DESCENT OF A GOD

 

“Years ago my wife and I travelled to the Holy Land. As we ascended Shepherd’s Field, we overlooked the quaint little town of Bethlehem. It was as though time stood still. We tried to imagine the scene two thousand years earlier with no paved roads, no running water, no electricity, no shopping malls.

“Life was reduced to its simplest terms: rude shelters to protect one from the elements, a central well from which to draw water, transportation by foot or donkey or horse. The days were spent plowing the field, tending the sheep, or selling a few simple items of merchandise. It was hard to believe we were viewing the place where a God was born.

“He, “the King of heaven”….left a throne to inherit a manger. He exchanged the dominion of a god for the dependence of a babe. He gave up wealth, power, dominion, and the fulness of His glory – for what? – for taunting, mocking, humiliation, and subjection.

“It was a trade of unparalleled dimension, a condescension of incredible proportions, a descent of incalculable depth. And so, the great Jehovah, creator of worlds without number, infinite in virtue and power, made his entry into this world in swaddling clothes and a manger.”

-        Tad R. Callister, The Infinite Atonement, p 69

I cannot read something like this without the stark realization of one of Christ’s greatest virtues – humility.  Consider for a moment the eons of time He would have spent in exact obedience to His Father’s laws, the instruction He would have received and the knowledge He would have obtained to rise to His godly status.

The development of the Saviour’s impeccable character would have earned Him amazing respect and adoration from us all, His younger siblings. No doubt we looked up to Him for example and guidance. Imagine all that not producing an iota of pride.

Only innate goodness could produce the humility that He possessed. Only such humility could lower itself into the manger of a stable. The humility of a God who knew His purpose: “To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39).

 

No soft pillows and kingly bed

On which to lay His princely head.

A bleak future on some hill

Lay in shadows of His Father’s will.

 

For man’s purpose did He come

To dispel the gloom from

The devil’s hellish flood.

To light the world with heaven’s glow,

The greatest love you’ll ever know.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: The Greatest Gift by Liz Lemon Swindle)

THE GRANDEUR OF OUR GOD

 

 

I began to read The Mortal Messiah series again and could not get past the preface. I became so emotionally overcome that I could not read any further.

Many of us think that we are studying the life of Christ when we study the New Testament. This is far from the truth. The Gospels are not biographies of Jesus but a synopsis of faith promoting accounts from the Saviour’s ministry.

“No mortal can write the biography of a God. A biography is but the projection through the eyes of a penman of what the writer believes were the acts and what he feels were the thoughts and emotions of another man…. How, then, can any mortal plumb the depths of the feelings, or understand in full the doings, of an Eternal Being?

“The true Life of Jesus must be written by the spirit of revelation and of prophecy and cannot come forth until that millennial day when men have a perfect knowledge that God can show them all things [see D&C 101:32-34]. Only then will they be able to believe and rejoice in the heavenly account.”

-        (Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah Book 1, p xvi [1979].

Even the faith promoting accounts do not contain all the words and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Elder McConkie goes on to say that so sacred and holy were Christ’s teachings that only a selection of them were preserved for ‘presentation to the unbelieving and skeptical masses of men into whose hands the New Testament would come’ (ibid).

We do not fully know or understand the lonely road He travelled here. We do not fully understand the condescension of a God who stepped down from His gilded throne to traverse the dusty roads of Galilee.

 I am always touched when I see the humanity in Him through scripture….the hunger when He reached for the figs on the barren fig tree, the physical exhaustion that made Him sleep through a violent storm on the sea of Galilee. How did He cope with such overwhelming humility that kept at bay His godship and divinity?

And then the ultimate subjection to become a man whose ‘visage was so marred more than any man’ by being willingly lifted upon the cross of Calvary, allowing the nails to be driven into His hands and feet and His body to be broken to ensure our eternal destiny (Isaiah 52:14; John 19:17-18,32-34; see Old Institute Manual commentary for Isaiah 52:13-15). A God in a mangled body…..Could any of us possibly understand this?

