As our hearts, souls and minds are focused keenly on our Lord’s passion and death during these days of Holy Week, we ponder the enormity of the love of Christ in that the One who was so rich, became so poor. The One who knew no sin, became sin for us. Here is how Johann Gerhard describes the practical use of the doctrine of our Lord’s humiliation.

The practical use is: (1) Consoling, for pondering Christ’s love for mankind and His kindness. The apostle shows this use in 2 Cor. 8:9: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich.” Christ was rich because of the true and real communication of the divine properties to the flesh, because “the whole fullness of the deity dwells in Him bodily” (Col. 2:9). He was rich because He was given a name that is above every name (Heb. 1:4). He was rich because of the communicated power to govern heaven and earth (Matt. 28:18). He was rich because He shared infinite and divine knowledge, because “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge were hidden in Him” (Col. 2:3). He was rich because of the subjection of all things (Matt. 11:[27]; John 3:35).

Christ had been enriched with these treasures from the very first moment of His incarnation, as we see from the personal union, from His working of miracles, and from a special demonstration of this power and majesty. But He became poor with His emptying, humiliation, and assumption of the form of a servant. For that reason, He was born poor in a stable, He rested in the lap of a poor mother, He lay down in a poor hut. The Wise Men gave Him a gift of gold. He was presented to the Lord with a pair of turtledoves, which was the gift of poor people. As a poor boy, He was reared in the home of His parents. He was considered the son of a poor carpenter. He felt poverty in His fasting. He did not have His own dwelling place. He was stripped of His clothing on the cross and finally was laid in a grave that belonged to someone else. All of these have to do with Christ’s poverty and emptying. But with this poverty He made us rich. Just as He earned life for us with His death, so He restored heavenly riches to us with His poverty. For this reason His poverty is set before us as material for our happiness (Zech. 9:9). Christ’s poverty is our patrimony, our savings in life, our traveling allowance [viaticum] in death, because with His poverty He acquired for us heavenly riches.

(2) Instructing us to imitate Christ. The apostle shows this use in Phil. 2:5: “Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.” He sets before us: (a) The example of Christ, worthy of imitation. “Let human weakness be ashamed to show pride, because divine majesty humbled itself so.” Augustine, Sermon 39 de verb. Dom.: “Deign to be humble for God’s sake, because God deigned to be humble for your sake.” Christ emptied Himself so that He, without whom nothing was made, appeared to be almost nothing, but you boast immensely and think that you are something when you are nothing. How absurd and preposterous is it for the highest heights to be humbled and for the lowest lowliness to wish to extol itself? (b) The consequent reward for humility. Christ humbled Himself; therefore God exalted Him. In the same way, you will not reach the heights except through a life of humility. Bernard, Sermon 2 adscens.: “The best road to exaltation is humility.” Because Christ through the nature of His divinity did not have anything by means of which He could increase, He found how to increase through descending. In the same way, there is no way for you to come to the heights except through the depths.

Source: Johann Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces, Exegesis 4, On the Person and Office of Christ (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, in production). Thanks to the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Mayes for sharing this quote with us. This volume will be available October 2009.