He Emptied Himself

The Word became flesh, and that might seem the end of the matter. But the New Testament does not stop at the fact that He took flesh. It also tells us what kind of life He lived in that flesh, and in what order the work of salvation was carried out. Two more terms help to say this clearly.

The Humiliation of the Son

The first term is humiliation. It comes from the Latin humiliatio, a lowering, a humbling. In everyday English “humiliation” often means being shamed by someone else. Here it means something different: a lowering that the Son chose for Himself.

It can be defined this way. The humiliation is the Son, who holds divine glory, lowering Himself for the salvation of men: submitting to human limitation and suffering, placing Himself under the law, and going as far as death on a cross. The passage it rests on is in Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

Philippians 2:6-8 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 stauros σταυρός stow-ros'(cross).

These three verses go steadily downward.

He began in the form of God, and instead of grasping at equality with God He “emptied Himself.” The Greek verb is ekenosen, from the word for empty, and Paul says how: the One who existed in the form of God took the form of a bond-servant.

The second step down is “He humbled Himself.” The Greek is etapeinosen, He made Himself low, and the lowering went as far as death, and not only death, but death on a cross.

At each step the Son is the one acting: He emptied Himself, He humbled Himself, He became obedient. No one forced the Son down from the form of God. The lowering was His own.

Obeying the Word of the One Who Sent Him

This lowering did not stop at His birth or wait for His death. It carried His whole earthly ministry, in which He obeyed the word and the will of the Father throughout. John records Him saying so.

John 14:24 He who does not agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(love) Me does not keep My logos λόγος log'-os(words); and the logos(word) which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.

The Son, who is the Word, says that the word He speaks is the Father’s; He does not speak on His own account but as the One who was sent.

Malakh, the word Jacob used on his deathbed, means one who is sent, a messenger, and Jacob called the One who redeemed him “the messenger.” In John’s Gospel the Son speaks again and again of “the Father who sent Me.”

The Order of Salvation

The second of these terms is usually called the economic Trinity, and it needs explaining, because the word economic here has nothing to do with money.

It comes from the Greek oikonomia οἰκονομία oy-kon-om-ee'-ah, which means the management of a household, an ordered plan. The economic Trinity is the relation among the three Persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, as it appears in their work of creating and saving the world.

Two statements belong to this term, and both must be held together. First, in essence and glory the three are fully equal. Second, in carrying out salvation they work in an order: the Father plans and sends; the Son obeys and accomplishes; the Spirit applies and is present. The equality is in who they are. The order is in what each does in the work of salvation.

John records the Son describing His own place in that order.

John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own thelema θέλημα thel'-ay-mah(will), but the thelema(will) of Him who sent Me.

The Son came down to do the will of the One who sent Him. That is obedience and accomplishment, the Son’s part in the order.

And He describes the Spirit’s place as well.

John 15:26 When the Parakletos(the One who comes alongside to call) comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) of aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth) who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me,

The Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father, is sent by the Son, and testifies about the Son. The Father sends; the Son is sent and sends; the Spirit comes and bears witness. The work of salvation moves in that order, while the three remain one in glory.

The Whole Line

The invisible God revealed Himself in the Old Testament by degrees, through theophany, in flame and cloud and rock, and in the form of a messenger and a man. In the New Testament the Son Himself became man: the incarnation. The Son who had become flesh then lowered Himself willingly: the humiliation. And, according to the order in which the Father, the Son, and the Spirit carry out salvation, He completed salvation by obeying the will of the Father perfectly.

It began with an old man’s word. Jacob, about to die, spoke of “the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil.” That messenger said to Jacob “I am the God of Bethel,” wrestled with him all night and left him limping, and Jacob alone of all the people in the Old Testament is recorded as touching Him body to body. The New Testament tells of the Word who became flesh, emptied Himself, and obeyed to the point of the cross. Scripture does not write the sentence that makes them one Person, but reading them so is a very persuasive interpretation: the messenger spoke as God, and the Son is the One who makes God known.

The Question That Remains

One question remains, and it is the question of the word goel itself: why a form taken for a night could not redeem, and why redemption, as the New Testament tells it, runs through flesh taken for ever and through the cross. A form taken for a time would not have met what the word requires.

The answer lies in the law that gave the word goel its full meaning. Generations after Jacob, the Torah set down who may redeem and what redemption requires, and that law shows why a form taken for a time was not enough.