Jesus’ choice to make Himself low in order to lift you up is astonishing. We shouldn’t lose the wonder of it. He who was most high became so low they put Him in the ground, so that you who were dead in the ground could be lifted to the heavens.

There is no one who is higher than the Lord Jesus. He is Yahweh, God of gods, King of kings, Lord of lords. He is seated on the throne in the heavenly temple and the train of his robe fills the place.

There are winged fiery lightning snakes that attend his person and serenade him, sinless beings of terrible might, who have a whole seat of extraneous wings for the single purpose of ensuring they never look at him because he is too wondrous for their sight (Isaiah 6). There is none greater than the Lord.

This same one, high and lighted up, chose to become low; he became low enough to get into the dust with you. He made himself what he was not, becoming a man like us.

Did you ask him to? I know I didn’t.

He went further, plunging himself with the inexorable force of a comet from the heavens into the dust, all the way to the place of the dead. He got low enough to get underneath you so that he could lift you up.

More than that, he was ‘lifted up’ in a perverse way by being nailed to a rude beam of wood, hanging suspended between heaven and earth, exposed to cruel spectacle and the deepest shame. He who cannot be looked on by pure beings of fire that wipe out armies was looked on by a legion of baying and mocking crowds. They did not avert their gaze; they stared at his inverted exaltation as though it were sport and he was the scum of the earth.

He had become so, for you. Unasked, he reached for you.

He went lower, entering the place of the dead to wrest the keys of Hades from the Enemy’s vile hand, then leading a train of captives to the heavens.

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