Over the past couple of weeks I have been conversing with a Muslim gentleman who is exploring Christianity and is making his way through the Gospel of Matthew for the first time.  When he made it to Matthew 5 he was puzzled at the fact that Jesus could possibly be tempted.  If Jesus was almighty God, as we claim, how could he have been tempted?  In response I had to explain that although Jesus was (and is) fully God, he was (and is) also fully human just like we are.  My Muslim friend responded in this way: “To degrade himself in order to look like one of his creations is considered Blasphemy by us.”

         His response got me thinking.  Did God degrade himself to become human in Jesus Christ?  The word degrade essentially means  “to be humiliated and suffer a loss of status.”  Taken in this way, yes, God degraded himself to become a human being.  Philippians 2 puts it this way: “Christ Jesus:
  Who, being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be            

      grasped,
  but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
  And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:6-8 NIV).

 

God loved you and me so much he lowered himself, emptied himself and became human and then lowered himself even further to the most humiliating, shameful and torturous death ever conceived--death on a cross. He took the punishment we deserve for our sin so that we could become the righteousness of God!  

       So, yes, God degraded himself when he became a human being...but that is what is so amazing about the incarnation!  He did this for you and and he did this for me.  My prayer for my Muslim friend and all Muslims around the world is that they would meet this God who loved them so much that he did this for them.