

He was God from the very beginning,
with all the shining glory of God,
but he did not grab hold of it
or keep it for himself.
He let it go.
He took the place of a servant
and was born a man like us.
Then he bent lower still.
He obeyed his Father all the way to death,
even death on a cross.

So God lifted him up to the highest place
and gave him the name above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow,
in heaven, on earth, and under the earth,
and every voice will say,
"Jesus Christ is Lord!"
and all of it will bring glory to God the Father.

(Those were brave words to send from Rome. In Rome, people called Caesar "lord," and they climbed over each other to get near his throne.)

Paul could tell the Philippians to put each other first, but he could not make Euodia and Syntyche agree. Only the King in the song could do that, and he was already at work. Back when the church in Philippi began, a woman named Lydia, who sold purple cloth, had heard about Jesus beside a river and opened her home to the believers. Now, in Rome, there were believers even in Caesar's own household.

One day every knee in heaven and on earth will bow. In Philippi and in Rome, the bowing had already begun, one knee at a time, before the King who climbed all the way down to die on a cross and was lifted all the way up.