The Greatest Missionary

01 November 2011 by Brad Williams

Q. 46. What was the estate of Christ's humiliation?
A. The estate of Christ's humiliation was that low condition, wherein he for our sakes, emptying himself of his glory, took upon him the form of a servant, in his conception and birth, life, death, and after his death, until his resurrection.

Q. 47. How did Christ humble himself in his conception and birth?
A. Christ humbled himself in his conception and birth, in that, being from all eternity the Son of God, in the bosom of the Father, he was pleased in the fullness of time to become the son of man, made of a woman of low estate, and to be born of her; with divers circumstances of more than ordinary abasement.

Q. 48. How did Christ humble himself in his life?
A. Christ humbled himself in his life, by subjecting himself to the law, which he perfectly fulfilled; and by conflicting with the indignities of the world, temptations of Satan, and infirmities in his flesh, whether common to the nature of man, or particularly accompanying that his low condition.

I love missions. By that, I mean that I love the spreading of the Gospel to the nations for the purpose of making disciples of Jesus Christ. I have friends who are overseas living in circumstances that would break most men and women I know; they have left kith and kin with only the dream of the Gospel to sustain them. They are in what look like God-forsaken lands, but they believe that the Gospel will bring their new people hope. So they labor in language, with loneliness, in danger, and among a strange people in a strange land. This world is not worthy of them. They are the sort of people who get embarrassed when you tell them how much you admire them, and they would be ashamed if they knew I had them in mind when I wrote these words. These brothers and sisters are ministers of Christ; they burn with His fire.

The greatest missionary who ever lived was not the Apostle Paul. The greatest missionary that ever lived was our Lord Jesus Christ. He left His country (heaven, where his throne is) surrounded by throngs of adoring angels, not counting His equality of God a thing to be clung to, and he emptied himself. He made himself of no reputation. He stepped out of glory and into the womb of a poor Jewish girl, took on on flesh and bone, and became the son of a blue collar laborer named Joseph.

His was more than the ordinary abasement. Jesus' mission required humiliations galore. He lived in the world he made, and his own people which he made rejected him; they cursed him with the air he gave them to breathe. Yet, he endured for the love of his bride. Jesus burned with a love for the nations, and no humiliation, torture, nor even the wrath of God would deter him from his zeal to rescue them.