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Closing the Gap 3.14.18

The Humility of Christ:
“Adam ate the fruit of his own pride and died, we eat the fruit of Christ’s humility and live.”

Week 10 Day 3

Pray:

Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.

 

Phil. 2:3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5   Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:  6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,  10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 

Reflect:

It is impossible for humans to get their minds fully around the incarnation.  This doesn’t mean we should not contemplate it, meditate on it, and have growing wonder for it, because we can understand it, in the same way we understand other things that are real.  Our knowledge of Christ being made in human likeness is accurate and adequate even though it is not exhaustive or comprehensive. In nature, there are believed to be four fundamental forces, one of which is gravity.  How these forces work and how they are tied together is not fully known. The lack of full knowledge does not keep us from living on the earth, launching rockets into space and any number of other human activities related to gravity and the other three forces.  Knowledge of God is real knowledge; it is not in a separate realm than knowledge of gravity. All knowledge is in the realm of what is real. If it is not real, it is not knowledge. The reason this is important is that, for many people, talk of “knowledge of God” is pushed into the realm of “religion” which is different than the realm of “reality” where things like gravity exist.  This is silly, but it has impacted many people’s perceptions of faith, perhaps it has impacted yours. Jesus is the eternal Son of God. He has always been, and always will be. In space and time, he was born to a virgin as an infant. This is real knowledge, though it is fantastic knowledge. The fact of God becoming man is no more impossible or implausible than the fact of the existence of the universe itself.  Gravity is a subject of academic study. There are formulas written in books that describe it. But, of course, gravity exists as an actual force in the real world; it is more than theory in books. In the same way, the Incarnation is a subject of study written about in the Bible and in other books. But, like gravity, it is something that is real in the world. The implications and applications are profound for human existence.  In many ways, it is more profound even than the reality of gravity. The knowledge of the Incarnation tells you how you are to live your life; that is very important knowledge to have. Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth. His life, death, and resurrection inform everything about our lives, deaths, and eternal destinies. He took the form of a human, which is the form of a servant. This means your essential nature, as a human, is servant.  You cannot completely close the gap on understanding the Incarnation, but if you will think about it, you will grow in your understanding and appreciation for it. As you do, it will change how you see things in and around you. When you are treated as a servant, instead of becoming angry, you will understand this is who God has made you to be. This is the very form God incarnate took on himself.

 

Pray:

(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)

Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.

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