There is no one who is higher than the Lord Jesus. He is Yahweh, God of gods, King of kings, Lord of lords. He is seated on the throne in the heavenly temple and the train of his robe fills the place.
There are winged fiery lightning snakes that attend his person and serenade him, sinless beings of terrible might, who have a whole seat of extraneous wings for the single purpose of ensuring they never look at him because he is too wondrous for their sight (Isaiah 6). There is none greater than the Lord.
This same one, high and lighted up, chose to become low; he became low enough to get into the dust with you. He made himself what he was not, becoming a man like us.
Did you ask him to? I know I didn’t.
He went further, plunging himself with the inexorable force of a comet from the heavens into the dust, all the way to the place of the dead. He got low enough to get underneath you so that he could lift you up.
More than that, he was ‘lifted up’ in a perverse way by being nailed to a rude beam of wood, hanging suspended between heaven and earth, exposed to cruel spectacle and the deepest shame. He who cannot be looked on by pure beings of fire that wipe out armies was looked on by a legion of baying and mocking crowds. They did not avert their gaze; they stared at his inverted exaltation as though it were sport and he was the scum of the earth.
He had become so, for you. Unasked, he reached for you.
He went lower, entering the place of the dead to wrest the keys of Hades from the Enemy’s vile hand, then leading a train of captives to the heavens.
He who was high became low so that you could be lifted up. He did all of that before you turned to him, before anyone asked him to. No one twisted his arm. God saw our plight and chose to send the Son on our behalf, because he loved us. He who is glorious became nothing to share his glory with you, before you asked him to.
In Hebrew the word ‘lifted’ (nasa) is also the word for ‘forgive.’ To forgive is to lift off burdens from another and take them to yourself. Jesus did that for you. He who was high became low so that he could lift us—forgive our sins—and lift us—bring us into the heavens to enjoy adoption and fellowship and union with God.
Isaiah has a running theme with the word ‘lifted,’ not just that God is high and lifted up and that he lifts our burdens, but against people who have ‘lifted’ themselves. In other words, against pride. Jesus’ mission to save us is the very opposite of pride. He humbled himself (Philippians 2) so that we could be lifted. He made himself low. He was ‘lifted’ (John 12) on the cross on our behalf.
Pride is a terrible sin. It’s one I struggle with. We live in a cultural moment that thinks its important to be ‘proud’ of ourselves in numerous ways beyond the most obvious. We should not be. That isn’t to say that God hasn’t made you in a way that he delights in—he can take pride in you—but we should not take pride in ourselves. If anything, we are called to humility, to an emptying of ourselves on behalf of others, mirroring Jesus’ redemptive work on our behalf.
Jesus’ choice to make himself low in order to lift you up is astonishing. We shouldn’t lose the wonder of it. He who was most high became so low they put him in the ground, so that you who were dead in the ground could be lifted to the heavens.
We should not lift ourselves up. We should lift (forgive) others, and also lift (encourage) them. We shouldn’t say untrue things to boost others, that’s usually our own pride in action so that they like us and think well of us, and we shouldn’t embrace the kind of woe-is-me false humility that’s actually also pride as we want people to think us godly. Instead, we look at Jesus. Repenting of pride involves taking our eyes off ourselves and lifting them up to see Jesus in his humiliation and resplendent glory.
We should make that our goal: may Jesus be high, and lifted up in our eyes as in reality.
Photo by Colton Jones on Unsplash
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