December 7

His estate of humiliation [Philippians 2:5-11]. He not only took upon him

the likeness and fashion of a man,

but the form of a servant, that is, a man of mean estate. He was not only God's servant whom he had chosen, but he came to minister to men, and was among them as one who serveth in a mean and servile state. One would think that the Lord Jesus, if he would be a man,

should have been a prince, and appeared in splendour.

But quite the contrary: He took upon him the form of a servant. He was brought up meanly, probably working with his supposed father at his trade. His whole life was a life of humiliation, meanness, poverty, and disgrace; he had nowhere to lay his head, lived upon alms, was

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,

did not appear with external pomp, or any marks of distinction from other men. This was the humiliation of his life. But the lowest step of his humiliation was his dying the death of the cross. He became obedient to death,

even the death of the cross.

He not only suffered, but was actually and voluntarily obedient; he obeyed the law which he brought himself under as Mediator, and by which he was obliged to die....There is an emphasis laid upon the manner of his dying, which had in it all the circumstances possible which are humbling: Even the death of the cross, a cursed, painful, and shameful death, - a death accursed by the law

(Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree)

- full of pain, the body nailed through the nervous parts (the hands and feet) and hanging with all its weight upon the cross, - and the death of a malefactor and a slave, not of a free-man, - exposed as a public spectacle.

Such was the condescension of the blessed Jesus.


~Matthew Henry