ess us whom He came to save. That awful and benignant
"Exinanition" placed Him indeed on the creaturely level in regard of the
reality of human experience of growth, and human capacity for suffering.
But never for one moment did it, could it, make Him other than the
absolute and infallible Master and Guide of His redeemed.

We are beset at the present day, on many sides, with speculations about
the "Kenosis" of the Lord which in some cases anyhow have it for their
manifest goal to justify the thought that He condescended to be fallible;
that He "made Himself void" of such knowledge as should protect Him from
mistaken statements about, for example, the history, quality, and
authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. I have said once and again
elsewhere[21] that such an application of the "made Himself void,"
_heauton ekenosen_, of this passage (from which alone we get the word
Kenosis for the Incarnation) is essentially beside the mark. The Kenosis
here is a very definite thing, as we see when we read the Greek. It is
just this--the taking of "Bondservant's Form." It is--the becoming the
absolute Human Bondservant of the Father. And the Absolute Bondservant
must exercise a perfect Bond-service. And this will mean, amidst all
else that it may mean, a perfect conveyance of the Supreme Master's mind
in the delivery of His message. "_He whom God hath sent, speaketh the
words of God_." The Kenosis itself (as St Paul meant it) is nothing less
than the guarantee of the Infallibility. It says neither yes nor no to
the question, Was our Redeemer, as Man, "in the days of His flesh,"
omniscient? It says a profound and decisive yes to the question, Is our
Redeemer, as Man, "in the days of His flesh," to be absolutely trusted as
the Truth in every syllable of assertion which He was actually pleased to
make? "_He whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God._"

The dogmatic treasures of this wonderful passage are by no means
exhausted, even when we have drawn from it what it can say to us about
the glory of the Lord Christ Jesus. But it is not possible to follow the
research further, here and now; this imperfect indication of the main
teachings about Him must be enough.

But now, in closing, let us remember for our blessing how this passage of
didactic splendour comes in. It is no lecture in the abstract. As we
have seen, it is not in the least a controversial assertion. It is
simply part of an argument to the hear