Theological term
State of Humiliation
23 sermons · All terms
The Dominion of the Incarnate Son
Psalm 8 is not merely a meditation on creation but a messianic prophecy concerning the dominion of the incarnate Son of God. The sermon traces the psalm's double register — the glory of God manifest in the created order and the glory of God manifest in the incarnation — grounding that interpretation in the two New Testament passages where Jesus and the Apostle Paul explicitly apply Psalm 8 to Christ: Matthew 21 and Hebrews 2. The exaltation of the God-man at the right hand of the Father, his conquest of the devil through death, and his propitiation for the sins of his people are shown to be the true fulfillment of the dominion language of verses 4–8. Believers are exhorted to silence the enemy's accusations against them by invoking the blood and righteousness of Christ, which is the ground of both justification and assurance.
The Burial of Christ
The burial of Jesus Christ in John 19:38–42 and Matthew 27:62–66 is not a peripheral narrative detail but a theological linchpin between the humiliation of the cross and the triumph of the resurrection. Through the actions of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus — two secret disciples emboldened by the death of Christ — the gospel accounts establish the true humanity of the Son of God, confirm the reality of his death against ancient and modern denials, and set the stage for the empty tomb. The security measures taken by the Sanhedrin, far from suppressing the resurrection, served only to make the miracle undeniable and the wrath of men an instrument of God's glory. Sinners are called to receive the gospel as historical fact: that Christ died for sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day.
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 4
Chapter 8 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession sets forth the person and work of Christ the Mediator, and this study works through its latter paragraphs (4–10) covering the historical description of Christ's obedience, the specific operation of His atoning work, the retrospective application of redemptive benefit to Old Covenant saints, the communication of idioms, and the effectual application of redemption to the elect. The confession grounds definite atonement, active and passive obedience, and penal substitutionary atonement in Christ's willing entrance into the state of humiliation and His perfect fulfillment of the law, establishing the foundation for the confession's later treatment of justification by faith alone. The threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king is shown to be not an imposition on Scripture but its exegetical fruit, meeting precisely the threefold need of God's people for revelation, reconciliation, and kingly rule.
The Example of the Savior, Part 3
Philippians 2:8 presents the humility of Christ not as incidental biography but as the doctrinal and ethical foundation for the church's conduct. This sermon examines first the declaration of Christ's humility — that he humbled himself voluntarily, according to his human nature as covenant mediator, in active obedience to every demand of God's law from his mother's womb — and then its demonstration in the extent of that humiliation: even the death of the cross, a death cursed by the law and laden with shame. The active and passive obedience of Christ, taken together, are the sole ground of justification by faith alone, which is why the Lord's Supper is received not as a reward for good conduct but as a proclamation of what the Savior accomplished on behalf of his people.
The Example of the Savior, Part 2
Philippians 2:7 sets forth Christ's incarnation as the supreme argument against selfish ambition and conceit. This expository sermon works through four statements in the verse — Christ made himself of no reputation, took the form of a bondservant, came in the likeness of men, and was found in appearance as a man — with careful attention to the kenotic controversy, the hypostatic union, and the patristic formulations at Nicaea and Chalcedon. The heresy of kenotic Christology (that Christ emptied himself of his divine attributes) is refuted from 2 Corinthians 8:9, John 1:14, and Hebrews 2, while docetism is equally rejected in favor of Christ's true and complete humanity. The doctrinal weight is carried in service of Paul's pastoral concern: the one who was in the form of God and equal with God voluntarily humbled himself, and that reality demolishes every claim to selfish priority among his people.
The Example of the Savior, Part 1
Philippians 2:5–6 presents both a profound Christological confession and a direct ethical demand: the church is to pursue unity and love by imitating the mind of Christ. This sermon expounds the divinity of the Son — his eternal existence in the form of God and his equality with the Father — as the theological foundation for Paul's call to selflessness and others-mindedness in the local church. Christ's equality with God was not seized by usurpation, as Adam and Lucifer attempted, but was his by eternal generation and consubstantiality with the Father. Because the superior condescended to serve the inferior, those who are inferior to one another have every reason to renounce selfish ambition and conceit.
