Grosey's Messages

Luke 2. THE ANGEL'S SONG

⁸ In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock.
⁹ Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
¹⁰ But the angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people:
¹¹ today a Savior, who is Messiah the Lord, was born for you in the city of David.
¹² This will be the sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped snugly in cloth and lying in a feeding trough."
¹³ Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:
¹⁴ Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people He favors!  
¹⁵ When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us."

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,"

They said that this salvation gave glory to God.

Angels, from the realms of glory, Wing your downward flight to earth,

Ye who sing creation's story, Now proclaim Messiah's birth; Come and worship,

Worship Christ, the new-born King.

"Glory to God in the highest." Why this, that salvation is God's highest glory. He is glorified in every dew drop that twinkles to the morning sun. He is magnified in every wood flower that blossoms in the copse, although it live to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness in the forest air. God is glorified in every bird that warbles on the spray; in every lamb that skips the mead. Do not the fishes in the sea praise him. From the tiny minnow to the huge whales,  all creatures that swim the water bless and praise his name! All created things extol him!

And as the message ran from rank to rank, at last the presence angels, those four cherubim that perpetually watch around the throne of God — those wheels with eyes — took up the strain, and, gathering up the song of all the inferior grades of angels, surmounted the divine pinnacle of harmony with their own solemn chant of adoration, upon which the entire host shouted, "The highest angels praise thee." — "Glory to God in the highest."  No mortal can ever dream how magnificent was that song. And it was sung about a baby!

13 Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:
14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people He favors!  

Why is the incarnation of the Lord Jesus the subject of the Angel's glorying?

"Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates; and he ye lift up, ye everlasting doors ; and the King of Glory shall come in.

Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory."

The Only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath interpreted Him, so that Jesus could say, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. In Various ways this truth is expressed in the New Testament, but nowhere more impressively than in Hebrews 1.3

The former of these passages tells us that the Son is "the effulgence of God's glory, and the very image of His substance"; that

He is the manifestation of the Divine attributes, and the embodiment of the Divine essence ; that in Him the glory of God is radiated, and His character reflected.

Now mark well that this creating Christ is no philosophical abstraction ; neither is He a creature ; but by eternal nature He is the Son of God. He did not become God's Son at the incarnation, neither when He rose from the dead (Acts xiii. 35; Rom. i. 4), though by the latter event His Sonship was fully manifested; but He is the "only-begotten" of the Father, of the same nature and with the same powers, and to Whom equal worship is due.

Christ is God, without Beginning, Supreme, and Transcendent. This was his own consciousness in incarnate life. He knew that He stood related to God the Father as the sons of men never could, and so, when speaking of that relationship, He distinguished between Himself and His disciples by saying, "My Father and your Father; My God and your God." "My" and "your," not "our"! In the Christian consciousness, also, Christ has ever been regarded as Divine, giving that word the connotation of Deity. The very heart of Christological belief is the truth that Christ is God incarnate ; that He Who was born at Bethlehem, and died on Calvary, was the Divine Logos, in the beginning with God, the full and final revelation of God, and Himself very God.

THE ABSOLUTE ETERNITY OF CHRIST.

Not only is He "the Image of the Invisible God," but, also, "the First-born of all creation" (15), and "He is before all things." This is another pregnant utterance which, presents several truths of the first magnitude.

And, first of all, it announces-

I. The Priority of Christ to all Creation, The Pre-Existence of Christ is nowhere in Scripture argued as a doctrine, but is everywhere assumed and heavily built upon, If Christ be not pre-existent, He cannot be' God, and if He be not God, He cannot be either Creator or Redeemer. You will therefore, see at once how vital is this truth, for Christian faith. Of the many passages which declare or imply it, let me remind you, of a few only.

"When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son"; therefore, before the' incarnation, the Son was with the Father, and, presumably, before all time,

"Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet, for your sakes He became poor, that ye, through, His poverty, might become rich."

A moment's reflection will convince us that "rich" here is declared of Christ as preexistent, and "poor" of Him as incarnate.

