The Stages of Christ's Humiliation

Tonight we're on lesson number seven, the stages of the humiliation of Christ. Last week Caleb did a great job teaching us on the humiliation of Christ, which is simply that Christ humbled Himself to save us. He set aside His divine form and He took on the form of a servant to come to seek and save the lost. It can be said of Christ's humiliation that He made Himself little so that He could make us great. He lowered Himself so that He could raise us up. Tonight in lesson seven we're going to be looking at the stages of His humiliation as far as each section of His life here on earth. His entire earthly life was humiliation. It was Him humbling Himself. So we're going to be looking at those stages in detail tonight. Let's begin with Bible point number one. Bible point number one is kind of a summary of what we learned last week.

The humiliation of Christ is a voluntary submission of the eternal Son to the Father's will to accomplish the salvation of His people. The eternal Son gave up His divine glory with the Father to take a servant form. In this act Christ resigned — not the possession nor the use, but rather the independent exercise, that's the second blank, the exercise of the divine attributes. He didn't quit being God. He didn't give up His holiness. He didn't give up His love. But He gave up His independent exercise of those apart from the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit.

This continuous, self-chosen state of surrender and self-renunciation lasted His entire — that's the third blank — His entire earthly ministry. Christ came to save us.

And taking on humanity, taking on a human nature, that was a humbling thing for the Lord God Almighty who made heaven and earth to do, to become one of us to save us. Philippians 2:7 speaks of this. We read this last week; I want to reread it again today.

"But made Himself of no reputation" — that's that emptying, so to speak, the setting aside of His divine form to take the servant form. He made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant or slave and coming in the likeness of men.

Our memory verse from two months back was Isaiah, right? "Holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is full of His glory." For all of eternity, Christ had heard that. "Holy, holy, holy," surrounded by the praise of His cherubim, the angelic praise of those heavenly beings. He willingly set that aside.

I would love to be in heaven right now, right? Can't wait for that day to be able to hear that. But Christ set that aside and humbled Himself to take the form of a man where He would be rejected, where He would suffer. And He did that for us because of His great love for us. Flip over on the back.

Galatians 4:4 through 5, this is one of the passages that we read speaking of His humiliation. It says, "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son." Notice that Christ did not have a beginning, right? He's pre-existent. He's always been. But when the fullness of time had come, at just the right time, when His plan was perfectly timed, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, meaning He became flesh, born under the law, taking on all of our obligations to fulfill the perfect holy law of God,

to redeem those who were under the law, to purchase us, to be our substitute, to be our sacrifice, that we might receive the adoption of sons. It's what Christ did for us in His humiliation.

The application is this: be humbled that Christ humbled Himself for you. That's the blank: humbled. Be humbled that Christ humbled Himself for you. The very thought of what Christ did for us should deflate all the wind from our pride.

It should take all self-importance from us. It should take all vainglory from our lips to consider the amazing humiliation of Christ, how He humbled Himself to save us.

Bible point number two: the first stage of the humiliation of Christ was His incarnation. Incarnation means coming in the flesh.

In the incarnation, the eternal divine Son voluntarily assumed a human nature. Born of a virgin by the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit, Christ was free — that's the first blank. He was free from the pollution of sin. He became a human being just like us in every respect except for sin. We are born in this world as humans with a nature that has been thoroughly corrupted by sin. Our will is bent towards sin. It's bent towards evil, bent to serving ourselves and not serving God. A man apart from Christ has an antagonism to God until we are regenerated. And then He gives us a new heart, a heart that loves God and a heart that desires the things that He desires. But even then, we still have to struggle with our old human nature, the pollution of sin. Well, Christ was born without this pollution by the operation of the Holy Spirit. He was like us in every respect but without sin.

The Lawgiver, in becoming flesh, placed Himself under the law to become legally responsible for our sins and liable — that's the second blank — liable to the curse of the law. When once Christ took on humanity,

the full weight of humanity's sin fell upon Him.

He was liable to the curse of the law. What does Galatians tell us in chapter three, verse thirteen? That He became a curse for us. He took the curse of the law for us.

Christ's deity was veiled.

It's rarely seen in His earthly ministry, right? Christ was subject to human weakness, grief, and limitations in knowledge and power according to His human nature. Human is a third blank.

When Christ took on flesh as a baby, He knew as a baby and He had the power as a baby.

