A Humble God: Lessons from the birth of Jesus
Philippians 2:5-8 KJV says:
2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
2:7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
2:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
I’ve always wondered what it really means to have the mind “which was also in Christ Jesus.” The following passage from Phillip Yancey’s book, The Jesus I never knew, has set me on the path to understanding what Paul meant:
“Before Jesus, almost no pagan author has used (the word) “humble” as a compliment. Yet the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth came not in a raging whirlwind nor (sic) in a devouring fire. Unimaginably, the Maker of all things shrank down, down, down, so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilised egg barely visible to the naked eye, an egg that would divide and redivide until a fetus (sic) took shape, enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager. “Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,” marvelled the poet John Donne. He “made himself nothing…he humbled himself,” said the apostle Paul prosaically.
“That God is little, that is the truth which Jesus taught man.” The God who roared, who could order armies and empires like pawns on a chessboard, this God emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder, who depended on a teenager for shelter, food, and love.” Phillip Yancey: The Jesus I never knew, page 36
All this for a sinner like me: Amazing Grace.
