6 The Word became Flesh—He emptied Himself

MANY YEARS AGO Hudson Taylor doffed his European clothes, and with them his European life, and put on Chinese clothes and a Chinese pigtail that he might live a Chinese life and win Chinese souls for His Master. Years before that, a band of Moravian missionaries took the only means open to them of reaching the negro slaves of America with the Word of Life by selling themselves into life-long slavery to their tyrannical masters, so that by living the life of slaves they might gain slaves for Christ.

       Such actions, magnificent as they were, pale into insignificance when compared with the incarnation of the Word of God, that by taking upon Him the flesh of men He might live the life of man and reconcile men to God. The contrast between the life of the Son of God in Heaven, and that of the Son of Man in Nazareth, is so extreme as to defy description. Yet it is put before us as something which we should consider, and from which we may learn much about Our Saviour's heart. We should therefore ponder all that is told of this event: for it was shown us not to mystify but to enlighten us, not to repel but to attract us. The Holy Ghost came not to disappoint us but to lead us step by step into all truth. It is the fact that man was made in the image of God that enables us to enter into His thoughts and into His feelings. It was the same fact that made the Incarnation a

— end of page 23 —

possibility. The mould into which the soul of the Son of God was now to enter was of the same form, though of infinitely slighter proportions than that in which He had hitherto dwelt.

       There is a phrase in Mark 14:33 which may aptly be transferred to the time before the Incarnation. It is said there that when the shadows of Calvary began to fall upon Jesus of Nazareth He began to be amazed. So different is realisation from anticipation, even to God Himself! The Lord Jesus had been contemplating, facing, foretelling and explaining Calvary throughout His ministry, but the first actual approach of the fact so far exceeded His thoughts as to beat Him to His knees in an agony of conflict.

       There must have been some such experience for the Son of God when the time came for Him to implement the promise made before Creation. Hitherto it had been words and thoughts; now it was to be actions and feelings. No doubt the Moravians had thought it all out upon their knees in their own chambers, but it was different when the money was paid, and the manacles clamped, and the whips might fall!

       There lay before the Son of God a mighty change of experience. Hitherto His person had been inviolate. His home secure. His vision of His Father unobscured. Now He was to lay aside His immunity from pain and suffering, from the unforeseen chances of human life, and launch His frail barque upon an unknown sea of untasted experiences. Above all, He was to put Himself into such a position that Death itself should be His portion. The Son of God was to lay aside not only His Body but also His Spirit, and enter into the sufferings of the damned, before He could again revert to the Glory which He shared with His Father from the Beginning.

       To sustain Him in this fearful adventure was the knowledge that He came not of Himself but was sent by His

— end of page 24 —

Father, not upon some self-chosen escapade like the fallen angels who also left their first estate, but to do the will of Him who sent Him. He had known from eternity what it was to live in trustful dependence upon His Father. Now that hidden life was to be manifested to men, and He who had obeyed Him in the light was to trust Him in the dark, that all might know that He came to live and die because He loved the Father. In Hebrews 2:13 is given the badge of Divine Sonship worn by all the Royal Family: their faith and hope have been in God.

       There is a purely human courage which enables a man to face danger through confidence in his own right arm, his own resources of soul and body. There is another courage which rests not upon itself but upon the Love and Power of another, the courage of Faith in God. This it was that nerved the Son of God as He faced the Incarnation.

       Before the actual Incarnation, however, there was to be, as it were, a 'disrobing' of the Son of God. In Paul's vivid phrase 'He emptied Himself' (Philippians 2:7), and thus became poor for our sakes. The Son of God was to live on earth a purely human life with all the disabilities that that entailed. He was to know experiences and trials which are impossible to God in His fulness: for He was to be tempted, to be weak, to suffer and to die. Therefore He laid aside His wisdom that He might know what it was to grow in wisdom; His power that He might learn to depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit; His immortality that He might taste death for every man. In other words, He emptied Himself of everything which might give Him an advantage over any other man, and became 'the man, Christ Jesus'.

       It has sometimes happened that a man has left his home to go to business in the morning as usual, and at midday found himself in a hospital ward wondering who he is and what he is doing, a victim of amnesia. While the attack

— end of page 25 —

lasts he is wholly dependent upon the words of others for knowledge of his past life. His mother, his wife, his business associates can each supply him with a new memory; and, if he can believe them, he can piece together his past life incident by incident, conversation by conversation.

       Some such experience was the lot of the Son of God. There came a moment when He laid down even His consciousness of self, and with it his memory, and became an embryo in Mary's womb, to wake up to the slow mental growth of an ordinary baby. How inconceivably great a step for God to take!

       Or, again, it has often happened that a vigorous athlete has been stricken with some foul disease and heard from his doctor's unwilling lips the news that never again will he feel strong or be healthy; that the best he has to hope for, after a painful operation, is the life of an invalid and a lingering death. So has he laid himself down to be anaesthetised, knowing that when he awakens the old life of prowess will be over, and the one of invalidism begun.

       So the Lord of Glory was faced with the fact that after He had emptied Himself He would wake again to consciousness in a poor body without any beauty, and live out a lonely life amongst a sea of enemies, until even that was extinguished in the darkness of Hades and the company of the damned. And this He did, not in ignorance, but having followed for centuries the sufferings of those who, like Himself, had put their trust in a Living God, and earned the hatred of the ungodly.

       The friends who bid farewell to the missionary at the railway station know full well that in spite of choruses and hallelujahs the life that lies ahead is strange and hard and maybe dangerous. Their hearts are full, their prayers are promised, their imaginations stirred. How must the Angels, both good and bad, have wondered as the departure of the Son of God on this voyage to earth began. Gabriel had

— end of page 26 —

already had a hand in the preliminaries, and carried down to Zacharias, Mary and Joseph the first news of the coming event. Simeon too had received advance information. On the other hand Satan was already forming his plan to destroy the young child at birth. There should be no room in the inn save in the cattle shed; and if the babe survived that insanitary birthplace, Herod should be roused by the Magi's enquiry to cut Him off with the jealous sword. All Heaven indeed was agog with interest as the day of the amazing adventure drew nigh: only earth was wrapped in the sleep of ignorant unbelief; earth which had been warned centuries before that such a Son should be born to them, a Son Who should be the Mighty God.

       How tremendous that last moment, when with supreme confidence in the Almighty Father, the only-begotten Son lost hold of Himself and fell asleep on the bosom of Jehovah, to wake again in the arms of Mary!

— end of page 27 —

---

Previous | Next | Contents | Home Page | Site Map | < - >