The Incarnation, Part 6: Jesus Engaged Our Lost and Lowly Estate

The Incarnation, Part 6: Jesus Engaged Our Lost and Lowly Estate

The Greatest Mystery of All: When Infinity Became Infancy!

An Eight-Part Series Exploring Jesus’ Lifesaving Incarnation

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Part Six

Jesus Engaged Our
Lost and Lowly Estate

David Bryant

Introduction   Part 1  Part 2  Part 3   Part 4   Part 5

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Until COVID hit, my wife Robyne and I had spent thirteen years volunteering inside a maximum security prison near us. Initially, we thought we were there to care for and uplift men who were about as lost and low as anyone can be—many of them serving life sentences.

How wrong we were!

Before long, I found myself preaching to a chapel filled with as many as two hundred inmates abounding in love for Jesus and overflowing in joyful worship of God together, hungry to go further in their newfound freedom in God’s Son.

At first, like Jesus, we needed to assume a position of submission to even join the men we wanted to reach—enduring the protocols, body searches, and multiple prison doors—so we could walk inside the walls where these men lived.

However, UNLIKE Jesus, we soon found ourselves being cared for and encouraged by those we had come to bless. It didn’t take long for us to discover that we had joined them as full-fledged members of a “company of the lost and lowly.” The fact was that whether outside or inside the prison walls, ALL OF US needed liberation by the saving power of Jesus Christ.

This highlights another amazing dimension of the Incarnation: It reveals how ONLY JESUS can directly engage, person to person, with a fallen race, reaching down to elevate and set free the most shackled and broken of us all—yet without ever requiring the same ministry in return for himself.

Just as it is recorded in verse 15 of Hebrews 4:

This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses since he had the same temptations we do, though he never once gave way to them and sinned (TLB).

Let’s explore this extraordinary truth further to gain a new level in our understanding of the full implications of the Incarnation.

By the Incarnation, God’s Son came not only to physically enter the prison of our sin but also to bring us into the wide-open space of God’s redeeming grace—to liberate us from the destructive forces of evil, both inside of us and all around us. As he proclaimed from the outset in Luke 4:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed (NET, emphasis added).

In terms of his humanity, Jesus experienced a life like ours—weak, defenseless, and vulnerable.

He shared our frustrations, futilities, and fatigue. He tasted the full spectrum of our helplessness, burdens, shame, fears, and despair. We’re reminded of this in Hebrews 2:

So he had to be made like people, fully human in every way. Then he could serve God as a kind and faithful high priest. And then he could pay for the sins of the people by dying for them. He himself suffered when he was tempted. Now he is able to help others who are being tempted (v. 17, NIRV).

Or as Paul puts it in Romans 8, the Son has now become “the firstborn among many brothers.” The Christian men inside that prison called each other brothers. They welcomed us as brothers—redeemed members of the same family—no matter our race, age, abilities, or what transgressions we had committed and brokenness we had suffered.

There was no difference between Jesus and other men—save only this: He was God and never sinned.

Even so, he ate, drank, slept, and walked the roads just like all of us. He knew what it was like to feel weary and exhausted. He felt our sorrows; he wept over dead Lazarus. He was counted among the poor of his generation—often hungry and thirsty, saying at one point, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

To sum up: At the forefront of Jesus’ mind was the preservation of his life—but only to get to the cross. In the process, he endured the difficulties of life and the blows of evil men like anyone else.

Beyond all that, Christ engaged with the tragic

consequences of our rebellion against God.

He plunged right into a firsthand encounter with the depths of our spiritual bankruptcy. He did not stand apart; he identified with us in our times of rejection, abuse, loneliness, neediness, and bereavement.

Taking on our skin, he directly and actively confronted our sin. In his public ministry, Jesus began to fulfill the Father’s plan to put away sin and destroy its consequences once and for all.

He began by healing, delivering, restoring, and discipling all who received him. The gospel stories reverberate with how he engaged our lost and lowly condition this way.

Looking back at Jesus’ earthly ministry a few months after the Ascension, Peter proclaims to Cornelius, a Gentile soldier:

[God] has sent his message to the sons of Israel by giving us the good news of peace through Jesus Christ—he is the Lord of us all. You must know the story of Jesus of Nazareth . . . how God anointed him with the power of the Holy Spirit, of  how he went about doing good and healing all who suffered from the devil’s power—because God was with him. Now we are eyewitnesses of everything that he did (Acts 10:36-39, PHILLIPS, emphasis added).

Jesus wept for us, but he did so while standing among us.

Read the language John used when he described Jesus at the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus:

Jesus saw her crying. He saw that the Jews who had come along with her were crying also. His spirit became very sad, and he was troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus sobbed. Then the Jews said, “See how much he loved him!” (John 11:33-36, NIRV, emphasis added).

When he approached Jerusalem for the last time, we are told he saw the city and began to weep. His heart was broken, knowing the tragedy that awaited its citizens because they were about to reject him. Mournfully, he said:

“I wish you had known today what would bring you peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes.” (Luke 19:42, NIRV).

Six hundred years earlier, Isaiah prophesied those tears, putting them in the context of the Incarnation that would cause Jesus to engage with our lostness and lowliness to the fullest degree—when he predicted:

He was despised, and we didn’t care. Yet it was our grief he bore, our sorrows that weighed him down . . . he was wounded and bruised for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace; he was lashed—and we were healed! We—every one of us—have strayed away like sheep! We, who left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet God laid on him the guilt and sins of every one of us! (Isaiah 53:3-6, Living Bible, emphasis added)

Indeed, Jesus has become a “brother born for adversity” for us.