During that time, if you can fathom this,

the divine second person of the Trinity in the person of Christ narrowed Himself down to the point of almost extinction — to a fertilized egg

within Mary.

That's amazing — His condescension towards us, His love towards us, what He was willing to do on our behalf. Romans 8:3, it's kind of small on our sheet because I had to kind of make it fit. It says that God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. When you read it in context, it's saying what the law couldn't do — the law couldn't save us, right? The law shows us the holy standard of God and it commands us to make sacrifices, but it can't take away our sin. What the law couldn't do, God did. And He did it by sending His Son in the flesh. That's the incarnation. That was the only way for us to be saved. God is a holy God and He must punish sin. He couldn't just say, "Okay, forget about that," or else He wouldn't be holy, right? So He sent His Son to take on human flesh to die for us. Flip over on the back.

Hebrews 10, verses five through seven, says, "Therefore when He came into the world," speaking of Christ, He said — He's quoting from the Old Testament, a messianic passage here — "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me." He took on a human body, human flesh.

"And burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure in. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come. In the volume of the book it is written of Me to do Your will, O God.'"

God wanted perfect obedience, right? He wanted perfect conformity to His holy character. And that's what Christ came into this world to do and to be. He perfectly fulfilled all righteousness, perfectly fulfilled the law so that He could be the one who gives us the merits and favor of His own righteousness, right? He could die in our place, taking away our guilt and giving us the perfect divine favor and love of the Father for the Son.

The application for number two is this: be filled with joy and peace. First blank is joy, the second blank is peace.

And I have referenced here Luke chapter two, verses ten through fourteen. Caleb preached on this during Christmas time. Remember what the angels said? Let me read it to you actually here. Luke chapter two, verse ten: "Then the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid,'" speaking to the shepherds, "'for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: you will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.'" And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God — this is an angelic army in the heavens — and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men."

Christ came into this world to bring us joy — it's great news — and to bring us peace. This army that appeared in the heavens, you'd normally think of an army bringing judgment. "Oh no, they're going to conquer me. This is the armies of God, and I'm a sinful man. This is judgment day." But it wasn't judgment day when Christ came. When Christ came, they proclaimed peace, because that's what the Messiah would bring — peace with God — because He would be the one who would make satisfaction for our sins. So when we think about the incarnation, it should fill us with joy, and it should fill us with peace. And it should be on our lips when we share it with others. It's not a burden to share the gospel; we're offering them the greatest joy in the world, we're offering them peace with God, because of what Christ has done.

Bible point number three.

The second stage of the humiliation of Christ was His suffering.

Christ suffered His entire life.

So that's the first blank: entire life. We often think of His suffering as what took place at the end — you know, the Passion Week, so to speak, the Passion of Christ, His suffering, His being mocked and scourged and spat upon and rejected by men and crucified. But His whole life was marked by suffering. And isn't our life marked by suffering?

Because we're born under the curse,

isn't our life filled with suffering? Some of us seem to have more of it than others, right? When you have sicknesses, where does that come from? Isn't that the objective result of sin? Right? Man's inhumanity to man — when someone abuses a child, when someone takes advantage of a woman, when someone steals, when someone is bitter, when someone's hateful or angry or belittles you or curses you — that's all the result of sin. That's all suffering. And Christ's whole life was marked by suffering.

The Holy One came into a sin-cursed world.

Christ knew hunger, thirst, and mourning. Remember when He mourned for Lazarus? Groaned within Him? Remember when He wept over Jerusalem?

Christ would be tempted by the devil, despised by men, smitten by God.

His suffering was unique in intensity. That's the second blank: intensity.

It was unique in intensity because He did not deserve it. Right?

He was the Holy One of God.

The One who had only known perfect joy. The Bible says that He's the ever-blessed God. It means from all eternity He had perfect union with the Father and with the Spirit, perfect self-impartation, perfect giving, perfect unending love. But when He came into the world, He wasn't treated that way, right?

The intensity of His suffering cannot be imagined.

I was reminded of Isaiah 53:3 —

two words say that He was a man of sorrows. Amen.

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And like one from whom men hid their faces. So when it says He was a man of sorrows, He was — it was predicted that He would be the one who was in His sorrow. All throughout His ministry, when you read through the Gospels, you see people rejecting Him. Even His own family members didn't believe, at least early on, right?

