In Psalm 113 we learn that in order to acknowledge (ie. see) the heavens and the earth God has to humble Himself. Think about that for a second. Is that just poetry, or is God really that exalted? I believe He is. It follows that Paul was making a vast understatement when he writes to the believers at Philippi that Christ our Lord, though He existed in the form of God, emptied Himself, taking on the form of a bond-servant, and being found in the likeness of men.

Not the kind of empty whereby we mean, mostly empty, as in an "empty" gas tank - which may have a few drops left in it, or the glass of milk that you "empty" which, once emptied, still has a little drop or two of milk in it that you couldn't be bothered to clean out. When the second Person in the Godhead emptied Himself in order to become a man, we are getting a description of exponential humility. If God must condescend just to look at men, how much more to empty Himself and become a man?

But God didn't stop there. He didn't leave a few drops of milk in the bottom on His emptied cup. When God the Son condescended to become a man, He didn't stop there, but lived this life in perfect obedience, even as His own creation in rejecting Him, abused Him, falsely accused Him, and jeered at Him as they took away that same life. I mean, His death was the death of a criminal - it was the cultural equivalent of putting down a rabid dog. Man's judgment against His maker was that the Author of Life was not fit to live.

Betrayed by His own, abandoned in the end, and dying an ignoble death -these things were nothing compared to being forsaken by God. Do you want to understand how Christ was humbled in His death? He drank the cup of humiliation bone dry, when our Lord said, "It is done!" it marked the completion of His humiliation. Chew on this: It meant that He had endured every humiliation possible. It meant that He had come from the highest high, and condescended to the lowest low. When He said "It is done!" it marked the place where there was no where lower to go.

Labels: Christ, Humiliation

When Adam and Eve sinned against God, the first thing that they realized was that they were naked. Why hadn't they noticed this before? Was it because they, in their innocence, were completely naive? Or, is their realization connected to something else? Since I believe that the first couple were at least as smart, if not smarter, than the rest of their progeny, I highly doubt that it had previously escaped their notice that they were both in the buff. If that is the case, then their realization of nakedness means something else. But what?

The original sin of our ancestors brought death. The bodies of Adam and Eve began to decompose while they were still wearing them. It was slow, but it was steady. Like you and I, they became subject to disease, injury, and death. Old age crept up on them, just like us, and eventually they died, just like we will.

Being dead is kind of a bummer. I believe that to die is to depart and be with Christ. I also believe that being dead and with Christ is better than being alive in this rotting tent we call a body. However, 2 Corinthians 5 indicates that the time between being dead and being resurrected represents a time of longing. We are longing to be clothed with immortal bodies that are not subject to death. Part of being human is wearing flesh, its just that the flesh we wear now is a constant reminder of our original shame: we have sinned, and we are dying.

Did you know that Jesus the Lord experienced this shame? He had to wear a body that was subject to death, even though he never earned that sort of body by sinning. He wore that tent, he tabernacled with us, because he is gracious. And not only did Jesus wear a body ravaged by the effects of sin, he died in it. Not only did he die in that body, he remained separated from a body for three days. Is that a big deal? Yes, yes it is. Jesus is a man, and so for three days he felt the longing that I will feel when I die and am disembodied. He longed to put on his heavenly garment and be clothed in immortality, just like I do. I will do so even more keenly when this body finally wears out.

In every way, our Lord Jesus became one of us. He wore our filthy garments. He suffered in the same kind of flesh we suffer in as a reminder of our shame. He even suffered a death like ours, a disembodiment like we will suffer, and he groaned for the redemption of his body.

And on the third day, he clothed himself with immortality. Soon, he will rid us of all our shame, and he will cloth us as he has clothed himself.

Hallelujah.

Labels: Christ, humility, nakedness, salvation

Labels: Christ, Jesus, judgment, sin, suffering

The apostle had made all who are under the law subject to the curse; from which arose this great problem, that the Jews could not free themselves from the curse of the law. Having stated this problem, he meets it, by showing that Christ has made us free, which aids his purpose even more. If we are saved, because we have been freed from the curse of the law, then righteousness is not by the law.

