DAY SIX -- Son of Man

What does it really mean that Jesus became man? Consider that His greatness, His power, His eternal nature, and the worship due Him as a result, were laid aside when He came to earth. As you come to wait upon Him today, ponder the mystery that God became a man, taking on weakness and struggle, even temptation to sin. Have you grown so accustomed to this thought that it holds little mystery to you? Does it still have the power to fill you with awe?

Be still in God's presence and ask Him to give you insight into the depths and beauty of the reality that He came and dwelt among us.

Slowly contemplate the verses below, before reading the devotional that follows.

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things. …

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

Isaiah 53:2-3, Mark 8:31, Philippians 2:5-7

What if God was one of Us?

Just a slob like one of Us?

Just a Stranger on a bus,

trying to make His way Home.

[One of Us, Lyrics and music by Eric Bazilian, copyright©1995 PolyGram Records, Inc. ASCAP/BMI]

Humanity has long been intrigued at the thought of incarnation, as can be seen in the plaintive lyrics of this popular song. "What if God was one of us?" is a common conundrum posed by mortals, who, in grappling with the mystery of God end up reducing Him to something manageable, like a stranger on a bus.

For the Christian, the incarnation is the very centerpiece of our faith. God became the Son of man -- flesh and blood, bones and joints, muscle and sinew -- in order to dwell among us. Yet even we are prone to take such a thing lightly, running the risk of missing eternity's most glorious mystery as we relegate Christ to some position only slightly above fallen man. Our greatest hope for maintaining the holy reverence of which the God-man Christ Jesus is worthy, is to ponder His coming to earth within the context of the lofty heights of grandeur He left behind to do so.

Daniel Fuller paints a picture of the incarnation as a winding staircase stretching from the glory of heaven to the world of wretched misery. Upon this staircase, "the length of which cannot be exaggerated, since it spanned the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature,"* Jesus descends in step after excruciating step. Though His eternal descent had its inception long before the foundation of the world, our first glimpse of it is in a stable reeking of animal dung and moldy straw, where a newborn babe shivering in the chill of night, lies vulnerable to the worst conditions humanity has to offer.*[Fuller, Daniel, The Unity of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), p. 210.]

From a human standpoint, one could say Jesus never really recovered from that inglorious birth. Soon on the run for their lives, His parents became vagabonds, settling as strangers in a foreign land, their very livelihood dependent upon Egyptians, some of whom detested them. Later Mary and Joseph would establish their family in Nazareth, a place of derision even among the Jews for its lack of any distinguishing mark. The descent from glory continued for the Son of Man as he grew up in disheartening obscurity, esteemed by none.

Pain permeated Jesus's adult life as well. When fasting in the wilderness to launch His ministry, Satan flaunted His former glory in His face, reminding Him of what He'd left behind. Then for three years, the homeless Son of Man walked and worked while sleeping in fields and hills, dependent upon benevolent women for financial support, crying out to His Father into the wee hours of His dark and lonely nights. Scorned by heathens, rejected by the religious elite, living under constant threat of death, the descent from glory continued.

Jesus often warned His disciples that the Son of Man would suffer many things, as if the dread of what was to come plagued His human heart continually. We only dimly comprehend His true agony as we ponder it in retrospect. Betrayed, arrested, mocked, spat upon, slapped, disdained and derided, the descent continued. Scourged to a bloody pulp with barely the strength to hang on, burdened with the weight of His own crossbeam and paraded through the streets like a criminal, the descent continued.

Down and down and down the winding staircase Jesus went as He was denied and abandoned by His closest followers and forced to watch His earthly mother mourn in despair. Then, for six horrific hours on Calvary, in torture no human mind could possibly conceive, the Son of Man descended to the very depths of depravity as He took on the sins of the world. Surely no greater suffering has ever been known than when the King of glory plunged into that black chasm of alienation from His Father who'd deserted Him unto death.

This is only a smattering of what it meant for God to become the Son of Man. The insidious depths of His descent from glory will perhaps be understood only when we see Him one day on His throne, radiant in splendor, attended by angels and worshipped by saints from every tribe and tongue. Until then, we must ponder often the wonder of the Incarnation.

When we consider the conditions to which Jesus submitted Himself in order to secure redemption for our souls, we can only exclaim, "O God, how great a salvation!" And when we find ourselves distraught by our inadequate lives and discouraged by our bumbling attempts to please Him, we need only contemplate that infinite staircase upon which our Lord descended. In this we find hope and receive assurance that God will do everything necessary to accomplish His work in our hearts, by His grace and for His glory. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? (Romans 8:31-32)

Respond

The reality that Christ, second person of the Triune Godhead, emptied Himself of glory to dwell among men is a truth that must never be treated lightly. Spend some time today meditating upon His life. Read back through the devotional, asking God to fill you with a sense of what Jesus must have experienced. Consider that His entire life was one of grief, sorrows, rejection and derision. He was an outcast in every way and must have felt it keenly all His life. Worship Him, offering a heart of thanksgiving and praise.

Scripture says that the Son of Man, who was inordinately wealthy, became a beggar, that through His complete poverty we might gain wealth (2 Corinthians 8:9). This is the mystery of the Incarnation. What are some of the things that comprise the wealth He gained for you through His poverty? Ponder this and write a prayer of response.

A Prayer

O my Lord what can it mean that you became one of us? How does the Almighty God manage the loss of glory? Were You terrified to shed Heaven's splendor and fall down, down, down to dwell among earth's depraved denizens? What was it like to be a beggar at man's mercy, tempted in every way but not sinning, learning lessons of obedience by suffering? This is just something I cannot fathom my Lord. My heart yearns with desire to worship in some way worthy of all You've done. I come with nothing my Lord, and yet everything, for through Your poverty I have been made rich. I love You and there is nothing else to say O precious Son of Man.

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