In fact, flip over on the back.

Sarah's right on track. We've got Isaiah 53, verses three through eight here on the back.

"He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. We didn't respect Him. We didn't look Him in the eye. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted."

He walked by and he saw a person on the cross. He figured that's a bad person; they deserve that. No pity for them.

"But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And by His stripes, we are healed. He suffered for us, right? All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. Who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken."

Christ's suffering was for us.

Matthew 26, verse 38. This is in Gethsemane. Jesus says, "My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death."

His suffering was not just in body, but it was in soul, right?

At the end of Bible point number three, I forgot to read this. He suffered infinitely for us, because in the person of Christ we have perfect divinity and perfect humanity united in the one person.

So even though He suffered in His humanity,

what He did has a value of both.

In His divinity He's infinite, right? Infinite capacity.

So His suffering was infinite.

He suffered for you, for me. He suffered for every person who will bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. His suffering knew no end.

The application is this.

Trust — that's the blank — trust Christ in your sufferings.

Trust Christ in your sufferings. We all suffer to various degrees. I'm going to point out here 2 Corinthians 1, verses four through five. When we suffer, whether it's physical or spiritual or emotional, whether it's broken relationships, whether it's a broken body, whether it's a broken heart, a broken spirit,

look what God says in 2 Corinthians through the Apostle Paul. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." God comforts us, and by that comfort we're able to comfort others. Look what he says in verse five: "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ."

As Christians, if we are following Christ, we will suffer, right? Not just for our own sins and our own human condition, but we'll suffer on behalf of Christ for His cause and for His sake. We suffer because we bear the name of Christ, because we're in Christ. But along with those sufferings comes His consolation, right? His Holy Spirit, His Comforter, who speaks peace to our hearts. He says, "I'm not going to leave you. My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness." That is a God that we serve. And the abounding consolation that Christ gives is greater than the suffering that we endure. Our suffering is not infinite, praise God. Our suffering is finite, but the consolations of Christ are infinite, right? Far exceeding the sufferings that we go through.

Bible point number four.

Christ's suffering includes His temptations. Besides being rejected by men and despised and sorrowing, and of course eventually being crucified, His suffering includes His temptations. The God-man was temptable through His human nature — that's the first blank, through His human nature —

but was impeccable because of His divine nature. That's the second blank: divine nature. Let me explain that. Christ was fully, truly human. He had a human nature. And He also had a divine nature, right?

He was temptable through His human nature. As a human, He hungered, right? He would grow weary. Remember the temptations at the very beginning of His ministry in the wilderness with Satan? He had fasted for forty days and forty nights. I don't know about you, but I'd be wanting to head over to get me some Four Rivers Barbecue, you know, after that. The only thing on my mind. And how does Satan tempt Him? One of the temptations is "Turn these stones into bread," right? That's a human need. A human need for wanting friendship and even to be loved. What does Satan say? "Hey, I'll give you everything if you'll bow down before me."

We have human needs. Christ had those human needs in His human nature, so He was temptable in His human nature. In His divine nature, though, He was impeccable. Now that's not a word we use a lot, but it simply means that He could not sin in His divine nature, okay?

You may have heard the phrase

simul peccator iustus, meaning we are simultaneously justified, but yet we're sinners, right, in Christ. We know we sin, we fail all day long, but praise God, what He did for us on the cross cannot be changed, right? And He loves us, and all we have to do is look to the cross of Christ. Well, peccator means to sin, okay? We're sinners. Christ was impeccable in His divine nature, because God's attributes — we've studied, when we studied the nature and attributes of God, we studied that God was holy, right? Meaning perfect purity.

He cannot sin. We also know God is immutable. He can't begin to sin; He can't change. There are some things God can't do: He can't lie. He can't break His promises. He can't cease to be, right?

To do those things would be sinful for God; it'd be going against His nature, right? Now, because of that, Christ couldn't sin.

Now was His temptation though real?

If He couldn't sin by virtue of His divine nature,

but He was truly tempted in His human nature, was that temptation real? Yes. It's hard for us to get our minds around it, but let me give you a good example. Can you imagine an invincible army?

Whatever that looks like — whether it's knights in shining armor on horses, or whether it's the vision of tanks and air support flying over in modern warfare — if you have an invincible army, can that army be attacked? Sure. But can it be defeated?

