(254) July 25/2016 – Being

Monday Meditation
July 25, 2016
From the desk of A.J. Higgins

Being

“Being in the form of God .” (Phil 2:6).
“Being rich became poor” (2 Cor 8:9 JND).
“Though being Son, yet learned He . He suffered” (Heb 5:8 YLT)

Think of all that He was eternally: He was eternally the Son of God; eternally existing in the form of God; and He was “rich” beyond measure. This was His – essentially, inherently, and rightly. He did not inherit wealth; He did not experience adoption to Sonship. He did not ascend to the form of God. These were eternal realities for Him.

Yet, the form of God was poured into servant form. Nothing of deity was sacrificed or compromised. The self-humbling, servant character of God was now expressed in the likeness of man. His stoop to servant character has forever dignified the role of servant-leader. His service was to His Master, God; but it was expressed toward His own and the needy of earth. Deity not only became incarnate – that is a step beyond measure itself – but it chose to do so in Servant form. Here was the Perfect Servant Who fulfilled all that the nation, as Jehovah’s servant, failed to accomplish. He alone displayed and fulfilled all of which Isaiah wrote in his Servant Songs (Isa 42, 49, 50, 53).

“Though being Son,” He suffered. It is as though the Spirit of God would halt the penman of Hebrews and ask him to consider, in amazement, the juxtaposing of these two statements: being Son and suffering. Sonship not only did not exempt Him from suffering, it actually singled Him out as the only fit Man, able to suffer. Hebrews 5 brings us primarily to the Garden scene when He “offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears” (v 7). Tears stained the face of the Son of God, but they were not tears of self-pity or regret. They were tears that only the Godhead can appreciate – as they reflected the deep grief of His heart over the separation which loomed before Him. No mortal could ever have wept those tears. If David could speak of God treasuring up his tears in a bottle (Ps 56:8), how much more precious were the tears which soaked the sod of Gethsemane?

Being rich, He became poor. Once again it is a self-imposed condition. The One Who emptied Himself into servant form, Who humbled Himself and in the “days of His flesh” knew grief immeasurable, knew self-inflicted poverty to accomplish the will of God. How rich was He? The riches are not limited to the material universe He created. He was rich long before the divine fiat brought worlds into being. He was eternally rich in glory, majesty, might, dominion. The visible display of His glory and majesty, the brightness of the glory of the throne, the worship of angelic beings – all of this was veiled as He stooped to the manger, to the peasant’s hut of Nazareth, to the carpenter shop, and finally to a cross. As to His material possessions, His clothes were stripped and taken from Him, and He left the world in a borrowed tomb. He became poor.

His servanthood, His humanity, and His poverty were all for us. We have a Saviour, a Sympathizer, and a wealth untold as a result.

Consider:

1. “Being” suggests a timelessness, something which never had a beginning. While the word is not the same, the concept is the same as John 1: and “the Word was God … “

2. In what sense do you think the Lord Jesus “learned obedience” by suffering? He experienced obedience but He also experienced the price of obedience.

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