He next points out the manner in which we are made free. It is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. Now, Christ hung upon the cross, therefore he fell under that curse. But it is certain that he did not suffer that punishment on his own account. It follows, therefore, either that he was crucified in vain, or that our curse was laid upon him, in order that we might be delivered from it. Now, he does not say that Christ was cursed, but, which is still more, that he was a curse, — intimating, that the curse “of all men was laid upon him” (Isaiah 53:6.) If any man think this language harsh, let him be ashamed of the cross of Christ, in the confession of which we glory. It was not unknown to God what death his own Son would die, when he pronounced the law, “He that is hanged is accursed of God.” (Deuteronomy 21:23)

But how does it happen, it will be asked, that a beloved Son is cursed by his Father? We reply, there are two things which must be considered, not only in the person of Christ, but even in his human nature. The one is, that he was the unspotted Lamb of God, full of blessing and of grace; the other is, that he placed himself in our room, and thus became a sinner, and subject to the curse, not in himself indeed, but in us, yet in such a manner, that it became necessary for him to occupy our place. He could not cease to be the object of his Father’s love, and yet he endured his wrath. For how could he reconcile the Father to us, if he had incurred his hatred and displeasure? We conclude, that he “did always those things that pleased” (John 8:29) his Father.

Again, how would he have freed us from the wrath of God, if he had not transferred it from us to himself? Thus, “he was wounded for our transgressions,” (Isaiah 53:5,) and had to deal with God as an angry judge. This is the foolishness of the cross, (1 Corinthians 1:18,) and the admiration of angels, (1 Peter 1:12,) which not only exceeds, but swallows up, all the wisdom of the world.

Labels: Christ, humility

We are a cursed people. The stench of death hangs upon this world. It stalks us all. It lurks, like a specter, in the back of our minds from the time we become aware that we are persons to the time we breathe our last. It casts a shadow over all we do. Everything here rots. Everything here dies. Everything here turns to dust.

Nature itself feels the weight of death's oppression. The creation sighs, and it does not willingly suffer the sons of men to trample her underfoot. The earth longs for restoration, for the wicked to be put down, for death to crushed underfoot. If creation were not bidden by her Master to hold us up, she would gladly cast us off and be rid of our cursed ilk. The sons of men are cruel stewards.

Man is cursed to separation. He is separated from his God, and he is separated from the creation he was made to tend. He spends his life in fear of dying, wondering if there is something beyond this world of thorns and thistles. He sees the withering flower that dies and leaves no trace, he sees the oak tumble and burn, he watches his crops die for lack of rain, he hears his babies cry with hunger, he sees time etch her marks on his skin, and he knows he is headed for his doom. All of this, whether he knows it or not, is just recompense for his own wickedness.

It is a testament to the horror of sin and the depth of man's cursedness that the heinous thing we call death, the blight that permeates the world, is a mercy. Death is a mercy, though she is cloaked in terrible garments. For the Lord God said upon man's fall, "Behold, the man has become like on of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever..." (Gen. 3:22). God drove the man out of paradise and into the clutches of death in order to save him from a fate worse than dying, a fate worse than a thousand generations of cancer, murder, rape, starvation, and war. A fate worse than a stillborn upon the lap of an inconsolable mother.

This brings us to the greatest shame of the sons of men and the source of our greatest misery. We are blinded to glory and goodness. We are utterly unable to see holiness. For if we could see glory, and if we knew holiness, we would never have to wonder if death were a mercy, whether our suffering is just, and how it could be that starving is preferable to God's displeasure.

Man is a cursed brute, and the world is full of his stench. No one knows this like a man who has been set free by that alien thing called grace, who has caught the scent of heaven, who has seen the glory of eternity, and who has been enveloped by the love of God that invades this wretched place. Only this kind of man, a man freed from the misery of sin, can see that God must kill us to save us, and that all our sufferings here, all of our miseries, are nothing in comparison to knowing the glory of God in the risen King, Jesus Christ. The cursed world thinks this man is insane, thus adding to the misery and the longing for the sons of God to be revealed.

Labels: Contributors notes, holiness, righteousness, sin, The Fall

Labels: Christ, Hypocrites, law and gospel, savior

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.