"The verse is one which in import transcends-the phenomena of time and space, announcing- not merely that Christ's earthly life was inferior in glory to His own prior condition, but, a yet more sublime thought, that He entered upon the lower state by His own, volition."

Philippians 2:5-11  Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus,
6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage.
7 Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form,
8 He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross.
9 For this reason God also highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow— of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth—
11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Then there is that amazing passage in Phil. 2.5, 6, which says that "Christ Jesus, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped."

Surely words could not make more plain the truth which the Spirit would convey, that Christ is not merely like God, but is God, and, therefore, pre-existent and uncreated, absolute in His Eternity. Again, " In the beginning was the Word." Mark the preposition "in," not "from," and the verb "was," not "became." And in the same connection John speaks of "the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father." To these passages must be added the testimony of Jesus Himself, notably, when He said, "Before Abraham was, I am" —a declaration which is reflected in the words of our text, "Who is," in verse 15, and "He is," in verse 17.

Mark it well, "He is," the "He" emphasizing His Personality, and the " is " His Pre- Existence and Self-Existence.

Richard Baxter said, "Nothing can be rightly known if God be not known;" nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature till we know it as it stands related to the Creator. Single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh Him Who is the 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not Him in all, Who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables ; they signify nothing as separated from God.

The Angels glorified Him as they considered the exaltation that He enjoyed. He was "in the form of God" (v. 6). Our English word "form" scarcely captures the richness of the Greek. This is "form" neither in the sense of material shape or of seeming likeness. The Holy Spirit is saying is, that that which constitutes the very essence of God, that God-nature, God-hood—not merely Godhead now, but Good-hood—has belonged for ever, and will belong for ever, to Jesus Christ.

Joy to the world the Lord is come." "Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning." "Come adore on bended knee Christ the Lord." "Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord, veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate deity, Jesus our emanuel." "Yet in the dark street shineth the everlasting light." We sing, "O come to us, abide with us, our Lord emanuel," which means God with us. "Jesus Lord at Thy birth." We sing, "The virgin sweet boy is the Lord of the earth." We sing, "Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing." "How that in Bethlehem was born the Son of God by name." "God with man is now residing, suddenly the Lord descending." We sing, "Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown when Thou camest to earth for me." And we often sing, "And the Father gave His Son, gave His own beloved one." And so the writers of all the Christmas carols mark out for us the reality that the child is God.

That is not the only thing that Paul says about His exalted position. He says that He had equality with God. Now here the phrase speaks of relationship more than of nature.  Equality with God. And such is the Greek construction in this phrase that we may take Paul to mean either one of two things: either that this equality was His by complete right and fitness, and not by the slightest presump-tion; or that it was something on the retention of which the Lord Jesus would not insist, when by letting it go—this status of equality with God—when by renouncing its heavenly expression, He might reveal His infinite con-cern for you and for me.

This was His own interest. He might have held on to it. He had a perfect right to. But instead of that, He turned His back upon it, because you and I needed a Saviour. From that lofty elevation Jesus came down.

The Angels glorified Him as they considered the reputation that He renounced—"He emptied Himself." That is indeed a fair rendering of the Greek. Weymouth has, "He stripped Himself of His glory," and Phillips is somewhat similar—"He stripped Himself of all privilege."

How far did that self-renunciation go, that self-disglorification, to use the extraordinary phrase of P. T. Forsyth. Did it extend to His deity? How could it, if He was essentially and eternally God? No! Did it extend to His knowledge? It the sense of voluntary self-limitation, yes, in ways that are so mysterious that while we must recognise them they are really quite beyond us. We read of our blessed Lord that in the days of His flesh "He grew in wisdom." We have to face the implications of that. We read again of Him that according to His own confession, as we have it in Mark 13:32, "But of that day and that hour (His Second Coming) knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Yet I hasten to add that the church universal, and the church evangelical particularly, has always insisted, and rightly, that whatever may have been the self-imposed limitations of our Saviour's knowledge, they were not such as to lay Him open either to incompetence or to error.

