The Attributes of Jesus
Christmas is a time of praising Jesus for who He is! Praising Him for coming to earth in all His glory and subjecting Himself to the ways of the world. It is a beautiful time of year full of wonder and amazement, but it can also be a trying time of the year. My family laughs and says that something dramatic always happens around the holidays, and it seems so true. We have such high hopes of a perfect Christmas season and somewhere along the way our hopes crumble. Have you experienced this? It’s like when you are about to go on a trip that you have been waiting months to go on. You look forward to the rest you will gain, the sights you will see, the exotic food you will eat, and the companionship you will have with the people you are traveling with. Then the trip gets here, and nothing goes as planned and you get in a huge fight with your travel buddy. The high expectations of the holidays can be unpredictable.
This Christmas season, I want us to keep our eyes on Jesus and the attributes He demonstrated here on earth. We can live hopeful this Christmas season because His attributes are still with us today. Jesus Christ is the same now as He was when He walked the earth.
It is important for us to remember that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. We use the word incarnation when we refer to the fact that Jesus was God in human flesh. Last Christmas we studied the names of Jesus Christ. If you missed those devotionals you can go back to the blog posts and read them. We studied that Jesus is named Immanuel, Light of the World, Word of God, Author and Perfecter of our faith, and Beloved Son. These names show His deity, that He is eternal Lord of heaven and earth, and He created all things and will remain the same forever.
For the next 4 weeks, we are going to look at Jesus’ power, wisdom, sovereignty, and worthiness. We tend to think of these attributes when we think of God, but when we believe in the truth that Jesus is God in the flesh we can see these attributes through Jesus’ life here on earth.
“Have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” Philippians 2:5-7
When the words “emptied himself” are used in this passage, it does not mean that Jesus emptied Himself of powers or attributes that He possessed before coming to earth. It means He “emptied himself” by “taking on the form of a servant.” When you become a servant, you are still who you are and were created to be. You simply surrender yourself to the cause and become obedient to what you are commissioned to do. Jesus came to earth for a reason and He did it with humility while still possessing who He is. He humbled Himself by coming in the form of a man, “being found in man form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:8)
In the New Testament, there are hundreds of explicit verses that call Jesus “God” and “Lord” and use a number of titles of deity, and many passages show His attributes that make Him divine. Jesus is our Savior who came to earth to save His people from despair and sin. His attributes are beautiful, perfect, and are a direct reflection of The Most High God.
May we focus on these attributes of Jesus instead of the destructive world around us. No matter what your circumstances are this Christmas, you can rest in the truth of who we are celebrating, Jesus Christ. We are celebrating the birth of the most extraordinary man that ever walked the earth and the fact that He is still living today.