No Advantage to Him

     “… [Jesus] did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing…”  (Philippians 2:6b-7a, ESV)
     I want to challenge you to remember something this week as you move toward Christmas Day.  When Jesus came here to earth, there was no advantage in it for Him.
     Jesus is God in every respect: power…authority…wisdom…eternality…everything about Him is God.  There is no one else like the Lord Jesus.  He was fully God and fully man.  It is beyond my finite ability to understand.
     With all of that being true, think about the magnitude of what He did in coming to earth.  According to Philippians chapter 2, Jesus veiled his majesty as God and came to earth taking on the nature of humanity.  He didn’t stop being God, but He did choose not to exercise His rights and the prerogatives of deity in many cases.  Even further than that, He headed straight to the cross from the moment He arrived on planet earth.  He eventually endured the death of the worst kind of criminal.
Did he need to do that?  Was there some kind of cosmic requirement for Jesus to come and sacrifice himself for me like that?  What I'm driving at is this: is God now better off because He has millions of people to love and worship Him?  I would suggest to you that the answer is “no.”  God is completely self-sufficient.  He doesn't NEED my worship to fulfill himself or feel better about himself.  It was no advantage to Him whatever to send Jesus to earth.
For those of you who have “been around the family” for some time, you suspect by now where I am headed with this.  Jesus did everything he did for my benefit; to my advantage.  We who trust in Jesus as our Savior have all the benefit accrued to our account.  God’s glory was seen wonderfully against the backdrop of my sin.  He is now seen as more beautiful than before because of the overflow of His grace.  But he isn’t actually more beautiful than before.  He is awesome and will never be any better than He is.  I only see it better as he reveals himself and I study him more completely.
So what now?  Is it not reasonable to consider that as I worship him this week and especially on Christmas morning, I should evaluate my offering to him?  Everything Jesus did was to my advantage.  Now I have the opportunity to invest my life in seeing to it that he receives glory no matter what.  That is what men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph believed.  That was the foundation of Paul and Timothy’s lives.  That is what the reformers gave their lives for.  It wasn’t about them; it’s not about me.  It's about the glory of God.
Let’s allow the Christmas season this year to remind us that a priceless treasure was given to us many years ago.  We don’t have to work to get that gift.  We do, however, have an opportunity to remember what He did and to determine agin that our lives will be given completely for his glory.  His gift was so great that the offering of my life pales in comparison.  It is however, the best I can offer and that is all he asks.
I offer you my warmest wishes for a wonderful, spirit-filled season of celebration.

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