THE
REDEEMER’S HUMILIATION
By J.
C. Philpot
Chapter
Three from the book Meditations on the Sacred Humanity of Our Blessed Redeemer
In approaching the solemn subject of the sacred
humanity of our blessed Lord, as engaged in the work of redemption when here
below, we desire to do so under the special teaching and unction of the Holy
Ghost, not only that nothing erroneous, inconsistent, or unbecoming may escape
our pen, and that what we write may be in the strictest harmony with the
oracles of God and the experience of his saints, but that life, and power, and
savour may attend our reflections to those believing hearts which may desire to
walk with us in these fields of heavenly meditation To guide into all truth, to
take of the things of Christ and to show them to his disciples, and thus
glorify Jesus, is the especial work of the Holy Ghost. #Joh 16:13-15 To have this divine teaching is to have
"an unction from the Holy One whereby we know all things;" #1Joh 2:20 and is to be blessed with that anointing which
"teacheth of all things and is truth, and is no lie." #1Joh 2:27 Prayer and supplication, reverent thoughts and feelings
towards the sacred Majesty of heaven, inward prostration of spirit before his
throne, submission of mind to the word of truth faith in living exercise upon
the Person and work of the Son of God. hope anchoring within the veil, and love
flowing forth to the adorable Redeemer, will all accompany this heavenly
anointing. So unspeakably holy, so great, and so perfect is that true
tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man; one not made with hands, as the
tabernacle in the wilderness, but prepared by God the Father, assumed by God
the Son, and sanctified by God the Holy Ghost, that we should as much dread to
drop any word derogatory to or inconsistent with its grace and glory as the
high priest under the law would have trembled to carry swine’s blood, or the
broth of abominable things into the most holy place.
The sacred humanity of his dear Son, as
the temple of his Godhead, and as irradiated with the beams of his eternal
glory, the eyes of the Father ever contemplate with ineffable complacency and
delight. Nor was this tabernacle less glorious in his holy eyes who sees things
as they really are not as they appear to man, even in Jesus’ deepest
humiliation and shame, when he was "a worm, and no man, a reproach of men,
and despised of the people." When dogs compassed him, when the assembly of
the wicked inclosed him, when they pierced his hands and feet, when He could
tell all his bones as they hung stripped on the cross, when his enemies looked
and stared upon him, parted his garments among them, and cast lots upon his
vesture, #Ps 22:6;16-18, he was as much delighted in by the
Father, and was as glorious in his eyes as he now is at the right hand of his
throne. He ever was from the hour of his incarnation, he ever will be the same
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, when he hung upon the cross, today as he sits
at the right hand of God, and for ever in the eternity of his kingdom, power,
and glory. May we, then, who believe in his name, and cleave to him with
purpose of heart, as beholding the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ, feel such a sacred communion with him in his
suffering humanity that we may be able to say, with holy John, in the flowing
forth of faith and affection, "And truly our fellowship is with the Father
and with his Son Jesus Christ." #1Jo 1:3
The foundation of this sacred mystery was
laid in the eternal purposes of God, and determined by a covenant ordered in
all things and sure. The creation of this lower world, and indeed we may say,
of the higher world of bright, angelic beings, was but a first step to the
bringing to light of these hidden purposes of Jehovah. When he formed man in
his own likeness, it was not merely after his moral image, #Eph 4:24 Col 3:10 but after the likeness of that man who
was set up in the mind of God from everlasting, or ever the earth was. #Pr 8:23 It was utterly impossible that a holy God could create a
sinful man. He, therefore, made man upright, but able to fall. During the
period of man’s innocency the promises of the covenant of grace, so to speak,
slept. They were in the bosom of the covenant, ready to appear, but were not
yet needed. But immediately that man sinned and fell, -as soon as Justice,
which, as the revelation of the intrinsic holiness of Jehovah, had the first
claim to speak, had pronounced sentence on the head of the guilty criminals,
mercy, as already laid up in the covenant of grace, stepped in with the first
promise which issued from the lips of a sin-pardoning God, that the seed of the
woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Here was the first intimation of the
manifestation of the Son of God to destroy the works of the devil. The bruiser
of the serpent’s head was to be of the seed of the woman; and the sufferings of
the sacred humanity to be assumed of the woman were at the same moment
foreshadowed in the declaration that the seed of the serpent should bruise his
heel.
