OUR LORD BECAME INCARNATE IN ORDER
THAT HE AS GOD MIGHT KNOW HUMAN LIFE FROM THE
INSIDE BY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
I pause here for a moment to clear away any possible misunderstanding. There is only one way to have experience, and that is to have experience! This is what I mean: You may read numberless books on poverty, you may investigate actual conditions among the poor, you may study thousands of cases, become the greatest sociological authority in the world. But you will never know poverty and experience poverty until you have become poor in fact and live a life of poverty. Likewise we may say reverently, but on the authority of the Word, that not even an Almighty God, with all His omniscience, can know human life by experience without being born into human life and living in human life. To this end, He that was rich became poor, He that was in the form of God took the form of a servant.
But why, it may be asked, did God need this experience of human life? God needs nothing in Himself, the need was ours! The first reason is given by the writer of Hebrews (2:17): "Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren." Here we have the assertion of His human experience and its reality. Now for the reason: Hebrews 2:17-18, "That He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted," To this end He was made in all things like unto us, sin apart. Have we suffered? He suffered, more than tongue can tell, Have we been tempted? He was tempted in all points like as we are. Have we tasted the bitterness of poverty? He had nowhere to lay His blessed head. Have we felt the lash of slander? He could say, "Reproach hath broken my heart." Have we known the heartbreak of friends proved false? He too was "wounded in the house of His friends." Some of you may be passing through deep waters just now, and in your distress you may find yourself wondering how God in far-off splendor can possibly be touched with the feeling of your burdens. In such a time, do not forget that the God with whom we have to do has lived our life; and there is no crisis of the soul (sin excepted) where He has not gone before us. Like the Good Shepherd that He is, when He putteth forth His sheep, He "goeth before them." - All the way! Perfectly!!!
Still another reason why we needed a God with the experience of human life is set forth in John 5:22 and 27. Our Lord is the speaker. "For the Father judgeth no man," He declares, "but hath committed all judgment unto the Son." Surely a most astonishing claim, Why should the Father abdicate the judgment throne and reserve all judgment for the Son? Is it because the Son is somehow wiser than the other Persons of the Godhead? Not at all. The true explanation appears in verse 27: "The Father hath given. Him. authority to execute judgment because He is son of man" (No article in Greek). Of the three eternal Persons of the Triune God, only the Son has passed through the experience of human life. O, how wonderful and comforting to know that on the Judgment Seat before which we must all appear, and on that Great White Throne before which the lost must stand, there will sit One who is both Son of God and Son of Man. This is the glory of the Incarnation: It gave to us a Savior, and to the world a Judean, who knows the problem of human existence through personal experience. Surely this is grace, grace beyond compare. - Grace even in the midst of judgment.
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