The Believer's Race, Part 2
Hebrews 12:2 presents Jesus as the supreme object of faith for the believer running the Christian race. This sermon examines five dimensions of Christ to which the runner is directed: His person, His work as author and finisher of the faith, His mission under the covenant of redemption, His suffering and shame on the cross, and His exaltation to the right hand of God. The central pastoral application is that the believer neither enters nor sustains the race by personal effort, but by faith in Christ alone — and that the pattern of the cross preceding the crown should brace believers for mounting opposition to their identification with Jesus.
The Departure of Christ, Part 2
John 14:29–31 grounds the disciples' faith in Christ's predictive prophecy, his victory over the devil, and his loving obedience to the Father. Jesus announces his departure in advance so that when it comes to pass the disciples will believe — both that he is the object of saving faith and that he is the second person of the triune God. The cross simultaneously displays the Father's love for the world and the Son's love for the Father, and the resurrection and ascension secure every blessing the departing Christ promises his people. The sermon closes with a call to find stability not in practical strategies but in the knowledge of the triune God and the peace Christ himself gives by the Spirit.
The Departure of Christ
John 14:28–31 presents Christ's departure not as cause for sorrow but as grounds for rejoicing, because it leads through the cross to his exaltation at the right hand of the Father. The sermon gives sustained attention to the clause 'my Father is greater than I,' defending Trinitarian orthodoxy against Arian misreading by deploying two hermeneutical guardrails: the consubstantiality of the divine persons (each having the whole divine essence undivided) and partitive exegesis (predicating statements of Christ according to whichever nature is in view). The Father is not greater than the Son in respect of the divine nature, but is greater with respect to the Son's assumed humanity and mediatorial office in the covenant of redemption. Believers are called to rejoice in Christ's departure, to stand in awe that the Spirit has been sent so they are not left as orphans, and to receive the peace Christ bequeaths as their stable foundation for mission.
Very man: "Now my soul is troubled"
John 12:27–28 records the Son of God incarnate declaring 'Now my soul is troubled' — words that are simultaneously a window into his true humanity and a display of his sinless obedience at the threshold of Calvary. This sermon works through the four clauses of those verses, arguing that Christ's soul-trouble was real and holy, arising not from cowardice before mere bodily suffering but from his contemplation of the divine wrath he would bear as the substitute for sinners. Drawing on Cyril of Alexandria's principle that 'what is not assumed is not healed,' the sermon shows that Christ's sinless experience of grief, agitation, and soul-anguish recapitulates every stage of fallen human experience so that he might procure both the forgiveness of guilt and the positive righteousness his people need in every circumstance of life. The congregation is called to rest its entire confidence — prayer life, grief, daily obedience — in the blood and righteousness of the one who said 'For this purpose I came to this hour.'
2LCF Chapter 8 - Of Christ the Mediator, Part 5
The work of Christ as Mediator — his active and passive obedience, definite atonement, and threefold office as prophet, priest, and king — is the subject of this exposition of 2 London Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter 8, paragraphs 4 through 10. The confession traces Christ's voluntary humiliation, his satisfaction of divine justice as a propitiation, and the retroactive efficacy of that work for Old Covenant saints who looked forward to him through promises, types, and sacrifices. Paragraph 8's teaching that Christ certainly and effectually applies redemption to all for whom he obtained it grounds the assurance of salvation entirely in the sovereign purpose of God rather than foreseen conditions in the sinner. The threefold office — prophet to instruct the ignorant, priest to reconcile the alienated, king to subdue and preserve the unwilling — frames the believer's comprehensive dependence on Christ alone.
The Riches and Poverty of Christ
2 Corinthians 8:9 presents the Incarnation as the supreme pattern for Christian charity: the eternal Son of God, rich in every divine perfection, took upon himself genuine human poverty without divesting himself of a single divine attribute. This sermon examines the riches of Christ — his eternal divine nature as Creator, Sustainer, and Son by nature — and the poverty of Christ, meaning his true assumption of human nature with all its essential properties and common infirmities, yet without sin. The hypostatic union is defended against kenotic error: Christ's humiliation consisted not in the emptying of divinity but in the addition of humanity to the one person. These riches secured through Christ's impoverishment — justification, sanctification, and glorification — are received through faith alone and visibly proclaimed in Christian baptism.
