Self-emptying obedience, subjection of a kind quite its own, is, therefore, to be seen in every stage and action of such an One. And what was that course of service in the esteem of Him to whom it was rendered? As the born One, the circumcised One, the baptized and anointed One, the serving, sorrowing, and crucified One, and then as the risen One, He has passed here on earth under the eye of God. In the secrecy of the Virgin's womb, in the solitudes of Nazareth, in the activities and services of all the cities and villages of Israel, in the deep self-sacrifice of the cross, and then in the new bloom of resurrection, has this wondrous Man' been seen and delighted in of God-perfected, untainted, recalling the Divine delight in Man more than when of old he was made in God's image, and more than annulling all the Divine repentings of old, that man had been made on the earth.
His Person lent a glory to all His course of service and obedience, which rendered it of unutterable value. Nor is it merely that His Person made all that service and obedience voluntary. There is something far more than its being thus voluntary. There is that in it which the Person (g My Fellow, saith the Lord of hosts ') imparts-and who can weigh or measure that?
We know this full well among ourselves. I mean in kind. The higher in dignity-in personal dignity -the one who serves us is, the higher the value of the service rises in our thoughts. And justly so; because more has been engaged for us, more has been devoted to us, than when the servant was an inferior: more has the heart instinctively learned that our advantage was indeed sought, or our wishes and desires made an object. We do not forget the person in the service. We cannot. And so in this dear mystery we are meditating on. The service and obedience of Jesus were perfect; infinitely, unmixedly worthy of all acceptance.
But beyond that beyond the quality of the fruit-there was the Person who yielded it; and this, as we said, imparted a value and a glory to it, that are unutterable.
The same value rested on the services of His life which afterward gave character to His death. It was His Person which gave all its virtues to His death or sacrifice: and it was His Person which gave its peculiar glory to all He did in His course of self-humbling obedience. And the complacency of God in the one was as perfect as His judicial acceptance of the other.