The High Cost of a Free Gift

The Humiliation of Jesus

Kermit R. Taylor

• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781098042516
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología sistemática y ética

When we think about our salvation in most cases, we will focus on God's gracious and undeserved goodness toward us. Though salvation flows from the grace of God, thereby making it free to all who put their trust in Jesus, free does not mean that our salvation is cheap or without great cost to God Himself. This book, The High Cost of a Free Gift, takes a very Christocentric looked at the gracious provision of salvation. This book focuses on all that it cost our Savior in order that He might be our perfect and eternal sacrifice for sin. By looking at the Christology of our salvation, this book encourages a greater appreciation for all that the Son of God endured in order that we might be saved. From His preincarnate glory to His descent into the grave, our Savior paid a high price in order that we might receive the free gift of salvation.This book will trace the downward stage in the works of Jesus Christ from His glory to the grave referred to as His humiliation. We will take a deeper look at the following topics: -"Jesus's Glorious Preincarnate Existence"-"The Meaning and Necessity of His Humiliation"-"The Virgin Birth and Incarnation of Jesus"-"Kenosis: The Self-Emptying of Jesus"-"His Temptations and Rejections"-"His Illegal Trials"-His Sacrificial Atoning Death"-"His Burial and Descent to Hades"-"The Implications of His Humiliation"Ultimately, from this reading, we learn that the Son of God's love for man was so deep that He willingly laid aside His glory in order to endure a level of humiliation that was so great that only God wrapped in humanity could endure it. Our greater appreciation for the high cost that Jesus paid to save us should cause us, as believers, to appreciate, admire, and adore Him all the more and greatly value the free gift to which He paid such a high cost.

Chapter 9

The Implications of His Humiliation

Having studied the humiliation of Jesus in some level of detail within this book, I cannot help but close this study by addressing the simple question: What does the humiliation of Jesus really mean to me as a believer? There are some important implications of the humiliation of Jesus that is worth addressing in this study. One of those is the willingness of Jesus, the eternal Son of God, to lay aside the glory of eternal deity in order to become the “Suffering Servant” by taking on the nature of man. This willingness of Jesus to condescend Himself to the level of humanity has significance to us not only as human beings but also to us as Christians. The tremendous costs our Savior paid to purchase our liberty from the bondage of sin is something that we can never ever take lightly. In it, we discover the greatest evidence and the absolute proof of God’s love, holiness, and His power to save. All of this is manifested in the humiliation of Jesus as He willingly wrapped Himself in humankind in order to fulfill the Father’s eternal plan of redemption. What a cause for us as believers in Christ to not only rejoice in our unearned salvation but also to have assurance and security that our sin debt has been paid in full by the precious blood of our Savior. Never can we forget that for a debt He did not owe, He paid a price that we could not pay!

The humiliation of Jesus fulfilled multiple purposes of God. First of all, it fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah—His virgin birth, His incarnation, and His role as the suffering servant. Isaiah 7:14 gives us the prophecy of Jesus’s virgin birth: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.” Here, in the virgin birth of the Messiah as prophesied by Isaiah the prophet, the significance of His name being Immanuel cannot be overstated because Immanuel means “God is with us.” This clearly illustrates the incarnation of Jesus in that a virgin human mother would give birth to a human child who would be God Himself. We see in this passage not only the incarnation but the theanthropic (God and man) person of Jesus. This denotes that Jesus would have the dual nature of both God and man.

In Isaiah 53, we see Jesus as the suffering servant who would be rejected and eventually die for the sins of men. In verse 3, we see the rejection of Jesus by the human creatures that He came to redeem. Isaiah 53:4–8 alludes to His suffering and ultimately to His sacrifice for the sins of mankind. In these passages, there are some specific references that are verified in the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s passion and death. Isaiah says that the “Suffering Servant,” Jesus, was pierced for our iniquities. We see this fulfilled in John19:34 when a Roman soldier pierces Jesus in the side with a spear. Isaiah 53:5, Matthew 27:26, and Mark 15:15 all speak of the scourging of Jesus, which Isaiah indicates as the source of our healing from the sickness of sin. In Isaiah 53:6 it is said that

the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all

To fall on Him. (italics added)

This indicates the atoning (sin-covering) nature and purpose of Jesus’s sacrifice for sin and the necessity of His humiliation.

The ultimate purpose of Jesus’s humiliation was the atonement for the sins of fallen man. Jesus had to suffer the experience of incarnation, kenosis, rejection, and ultimately death and burial in order that the sins of men could be paid for once and for all. Merrill Unger, former professor of Old Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, says the end of Jesus’s humiliation was “that Christ might come in the most complete sense into oneness with mankind and thus accomplish human redemption.”70 Hebrews 10:5 tells us that when Jesus came into this world, He says that God is not pleased with “sacrifice and offering” but that He has prepared a body for Me (Jesus), the implication of this passage being that God is no longer satisfied with the Levitical sacrifices (Heb. 10:6, 8). Jesus makes it clear that His coming into the world was in order that He would take away the need for the Old Testament animal sacrifices and establish a new sacrifice of His own body once and for all (Heb. 10:9–10).71 Scripture tells us that in the incarnation, Jesus was made “for a little while lower than the angels…so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). In other words, Jesus had to experience the humiliation of the incarnation (becoming human) in order to be the perfect and universal sacrifice for sin.

One of the qualifications of a perfect sacrifice is identity with the one in which the offering is being made. Therefore, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to earth to share fully in our humanity and thus established His solidarity with all people.72 We recognize that in His preincarnate existence as the Son of God, God Himself, that He was eternally greater than the angels; but through His incarnation, He became lower than the angels for a time. Relating to the humiliation and the incarnation of Jesus in particular, in His human existence, God became man, thus allowing God Himself to enter into our human experience. Hebrews 4:15 tells us that “we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” So the humiliation of Jesus accomplished a deeper connection and identity between God and man, qualifying Jesus Christ to be ...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Jesus’s Glorious Preincarnate Existence
• The Meaning and Necessity of His Humiliation
• The Virgin Birth and Incarnation of Jesus
• Kenosis: The Self-Emptying of Jesus
• His Temptations and Rejections
• His Illegal Trials
• His Sacrificial Atoning Death
• His Burial and Descent to Hades
• The Implications of His Humiliation