Having said that, it is interesting to see how early
Christians put all of this familiar language and imagery to use.
Certainly it would have been said of the Caesar that “the gods exalted him and
have given him the name above every name, and that at the name of Caesar every
knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Caesar is Lord.” Unlike
Caesar, however, it was said of Jesus that His Lordship over all (including
Caesar) came about through a process that the rulers of the world would not
have supposed.
Whereas Caesar positioned himself as the son of god (divi
filius) and laid claim to his rule according to this proclamation, Jesus is
said to have “existed in the form of God” but “did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped.” Whereas Caesar exalted himself and enslaved
others to extend and enrich the empire of the one referred to as the son of
god, to bring about the kingdom of the Creator God, Jesus countered the Caesar
“by taking on the form of a slave.” Whereas Caesar and his sycophantic
worshipers lauded him as being a man among men and therefore endowed by the
gods with the right to rule because of the superiority of his very nature, the
true Emperor, that being Jesus, came “looking like other men” and “sharing in
human nature.” The dichotomy that is
being drawn is stark indeed.
Caesar, of course, inflicted his
power (the pax Romana) upon the peoples of the world by the looming threat of
death at the end of a sword, whereas Jesus became “obedient to the point of
death.” The Roman cross and its accursed death was the emblem of power of
Caesar and of his right to unchallenged rule. All those that presumed to
challenge his divinely appointed and sanctioned rule would meet their horrible
ends upon that emblem.
So naturally, as the hymn continues the contrast, Jesus, as
the anti-Caesar, went to “death on a cross,” with His Resurrection proving that
the great powers of the world (Rome, Caesar, death) had no power over Him or
over any member of the kingdom of the Creator God. Whereas the cross was
meant to shame and humiliate, it became Jesus’ path to honor and exaltation (as
the Philippian passage clearly demonstrates the kingdom ideal of the first
becoming last and the last becoming first). This, of course, was contrary
to all thinking in that day.
The fact that the early church so freely employed the
language of death by crucifixion, within a world that had a robust
understanding of the explicit implications of such a death (you’re not a king),
and within a Jewish world that saw such a thing as evidence of their God’s
highest cursing, gives tremendous weight to the firm belief in the fact of
Jesus’ physical Resurrection into a world that was materially changed by that
very fact. The Resurrection stands as the only explanation for the
language about Jesus that is here employed. It remains to be concluded
that if there was the smallest doubt that Jesus did not physically raise from the
dead, then the church would certainly not give triumphant voice to the fact of
His crucifixion at the hands of Rome.
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