Cannot be defeated.

Exactly. Christ is almighty, right?

He had the power of the Holy Spirit. He had His perfect holy nature that He shared with the Holy Spirit and with the heavenly Father. He could not sin, right?

But He was still truly tempted in His humanity, right? And tempted far more than we will ever be tempted. His whole path of life was one in which the devil wanted Him to fail, right?

And so when we are tempted, we can look to Christ, right? The same Holy Spirit to whom Christ, in His whole earthly ministry, was constantly yielding and constantly obeying — is it not the same Holy Spirit who dwells within us? The same resurrection power of Christ that resurrected Christ from the grave, is that not at work within us? Certainly.

His public ministry — we're still here in the middle of point four, I'm sorry I stopped. His public ministry began with a period of temptation. These temptations continued through Gethsemane.

By entering into the trials of men, Christ proved to be a perfect Savior — that's the third blank — and a sympathetic High Priest. Priest is the fourth blank for us. By entering our trials, He proved Himself to be a perfect and worthy Savior and a perfect High Priest for us. Luke 22:28: Jesus is talking to His disciples. He says, "But you are those who have continued with Me in My trials." Many translations will say "My temptations," because it's the same word there; it can be translated trials or temptations. He was speaking to them because they had begun arguing

about who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, as disciples were prone to doing. And Christ is telling them, "Look, you have a share in Me, and I have a share in you." He says, "You have continued with Me in My trials." As Christians, you will continue with Christ in your trials, in your temptations. Don't expect to be left untempted by the devil, right? You bear the name of Christ, and there's nothing the devil would love more than to see you fail. There's nothing he would love more than to see the name of Christ besmirched. Flip over on the back.

I want to show you two passages from Hebrews that speak both of Christ being our perfect Savior and also of Him being our High Priest who can sympathize with our weakness because of His suffering, because of His temptation. Hebrews 4:14 through 16: "Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin."

"Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." When you are tempted, go boldly before the throne of our Lord Jesus Christ. There you'll find grace. There you'll find help in time of need. Sometimes we get discouraged because it seems like sin gets the upper hand — whether it's anger or bitterness, lust or lying, whatever it is that we struggle with. We just throw our hands up in the air and say, "Am I ever going to be able to get ahold of this?" Don't throw your hands up in the air. Go boldly to the throne of grace. There you'll find forgiveness. There you'll find Christ who understands.

"I've been there, been tempted. I'll give you grace and help."

Hebrews 5, verses seven through eight:

"Speaking of Christ, who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear. Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered." In other words, suffering cost Christ.

He lifted up, it says,

His prayers and supplications with vehement, passionate cries and tears to God who was able to save Him from death.

"And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him." It doesn't mean that Christ wasn't perfect before this — He's always been perfect — but it means that in His sufferings, by going through these temptations and trials, He proved Himself to be the perfect sacrifice, the perfect Savior, the Lamb of God who was without spot and without blemish.

Flip back over on the front. The application for number four is: boldly approach the throne of grace. Boldly approach the throne of grace. Don't be timid, don't be afraid to go before Christ saying, "I failed again. I've given in to temptation one more time. He's going to reject me this time."

He says, "Come to Me. Come boldly before the throne of grace, and I'll give you grace. I'll give you help in time of need."

Bible point number five: the third stage of the humiliation of Christ was His death. Death is the judicially decreed and inflicted penalty of sin.

Sin has a price; it has a penalty. The wages of sin is what? Death, exactly right. When Christ freely joined Himself to humanity, all the exposures and liabilities of humanity fell on Him. Death thus worked in the God-man in all His many sufferings, but reached its climax on the cross. Christ Jesus was counted as a transgressor. He bore our shame — that's the second blank, shame — and endured the infinite wrath of God. Wrath is the third blank. Christ was counted as a transgressor for us. He bore our shame. To be on the cross was the most shameful form of death you can imagine.

It was for the worst of the worst. It was for the forsaken. It was for those who were enemies of the people. They were stripped naked, they were beaten. They often took two or three days to die. During that time, the crows would often come and pluck their eyes out while they were still alive. They'd be gasping and suffocating. It was a horrible way to die, an inhuman way to die. Even during Christ's time, there were people in Roman society who spoke out against the barbaric nature of the crucifixion. It was for those who bore the curse. It was for transgressors. It was a shameful way to die. But Christ bore that shame. That shame was our shame.

