God
With Us
They
shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Matt.
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” (Phil. 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.
From
Devotional: Our Father Cares, p. 200.
