In the Flesh

God put flesh on for me. It’s a concept that never ceases to amaze me afresh each time I cherish it. God, the creator of the universe, the spoken Word, chose to leave heaven and encounter hell on earth, and He did it without sinning so that I wouldn’t have to encounter hell at all. To do this, Christ humbled himself as Paul so eloquently writes about in Philippians 2:5-8: “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (NASB). As humans, we sometimes forget that we are not God—we make decisions, act rashly, and put on an arrogance that Christ, who is righteous and just, did not choose to wear. Our attitudes do not reflect His, but Jesus emptied Himself to take on the form of the ones He created. It is a mind-blowing concept, is it not? Thinking of Christ’s sacrifice for me makes me reevaluate what I am grasping: God, Family, Church, Work, Friends, Fun, Cares, Needs, Health, etc. Am I grasping tightly to the right things? For the right reasons? My time on earth is limited, and I have a purpose, which is to glorify God with my life. When I compare my list above with a list of what Jesus encountered in the flesh how does it compare? Poorly, I’ll tell you. Jesus grasped onto the follow things for me: leaving heaven, facing separation from God the Father, facing temptations, loving the unlovely, refuting hypocritical religion, facing rejection, dealing with unthankful people, encountering death on a cross, defeating death, and the list goes on and on. Many of the things on His list are common to the human race, but many are singular to Christ’s experience on earth. He put flesh on to save me, and in putting flesh on He shared my plight while on this earth. God with flesh on will never stop amazing me and challenging me to “work out my salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).