Question
31: What do we mean by Christ's
humiliation?
By Christ's humiliation we mean that he was
born, and that in a low condition; that he was made under the law, and
underwent the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the
cross; that he was buried, and continued under the power of death for a time.
DAY 1: Galatians 4:4; Luke 2:7
When we speak of Christ’s birth we speak about His coming to earth physically. We are not implying that He had a beginning, nor are we saying that when He died He had an ending. We are merely speaking to the incarnation. Micah 5:2 tells us, when prophesying about the Messiah’s coming, that He will be from everlasting. He is the eternal God who has taken on human flesh.
Our
passage in Galatians 4 tells us that God had a timetable which was right on
schedule. In Daniel chapter nine we find
that God had given His people a specific period of time when the Messiah would
show up. This would be about the time of
His death. However, the idea was to give
them hope in the midst of the Babylonian captivity. They were not to think that God had forsaken
them, but rather that He was merely disciplining them, because of His love for
them. God says, through Daniel the
prophet (
Between Luke’s gospel and Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we see that Jesus was born into the world. However, this simply affirms His humanity. As we have discussed, He is eternal and had no beginning. He had to be fully man in order to take the sins of the world upon Himself as our substitute. But, He also had to be fully God in order that His sacrifice might have the infinite power to redeem all those He was going to purchase.
He
also came in humble settings. Luke tells
us it was in a stable and that His crib was a manger. Though He was a king, he came as a little
baby. Instead of coming as the one
giving the law, He came as one under the law.
He came as all men do. Only His
conception was different than any other man’s.
His mother was a virgin (cf. Isa.
DAY 2: Isaiah 53:3; Philippians 2:8
Speaking to the miseries of this life that Christ
endured, the prophet Isaiah said, “He is despised and rejected of men”. He was treated with contempt by those who did
not believe He was who He said He was.
Even His own brothers rejected His claims (John 7:1-9). It even came to the point that the entire
crowd gathered there in
He was a man of sorrows.
The Hebrew word for sorrows carries the idea of pain and suffering. We watch as His suffering begins internally
in the garden (Luke
Isaiah
also tells us that He was acquainted with grief. Here the word can mean sickness or disease or
weakness. This can have both a physical
and spiritual significance. For instance
in the passage of Luke
Isaiah also tells us that we hid our faces from Him and didn’t even think much of Him and the work He did. Isaiah speaks in the first person here. Though he is a man of God, even a prophet, he recognizes his own sinfulness and lack of esteem of the Messiah (cf. Isa. 6:5) and lumps himself in with his people.
But
Christ not only submitted Himself to become man and endure the sufferings of
this life and of the cross, but He also submitted Himself, in obedience to the
Father, to the death of the cross.
That’s right. He submitted
Himself unto the power of death. This
does however, refer to His physical body.
It does not refer to His spirit (cf. 1 Peter
Christ
remained under death for a brief point of time, only three days. It was then that He came back to life and
lives forevermore. He has conquered
death and the grave and has granted to those who believe in Him the same
victory (1 Cor.
DAY 3: Luke 22:44; Matt. 27:46;
Mark 15:45-46
We saw in
the previous lesson the picture in Luke 22:44, so we won’t take time to deal
with the passage. You may want to
reemphasize the humanity of Christ and the things that Christ experienced. This may help our families to understand;
that He was not only God, but that He was the God-man. His body was subject to the things ours are,
such as hunger (Matt. 4:2-4), thirst (John
Matthew tells us that before Christ died He cried out “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus uses a combination of the Hebrew and Aramaic when calling out and it is not clear why He does this. However, it is a parallel with Psalm 22:1. Also, as we have referenced, Psalm 22 is a prophecy in and of itself of the crucifixion. This seems to be the thing that was most dreaded by Jesus during His prayer in the garden. The fact that He would face divine abandonment from His own Father and come under His wrath was frightening to Him. This reality had never before happened at any time in eternity that the Son would sense the Father’s abandonment. It seems that this was the moment that Christ knew that all had been fulfilled and it was just after this that He willingly gave up His spirit and died.
Like those that die, Jesus was buried. We saw previously in Deuteronomy that when a person was executed and hung on a tree for public display, they were to be taken down by the end of the day. This was God’s law. The Sabbath was approaching and there was a man named Joseph of Arimathea came asked Pilate for the body of Jesus that he might give Him a proper burial. Joseph and Nicodemus took the body and wrapped it and buried it in the Joseph’s own tomb. There the body lay until the resurrection morning. However, this is to show that Christ really experienced a literal death. Yes, from birth to burial, Christ experienced the things man experienced, yet without sin.
But He also experienced what
all men will experience… a resurrection.
Yes, all men will experience a resurrection. Some will experience a resurrection of
everlasting life and some will rise to experience eternal damnation (Dan. 12:2;
1 Thess.
Scripture: Luke 2:7; Galatians 4:4; Isaiah
53:3; Luke 22:44; Matthew 12:40; 27:46; Philippians 2:8; Mark 15:45-46