The Condescension of Jesus
Belgic Confession • Sermon • Submitted
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For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,
“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.”
Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying,
“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”
And again,
“I will put my trust in him.”
And again,
“Behold, I and the children God has given me.”
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Scripture: Hebrews 2:5-18
Belgic Confession Articles 18-19
Sermon Title: The Condescension of Jesus
Belgic Confession Article 18: At the beginning of December we were looking at Article 10, which dealt with the deity of Christ. I described that as his God-ness. One of the differences between us, human beings, and Jesus is that he is something other than us. He is not only flesh, blood, bones, and so on, but he is divine. Jesus is fully God. But I also mentioned that the Confession would get to a point of dealing with Jesus as fully man. That is where we are tonight, and we are going to read two Articles, 18 and 19. The first deals with the incarnation of Jesus, his humanness, and then later in the service we will confess our belief in these two natures.
Scripture Intro: In some sense, a message about Jesus’ humanity, the incarnation, would be easy to skip over. This is what we come back to every year in Christmas, the Passion Week, Good Friday, Easter, the Ascension, and if the pastor covers them, Jesus’ baptism and temptation. All of those are events from Scripture that mark times in the historical human existence of Jesus. I don’t expect too many people from our congregations are really troubled with Jesus being both God and man. There’s still some mystery, but we believe it.
Still, we are going to look at the incarnation of Jesus. Something that I found interesting is that when we looked at the deity of Christ, we actually looked at Hebrews 1, and now addressing his humanity, we are going right into the next chapter. It seems God is telling us through his word that the two natures of Christ are important for believers to comprehend. It is out of these things that much more about Jesus and the sacrifice for our redemption flows.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, one of the deepest yearnings that we as humans tend to have is the desire to feel that we’re not alone. We want to know that we are not the only ones who have been through something. We want to be able to share our experiences—joys and sorrows, tragedies and celebrations, with people who genuinely understand us. If I pour out my frustrations and disappointments to someone, I want to know they get it. At best, that takes talking to someone who has been through something similar themselves; someone sharing about cancer is likely most comfortable talking about that with someone else who has or has had cancer. But other times, we share things with people knowing they can’t fully comprehend our situation because they haven’t been there before. They are sympathetic, they’re willing to be with us, more than empathetic.
When we consider the incarnation of Christ, that in Jesus God put on flesh, we find that this deep longing has been satisfied by God. Because Jesus came into the world through a lowly and from the outside scandalous birth, because he experienced life in all of its parts growing up, because he walked and ate and slept and was tempted to sin—all the way through to suffering even unto death—because of that we are not alone. He experienced and knew the pains of being rejected, of being without a basic provision in food, and of being tortured.
In all of his suffering, we have been given a Savior who is like us, with whom we can identify in every way, except that he did not sin. Through the real human Jesus, God does understand what it is like to live the human experience. Any time we might feel just in saying, “God, you don’t get what I’m going through,” God could graciously tell us that he does—because his Son suffered. We’re going to look further at that with our passage in a few moments.
If you looked in the bulletin, I’ve entitled tonight’s message: “The Condescension of Jesus.” That might sound strange to some of us—when we talk about someone being condescending, it tends to be a negative thing—they are patronizing, they are holding themselves above others. Yet that’s not what the condescension of Jesus is about—his condescension regards how in taking on a human form, being born and experiencing life on this earth, we understand that to be beneath his majesty and glory as God. It’s what Paul is capturing in Philippians chapter 2, “Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” A verse later he goes further, “Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!”
Jesus took on roles that were lower and farther away from his place in heaven as his life went on. Through them all, though, we cannot forget that Jesus did not have to experience life on this earth; he did not have to go through the torturous beatings of the soldiers or carry a cross or be nailed to it and die. He of his own free will did not owe us anything. We needed him to do all this, but he did not have to. Isn’t that incredible? As I consider that, it makes me want to praise God: thank you for doing for me, for us that which you did not have to do! As we have seen with so many of these biblical truths that form our faith in the Reformed confessions, what does it matter that Jesus was human? It makes us realize more and more the selfless, amazing love of God.
Going back to Hebrews 2, we find his humanity being linked again and again to his suffering and death. That’s where we focus our attention to for the rest of our time tonight. There are 3 verses that I’ll highlight that make us aware of the importance of these for us.
The first verse is verse 9, Jesus “suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” In one sense, that’s speaking to that being able to identify with us. When we have lost someone or we ourselves believe or are experiencing the nearness of our own death-we can remember that Jesus went through that. We are able to turn to him in prayer, and ask him to comfort us in our fear or lament the existence of death and dying. God created us for life, and yet as long as we are in our mortal bodies, there is this tragic ending. Jesus went through that.
