'He was . . . He became,' there is one strange contrast. 'He was _rich_
. . . He became _poor_,' there is another. 'He was . . . He became.' What
does that say? Well, it says that if you want to understand Bethlehem,
you must go back to a time before Bethlehem. The meaning of Christ's
birth is only understood when we turn to that Evangelist who does not
narrate it. For the meaning of it is here; 'the Word became flesh, and
dwelt among us.' The surface of the fact is the smallest part of the
fact. They say that there is seven times as much of an iceberg under
water as there is above the surface. And the deepest and most important
fact about the nativity of our Lord is that it was not only the birth of
an Infant, but the Incarnation of the Word. 'He was . . . He became.' We
have to travel back and recognise that that life did not begin in the
manger. We have to travel back and recognise the mystery of godliness,
God manifest in the flesh.
And these two words 'He was . . . He became,' imply another thing, and
that is, that Jesus Christ who died because He chose, was not passive in
His being born, but as at the end of His earthly life, so at its
beginning exercised His volition, and was born because He willed, and
willed because of 'the grace of our Lord Jesus.'
Now in this connection it is very remarkable, and well worth our
pondering, that throughout the whole of the Gospels, when Jesus speaks
of His coming into the world, He never uses the word 'born' but once,
and that was before the Roman governor, who would not have understood or
cared for anything further, to whom He did say,'To this end was I
born.' But even when speaking to him His consciousness that that word
did not express the whole truth was so strong that He could not help
adding--though He knew that the hard Roman procurator would pay no
attention to the apparent tautology--the expression which more truly
corresponded to the fact, 'and for this cause came I into the world.'
The two phrases are not parallel. They are by no means synonymous. One
expresses the outward fact; the other expresses that which underlay it.
'To this end was I born.' Yes! 'And for this cause came I.' He Himself
put it still more definitely when He said, 'I came forth from the
Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go unto
the Father.' So the two extremities of the earthly manifestation are
neither of them ends; but before the one, and behind the other, there
stretches an identity or oneness of Being and condition. The one as the
other, the birth and the death, may be regarded as, in deepest reality,
not only what He passively endured, but what He actively did. He was
born, and He died, that in all points He might be 'like unto His
brethren.' He 'came' into the world, and He 'went' to the Father. The
end circled round to the beginning, and in both He acted because He
chose, and chose because He loved.
So much, then, lies in the one of these two antitheses of my text; and
the other is no less profound and significant. 'He was rich; He became
poor.' In this connection 'rich' can only mean possessed of the Divine
fulness and independence; and 'poor' can only mean possessed of human
infirmity, dependence, and emptiness. And so to Jesus of Nazareth, to be
born was impoverishment. If there is nothing more in His birth than in
the birth of each of us, the words are grotesquely inappropriate to the
facts of the case. For as between nothingness, which is the alternative,
and the possession of conscious being, there is surely a contrast the
very reverse of that expressed here. For us, to be born is to be endowed
with capacities, with the wealth of intelligent, responsible, voluntary
being; but to Jesus Christ, if we accept the New Testament teaching, to
be born was a step, an infinite step, downwards, and He, alone of all
men, might have been 'ashamed to call men brethren.' But this denudation
of Himself, into the particulars of which I do not care to enter now,
was the result of that stooping grace which 'counted it not a thing to
be clutched hold of, to be equal with God; but He made Himself of no
reputation, and was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the Cross.'
And so, dear friends, we know the measure of the stooping love of Jesus
only when we read the history by the light of this thought, that 'though
He was rich' with all the fulness of that eternal Word which was 'in the
beginning with God,' 'He became poor,' with the poverty, the infirmity,
the liability to temptation, the weakness, that attach to humanity; 'and
was found in all points like unto His brethren,' that He might be able
to help and succour them all.