God stooped down

“You give me Your shield of victory, and Your right hand sustains me; You stoop down to make me great.” Psalm 18:35
Sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking that we’ve deserved the things that we have – our house, our family, our job and its salary, our car, etc. But in reality, everything we have, including our life, we have because God has given it to us. If He had not given them to us, we wouldn’t have them – plain and simple. He is the one who protects us and gives us success. He is the one who provides for us, through our employer and through the opportunity to work. But the greatest thing of all that God has given us is salvation, through His Son. He stooped down to make us great.
Jesus, God Himself, stepped down into the depths of humanity. “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:5-8). Jesus didn’t just come as a man, He came as a poor man. He was born to a family so poor they could not offer the lamb for sacrifice but instead a pair of doves (Luke 2:22-24, c.f. Lev. 12:6-8). He didn’t own a house; He didn’t have servants to wait on Him; He didn’t drive around in a Mercedes. When He died, it was the death of a criminal, alone and in complete humiliation. And He did all this so that He might raise us up to be with Him in glory. “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). We don’t deserve this. But out of His love, God has provided it for us – just as He has all the other blessings in our lives. “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15).