JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

169
The writer proceeds by saying to have the same mind in you that was in Christ when He
became incarnate (His enfleshment). Christ could have come down to earth and even though He
would have taken on flesh, He could have appeared as God and God only as a result every knee
would have bowed to Him while He was on earth. But this He didn't do. Instead He emptied
Himself. This kenosis or "emptying" refers not to attributes but rights. It is a question not of
nature, essence, or substance, but of claim to power.
The passage deals with like-mindedness, unity, and humility. It stresses freedom from
self-assertion or grasping after privilege. Jesus' emptying, then, means that He emptied Himself
of the prerogative of deity—His rights, privileges, and intrinsic authority as God, to be honored
and glorified as God—and gave Himself to being seen, and heard, and treated like any other
person in the flesh, yet came as a servant.
This was not something that was foisted upon Him; He gave Himself to being a servant,
and becoming a servant He was true to the servant's obligation to be obedient. Full obedience
required that He die if He were to take away sin and effect redemption for the world. He not only
gave Himself to die but to the "death of the cross"—a death that entailed the shedding of blood
(Heb 9:22) and included the shame and ignominy of death by crucifixion.
Wherefore, God has given Christ what He gave up in becoming a man, i.e., the exaltation
as Lord, "a name that is above every name." At this name "every knee shall bow" (which was not
true while He was on earth), "every tongue should (shall) confess" that "Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father" (Php 2:9-10).
"The highest place that heaven affords
Is His, is His by right;
The King of kings and Lord of lords
And heaven's eternal Light."
--Anonymous
Jesus is worthy of the highest predicates that Christian faith can give. Only as the Church
breaks out in lyrical notes does she make up for the shortcomings of theological prose.
Jesus Christ became a man—"enfleshed" as prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures. He
became incarnate that He might live as a man and thereby be able to take man's place in death.
The incarnation is the best established fact in history—God became man, lived, died the death of
the cross, and rose again.
The Scriptures then, clearly and distinctly teach that Jesus Christ is both human and
divine. Jesus Christ is both God and man—the God-Man.