Did He empty Himself of His sinlessness? Never! Did He empty Himself of His non-temptability? He did. Here again is a mystery. For we read of Him in Hebrews 4:15 that "He was in all things tempted like as we are, yet without sin." He emptied Himself. You recall Milton's words? There are those who believe that this whole passage in Philippians 2 was a kind of hymn that was sung: it wasn't stiff, formal theology, so much as it was a great expression of adoration. You remember Milton's words- Will you look at it, this amazing deed. You see Him in the carpenter's shop, helping Joseph to make a yoke, in that little place of labour in Nazareth. Yet this is the One who, apart from His self-emptying, could far more easily make a solar system, or a galaxy of systems. Look at Him again, dressed like a slave, with towel and basin—the equipment of a menial —bathing the feet of some friends of His, who but for their quarrelsomeness should have been bathing His feet. Yet apart from His self-emptying and self-abasing He is no servant, but the Master of an army of servants, angels in white, who rejoice to fly at His beck and call. He humbled Himself. This is the revelation of humility, and this is the root of unity. You see how it is all linked together in Paul's thinking and in this unveiling of truth that comes to the Philippian church through him.

The Angels glorified Him as they considered the humiliation that He endured—"And being found in human form He humbled Himself." As though it were not enough for Him to come to Bethlehem's manger; as though it were not enough for Him to come to a town that was a by-word among the citizens—Nazareth; as though it were not enough for Him to come to lead the kind of life of which He could say, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man bath not where to lay His head"—as if that were not enough. He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death. The humiliation that He endured.

The Angels glorified Him as they considered the identification that He accepted—"He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (v. 7). These two phrases, "the form of a servant"—He so identified Himself; and "the likeness of men"—He so identified Him-self. Our Lord's identification of Himself with the life and the labour of a bondservant rests upon an identification that needs care-fully to be interpreted. This word "likeness" —"in the likeness of men"—does not suggest anything artificial about our Lord's humanity. He was not just seeming to be a man; He was real man. If we are Evangelical in our credal thinking we believe that He was as truly man as if He had not been God. He was not seeming to be man. It isn't likeness in that sense. It wasn't something artificial, just a parade. This word "likeness" does suggest that His humanity gives Him a true com-munity with men ; but not a complete identity. That is to say, He is really human, but He is at the same time more than human. So it is that in the paradox of what we call the Incarnation, we have the union of the divine and the human, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal, the sovereign and the servant. This is the stoop of God down to the level of our desperate need and lostness.

The Angels glorified Him as they considered the crucifixion He would endure. Still in v. 8, "even the death of the Cross." When we read that our Lord became obedient unto death we see that He stooped to mortality. But when we read the phrase, "even death on a Cross," we see that He stooped to ignominy. Now we know, of course, that God cannot die. One writer, grappling with this fact, said that God-be-come-man can die. The sentence is well-intended, but surely it is inaccurate. If God becomes man, what we have is man—a state-ment that would never have satisfied the apostles, or the makers of the Nicene or the Athanasian Creeds. What is true is that the God-man—not man-become-God, or God-be-come-man—but the God-man, Jesus Christ, in the perfect union of the divine and human natures, has a mode of existence in which one of the many acts it is possible for Him to choose, is the act of dying—and choose it He did. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life" (John 10:17, 18). There it is. "That I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself."

"Even the death of the Cross." Now with that brush-stroke, the portrait of our Lord's self-abasement is complete.

Upon that Cross of Jesus Mine eyes at times can see The very dying form of One Who suffered there for me;

And from my smitten heart, with tears, Two wonders I confess: The wonders of His glorious love, And my own worthlessness.

I take, 0 Cross, thy shadow For my abiding place; I ask no other sunshine than The sunshine of His face;

Content to let the world go by, To know no gain nor loss, My sinful self, my only shame, My glory all the Cross.

Alexander Maclaren The simple, personal name, Jesus, was given indeed with reference to His work, but had been borne by many a Jewish child before Mary called her child Jesus; and the fact that it is this common name which is now exalted above every name, brings out still more strongly the thought already dwelt upon, that what is thus exalted is the manhood of our Lord. You and I have a man in the glory, who is plead-ing for us—His name, Jesus."