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Chapter 1
147
death. The prophet gives to the world His words, “I hid not my face
from shame and spitting.
In consideration of this, can men have one particle of exaltation?
As they trace down the life and sufferings and humiliation of Christ,
can they lift their proud heads as if they were to bear no trials, no
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shame, no humiliation? I say to the followers of Christ, Look to
Calvary, and blush for shame at your self-important ideas. All this
humiliation of the Majesty of heaven was for guilty, condemned
man. He went lower and lower in His humiliation, until there were
no lower depths that He could reach, in order to lift man up from
his moral defilement. All this was for you who are striving for the
supremacy—striving for human praise, for human exaltation; you
who are afraid you will not receive all that deference, that respect
from human minds, that you think is your due. Is this Christlike?
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” He
died to make an atonement, and to become a pattern for every one
who would be His disciple. Shall selfishness come into your hearts?
And will those who set not before them the pattern, Jesus, extol
your merits? You have none except as they come through Jesus
Christ. Shall pride be harbored after you have seen Deity humbling
Himself, and then as man debasing Himself, till there was no lower
point to which He could descend? “Be astonished, O ye heavens,”
and be amazed, ye inhabitants of the earth, that such returns should
be made to our Lord! What contempt! what wickedness! what
formality! what pride! what efforts made to lift up man and glorify
self, when the Lord of glory humbled Himself, agonized, and died
the shameful death upon the cross in our behalf (
The Review and
Herald, September 4, 1900
)!.
Christ could not have come to this earth with the glory that He
had in the heavenly courts. Sinful human beings could not have
borne the sight. He veiled His divinity with the garb of humanity,
but He did not part with His divinity. A divine-human Saviour,
He came to stand at the head of the fallen race, to share in their
experience from childhood to manhood (
The Review and Herald,
June 15, 1905
).
Christ had not exchanged His divinity for humanity; but He had
clothed His divinity in humanity (
The Review and Herald, October
29, 1895
).