One thing that I've noticed over the course of my life is this sin that no one talks about. We find it throughout scriptures. We see it in our nation. We place these people on high pedestals. Our political elections are designed to put people who demonstrate this sin into power..We even find this sin within our churches, and I believe that it is this sin that is causing our church attendance to decline and the moral decay of our nation to increase.
Before I go any further, let me post a couple of verses of scriptures to demonstrate where this sin takes all of us. The verses are Isaiah 14: 13-14. I'm quoting the NASB in all verse references in this blogpost.
13 "But you said in your heart,
'I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
14 'I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.'
As you can see these verses are talking about the subject elevating himself to God. These verses are from a bigger context dealing with God's judgement of certain people and nations and there is a debate about who these verses are referring to, but no matter what the position of that debate you may hold, the meaning of what I am discussing here is the same. I believe that self-exalting is to sin what love is to righteousness.
To look at this, let's go back to the Garden Of Eden and look at what made the fruit of the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil so tempting. We find what I'm talking about in Genesis 3:5
5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
This is the verse right before the fruit looked good to eat. It was when Adam and Eve saw the tree as a means to exalt them to be God's equal that caused the sin of eating.
Now before we go any further, let us acknowledge that there are two ways to exalt oneself. you can elevate yourself by your actions and achievements or you an elevate yourself by cutting down others. Both ways will result in you being exalted about the others.
Now applying that to God's law that He handed down to Israel, we see:
Worshipping other Gods instead of the one true God, lowers God from His rightful Status.
Making images of a God that is beyond being represented in an Image, lowers God's Status.
When you use God's name in a vain way, you lower God's status.
Working 7 days a week or forcing your hired help to work seven days a week is a way to exalt yourself.
When you dishonor your father or mother, you lower their status and exalt yourself
When you murder someone, you exalt yourself above them.
When you commit adultery, your cut down and exalt yourself over your spouse, the person you have the affair with and also their spouse.
Stealing exalts yourself over others.
Bearing false witness or lying about someone else, cuts them down to exalt yourself.
Even just wanting or desiring to do those things, even if you don't act upon those thoughts, serves to exalt yourself over others.
Now maybe we can look back at what I started this blog post about. The American way is to honor those who have found a way to exalt themselves above others, whether it is through their monetary accomplishments, or athletic achievements, etc. Our Elections are based upon candidates exalting themselves. Our churches are full of Pastors who use their Seminary degrees as a means to exalt themselves. They use church statistics to exalt them and their local congregation above others. Even regular members seek to exalt themselves to be the "bell cow" of the congregations to dictate the actions of others. I could go into examples, but I think that everyone gets the ideal. Every person who has been born since Adam and Eve has had this sin, except one.
Now, I think is a good time to look at the cure for this sin and to do that, we need to look at the one, I just mentioned. That One is the person that we Non-Jews call Jesus. So let us look at Philippians 2: 5-8
5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
While the whole book of Philippians is a good book to read for this, let us look at these Christological verses that I quoted and see these things about Jesus
Jesus was in the form of God. He was equal with God. He was God. As we look at these next actions of His, let us remember that and that He never became a doormat for others to walk on.
He emptied Himself. Instead of Exalting Himself, He lowered Himself and thus elevated us. He took the form of a bond-servant, or a slave. The lowest position of any person on Earth and He became like us. When Jesus did that, He elevated us. Then He was obedient to the point of being tortured to death and dying on a cross. By Doing this He exalted us to the point where we can now receive Sanctification. That is we can be cured from our sins. We can become Justified. That is - Jesus took the punishment that we deserve. This is the basis of forgiveness. I can forgive those who harmed me because I know that someone has received punishment for that hurt that I received.
Now Jesus did not stay in that humbled position, because God has exalted Jesus about all of us and because of that - we who have accepted His Lordship over us are elevated to be considered younger siblings to Jesus. This is what love does. Love elevates others. When we humble ourselves instead of exalting ourselves, we are in a position to show love for others. To meet their needs, elevates them to a higher status. By seeing our actions of love, they see the how God seeks to exalt and can take part in that, by asking God to do that for them and they will be part of the family of God.