As a further development of the sacred
mystery of the Slaughtered Lamb, the gracious Lord then instituted Worship by
sacrifice, for it is evident from Abel’s offering “of the firstlings of his
flock and of the fat thereof, which he doubtless burned on the altar, in strict
accordance with the Mosaic ritual afterwards appointed, #Nu 18:17 that the Lord then instituted the rite of sacrifice, and
himself clothed our first parents with the skins of the sacrificed victims as
emblematic of the righteousness of the slain Lamb of God, who was thus revealed
to their faith.
Let us not think that these solemn
transactions in the garden of Eden were a sudden thought in the mind of God —
an expedient then and there for the first time devised to patch up the fall.
The covenant of grace between the three Persons of the sacred Trinity was
entered into with a foreview of the fall; and therefore the blessed Lord is
called the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" #Re 13:8 It is, indeed, derogatory to the character of him who
“declareth the end from the beginning," #Isa 46:10
who “looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven," #Job 28:24 to think that the Adam fall took him, so to speak by
surprise, was an unlooked-for unexpected event, of which there had been no
foresight, and for which there had been made no provision. Far from our mind be
such low, grovelling thoughts of the great and glorious self-existent I AM.
Such views would root up the very foundations of our faith in his omniscience
and omnipotence If God did not foresee the fall, an event charged with the
eternal destiny of millions, what minor circumstance can he foresee now? If God
did not provide a remedy for the fall as foreseen, where is his wisdom as well
as his prescience of the circumstances whereby we are at present surrounded?
Such a blind God groping, as it were for a remedy amidst the ruins of the fall,
which he never foresaw, is worse than a heathen idol. At any rate it is not the
God of the Bible it is not the God whom living souls believe in, worship, and
adore. They admire with holy reverence his eternal foresight, and bow with
submission before his fixed decrees; they adore his sovereignty in the election
of the vessels of mercy and the rejection of the vessels of wrath; and when
favoured with a sip of his love, bless his holy name for having loved them with
an everlasting love from before the foundation of the world. If those foundations
of our most holy faith be destroyed, what can the righteous do? #Ps 11:3 But blessed be God, his prescience and his providence, his
wisdom and his grace, his mercy and his love, are all from everlasting to
everlasting, secured by a covenant ordered in all things and sure, fixed by
firm decree and ratified by his word and by his oath, two immutable things in
which it was impossible for God to lie. #Heb 6:18 In
this everlasting covenant it was appointed that the Son of God, the second
Person in the glorious Godhead, should take our nature into union with his own
divine Person, that he might offer it as a sacrifice for the sins of his elect
people, and thus redeem them from all the consequences of the fall, and
reconcile them unto God.
We have already shown that this sacred
humanity of our adorable Lord was a real human body, and a real human soul,
taken at one and the same instant into union with the divine Person of the Son
of God, and that it was essentially impeccable and immortal. We have, with God’s
blessing, in pursuance of our sacred theme, and as a further opening up of
"the great mystery of godliness. God manifest in the flesh," to show
the work accomplished in that sacred humanity whilst here on earth in its state
of humiliation and suffering.
The first consideration is, what he became by this voluntary act of taking our
nature into union with his divine Person. In opening up this part of our
subject we shall tread closely in the footsteps of that portion of holy writ
where the apostle Paul unfolds the sacred mystery of the humiliation of the
blessed Lord. #Php 2:5-8
1. He emptied himself
of all those outward adjuncts of his glorious Person wherewith he had for ever
shone as the eternal Son of the Father in the courts of heaven. We use the word
“emptied himself,” as being the literal translation of the word rendered in our
version, “made himself of no reputation,” but we do not mean thereby that he
deprived himself of any one of the perfections of the divine nature. Not a
single essential attribute of Deity was, or indeed could be in the least degree
diminished by his assumption of our nature, for he could no more cease to be
all that God is than he could cease to be God. But he emptied himself of them
before the eyes of men laying aside their outward and visible manifestation. As
an earthly king may lay aside for a while his regal state, and yet not cease to
be a king, so the Son of God laid aside for a season those bright beams of his
glory which would otherwise have shone forth too brightly and gloriously for
human eyes to look upon; for no man can see God and live. #Ex 33:20. Besides which, there was a secret purpose in the mind of
God, whose glory it is to conceal a thing as well as to reveal it, #Pr 25:2, that the glorious person of his dear Son should be veiled
from all eyes but those of faith.
