The One Who Fills the Universe Emptied Himself

If you’re “full of yourself,” you are prideful, and there’s no room for anyone else, not even for God. I guess that pride allows you to love only you. To love someone else requires making room for others, an emptying, maybe even a humbling, submitting yourself to make someone else’s needs more important than your own. So the God who fills the universe paradoxically “emptied Himself” (Philippians 2:7) out of love, putting aside all that was rightfully His in order to make room for us. “God proves His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8.

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain

Because He was willing: Victory!

He did what I could not do. He did what no one else was willing AND worthy to do. The King left His throne in Heaven where He was loved and adored. He took on the form of a servant in a world where He was despised and rejected, condemned to a painful criminal’s death. Only His love for us drove Him on through His Passion, the suffering, the cross, and separation from the Father.

The angels now cry “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!” They watched His entire journey from the beginning and now praise Him in awe, as the Father has exalted Him to the Highest Place. One day all creatures will see what all Heaven sees, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. His unfailing love expressed in His blood and the nail prints in His hands and feet. Wow! What kind of love is this, that the Father has lavished on us, that we should share an inheritance with Christ Jesus and be called the children of God.

Meek and Lowly

The King washes the feet of the slave.

I’ve heard it said, “The Bible is full of contradictions,” and this is certainly true, especially when it attempts to describe God with human language, to characterize the infinite with the finite. For example, Jesus was fully God and fully man, a paradox, two seemingly contradictory elements that should cancel each other out but are simultaneously true.

And how do you explain an all-powerful God who should bow to no one but who takes the form of a servant, a slave? How could such a Being ever be meek and lowly? In Mark 10:45, Jesus says, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” God giving His life for us. An amazing, awesome mystery and a glimpse of the divine Mind and Heart.

And the servant part, God made flesh, performing the duties of a slave. He could have come and demanded worship, that all bow and serve Him. That would have been within His rights and befitting a King. He chose to be born in poverty, to minister, to enter Jerusalem in a lowly manner, meekly, on a lowly donkey, to submit Himself to torture and ridicule, to allow Himself to be crucified unjustly, and to suffer separation from His Father for the first time in all eternity.

“Who is like unto Thee, O Lord?”