HIS gracious Emmanuel “God with us” was the great Creator. “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” He reigned in Heaven as the acknowledged equal with the Father.

The angels delighted to do Him homage; every seraph’s wing would fly at His bidding; all the host of Heaven worshipped at His feet. Hymned day without night by all the sacred choristers, He did not lack for praise. Nor did He lack for servants; legions of angels were ever ready to do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word.

All the powers of nature, too, were under His control. He wanted nothing to make Him glorious; all things were His, and the power to make more if He needed them. He could truly say, “If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is Mine, and the fullness thereof.” It was this God, this Ever blessed One, who had been from eternity with the Father, and in whom the Father had infinite delight, who looked upon men with the eye of love. He that was born in Bethlehem’s manger, He that lived here the life of a peasant, toiling and suffering, was one with Jehovah.

Well might Isaiah, in his prophetic vision, proclaim the royal titles of the “Child” who was to be born, and the “Son” who, in the fullness of time, would be given to us and for us: “The government shall be upon His shoulder: and His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Let this truth sink into our souls, that it was God Himself who came from Heaven to save us from destruction. It was no inferior being, no one like ourselves; but it was “very God of very God” who loved us with an everlasting and infinite affection. I have often turned that thought over in my mind, but I have never been able to express it as I have wished.

If I were told that all the sons of men cared for me, that would be but as a drop in a bucket compared with Jehovah Himself regarding me with favor.

If it were said that all the princes of the earth had fallen at some poor man’s feet, and laid aside their dignities that they might relieve his necessities, it would be counted condescending kindness; but such an act would not be worthy to be spoken of in comparison with that infinite condescension and unparalleled love which brought the Savior from the skies to rescue and redeem such worthless rebels as we were. It is not possible that all the condescension of all the kind and compassionate men who have ever lived should be more than as a small grain that could not turn the scale, compared with the everlasting hills of the Savior’s wondrous love.

What amazing condescension is it that God, who made all things, should assume the nature of one of His own creatures, that the Self existent should be united with the dependent and derived, and the Almighty linked with the feeble and mortal! In His Incarnation, our Lord Jesus Christ descended to the very depths of humiliation, by entering into alliance with a nature which did not occupy the chief place in the scale of existence. It would have been marvelous condescension for the infinite and incomprehensible Jehovah to have taken upon Himself the nature of some noble spiritual being, such as a seraph or a cherub. The union of the Divine Creator with any created spirit would have been an immeasurable stoop; but for God to become one with man, is far greater condescension.

Remember that, in the person of Christ, manhood was not merely an immortal spirit, but also suffering, hungering, dying, flesh and blood. There was taken to Himself, by our Lord, all that materialism which makes up a human body; and that body is, after all, formed out of the dust of the earth, a structure fashioned from the materials which lie all around us. There is nothing in our bodily frame but what is to be found in the substance of the earth on which we live. We feed upon that which groweth out of the earth; and when we die, we go back to the dust from whence we were taken. Is it not a strange thing that this grosser part of creation, this meaner part, this dust of it, should nevertheless be taken into union with that pure, incomprehensible Divine Being, of whom we know so little, and of whom we can really comprehend nothing at all? Oh, the condescension of it! I must leave it to the meditations of your quiet moments. Dwell on it with awe. I am persuaded that no man has any adequate idea how wonderful a stoop it was for God thus to dwell in human flesh, and to be “God with us.”