He understands our plight. Emotionally, relationally, physically—even spiritually—Jesus suffered what we suffer. He knows our destitution as one who himself was homeless for years. Just like us, he endured the scoffing and rejection of family and friends, finding little welcome but rather frequent disapproval, derision, and unbelief within his hometown.

On behalf of all mankind, Jesus spent his last night in prayer when his tortured soul became sorrowful, even unto death.

We read in Luke:

Then he went a short distance away from them. There he got down on his knees and prayed. He said, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup of suffering away from me”. . . Because he was very sad and troubled, he prayed even harder. His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:41-44. NIRV).

Our Lord Jesus Christ took into himself the bitter horror of our “cosmic abandonment” before God. We find these words in Isaiah 53 (NIRV):

People looked down on him. They didn’t accept him. He knew all about pain and suffering. . . . He suffered the things we should have suffered. He took on himself the pain that should have been ours. . . . the servant was pierced . . . He was crushed . . . His wounds have healed us. . . . He was treated badly and made to suffer.

Jesus endured this agony because he knew this sobering truth: No body and no blood meant no blessing for the nations because there would be no atoning sacrifice for our sin. But now “he is the forgiveness for our sins, and not only ours but all the world’s” (1 John 2, TLB).

Jesus accomplished our deliverance as a real person with his whole person. All of him was inextricably engaged with our low and lost estate when he purchased the Church (Acts 20) by laying down his life to the last drop of his holy, precious blood.

What a sacred moment it was in the upper room (which itself was inextricably linked to what happened in a dirty stable 33 years before) when Jesus transformed the Passover meal into the ultimate celebration of his incarnation, as he said:

“Take, eat. This is My body, which is broken for you. Do this to call Me [affectionately] to remembrance . . . This cup is the new covenant [ratified and established] in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink [it], to call Me [affectionately] to remembrance” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25, AMPC).

Jesus knows exactly what every single human being has felt and suffered and endured ever since the Fall when he engaged with the penalty of our sins in his own body. He experienced every bit of sin’s ugly consequences and horrible pain—all of it for all of us—again, in his own body, including the eternal pain of the separation from God our sin brings, which we who trust in him will never, ever have to experience!

Of course, that is an experience he alone can comprehend; for us, it is indescribable and unfathomable. There is great comfort for all the saints to know he more than understands our pain—he became our pain!

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV).

He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed (1 Peter 2:24, NASB1995).

In addition, he engaged one-on-one

with the enemy of our souls.

He went on the offense against the “ruler of this dark world.” As one of his parables illustrated, the true battle involved this:

But suppose I drive out demons by the Spirit of God. Then God’s kingdom has come to you. Or think about this. How can you enter a strong man’s house and just take what the man owns? You must first tie him up. Then you can rob his house (Matthew 12:28-29, NIRV).

At every turn, Satan failed.

During the weakest moment of Jesus’ wilderness fasting, not even the Prince of Darkness could assail Jesus’ person as the Son of Man and Son of God. Satan could not divert Jesus’ power as the Son of Man and Son of God. Satan could not raise doubts in Jesus’ mind about his position as the Son of Man and Son of God. Satan could not sabotage Jesus’ mission as the Son of Man and Son of God. Jesus prevailed in those forty days of testing for us. Now, he willingly shares his victory with us.

Jesus claimed:

The Father is with me. I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world (John 16:32-33, MSG).

In another Scripture, we read this:

[T]he Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. . . . Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested (Hebrews 2:14, 18, NLT).

He did all of this for us to elevate our low estate
and transform our lost estate.

Paul reinforces this truth when he writes this to the Ephesian and Colossian churches:

So [God] gave us new life because of what Christ has done. He gave us life even when we were dead in sin. God’s grace has saved you. God raised us up with Christ. He has seated us with him in his heavenly kingdom. That’s because we belong to Christ Jesus. He has done it to show the riches of his grace for all time to come (Ephesians 2:5-7, NIRV).

You have been raised up with Christ. So think about things that are in heaven. That is where Christ is. He is sitting at God’s right hand. . . . You died. Now your life is hidden with Christ in God. Christ is your life. When he appears again, you also will appear with him in heaven’s glory (Colossians 3:1, 3-4, NIRV).

To this day, he continues urging us to let him bear our burdens for us and with us, as one of us! His warm, loving invitation is everlasting—extended to you right now, as he says:

Come to me, all of you who are tired and are carrying heavy loads. I will give you rest. Become my servants and learn from me. I am gentle and free of pride. You will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:28-29, NIRV).

Here’s another compelling paraphrase of what he means and how these words apply to you right now:

[Jesus said:] “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly (Matthew 11:28-30, MSG emphasis added).

Christmas is about a “coming”—in both directions. Jesus came to us so that we might come to him. He comes to us to face and fix our grave, sinful, and lost condition. We come to him to be cleansed and reborn, to thrive and flourish—to be set free by and in his perfect righteousness, his immeasurable mercy, his inexhaustible love, and his victorious reign.

Think of that this season as you ponder these words from “O Holy Night.” I know the scores of prison inmates who lifted it up with me at my last Christmas there sure did.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

In all our trials born to be our friend!
He knows our need—to our weakness is no stranger.

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name all oppression shall cease…
Let all within us praise His holy name!

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About the Author

Over the past 50 years, David Bryant has been defined by many as a “messenger of hope” and a “Christ proclaimer” to the Church throughout the world. Formerly a minister-at-large with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, president of Concerts of Prayer International (COPI), and chairman of America’s National Prayer Committee, David now provides leadership to ChristNow.com and Proclaim Hope!, whose mission is to foster and serve Christ Awakening movements. Download his widely read ebooks at ChristNow.com. Enjoy hundreds of podcast episodes. Watch his vlogs at David Bryant REPORTS. Meet with David through Zoom or in-person events through David Bryant LIVE!

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