h of us, the words are grotesquely inappropriate to the
facts of the case. For as between nothingness, which is the alternative,
and the possession of conscious being, there is surely a contrast the
very reverse of that expressed here. For us, to be born is to be endowed
with capacities, with the wealth of intelligent, responsible, voluntary
being; but to Jesus Christ, if we accept the New Testament teaching, to
be born was a step, an infinite step, downwards, and He, alone of all
men, might have been 'ashamed to call men brethren.' But this denudation
of Himself, into the particulars of which I do not care to enter now,
was the result of that stooping grace which 'counted it not a thing to
be clutched hold of, to be equal with God; but He made Himself of no
reputation, and was found in fashion as a man, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the Cross.'

And so, dear friends, we know the measure of the stooping love of Jesus
only when we read the history by the light of this thought, that 'though
He was rich' with all the fulness of that eternal Word which was 'in the
beginning with God,' 'He became poor,' with the poverty, the infirmity,
the liability to temptation, the weakness, that attach to humanity; 'and
was found in all points like unto His brethren,' that He might be able
to help and succour them all.

The last thing here is--

III. The work of Christ set forth in its highest issue.

'That we through His poverty might become rich.' Of course, the
antithetical expressions must be taken to be used in the same sense, and
with the same width of application, in both of the clauses. And if so,
just think reverently, wonderingly, thankfully, of the infinite vista
of glorious possibility that is open to us here. Christ was rich in the
possession of that Divine glory which Had had with the Father before the
world was. 'He became poor,' in assuming the weakness of the manhood
that you and I carry, that we, in the human poverty which is like His
poverty, may become rich with wealth that is like His riches, and that
as He stooped to earth veiling the Divine with the human, we may rise to
heaven, clothing the human with the Divine.

For surely there is nothing more plainly taught in Scriptures, and I am
bold to say nothing to which any deep and vital Christian experience
even here gives more surely an anticipatory confirmation, than the fact
that Christ became like unto us, that each of us may become like unt