Christ, Our Humbled, Glorious King
Ephesians 2:5-11
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Philippians 2:8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… What a sight it must have been. Jesus the Rabbi, Jesus the Teacher, Jesus the Preacher, Jesus the Miracle-Worker, loved by many, hated by more, enters Jerusalem sitting on a donkey, with palm branches and clothing spread out along his path down from the Mount of Olives and up again to the city of Jerusalem. He is surrounded by people waving their own palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! The King of Israel!”
All of it, including the donkey, proclaimed Jesus’ royalty, His humility, and His saving purpose, because it linked Palm Sunday to what the prophet Zechariah had foretold long ago: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zech 9:9)
The crowds understood, but only to a point. Indeed, they hailed Jesus as their king, but they were convinced in their own minds that He would be an earthly king. They loved Him for His humility, because they thought His humility would soon come to an end and be replaced by a glorious earthly kingdom, with glory for Jesus and for them. They knew His purpose – that He was coming to save them. And that is why they sang, “Hosanna, save us now!” But the salvation they sought wasn’t the salvation He was coming to bring; they were looking for and expecting something else. Not one of them thought that Jesus was coming into Jerusalem to lay down His life as an offering to atone for their sins.
Jesus’ disciples understood a bit more. They had called Jesus the King of Israel long before the crowds welcomed Him into Jerusalem with their palm branches and songs. They saw the humble life He led, and they were there for the foot-washing when their King wrapped a towel around His waist and stooped down to wash their feet, instructing them to humble themselves as their King had humbled Himself. But they, too, stumbled over His humility, and over the humility He outlined for all who would follow Him. They also misread Him and His purpose when “a strife arose among them, which of them should be considered the greatest.” (Lk 22:24)
In today’s Epistle to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul, writing after the fact – after Palm Sunday, after Maundy Thursday, after Good Friday, after Easter Sunday – addressed this very glory-seeking mentality that was evident in the Palm Sunday crowds. That glory-seeking mindset was also in Jesus’ disciples, and it dwells in us according to our sinful human nature. This is what St. Paul wrote: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”
Before He was born into this world, Jesus existed. He was in the beginning with God the Father and with the Holy Spirit. He was, as Paul wrote, “in the form of God.” He was also “the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,” as the writer to the Hebrews puts it (Heb 1:3). He “did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.” (Phil 2:6) In other words, Jesus did not seek to grab more glory for Himself. He already had all the glory anyone could ever want: the very glory of God.
But rather than hold onto that glory, He “made Himself of no reputation.” Literally, He “emptied Himself.” Jesus Christ, true God in the flesh, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Creator of all that is set aside His glory and all divine privileges as the Son of God and took “the form of a bondservant,” a slave. He came in the likeness of men. He lowered Himself all the way down to our level. As we confess in the Creed, He “became man.”
We call this portion of Christ’s existence His State of Humiliation, which encompasses that portion of His being from His conception to His death and burial. We confessed it in the Apostles’ Creed earlier: “who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” And, as I have mentioned before, it is a pious Christian practice to bow the head during the recitation of those words in humble recognition of our Lord’s humility in lowering Himself to our human level; to recognize that the King of the Universe, God in the flesh willingly and deliberately humbled Himself, lowered Himself, and became man – for us.
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First, He lowered Himself to our level as human beings. We are creatures who depend on God for everything. We depend on Him for the earth to live on, for sunlight, for rain, for sustenance, for health, for the very air we breathe. We are literally at the mercy of God for everything. Jesus lowered Himself to that same level of dependence on His heavenly Father and in perfect obedience to His heavenly Father as a creature, as the Son of Man.
Of course, even Adam and Eve were at that level, and it was still a pretty glorious thing. But that’s not low enough. Jesus had to go lower; He had to go to the level of sinful humanity, yet without any sin of His own. He had to go to the level of cursed humanity, and in so doing took upon Himself the curse of death for us. He obeyed and suffered all the way down to death, even the death of the cross. And He chose it. He chose it all…for you.
Jesus’ willing and deliberate humiliation of Himself teaches us very important things. It teaches us that there can be no glorious kingdom here in this sin-stricken world. Jesus’ humiliation teaches us that there can be no paradise, no heaven here on this earth. And that is so because every single member of the human race is corrupt with sin; and together, we can only end up destroying ourselves, as history has proven time and time again. Sin, death, and the devil are our real enemies. And it took the voluntary, deliberate humiliation of the Son of God to destroy those enemies for us and to take away their ultimate power over us. In His human nature, Christ tasted death for us.
But there is a kind of glory in that loving sacrifice, as Jesus told His disciples: “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him; if God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself” (Jn 13:31). Because Jesus humbled Himself so willingly, so perfectly, purely out of love for us, He earned for Himself, as a Man, all the glory He once shared with God the Father as the Son of God.
It is as we heard earlier in what St. Paul wrote in today’s Epistle: “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
God has already humbled us by bringing us to a knowledge of our sin and causing us to sorrow over it, calling us to confession and to daily repentance. God humbles us with the truth of His holy Law that shows us we are dead in our transgressions and sin, and that without Christ, we are doomed to eternal damnation.
And we are deeply humbled at the very thought that Christ took upon Himself our punishment and death so that we would not have to face those things. His declaration from the cross, “it is finished!” assures us that everything needed to procure our salvation has been done; that everything that we could not do for ourselves has been done perfectly and completely accomplished by Christ in our place. And because of all that Christ had done, He is glorified above all things.
Our comfort here is also that God has already glorified all those who believe in Christ Jesus and have been baptized in His name by making us His own children and delivering to us the forgiveness of all our sins in His preached Word and Holy Sacraments. And He promises us an eternal, glorious inheritance in the new heavens and the new earth.
The hard lesson for us, who still drag around our glory-seeking flesh, is that the path to that glorious inheritance for us Christians is still through shame and pain and suffering. The true path to glory is through self-denial and self-sacrifice. The true path to glory is not seeking glory for ourselves at all, but rather, seeking how we can humble ourselves to serve our neighbor in love. That is the path that was forged for us by Christ Jesus.
God has made us His own through Christ; thanks be to God for that! Our Lord invites us to follow Him down His path to glory during this Holy Week, by hearing and meditating on His Word and taking in as much of the Holy Week services online as we can. See again just how the Son of God humbled Himself for us and for our salvation. Rejoice, dear fellow redeemed. Praise God for His endless and selfless love for us all.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