This was the man from Nazareth, who sailed on the seas of Galilee and ascended to His exalted throne in glory and majesty. This was Christ the King, the eternal God of heaven and earth, the Son of God, the Saviour of my soul. I stand all amazed.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

 

 

YET HE CAME

He came to make something of you and me. All cost considered, a commitment iron clad, He subjected himself to the lowliest of all births that He might lift an amazing assortment of humanity that we are. I marvel at our uniqueness, our creativity, our intelligence, our very essence and all that we are and are yet to become. One baby born in a stable made this possible. 

When Moses encountered God on Mount Sinai, God revealed Himself to him and Moses saw the glory of God and every particle of this earth and all the children of men (Moses 1:8,27) that have ever been created. The vision of God's power was overwhelming to a man who grew up in an Egyptian court believing that Pharoah was god and there was no one greater than him so he exclaimed that now he could see that man is nothing (Moses :10). God, however, didn't want Moses to miss the point so He showed him the same vision again and concluded it with the most important message in the scriptures: "For behold this is my work and my glory - to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39). The point that God didn't want Moses to miss is this: amongst all of God's creations, none are greater than man…..because man constitutes God’s glory. All that we are and all that we become matters because it leads to our glory and adds to His. So He came to clothe us in robes of glory whilst He, for a moment, declined His, the splendour of His godhood suspended to carry the burdens of the faithful, the faithless and the lowliest. 

                                       . 
We tend to think of the Saviour in relation to His infinite sacrifice, the life he gave up so that we might live, which is of course correct. That sacrifice would not have been possible, however,  were it not for His humble beginning as a mortal baby, a beginning such as every other. I cannot fathom His condescension:  leaving His godly station to lay himself down in a bed of straw of this lowly earth. What a sacrifice from the stable to Calvary! And all for you and me…..

 

Did you miss

Your godly robes

That you traded for 

The swaddling cloths of Calvary?

Was the ground rough beneath

Your feet as You traversed

The dust of Galilee?

The baseness of This earth,

So willingly suffered despite hostility.

Yet You came

The Father to reveal

And to Him forever

Our yielding hearts to seal.

CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Liz Lemon Swindle)

THE HUMBLE GOD

 

Through my study of the scriptures I have counted 18 of Christ’s characteristics, the most prominent of which for me, had been ones of power and mercy. I recently came to understand one of His virtues which I had not paid much attention to before, the virtue of humility.

 

This is the scripture which made me reflect on the extraordinary nature of His character as a God: “Therefore, I command you to build a house unto me, for the gathering together of my saints, that they may WORSHIP ME” (D&C 115:8). Can you imagine the amount of humility it would require to say such a thing for a God of perfect attributes and devoid of pride? It would have to be someone who knows perfectly who he is, is confident in that knowledge and most of all, has a purity of spirit and heart. Compare this to Lucifer’s desire to be worshipped (Moses 4:1-4).

 

It amazes me that someone so powerful who calls himself ‘the king of heaven’ (2 N 10:14), who can create worlds and annihilate them by the power of His word (Helaman 12:9-17; D&C 63:4) can be so humble. Until now I have only seen Christ’s power in His self-declarations but have overlooked the humility. 

 

This is why this is important for us: Christ’s humility made it possible for Him to condescend to be born to a lowly life: in a stable, a carpenter, willing to be subjected to ridicule and unacceptance. You might say he experienced mortal life at ‘ground zero’. And in doing so he ‘descended below all things that he might comprehend all things’ (D&C 88:6). What things? Our difficulties, our sorrows, our sins, our imperfections, our sufferings, our inabilities, our mortal weakness. The added bonus was access to our individual lives through the Atonement where He learnt what it was like to be you and me.

 

Imagine a God leaving His exalted throne and all that comes with it, to be rejected, spat upon, scourged, reviled and crucified. Imagine the humility it would take to subject yourself to all that, despite the power within your grasp. Embrace the beating of your cherished heart, you were worth it. 

 

Did your angels miss You

When you left Your glorious throne?

Did their voices echo in the lowly stable

When you were so humbly born?

Did they weep for you

When you had to suffer alone?

Will they rejoice at Your return

And sound their trumps

To herald their joy?

And will they praise You forever

As you reclaim Your exalted throne?

- Cathryne Allen