The ultimate humiliation

It just so happens that part of my Bible reading today was in Matthew 27:27-44 where Jesus is on His way to the cross.  Here's a summary of what happens in this passage:

• Jesus is stripped and then clothed in scarlet, given a crown of thorns, handed a reed as a scepter, and made a mockery of by soldiers who facetiously bow down to Him as their king while spitting on Him and beating Him with their fists.
• After Jesus is nailed to the cross the soldiers gamble for His clothing as He hangs there naked and brutalized.
• They hang a sign over His head that reads "THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS" as His indictment for a crime that He never committed.
• Those who pass by at the foot of the cross yell insults at Him and mock Him all the more, challenging Him so save Himself if He truly is the Son of God.
• Then to add insult to injury, the two criminals who are flanked on either side of Jesus on their own crosses taunt Him in mockery.

It is at this point that, if I were in that same position, I would no longer be able to take it.  Jesus possessed the authority to remove Himself from that cross and in so doing He would have convinced the skeptics that He was the Messiah while putting the smackdown on those who put Him there in the first place.  But Jesus didn't do that.  Instead, He chose humility.

Humility--the placing of utter dependence upon God--saturated the life of Jesus.  In staying on the cross to accomplish the redemption of mankind, Jesus completely obeyed the will of His Heavenly Father.  His attitude wasn't, "I'll show them!  I'll stay on this cross and watch them pay for their rejection of me!"  Instead, Jesus was obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8).  There were no fireworks, no angel choir in heaven singing at this event and Jesus never once looked out at the crowd and asked them to admire Him for His perfect sacrifice.  This most perfect of all humble acts was done willingly and obediently, with no desire but that God might receive all the glory.

Jesus is our ultimate example of what humility looks like.  If you are a follower of Christ your attitude is to be that of Christ Jesus, 

who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross. For this reason God also highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow— of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

May we hope and pray that our lives look even remotely like the life of Christ and His humility.