Rightly Exalted / Alistair Begg

 

Rightly Exalted

Therefore God has highly exalted him.

Philippians 2:9

Philippians 2:5-8 is a beautiful statement concerning Christ’s humanity, deity, ministry, and humiliation. Having mapped the humility of the incarnate Son of God all the way to His death on a cross, where does your mind go next? Naturally, we think of the resurrection. But Paul does not. He takes us to Christ’s exaltation. 

There is, Paul says, a logical connection between Jesus’ humiliation and His exaltation: “Therefore God has highly exalted him” (v 9, emphasis added). What is this exaltation? It is that the Father has given His Son the throne and ordered this world so that one day “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (v 10-11).

But why is His exaltation fitting? Scripture gives us several answers. First, Christ’s exaltation is fitting because it fulfills Old Testament prophecy and demonstrates that God keeps His word. The worldwide recognition of Jesus as Lord will occur because God promised it would. Six hundred years before Jesus arrived on the stage of human history, Isaiah recorded these words from God: “Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted” (Isaiah 52:13). And so Christ came to bear the pain and sin of the world, fulfilling the role of Suffering Servant, lifted up on a cross and then raised to be exalted on His throne. As Paul wrote elsewhere, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Second, Christ’s exaltation is fitting because He is God. The Bible teaches us that the Son is one with the Father. On account of His divinity, exaltation is a necessity; there is nowhere else for God to sit! No other seat is suitable for the Son except at His Father’s right hand. 

Finally, Christ’s exaltation is fitting because He is the dear Son of His Father. God the Father watched the Son obediently go to the cross to fulfill the covenant of redemption and heard Him cry out in pain, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The Father knew that the Son underwent that agony out of love for the Father and love for His people. The Father would not leave His perfect Son in that dire condition. How could the Father’s love do anything other than exalt the Son from His lowly state?

Christ’s humiliation for us and exaltation above us are surely enough to bring us to the point where we bow in joyful submission to Him. They show us that there is one who has the status to demand our obedience and the character to deserve our adoration. They remind us that the best thing about heaven will be the most glorious person in heaven:

I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace;
Not at the crown He giveth, but on His piercèd hand;
The Lamb is all the glory of Immanuel’s land.[1]

 

Acts 13:16-43