As, then, the sun is sometimes veiled in a
mist, or by passing clouds, through which his light shines and his orb appears,
though dimmed and shorn of those rays which the human eye cannot bear, so the
Son of God veiled his diving glory by the tabernacle of the sacred humanity in
which he dwelt. He is therefore said to have “tabernacled among us,” as the
word “dwelt” #Joh 1:14 literally means; for as the Shechinah, or
divine presence, dwelt in a cloud of glory, upon the mercy-seat, in the
tabernacle erected in the wilderness, #Le 16:2, so
that the most holy place needed not the light of the golden candlestick which
illuminated the outer sancturary, and yet was veiled by the curtains of the
tabernacle, #2Sa 7:2, so the sacred humanity of the blessed
Lord was as a tabernacle to his divine nature, veiling it from the eyes of men,
and yet by its indwelling presence filled with grace and glory.
Thus, to common eyes, he had no form nor
comeliness, was as a root out of a dry ground, was despised and rejected of
men, and when they saw him there was no beauty in him that they should desire
him. #Isa 53:2. It is true that sparkles of his eternal
Sonship and glorious Godhead shone through the veil of his humanity to
believing eyes and hearts, for John says, "And the Word was made flesh,
and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten
of the Father, full of grace and truth." #Joh 1:14
And the Father not only outwardly, with a voice from heaven, twice declared
that he was his beloved Son, #Mt
3:17 17:5 but revealed him
inwardly as such to the hearts of his disciples, according to the Lord’s own
testimony in the case of Peter #Mt
16:16,17 As long as he was in
the world he was the light of the world, #Joh 1:9 8:12 9:5
as the sun, however veiled by clouds, is still the light of the earth. Though
rejected and abhorred of men, he could, therefore, still look up to his
heavenly Father, in the lowest depths of his humiliation, and speak in the
language of filial love and confidence, "Though Israel be not gathered,
yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my
strength." #Isa 49:5
2. The second act of humiliation of the
eternal Son of God in assuming our nature was to take upon him the form of a servant. Some are born servants, as Abraham had
three hundred and eighteen trained servants born in his house; #Ge 14:14 and some are made servants by others, either taken captive
in war #De 21:10 or bought with money. #Le 25:44-46 But the blessed Son of God took upon him the form of a
servant, as a voluntary act of grace; and not only the form, but the reality,
for the word form respects not only his outward appearance whilst here below.
but his inward subjection of soul to God. Therefore the Father said of him, in
the language of prophecy, "Behold my servant, whom 1 uphold; mine elect,
in whom my soul delighteth," #Isa 42:1 and
unto him, "Thou art my servant, 0 Israel, in whom I will be
glorified." #Isa 49:3 He was formed from the womb to be God’s
servant, #Isa 49:5 so that he became a servant at the very
instant that he took our nature into union with his own divine Person in the
womb of the Virgin. Thus the apostle, quoting the words of #Ps 40:6, "Mine ears hast thou opened," (marg. "digged,") that is, "Hast made me thy willing
servant," in allusion to #Ex
21:6, renders them, "A
body hast thou prepared me;" for by taking the prepared body he became the
willing servant of the Father, according to his own words, "I delight to do
thy will, 0 my God." #Ps
40:8
3. By taking this prepared body, he was
therefore made in the
likeness of men, and was found in fashion as a man, that is, though his sacred humanity was
intrinsically different from ours, as being holy, harmless, undefiled and
separate from sinners, impeccable, and immortal, yet, in outward form and
appearance, as in reality and truth, it perfectly resembled man’s. It ate, it
drank, it slept, was weary, sweat drops of blood, endured pain of body and
travail of soul. The early church was much pestered with what is called the
Gnostic heresy, which, under the plausible assumption that real flesh was too
gross and material a substance for the Son of God to assume, asserted that he
took a shadowy, aerial form, in which there was no real flesh or blood, but
only the appearance. It is against this heresy that holy John draws his sword,
when he declares that "the Word was made flesh," and gives this as a
test of saving truth and damnable error: "Hereby know ye the Spirit of
God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of
God, and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of antichrist whereof ye have
heard that it should come. and even now already is it in the world." #1Jo 4:2,3 We must hold fast, then, to this vital truth, that it was
real flesh and blood, though holy flesh and blood, that the Son of God assumed
in the womb and offered on the tree.
