Philippians 2:9-11 “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Jesus laying his glory aside by becoming a man and being considered striken and afflicted for our sakes might look to us all very weak. After all it’s not the Hollywood hero plot we’re used to. It’s rather mean and lowly it would seem. Surely there are more dramatic ways that God could have devised to redeem his people.
But it’s not like that at all; anybody who thinks that, can’t have considered these verses. Here we discover that the manifestation of God’s glory is also in the exaltation of Jesus.
Now, for Jesus to be exalted He had to be debased to begin with. In other words without the humbling of Jesus – that is, the making of Himself nothing as we read in Hebrews 1 – then there wouldn’t have been any exaltation and hence this expression of God’s glory couldn’t have been realised. Again God has designed an amazing plot to bring about His own glory, to make His holiness shine out in full brilliance.
God the Father is so delighted; so gratified with the perfection of the work that Jesus has done that He has set Jesus – with his body; a man that is – ever before Himself. He has set Him up on a throne in heaven as it were, so as to be an everlasting representation of Himself. And when we see Him – and indeed every eye will see Him – then our praise and our delight in God will overflow, even if we have hated Him all our lives. And we will not be speechless for we will all confess Jesus to be Lord. We shall all bow the knee and God will see Jesus and be satisfied, because the continual expression of the vindication of His holiness will be present as a perpetual memorial.
Philippians 2 reminds us that Jesus’ birth is integral to the future reality that all of us will experience and the fullness of God’s glory!