And yet for him to taste death for everyone is also linked to what we read in the next verse, verse 10, that Jesus, the author of salvation, is made perfect through suffering. The English Standard Version study notes remind that when we come across the word perfect, it’s often used to communicate a maturity, a completeness—we might say things are coming full circle. Jesus is made perfect through suffering—that is, he has fully served the purpose, the calling that God the Father gave him when he sent him to this earth.
It’s in this truth that the reality of God making covenant with his people, of God being the Father of his children and knowing specifically his sons and daughters, of him being the one who declares, “I will be their God, and they will be my people,” where all of that makes sense. Jesus came and died to give saving grace to the elect. We might struggle with the fairness of that and being able to comprehend every little bit, but in order for grace to truly be about what Jesus has done, it can’t just be that he came to save random people who choose him, but that he comes for those who will put their trust in him. There must be some form of predestined redemptive relationship. Jesus is tasting death for those people.
The second verse that teaches us about the importance of Jesus’ human suffering and death is verse 14. Jesus became human “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.” Jesus, in his humanity, destroys the devil. Maybe what we tend to think about with this battle between Jesus and the devil is that it’s wholly the resurrection that destroys him. Jesus coming back to life, is able to have the final knockout punch on Satan because he couldn’t stop him from returning to life. That would be true, there’s nothing wrong with that.
But the author here is specifically saying that it is by his death that he can destroy the devil. We have to link this to what is talked about further in verse 15—that Jesus gives freedom from slavery. Not just any slavery, but the enslaving that is over humanity in the fear of death. Because Jesus died and because he is in control and everything is under his submission, we don’t need to worry about death winning.
We’re going to look in a moment at what exactly Jesus’ death does, but even at this point we find that death is not to be viewed as this hopeless abyss for people of faith. Death has no power to say, “I got the last laugh.” If Christ is in us and we are in Christ, then we can have hope for the life that is beyond this life and our mortal death. It is only temporary until the resurrection
The third verse that we see for the humanity of Jesus being an essential part of our faith is verse 17. Jesus became human, like us, “in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.” It is because Jesus put on flesh and blood, he breathed, he moved, he had a soul that he can be a mediator for us. In addition to be part of the Triune Godhead who is reigning and upholding the plan and future of the universe, because Christ became like us who are not God, he is able to serve God as our high priest. He is always faithful in his duties; he does not show favoritism or become lax as can be seen in the priests and high priests of Israel. When he makes a sacrifice for our sins, it has the full comprehension of what we read later in Hebrews 10, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” So he does not offer sacrifice of animals or birds, but he offered himself.
This morning Corsica participated in the Lord’s Supper and Harrison I believe will be celebrating in a couple weeks. When we take up that memorial feast—we take the bread and the wine or grape juice not thinking it to be any more than those foods, but they are signs of Jesus’ body and blood, they are seals of his sacrifice. He, once-for-all, it is finished, gave himself, in the body, to atone for our sins. He took the great and dreadful amount of guilt that ought to be on each of us and every other believing sinner, on himself. Jesus can say, not only will I live for them, but I will die for them.
This is the effect of Jesus becoming human, being our perfect and great high priest, making atonement for us—Hebrews 10 verse 22—“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” As Hebrews 10:18 says, “Where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.” If there is no more sacrifice, then there is nowhere else to turn, there is nothing ahead that we should be waiting on to cleanse the guilt that we may feel from our sin. Jesus has dealt with that. We can seek forgiveness still, but where we turn is to the past.
We’ve considered that Jesus suffered death that he might taste death for everyone, that by death he might destroy the devil, and that he became human and suffered in order that he might be our high priest—in service to God, making atonement for our sins. I’ll wrap up with a question that sometimes comes up in a ministry candidate’s exam and probably in the past at least, in Catechism—the question “Did Jesus have to die?” On the one hand, we might like to think, “Well, no, God could have done something completely supernatural and abstract that we don’t understand—just magically we are saved.”
But at the heart of it, the orthodox answer is yes. This is why Jesus put on flesh—his suffering and death was not an afterthought shortening his preplanned time on earth. Jesus had to die to be our sacrifice, he had to die that all these things might be accomplished. He had to die that the real consequence of sin and the power in death would be defeated once and for all; and only he could accomplish that. May God receive all the glory and praise for this priceless gift. Amen