JESUS CHRIST-KENOSIS
Man was added
to Him, God not lost to Him; He emptied Himself not by losing what He was, but
by taking to Him what He was not.
The Word of
the Father, by whom all time was created, was made flesh and was born in time
for us. He, without whose divine permission no day completes its course, wished
to have one day for His human birth. In the bosom of His Father He existed
before all the cycles of ages; born of an earthly mother, He entered upon the
course of the years on this day. The
Maker of man became man that He, Ruler of the stars, might be nourished at the
breast; that He, the Bread, might be hungry; that He, the Fountain, might
thirst; that He, the Light, might sleep; that He, the Way, might be wearied by
the journey; that He, the Truth, might be accused by false witnesses; that He,
the Judge of the living and the dead, might be brought to trial by a mortal
judge; that He, Justice, might be condemned by the unjust; that He, Discipline,
might be scourged with whips; that He, the Foundation, might be suspended upon
a cross; that Courage might be weakened; that Security might be wounded; that
Life might die. To endure these and
similar indignities for us, to free us, unworthy creatures, He who existed as
the Son of God before all ages, without a beginning, deigned to become the Son
of Man in these recent years. He did this although He who submitted to such
great evils for our sake had done no evil and although we, who were the
recipients of so much good at His hands, had done nothing to merit these
benefits.
Augustine
Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, Trans.
Sister Mary Sarah Muldowney, R.S.M., v. 38 in The
Fathers of the Church, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, New
York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., p. 28.
When He took
on Him the form of a servant in our nature, He became what He had never been
before, but He did not cease to be what He always had been in His divine
nature. He who is God cannot ever cease to be God.
John Owen
Meditation on the Glory of Christ, 1684, ch. 4.
The heart of
the Adamic temptation was to grasp for equality with God (Gen. 3:5). Adam attempted to seize equality with God;
Christ did not. By contrast Christ chose
the way of self-emptying rather than self-aggrandizement.
George Eldon Ladd
A Theology of the New Testament, Eerdmans,
1993, p. 461.
The
impression of Jesus which the Gospels give is not so much one of deity reduced
as of divine capacities restrained.
J.I. Packer
The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations,
ed. Mark Water, 2000, Baker, p. 180.
He is the
King of kings, the radiance of His glory, the Lord of the spaceless,
fabulous, infinite universe, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, unspeakable
holy, dwelling in light, unapproachable, changeless ... and yet He condescended
to be enclosed in lowly human flesh, to be born a despised Judean, in a filthy
stable, in the womb of a simple Israeli woman and without fanfare or pomp.
Author Unknown
The Father
did not strip the Son of His eternal glory but the Son agreed to lay it aside
temporarily for the sake of our salvation (Jn. 17:1-5).
R.C. Sproul
The Blueprint of Redemption,
Tabletalk, Feb. 2004, p. 7, Used by Permission.