It was a shame that we deserved. We should be ashamed of sin. We should be ashamed of our behavior. We should be ashamed of our failures. But Christ bore that shame on the cross so we could have His glory. We could have His love. We could have His acceptance. He has made us accepted in the Beloved, in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2:8: "And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross."

The application is this: be filled with love and gratitude.

Love is the blank. Be filled with love and gratitude. I have a reference of 1 John 4:10. Let me read that for you.

"And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation" — the covering, to bear the wrath for our sins. "Behold, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Right? Be filled with love towards God and towards our fellow man because of what Christ has done for us.

Bible point number six. At Christ's crucifixion, He cried, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Jesus' cry of dereliction was not the dissolution of the two natures in the God-man. Some have erroneously said that the union of the divine nature was broken on the cross, that only Christ's humanity was on the cross. It's not the case. When Christ took on human flesh, He now forever has a human nature, even now in heaven. It was not separated at the cross.

Nor was it the ceasing of the love of the Father for the Son.

Can the Father ever stop loving the Son?

Think about you as parents and grandparents. Do you ever stop loving your kids? Even when they do something bad? Christ didn't do anything bad. He was perfectly obeying the Father, perfectly pleasing the Father in His crucifixion. So we can't say that on the cross God ceased to love His Son or God hated His Son. That's not scriptural.

Nor the divine nature being forsaken by the Father. You may have heard it said before that God turned His back on Jesus on the cross. It's not true. Even on the cross, the Father loved the Son and was pleased with the Son.

His cry of abandonment was the painful consciousness of the fullness — that's the second blank, the fullness — of the divine wrath bearing on the God-man. That moment on the cross, He was bearing the full wrath of God

for the sins of myself, for the sins of you, for the sins of all who trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. He felt that weight.

Even in the darkest hour, Jesus Christ did not utterly despair — that's the third blank.

As Jesus exclaims that He is forsaken, He directs His prayer — fourth blank, His prayer — to God in fulfillment of Scripture.

Christ on the cross says, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He's quoting Psalm 22, the Messianic Psalm.

Matthew 27:46: This is about the ninth hour. "Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?'" Flip over on the back.

We're going to look at the first two verses of Psalm 22 that He's quoting here. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?" Can you identify with that? Yeah, when you're in the midst of suffering. But you can't identify with this the way that Christ identified with it, right? Because the intensity and the magnitude of what He was feeling at that time was beyond human comprehension.

He was feeling the full wrath of God coming down on Him. Verse two: "O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent." Sounds like despair, right? And when you look at Psalm 22, you know that He's directing this whole prayer towards God to begin with, right? And what does Jesus even say on the cross after this? He says, "Into Your hands I commit My spirit." He's trusting God even in His very darkest moment — when He's feeling the full wrath of God for the sins of you and me — He was not forsaken by God, and He was not utterly despairing, right?

The application is this: Christ will never leave — that's the first blank — nor forsake you.

Forsake is the second blank. Hebrews chapter 13, let me read this to you. I have the reference, verse five.

"Let your conduct be without covetousness, be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" So don't worry about what you have or what you don't have — you've got the greatest thing in the world. You have Christ, who has promised, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." He's quoting Deuteronomy, right? Quoting Yahweh, and he's here applying it to Christ. He says, "So we may boldly say: 'The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?'"

If Christ is saying that, and He's quoting God's promise to Israel — "I'll never leave you nor forsake you there as you go into the Promised Land" — would God turn His back on His own Son? No. He'll never leave us, never forsake us.

Bible point number seven: the fourth stage of the humiliation of Christ was His burial.

His burial showed that Christ submitted Himself to what sinful man deserved — that's the blank, deserved.

Under the curse, men return to the dust — that's the second blank. Burial is going down — that's the third blank — into the ground, a place of corruption.

In His humiliation, He was placed in the ground, but He is free from corruption, right?

Flip over on the back.

It all starts back in the beginning, Genesis chapter three, verses seventeen through nineteen. This is after Adam and Eve had transgressed. "Then to Adam He said, 'Because you have heeded the voice of your wife

and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, "You shall not eat of it," cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you,

and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.'"

Adam, meaning man, also means earth or dirt, right?

