Oh, the Humanity!

O love, how deep, how broad, how high,
how passing thought and fantasy,
that God, the Son of God, should take
our mortal form for mortals’ sake!

~from the hymn: O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High attributed to Thomas a Kempis

This verse coupled with these scriptures from the Message Bible brought tears to my eyes:

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself … When the time came He set aside the privileges of deity and … became human! … He stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges … He lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death …

… Keep on doing what you’ve done, … redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God Himself willing and working at what will give Him the most pleasure.

Philippians 2:5-8: 12-13 The Message Bible (I capitalized the “God” pronouns)

Think of it, Jesus sacrificially laid down His deity to become the thing He came to save … humanity. What god in their right mind would do such a thing but the God? King of Kings, LORD of Lords, Master and Creator of all, ultimately, Lover — Lover of the crown of His creation — mankind.

That He would stoop from the heights of Heaven to walk with us here in: hunger, fatigue, sickness, disease, weakness, rejection, aging, anxiety, depression, the incessant barrage of the enemy against our bodies and our souls in attempt to break our spirits is beyond comprehension, but this, Jesus did. Such humility! In Philippians 2:5 in the Message version we are told to think of ourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself; He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of Himself that He clung to the advantages of that status no matter what.

He came to us and He also brought Heaven down.

He showed us by example how to live in our “human condition” without caving to the temptations of our enemy. He then demonstrated how to: remain pure, how to live in this world without becoming part of the world; how to heal the sick; how to cast out demons; how to raise the dead; how to defeat the enemy in death; and how to love without measure, even at the expense of ourselves, our own lives; and how to live again. He is Risen! He has ascended to His Father, our Father, where we are seated with Him in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6).

Our end will be glorious, too. Yes, getting from Point A to Point B is crushing at times; true discipleship is not for the faint of heart. What are we to to do while we travel here? As Paul wrote, Keep on keeping on. I add part of the LORD’s prayer: Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. No matter how it appears we need to keep looking for God’s will here. There is no sickness, disease, heartache, mental illness, or lack of any kind in Heaven, so look for the Cure to meet us here …

… because part of our prayer is to look for His kingdom here, I also add this admonition from Paul in Philippians 4:4 to: Rejoice in the LORD always; and again I say REJOICE! …

… why rejoice? Because it is finished (John 19:30). Whatever it is we are suffering here, It is finished. Whatever we commit to Jesus at the foot of the cross, to be covered with His precious Blood, It is finished. And whether we see and receive our answers to prayer while we are here, I trust that anything asked according to His will will be done.

Regardless, our focus is this: Jesus became one of us. He totally gets us. From birth to death, He was despised, rejected, a Man of sorrows, acquainted with our grief; because of us He was stricken, smitten, afflicted, wounded, bruised, and beaten. He purchased with His precious Blood our peace, healing, deliverance, wholeness, forgiveness, prosperity, and an eternal home with Him in Heaven. Join me today in bowing before Him, thanking Him for His humility, for becoming one of us. Let us take it a step further and ask if there is a particular matter in which we might humble ourselves before Him this day. It’s the least we can do.