GLEANINGS — November 3, A.D. 2013                                                                                                               "He Thought it not Robbery"

Quick! Name at least five ways in which the Bible relates a thief, thieves, or theft to the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus...

1. Judas Iscariot, one of His twelve, is expressly called a thief  (John 12:6).

2. Jesus said that His mission was exactly contrary in purpose to the "mission" of a thief (John 10:10).

3. Yet, He compared His own coming to that of a thief (Revelation 3:3, 16:15. Cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and 2 Peter 3:10)

4. He was crucified with two robbers (Matthew 27:38, Mark 15:27)

5. Yet, He "thought it not robbery to be equal with God," Philippians 2:6 (NASB and ESV translate the phrase as "something to be grasped.")

satan, deceived by his own pride (1 Timothy 3:6), apparently acted with utter foolishness and tried to rob God, Who will not give His unparalleled glory to another, let alone suffer it to be stolen. The Bible provides a glimpse into the fall of the devil when the prophet Isaiah takes up a proverb against the king of Babylon, and compares that man's vaunting arrogance to that of the arch adversary of God and man:

"How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; (Isaiah 14:12, 13 ESV; King James and New King James read "Lucifer," not "Day Star.")

Unlike the usurping evil one, the Lord Jesus, the eternal Son, IS in fact equal to the eternal Father and to the One Who is the eternal Spirit of the Father and the Son! Whereas the satanic thief seeks by deceit or violence to seize that which does not belong to Him, Christ willingly gave up that which was His own. He did not count His divine place of glory with the Father as something to be held onto no matter what. Without diminishing His divine nature, which is of course impossible, He nevertheless gave up that position, emptying Himself and taking the form of a servant.

The thief takes away, Jesus gives. And His apostle commands His followers to imitate Him: "Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need." (Ephesians 4:28)

Thieves usually do their dirty work in the dark, but believers are the sons and the daughters of light. The difference between Christ and His church, on one hand, and those on the other hand who steal things that are tangible or intangible is like night and day.