Adam was formed from the dust — lowly dust compared to God Almighty, right? God breathed life into him, but when Adam sinned, he brought the curse of death, and God tells him, "You're going to return to where you came from." He started from dust; you're going to return to the dust, you're going to be going into the ground.

When Christ was buried, He was taking on the curse of Adam for us. We're all in Adam apart from Christ, right? In Adam we all die, but in Christ we all live. So He is the second Adam — we've read about this in 1 Corinthians 15, right? He's the second Adam, He is the second man. In Christ we have life. So He took on the death that we deserve and was buried in our place.

The application is this:

"You have been buried and raised with Him."

Just as Christ bore our curse and was buried in the ground as a transgressor of the law, as a sinner — do you know that you too were buried with Christ in His burial?

Let me read to you from the book of Colossians. I have it referenced here, Colossians chapter two.

Verses eleven and twelve: "In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands," speaking of being given a new heart, the old deadness cut out, and a new heart being created within us, "by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ,

buried with Him in baptism,

in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead." Speaking of our union with Christ — it's as if we were buried in the same tomb with Christ. Our old man was buried, right? We're no longer that old person that we used to be before we met our Lord Jesus Christ, before we were regenerated, right? "I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God." And what is also 2 Corinthians 5:17? "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." We have been put in the tomb with Christ and we have been risen into new life in Christ. The same power that resurrected Christ from the grave is what regenerated our hearts, right?

So the application is: you have been buried and raised with Him.

Know that your old man is dead. You're no longer that old, shameful person you used to be. Don't identify yourself in such a way. I know substance abuse is a very serious thing, and many of you, if you've ever dealt with substance abuse, you may have gone to a program like AA, a twelve-step program. And one thing they'll often say is, "Hi, my name's David. I'm a recovering alcoholic. I've been sober for ten years."

Well, "recovering alcoholic" biblically is not who you are. That's not your identity, right? That old man has been put in the grave.

Your identity is that you are in Christ. You've been raised with Him. So live that way; hold on to that. Because what you identify with is going to have a way of working its way out in your life, right? Are you focused on who you are? Or are you focused on who you are in Christ?

Bible point number eight. The Apostles' Creed. Now, Baptists were not really a creedal people, so to speak. Well, generally there's actually kind of an

antagonism towards creeds. "No creed but the Bible," right? But creeds can have a very good place in clarifying doctrine. And one of the oldest creeds, almost universally accepted generally among Baptists and Presbyterians, is called the Apostles' Creed. It's very ancient. The first written copy we have is from around 340 AD, and we know it existed before then.

Some say, well, this was the doctrine handed down by the apostles — whether it really came from their hand or whether it was from their grandkids, so to speak, we don't know — but it was definitely early on crystallizing the doctrine of what we believe about Christ and God. The Apostles' Creed states that Christ "descended into hell," okay? The earliest versions — that's the first blank, earliest — the earliest versions do not state this. This was an addition.

It appears first in 390 AD.

And the next time we see it, this phrase "descended into hell" is in 650 AD.

So some versions that you may read don't have "descended into hell." Some do. Particularly in the Catholic Church, you see "descended into hell." Scripture does not support that Christ descended into hell.

The earliest versions of the creed seem to support "descended into hell" as equivalent to His burial — that's the second blank, burial. In other words, put down into the ground or into the grave, which sheol means: the grave.

This could also describe the hellish wrath — that's the third blank, wrath — that Christ endured on the cross. Because what Christ endured on the cross was literally hell, right? What is hell but the wrath of God extending from the very throne of God upon sinners? And Christ was reckoned a sinner on the cross.

Jesus says in Luke 23:46, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." And then He died. Where was Christ's spirit at that moment that He died?

In God's hands, exactly right. And did He not tell the thief on the cross?

Exactly right. The thief says, "Remember me when You come into Your kingdom." He says, "Today you will be with Me in paradise." But where does this idea come from? Well, besides being a euphemism for burial or perhaps for the wrath of God on the cross, I'm going to show you three passages that are sometimes used to support these views. Let's look at reference point number eight on the back.

I'm quoting from the ESV because I think they get the Greek really well here. It says — this is Ephesians 4:9 — "In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?" Some translations will say "descended into hell," right?

