Week 20—Monday Luke 19:1-10
Week 20—MONDAY
“EMPTIED HIMSELF”
We have meditated on, “he has visited and redeemed his people.” How deeply did the Divine Visitor penetrate the life of his people? Was it the momentary visit of a Sovereign to a slum—a few words of greeting, a smile or two, and then back to the palace of royalty? In Jesus did God go aslumming? No, his visit was identification—and what an identification! “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-9). That is what “visited” meant to Jesus. The steps down were seven: First, he inwardly renounced the security of being equal with God. Second, he emptied himself of everything, except love. Third, he would love not as a superior from above, but as a servant from below. Fourth, he was willing, though God, to be a man—not a man at the top, but man at the bottom. Fifth, he humbled himself as a man—became the lowest man—sinful man. Sixth, he took our heritage, death, as his own. Seventh, he took our sins as his own and died as a malefactor on a cross.
The visitation meant identification, and the identification meant not identification with persons at the top, becoming the best of persons, but becoming the worst of persons—a sinner, dying between sinners. “He became sin for us.”
That identification was gradual, beginning at inner renunciation of being equal with God, coming in a Virgin’s womb, and going deeper at every step until he hit rock bottom on a cross: “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
O Divine Redeemer, we can never understand the mystery of your self-giving, but we can worship at the shrine of it. And we do worship with a deepening reverence that passes into awe and that passes into complete surrender. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am a missionary—is my being a missionary a visitation or an identification?