s, and draw from
it the power to shape them after His blessed Example.

THE ASCENT OF JESUS

'Wherefore also God highly exalted Him and gave
unto Him the name which is above every name; 10.
That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
of things in heaven, and things on earth, and
things under the earth; 11. And that every tongue
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father.'--PHIL. ii. 9-11 (R.V.).

'He that humbleth himself shall be exalted,' said Jesus. He is Himself
the great example of that law. The Apostle here goes on to complete his
picture of the Lord Jesus as our pattern. In previous verses we had the
solemn steps of His descent, and the lifelong humility and obedience of
the incarnate Son, the man Christ Jesus. Here we have the wondrous
ascent which reverses all the former process. Our text describes the
reflex motion by which Jesus is borne back to the same level as that
from which the descent began.

We have

I. The act of exaltation which forms the contrast and the parallel to
the descent.

'God highly exalted Him.' The Apostle coins an emphatic word which
doubly expresses elevation, and in its grammatical form shows that it
indicates a historical fact. That elevation was a thing once
accomplished on this green earth; that is to say it came to pass in the
fact of our Lord's ascension when from some fold of the Mount of Olives
He was borne upwards and, with blessing hands, was received into the
Shechinah cloud, the glory of which hid Him from the upward-gazing eyes.

It is plain that the 'Him' of whom this tremendous assertion is made,
must be the same as the 'He' of whom the previous verses spoke, that is,
the Incarnate Jesus. It is the manhood which is exalted. His humiliation
consisted in His becoming man, but His exaltation does not consist in
His laying aside His humanity. It is not a transient but an eternal
union into which in the Incarnation it entered with divinity.
Henceforward we have to think of Him in all the glory of His heavenly
state as man, and as truly and completely in the 'likeness of men' as
when He walked with bleeding feet on the flinty road of earthly life. He
now bears for ever the 'form of God' and 'the fashion of a man.'

Here I would pause for a moment to point out that the calm tone of this
reference to the ascension indicates that it was part of the recognised