For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: “I will declare Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.” And again: “I will put My trust in Him.” And again: “Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.” (Hebrews 02:11-13, NKJV).
Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Some days I can understand that better than others. I can only imagine what it meant for the all-powerful Son of God to live life as a dependent Man and look upon the poignant mixture of beauty and horrible evil in this world. A bright, sunny, cloudless day filled with death and loss. The impossibly discordant juxtaposition between what could be versus what is, all viewed through the eyes of omniscience.
C.S. Lewis has rightly written that mortal life is mostly discomfort interspersed with moments of ecstatic joy and depthless sorrow. Of all men alive on the world, Jesus must have known that more completely than any other. To have come from Heaven to earth as a Man must have been the longest, most inconceivable journey undertaken by Deity in history. And as a Man He suffered more than any other precisely because He had intimate knowledge of the shocking contrast between the fallen world and the majesty of Heaven.
The writer of Hebrews informs us that both the sanctifier (Christ) and the sanctified (pitiable us) are all of one; brethren. It is an astounding claim, supported by the prophecies cited from Psalm 22 and Isaiah 8 that immediately follow that incredible statement. Furthermore, while it is barely understandable that He became one of us, it is completely incomprehensible that He was unashamed to do so. Look at the world for just a moment through the eyes of a sinless and perfect conscience - nothing pure or untainted; everything defiled and unclean. Even at our human best, our righteousness is as filthy rags.
Self-justifying evil, vile blasphemy against the God of Heaven, deeds and thoughts that surprises even the Devil himself - and that's just among believers. And yet, and yet, He became one with us, entered into the sewer of our existence without hesitation or apology all to save us from our sins.
There is a real danger of something being repeated so often that it becomes trite and meaningless. That is why it is sometimes the job of a writer or teacher to use unaccustomed words to convey an old truth. God became a Man is an old truth that easily falls into that category simply because it has been said more or less in the same way for 2000 years. It is a hallmark of our depravity that we can lose sight of what that really means.
Look at it this way - how would you like to be sentenced to living in close proximity to a homeless drunk eating and sleeping in his own filth? Or confined to the court of an amoral and ruthless tyrant who routinely persecutes and kills his hapless subjects? Or as an unwilling witness to inhuman debauchery? Or as an innocent inmate of Death Row?
These are lame and inadequate pictures of what it meant for Christ to self-identify with man and live among us as one of us. Nevertheless, to those torturous images you must add the power to exact perfect retribution for all those evils with a mere thought of divine power deliberately un-exercised. And to that, add to it your own inevitable death sentence at the hands of these vile creatures by the most excruciating and humiliating means available.
And even at this point we are not nearly done, because the impetus for all this voluntary degradation is the purest and most noble imaginable and yet will be disregarded or purposely defamed by the vast majority of those for whom it was intended to benefit.
And the capstone is this - by becoming one of these creatures you have no chance of escape. You will be one of these men forever.
God becoming one with man was at a cost I doubt we will ever fathom and for a motive we can only describe but can never fully comprehend. His divine love.
To say that Christ loved us so much that He is willing to do anything for us is the understatement of eternity. We have no clue about that kind of love from our own personal experience in what we blithely call love. Even the purest human love is a cesspool in comparison.
I think sometimes our view of the Savior is rife with romantic blather brought about by our stubborn need to think that we are somehow worth all that expense. In truth, our intrinsic worth is utterly imaginary.
What value we have comes to us only through His imputation. We have value because He insists we do. Our price is set, fittingly so, by the One who made us. That He considers us worth dying for is the mystery of the ages, but that is the price tag He has affixed to us.
However inexplicable, His oneness with us means more than all the Universe itself, or all the lofty thoughts or deeds that humankind could ever think or achieve.
In that regard, His oneness with us is perhaps His greatest and most surprising gift.