4. Having, then, thus voluntarily assumed
the form of a servant, the blessed Lord took that in which the very essence of
servitude consists, obedience, and that not only to the word. but to
the will of his heavenly Father.
As this obedience forms our justifying
righteousness and is a part of his finished work, it claims at our hands the
most attentive, prayerful, and meditative consideration. Not, however, to dwell
too long on this part of our subject, we may briefly name these five
particulars as most marked and blessed features of the obedience of Jesus,
whilst here in this state of humiliation. It was voluntary — delighted in —
perfect — vicarious — and meritorious.
i. It was voluntary.
"Lo! I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy
will, 0 God," #Heb 10:7 were, so to speak, the words in his heart
and mouth when he came out of the bosom of the Father to take flesh in the womb
of the Virgin. There was no compulsion to bring him down from heaven to earth
but the compulsion of love. As the love of Christ is said to constrain us not
to live unto ourselves, but unto him who died for us and rose again, #2Co 5:14 so, in a sense, we may say that the love of his people
constrained him to live and die for them. They were his inheritance, the
portion given him by his Father when he appointed him heir of all things, #Heb 1:2 that they might be his eternal possession. #De 32:9 Ps 2:8 "Thine they were," he therefore
meekly reminds his Father, "and thou gavest them me," adding, to show
the unity of mind, will, purpose, and possession in the Father and the Son,
"And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in
them." #Joh 17:6,10
He, therefore, loved the church as his own
bride, the spouse of his heart, whom he had betrothed unto himself as the gift
of the Father before time was. #Jer
31:3 Ho 2:19,20 Yes, before
the mountains were settled; while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the
fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, even then was he rejoicing
in the habitable part of his earth that part which his saints should inhabit,
and his delights were with the sons of men. #Pr 8:25,26,31
When, then, in and by the fall, the church had become defiled and polluted
beyond all thought and expression, when sunk beyond all other help and hope,
the image of God in which she had been created, marred, and defaced, she an
enemy and an alien by wicked works, the willing captive of sin and Satan, with
hell opening its mouth to swallow her up in the same gulf of eternal woe where
the fallen angels were already weltering then, even then, 0 miracle of grace! 0
wonder of unutterable love! the Son of God, by a purely voluntary act, yet in
accordance with the will and counsel of the Father and the Holy Ghost, gave himself
for her.
This free, voluntary gift of himself, with
all its blessed fruits and consequences, is beautifully unfolded by the apostle
in that striking passage, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also
loved the church and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it
with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a
glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it
should be holy and without blemish." #Eph 5:25-27 The
forlorn, abject, helpless, and hopeless state of the church by the fall, and
the pitiful compassion of the blessed Lord as her covenant Head and Husband,
are beautifully set forth by the prophet Ezekiel, where he compares her to a
poor, deserted, abandoned infant, cast out in the open field to the loathing of
its person in the day that it was born. No eye pitied it, no hand was stretched
forth to do it any necessary office, or give it food, warmth or shelter.
Abandoned to die, had not he who is "very pitiful, of tender mercy"
pitied her, #Jas 5:11 had not he whose love passeth knowledge
loved her, into what an unfathomable depth of everlasting woe must she not have
sunk! But in this very hour of need he passed by, and the time was the time of
love, for he spread his skirt over her, and sware unto her, entered into a
covenant with her, and she became his. But before she could pass into his arms,
he had himself to wash away all her filth in the fountain of his own blood, to
anoint her with the oil of his grace, and the regenerating, sanctifying
influences of the Blessed Spirit, and to clothe her with broidered work, even
the righteousness that he wrought for her by his own active and suffering
obedience the three blessings of which the apostle speaks as the present portion
of the saints of God: "And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but
ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by
the Spirit of our God." #Eze
16:5-10 1Co 6:11
ii. It was an obedience that the blessed
Lord delighted in. His own words, in the language of
prophecy, as if in holy anticipation of his coming from heaven to earth, a
thousand years before the incarnation, were, "I delight to do thy will, 0
my God." #Ps 40:8 Thus he could say, when faint and weary
at Samaria’s well, his love and delight in doing the will of God absorbing all
feeling of the natural wants of the body, "My meat is to do the will of
him that sent me, and to finish his work." #Joh 4:34
In this spirit also he said, a year before his actual sufferings and death,
"But I have a baptism to be baptized with" — and 0 what a baptism of
suffering and blood! of what agonies of body, and of what travail of soul!