Basically saying that in Christ's incarnation, He came down here to earth, the lower regions — the lowest you can be. That's His humiliation, right? You can't use that to say He went into hell where He further suffered or where He liberated lost souls in hell. You can't build a doctrine on something that flimsy. When we studied bibliology, you'll recall

Hal led us on a study on the interpretation of Scripture. One of the things that we talked about was what was called the analogy of faith, or letting the clear passages of Scripture shed light on the unclear. And you never take a doctrine and build it wholesale around an unclear passage that could have multiple meanings, right? You always let the clear help you understand the unclear.

1 Peter 3:18 through 20: this one is used often by the Catholic Church to support Christ descending into hell. And they teach a doctrine called the harrowing of hell.

Harrowing is not a common word that we use. You may hear it every now and then — someone will say, "Whoa, I had a harrowing experience on the 429 today. The traffic was insane, cars were weaving in and out." The word "harrow" is an old word that goes back to the days before modern agriculture, where they would have a plow that would till the ground behind an oxen — that was called a harrow, right? So it means an upheaval, a tumultuous thing. What the Catholic Church teaches is that Christ,

after His death but before His resurrection, went down into hell and proclaimed His triumph to all the demons down there. And He also preached to those who lived before Him, and if they accepted His gospel, then He took them out of hell and into heaven.

Yeah, kind of like that. Or some would say that it was those He took not out of hell but out of what we call Abraham's bosom, which is a Jewish way of looking at the Old Testament saints, and He led them into heaven from there. But again, that's a stretch, especially from this passage. 1 Peter 3:18 through 20, let me read it to you. It says, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom He also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient when once the divine longsuffering

waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few" — that is, eight souls — "were saved through water."

Now that passage has some very confusing linguistic things there in the Greek. But the most common interpretation — I asked my Greek professors when I was in college — is speaking simply of this: that Christ did not go down to hell and preach to souls who had been condemned during the time of Noah, because that goes against all Scripture. But He was preaching to those souls during the time of Noah through Noah. Noah was a prophet, right? No one listened to him as he built the ark,

but we find in 1 Peter that the Old Testament saints spoke by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of Christ was within them,

directing their words and giving them unction. And so Christ preached through Noah to those who were alive at that time. And that's the idea here, because he brings it forth at the end of the verse: "while the ark was being prepared, in which a few" — that is, eight souls — "were saved through water." And he goes on to talk about some analogies that we're not going to get into here just because of time. But from that one passage that isn't very clear — granted — that's where the Catholic Church builds that doctrine.

But it goes against everything else that we know in Scripture to interpret it that way. I think a far better understanding is what we just enunciated: that this is speaking of Christ preaching through Noah during the days of those who were alive, because the Bible says it is appointed for a man once to die, and after this the judgment. There are no second chances. There's no purgatory, unfortunately — and you might be sympathetic: "Well, I don't know about my Uncle Bill. I wish I could pray him out of purgatory." But that's not a biblical doctrine, right?

And then 1 Peter 4:4 through 6 can similarly be misinterpreted. It says, "In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation or evildoing, speaking evil of you. They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit." It's not speaking of someone going to people who are already dead and preaching to them. It's saying that they heard the gospel and now they're dead, and now they're going to face judgment — that's what that passage is talking about. So those are the only three passages that someone could twist to say that between Christ's death and His resurrection He went to hell to lead people out of hell and into heaven. It's a bad doctrine. That's why we reject it. Most evangelicals have rejected it; the Catholic Church teaches it. So you may run into that. But it's good for us to have that clarity, because when you go to college one day, or maybe meet some friends who are of a different faith background, they will talk about, "Oh yeah, Christ, He went down into hell and He preached the gospel and He told all the evil spirits that He won." They already knew He won, right? It was evident.

The application is simply this.

Anticipate — or look forward to — being present with the Lord. That's the blank: present. Anticipate being present with the Lord. And I have 2 Corinthians 5:8 as our reference here. Let me read that. Actually, I'm going to read verses six, seven, and eight.

"So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." Seeing that in this life we walk by faith — we can't see God — but we'll be well pleased one day to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord, right? Where our faith will be made sight. And the same applied to Christ because He was truly man, right? The moment that He died on the cross, His spirit was in heaven — to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

So that's the stages of Christ's humiliation. He humbled Himself in the most amazing way, went through infinite suffering to save us.