The Humiliation and Exaltation of Christ

"Now, in theology we make a distinction between the person of Christ and the work of Christ for various reasons. But even though that distinction is important to make, we must never let it become a separation because the person of Christ is intimately connected to His work. And we understand His work largely in part from the perspective of who it was who was doing that work." [00:00:07]

"In fact, it begins in eternity past in what we call in theology 'the covenant of redemption.' The people who listen to this radio program have told me many times that just like they enjoy listening to Rush Limbaugh rattling his papers on his desk, so the people enjoy the sound of the chalk scratching on the blackboard." [00:01:32]

"The covenant of redemption refers to a pact or an agreement that takes place in eternity within the Godhead. We distinguish the persons of the Godhead as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and we know when we look at the Old Testament record of creation that the entire Trinity, the whole Godhead is actively involved in bringing the universe into being." [00:02:42]

"The Father is the one who initiates the concept of redeeming a creation that He knows will be fallen. And so it is the Father who designs the plan of redemption. It is the Son who is given the assignment by the Father to accomplish that redemption, and of course, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to apply that work of redemption to us." [00:03:25]

"When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Romans at the very beginning of the epistle where he identifies himself as an apostle whose been called of God and set apart for the gospel of God, which he said was announced by the Old Testament prophets, and it regards Jesus who is born of the seed of David." [00:05:17]

"What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, as important as that is, but what's so significant about the birth of that particular baby is that in this birth we have the incarnation of God Himself. An incarnation means a coming in the flesh. We know how John begins His gospel, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'" [00:06:20]

"The incarnation is not so much a subtraction as it is an addition, where the eternal second person of the Trinity takes upon Himself a human nature and joins His divine nature to that human nature for the purpose of redemption." [00:07:41]

"And the pattern that is found here in this passage is a pattern that… uh… that we see frequently in the life of Jesus, which is a pattern of humiliation and exaltation, that is to say, he begins in exaltation in glory in heaven, but he condescends to join us in our earthly predicament in order to redeem us." [00:10:50]

"Now, having said that, let's look once more at this hymn and analyze some of aspects of it in Philippians 2. The way this is used is an exhortation that the apostle is making to Christians, that Christians ought to emulate the humility of their Savior. Elsewhere, the apostle tells us unless we are willing to identify with the humiliation of Jesus, we will not be ever able to experience His exaltation." [00:14:30]

"In the 19th century, liberal scholars propounded a doctrine called the kenotic theory of the incarnation, and you may have heard it, the idea being that when Jesus came to this earth, He laid aside His divine attributes so that the God-man at least touching His deity no longer had the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and all the rest." [00:16:28]

"Therefore or wherefore hath God highly exalted Him. Do you remember when Jesus was in the upper room the night before His execution, the night that He established the Lord's Supper? And He went through that lengthy prayer, the high priestly prayer it is called. Do you remember one of the things that Jesus asked for in that prayer? He asked the Father to restore to Him the glory that He had with the Father from the beginning." [00:19:29]

"The name that is above every name is that title that belongs only to God, that title Adonai that refers to God as the sovereign one. That is the title that is revealed that belongs to Christ because of His humiliation. Because of His perfect obedience in the role of a slave, God moves heaven and earth to exalt His Son, gives Him the name that is above every name." [00:22:02]