"and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" #Lu 12:50 — as though his holy soul panted with intense desires for
the overwhelming baptism of garden sorrows, and pressed forward to meet it, and
the sufferings of the cross, as the fulfilment of his Father’s will.
So, on his last journey out of Galilee
towards Judea, "he went before," as if he would exceed his usual
pace, and outstrip his lagging disciples, "ascending up to
Jerusalem," where the will of his Father was to be obeyed, and the atoning
sacrifice to be offered. #Lu
13:33 19:28 Blessed Lord!
would that we could follow thee in this holy example, and delight to do thy
will as thou didst delight to do thy Father’s will. And such surely would be
our desire and delight were we more conformed to thy suffering image, and more
moulded after the pattern of thine obedience. #Ro 12:1,2
Animated by the same holy delight, he said to his disciples, on the eve of his
sufferings and death, "With desire I have desired to eat this passover
with you before I suffer." #Lu 22:15 And
when the solemn hour drew nigh when the waters came in unto his soul, when he sank
in deep mire where there was no standing, when he came into deep waters where
the floods overflowed him, #Psa
69:1,2, {1} in the gloomy garden, when he had to drink of the cup of wrath
put into his hand, what meek submission, what holy resignation he showed to his
Father’s will! Where can we look to see such sorrows? But where can we look to
find such holy obedience, such meek submission, such patient endurance of them?
iii. Again. It was a perfect obedience. Every thought, every word, and every act of that holy
and sacred humanity were perfect, not only as proceeding from a nature
intrinsically pure, but as filled with all the gifts and graces of the Holy
Ghost, that glorious Person in the undivided Godhead who not only begot by a
divine operation the sacred humanity of our blessed Lord in the womb of the
Virgin, but filled it with all his gifts and graces, descending upon him more
visibly at his baptism, and anointing him as Prophet, Priest and King, #Isa 61:1 Lu 3:22 4:1 Joh 3:34 Ac 10:38
Heb 1:9 but abiding in him in
all his fulness during the whole of his ministry, sufferings, and death. The
law demanded a perfect obedience; it could, indeed, from its very nature,
accept no other; and this obedience must be unwavering, flowing on in one
uninterrupted stream from the heart, and that stream, like Jordan, all the time
of harvest, overflowing all its banks with love to God and man. As the Lord
promised that rivers of living water should flow out of the belly (or heart) of
him that believed in his name, so the rivers of living obedience flowed from
his own heart and lips, as he himself believed in God and did his will from the
heart.
iv. The obedience of Jesus to the Father s
will was vicarious, that s, rendered on behalf of his
church, and imputed to her for righteousness. He stood in her place and stead
as her Surety and Representative. She owed a debt which she could not pay, an
obedience to the Law which she could not render. The Father accepted his Son’s,
and thus his obedience became hers. Thus, as by one man s disobedience many
were made sinners, so, by the obedience of one, many are made righteous; #Ro 5:19 for God made the Lord Jesus to be sin for us who knew no
sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. #2Co 5:21.
v. This obedience was meritorious. Here we see the beauty, grace, and glory of the
incarnation of the Son of God As God, he could not suffer; as man he could not
merit- but as God-man he could suffer as man, and merit as God And as though he
has two natures, he has but one Person, his doing and dying, his sufferings and
obedience, his blood and righteousness, are stamped with all the value and
invested with all the validity of Godhead, because he who obeyed and suffered
as man is truly and verily God.
Here, then, is "the great mystery of
godliness, God manifest in the flesh." Here flow through this consecrated
channel pardon and peace. Here God can be just and yet the iustifier of him who
believeth in Jesus. Here every attribute of God is harmonised, the law magnified,
the gospel revealed, the sinner saved, and God glorified.
{1} It is in the Psalms, especially #Psalms 22; #Psalms 40; #Psalms 69, that the inward experience of the
blessed Lord us a Man of sorrows is set forth.
Please direct your comments to Mike
Krall.