The Recovery of the Lord's Name In His People # 16

The Ground of His Presence and Power (continued)

Now here we have a wonderful thing: Paul, in these words reads, reads the motive of the incarnation and the Cross. He reads right back into the glory into the presence of God where the Son is and reads the mind of the Son as the decision is arrived at, to leave that estate and to come here and take the way of the Cross. He reads a motive in the mind of Christ. The motive has evidently sprung from the fact that another name had taken the place of the Lord's Name, His Father's Name; another name had intruded, it ell into the place of the Name of the Lord. And that being the case, and we know quite well the whole of that story, that story of the one who said, "I will, I will be equal with the most High," who sought to make for himself the name above every name. We know about that. That being the situation, it was not enough for the Son to sit in equality with God in heaven when His Father's Name was dishonored on earth. He could not be at rest and be comfortable and be satisfied. Indeed He could not endure it, that He should be there in His glory in possession of that position and that estate while in the creation another name was being honored, another name had usurped His Father's Name. And the motive was jealousy for the Name of God, jealousy for God's honor, that lay behind everything. He emptied Himself. And all the other things mentioned here which we are going to look at one by one.

But first of all notice the Incarnation, the Cross and the ultimate exaltation above all names rested upon one thing; jealousy for the Name of the God. The great, "Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him" sums up all the steps of the great cycle from the glory back to the glory, but relates preeminently to this: Wherefore, Whyfore, because all that was in jealousy for His Father's Name. This mind, this mindedness, it is a kind of mindedness you see. Unless you have got a mind and a motive adequate, you will not do all these things. It is of little use to apply this scripture to Christians and say now, you ought to have the mind of Christ and the mind of Christ worked out like this, in this way and this way. And you have got to be Christ-like, you have got to be Christ-minded. You see that can bring a tremendous amount of pressure and weight like a legal obligation to bear upon Christians. I am not a bit like that, that is not at all my mind, my way, you have got to have a motive, a motive that will make you, cause you, to take his path of the Cross. A motive strong enough to make it something that you must do, you cannot help doing it. That is Christ-mindedness, He could not help it. The constraint of this jealously for His Father's Name was so strongly upon Him that there was nothing else to do, He must, He must take this way.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 17)