Words of Grace 7/22

By Mahlon Nevel

To whom then will you liken me, or shall I be equal?”

To whom then will you liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like? “

These questions are asked by “the Holy One,” in Isaiah 40:25 and 46:5. To be holy is to be completely set apart from all others. No one can be compared to the Holy God, or make himself equal with him.

When the Lord Jesus came into the world he was “despised and rejected of men.” “The Jews hated him and sought to kill him because he said “God was his Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18).

According to Philippians 2:6, because Jesus existed “in the form of God,” he is “equal with God”. But he humbled himself to be made in the likeness of men. He made himself of no reputation, taking upon himself the form of a servant.

Jesus was only concerned with his Father’s reputation and not his own. The work that he came to do was not his work, but the Father’s work. The words that he spoke were not his words, but the Father’s words. He did not come to do his will, but the Father’s will.

And it was the Father’s will that Jesus would die for us. He was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (v.8).