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God With Us, August 4
They shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with
us.
Matthew 1:23
.
From the days of eternity the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the Father; He
was “the image of God,” the image of His greatness and majesty, “the outshining
of his glory.” It was to manifest this glory that He came to our world. To this
sin-darkened earth He came to reveal the light of God’s love—to be “God with
us.”...
Our little world is the lesson book of the universe. God’s wonderful purpose
of grace, the mystery of redeeming love, is the theme into which “angels desire to
look”, and it will be their study throughout endless ages. Both the redeemed and
the unfallen beings will find in the cross of Christ their science and their song. It
will be seen that the glory shining in the face of Jesus is the glory of self-sacrificing
love. In the light from Calvary it will be seen that the law of self-renouncing love
is the law of life for earth and heaven; that the love which “seeketh not her own”
has its source in the heart of God....
Jesus might have remained at the Father’s side. He might have retained the
glory of heaven, and the homage of the angels. But He chose to give back the
scepter into the Father’s hands, and to step down from the throne of the universe,
that He might bring light to the benighted, and life to the perishing....
This great purpose had been shadowed forth in types and symbols. The burning
bush, in which Christ appeared to Moses, revealed God.... The all-merciful God
shrouded His glory in a most humble type, that Moses could look upon it and live.
So in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, God communicated
with Israel, revealing to men His will, and imparting to them His grace. God’s
glory was subdued, and His majesty veiled, that the weak vision of finite men might
behold it. So Christ was to come in “the body of our humiliation” (
Philippians 3:21
,
R.V.), “in the likeness of men.”... His glory was veiled, His greatness and majesty
were hidden, that He might draw near to sorrowful, tempted men.
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