A Deliberate Handicap
A Deliberate Handicap
You probably know at least a few disabled people.
But did you ever think of the Lord Jesus in that category?
If we use that definition, then Jesus was handicapped. Think of it. On one hand He possessed the fullness of Almighty God, yet on the other hand He made Himself nothing. He emptied Himself, taking the very nature of a servant.
Talk about handicaps! To be God on one hand … yet to make yourself nothing. What a severe limitation! You would think it must have hampered the Lord, put Him at a disadvantage.
Jesus, Master Architect of the universe, designed planets and stars, galaxies and nebulae, pulsars and quasars. On earth He was a carpenter, limiting His design work to stools and tables.
Jesus, the eternal Word, spoke time and space into being. On earth He chose to speak to prostitutes, lepers, and sinners.
Jesus, the One who created the perfect bodies of Adam and Eve, despised pain and suffering as one of the awful results of the Fall. On earth, He endured backaches, cramped muscles, pangs of hunger and thirst. He sweat real sweat and cried real tears and bled real blood.
When I think of all this, it strikes me that these limitations just didn’t “happen” to Jesus in the same way circumstances “happen” to you and me. The amazing thing is that Christ chose to be handicapped. I can’t think of too many people who would make such a choice. I know I wouldn’t.
But “since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death” (Hebrews 2:14).
If you have a physical handicap, or maybe even an emotional or mental one, then you’re not in bad company. If anything, you’re in an elite fellowship with Christ Himself.
We had no choice over our handicap.
He did, and chose to be limited … so that He might set us free.