The Humiliation of the Lord

"...He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death..." - Philippians 2:8

I've been praying a lot on humility, asking God to enable me to live a humble life.  Jesus was a humble man because He positioned Himself as one who did the works of His Father.  He humbled himself first before the Lord, not before men (1 Peter 5:6). 

This began in Heaven.  Jesus was at the right hand of the Father, and at His Word all things were created (John 1:3).  But the will of the Father required that He empty Himself of all divinity (Phil 2:7 NASB) and take on what we could not.  A.W. Tozer points out that the act of Jesus becoming a man put Him as a subject under the very laws of Creation that He Himself put in place - the Creation that we corrupted with sin.  The Word that brought forth all Creation became flesh to be governed by the perishing dust of a corrupted creation.  He ate, He drank, He slept, He was tempted, He lived, He died. 

When He was in anguish before His death (Luke 22:39-46), I don't think that His fear was of the physical pain He would go through.  I think His inner turmoil was because He was about to be subjected to the very thing He came to abolish: death.  As mortal men and women I don't think we'll ever truly understand this.  Though I pray we all gain more revelation into it.  Jesus is  Life.  Life itself was handed over to the hands of death, that He might destroy it from within it.  All this so that you and I might one day exist in Life as we've never known.  This is the will of the Father. 

Lord, give us understanding into Your humiliation, that we may see past our short, perishing perspective, and take on a perspective of Life.  Thank you for humbling Yourself before the Father, that we may exist in Life.