Your ShelfYour Projects

LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN

6%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 17, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 46.

Read the full edition

“LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN.”

By Cyrus Simmons

“In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” Heb. 2:17. The parallel is sempiternal: it begins at birth; it continues through time and eternity.
Jesus was born, or “made of a woman.” Gal. 4:4; Matt. 1:20, 24. Our maternity is the same.
He was born of the Holy Ghost. Luke 1:35. Spiritual birth is imperatively enjoined upon all. “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God.” John 3:5. It is then we receive “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” Rom. 8:15.
At birth Christ was a helpless babe. Luke 2:7. New creatures in Christ Jesus, “as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye [they] may grow thereby; if so be ye [they] have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” 1 Peter 2:2, 3.
From a babe Jesus became a child. Luke 2:40. The Lord addressed His apostles as “children.” John 2:5.
From childhood Jesus went on growing. “And the Child grew, and waxed strong in Spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.” Luke 2:40. The gifts of the Spirit are placed in the church “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; that we henceforth be no more children.” Eph. 4:12-14.
Jesus came to do the will of God: “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me), to do Thy will, O God.” Heb. 10:7. None are exempt from doing likewise. “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.” Matt. 7:21.
In perfect obedience Jesus came to die. “Being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,” “He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Acts 2:23; Phil. 2:8. With the same submission to the will of God, it should be the Christian’s purpose to die. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matt. 16:24. Note the likeness attending the circumstances of the death of Christ and of His followers. Jesus bore His cross. John 19:17. We must do likewise. “Let him . . . take up his cross.”
By reading the same text with another emphasis, we find that Jesus bore His cross. To His followers He speaks, “Let him . . . take up his cross.” Why take up the cross without intending to be crucified? But crucifixion is the denial of self. Jesus “made Himself of no reputation,” or, as the Revised Version and Rotherham render it, “emptied Himself,” and “took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” Phil. 2:7. God’s emptying of self was so complete that He became a man. It preceded His death. Before we are bidden to take up our cross, we are told to first deny self. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross.”
This likeness “in all things” begins here and is continued in the hereafter. It belongs to the farthest reaches of the soul. “For if we have become united with Him by the likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection.” Rom. 6:5, R.V. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” 1 John 3:2.
He was made like unto His brethren, that He might make His brethren like unto Him. We could not go up to Him, but He came down in our likeness to be with us, that He might bring us up in His likeness to be with Him. Thus as man He reveals Himself to man. By raising him from the human to the divine, He makes him fit for His own companionship, and is enabled as God to reveal Himself to the sons of God. “We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”
Who would not love such a Saviour?
CYRUS SIMMONS.