The Humiliation of Christ

When believers pass away, you’ll often hear someone say, “Even if they could come back, they wouldn’t.” Who would? How traumatic would it be to leave heaven and come to earth?

Christ knows.

In his great high priestly prayer, he said, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5). Before the incarnation, God the Son existed in perfect loving union with his Father and the Spirit, worshiped by angels, and free from the trials of a mortal existence. Then he who

“was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness” (Phil 2:6-7 NRSV).

One day, “the heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain” him (1Kings 8:27); the next he is neatly tucked into Mary’s womb with room to spare. One day he hears angels call him “holy, holy, holy” (Is 6:3); the next he literally cannot hear, for he has no ears. The one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalms 50:10) chose to become the child of a poor couple in a poor land ruled by an empire that put very little value on human life.

The infinite became finite. The Almighty became an embryo. The Judge was willing to be treated unjustly. All because the Eternal chose to die.

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was amazing, but let us not lose sight of the fact that it was the last in a long line of sacrifices that he made. For us.