He humbled himself to death
The descent of Christ
The hymn of Christ's humility traces his descent all the way to the bottom. Having emptied himself and become a servant, Paul says, he humbled himself further still, becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. The Son of God did not stop at incarnation, or even at a life of service; he descended all the way to the most shameful, agonizing death the ancient world could devise.
Notice that the descent was deliberate and complete. He humbled himself — it was a chosen self-lowering, not something forced upon him — and he went all the way down, holding nothing back, to the cross. There was no floor to his humility, no point at which he said, this far and no further. The self-emptying that began in heaven reached its end in the dust of death, for us.
And then the hymn pivots on a single word: therefore. Because he humbled himself to the lowest place, therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name. The exaltation came through the humiliation, not instead of it; the way up was the way down, all the way down. This is the pattern stamped into the very gospel: the path to glory runs through the lowest descent. The death of self is not a detour from glory but, as it was for Christ, the road to it.
“Being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross.”
— Paul, to the Philippians — Philippians 2:8 (WEB)
Follow Christ's descent, trusting that the way up is the way down — that the death of self is not a detour from glory but, as it was for him, the road to it.
“Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name.”
We file humiliation and exaltation as opposites and treat any descent as a detour away from the glory we are after — a place to escape, not a road to travel. The interior work is to read the gospel's pattern in Christ's hymn, where the word therefore binds the two together: because he went all the way down, God raised him all the way up. The descent you dread is not glory's enemy but, as it was for him, its only road.
This week, where you face a descent — a humbling, a lowering, a hard obedience — follow Christ's pattern rather than resisting it: go low deliberately, holding nothing back, and trust that the path to any glory God has for you runs through it.
The instinct of self-preservation reads every lowering as the end of all glory, so we resist each humbling as sheer loss and flee the very ground we were meant to walk. But the gospel's therefore still holds — the way up is the way down — and the soul that follows Christ's descent finds the bottom was the road to the heights all along.
Christ's humility had no floor. Having emptied himself to become a servant, he humbled himself further still, all the way down to death on a cross — the most shameful end the world could devise. The descent was deliberate and complete; there was no point at which he held back, no this far and no further. He went to the very bottom, for us.
And the hymn turns on the word therefore: because he humbled himself to the lowest place, God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name. The exaltation came through the descent, not around it. This is the pattern stamped into the gospel itself — the way up is the way down, and glory is reached by way of the lowest place. So the death of self is not a detour away from glory but, as it was for Christ, the very road to it. The descent you fear may be the only way to the heights God has for you.
- Do I see humiliation and exaltation as opposites?
- Can I trust that the way up is the way down, as it was for Christ?
- What descent am I resisting that may be the road to God's glory?
Lord Jesus, your humility had no floor; you went all the way down to death on a cross, and therefore God exalted you. Stamp that pattern on me. Help me follow your descent, trusting that the way up is the way down, and the death of self is the road to glory. Amen.