The Necessity of Christ's Passion
Matthew 16:21–23 presents the first formal announcement of what Christ himself calls a divine necessity: he must go to Jerusalem, suffer at the hands of the elders and chief priests, be killed, and be raised on the third day. The sermon traces this necessity through the covenant of redemption, the Old Testament prophetic witness — Psalms 22, 69, and 110, Isaiah 52–53, Daniel 9, Zechariah 9–14 — and a series of informal anticipations across Matthew's Gospel. Peter's sharp rebuke is examined as a representative failure to grasp the messianic agenda of a suffering Servant, and Christ's equally sharp response — 'Get behind me, Satan' — is shown to be the definitive affirmation that substitutionary curse-bearing is non-negotiable: error here is not a skin disease but a disease at the heart. The congregation is urged to hold fast to the doctrine of Christ crucified and risen as the only stable ground of perseverance in the Christian life.
Free Grace Baptist Church - July 9, 2017 PM
Humility is not merely an outward posture of social deference but an inward disposition that every believer must cultivate, grounded in a right knowledge of self, of God, and of the gospel of Christ. Expounding 1 Peter 5:5–7, this sermon traces three movements: the command to humble ourselves toward one another and toward God, the means of doing so by casting all anxiety upon him in prayer and through the means of grace, and the reason to do so — namely that the God of heaven and earth, who proved his care at the cross and sustains his people through trial, will exalt the humble in due time. Pride is shown to be not merely loudness or arrogance but any self-trust that withholds dependence on God, and the remedy is the gospel itself: the one who humbled himself to the death of the cross is the ground and pattern of true humility.
Of Christ the Mediator 2 (2LCF 8)
The person and work of Christ as Mediator, as confessed in chapter 8 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, is the most central locus in all of Christian theology — to be wrong here is damnable. This session surveys paragraphs 3 through 10 of that chapter, tracing Christ's anointing and suitability for office, the active and passive obedience by which He fully satisfied divine justice, the retrospective application of His redemption to the elect of all ages under the old covenant, the communication of idioms in His two natures, and the effectual application of salvation to His people by His Spirit and Word. The threefold office of prophet, priest, and king supplies precisely what the elect need in their ignorance, alienation, and inability — and no other mediator may share or transfer any part of that office.
The Riches and the Poverty of Christ
Second Corinthians 8:9 presents the incarnation of the eternal Son as the supreme theological ground for Christian generosity: though he was rich in essential deity, Christ became poor by addition — taking on humanity — that his people through his poverty might become rich. The sermon exposits the riches of Christ in his divine nature and the poverty of Christ in his state of humiliation, drawing on the Chalcedonian definition of the hypostatic union as articulated in the 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 8. Doctrinal appropriation of Christology is shown to be the indispensable spring of practical Christian living, including sacrificial giving, mortification of sin, and love within the home.
The Ascension of Christ
The bodily, visible, local ascension of Christ into heaven forty days after his resurrection is not a peripheral doctrine but the hinge on which the entire exaltation of the Mediator turns. This sermon expounds Acts 1:9–11 in three movements: the historical reality of the ascension (real, visible, bodily, local, and glorious), its theological significance (fulfillment of Scripture, completion of Christ's priestly work, his enthronement at the Father's right hand, and the glory given to him as Mediator), and its practical benefits for the church (the gift of the Holy Spirit, the perpetual intercession of Christ, and the guaranteed second coming). Believers are called to draw courage from Christ's present reign, flee to the cross before the judgment that the ascension makes inevitable, and rest in the advocacy of the enthroned Savior who always lives to make intercession.
The Son-Tilted Focus of All Things
Colossians 1:16 presents the Son of God as the author, agent, and goal of all creation — not merely its first product, but its sovereign Lord. The sermon argues that 'firstborn of all creation' (Col. 1:15) carries the Old Testament sense of preeminence and rank, not ontological origin, so that the Son is the Creator and not a creature. From this text the preacher traces a 'Son-tilted' architecture running through creation, providence, and redemption, showing that all three are oriented toward the glory of the eternal Son. The sermon closes with the gospel call: the same Son who made all things assumed human nature, suffered, rose, and now brings many sons to glory — a glory in which believers will stand blameless before God with great joy, solely on the ground of Christ's righteousness.
Jesus Was Born to Reign
What does it mean that the eternal Son of God was born? John 18:37 places the incarnation in its most demanding context: Jesus, exhausted and on trial before Pilate, declares with quiet certainty, 'For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world.' This sermon exposits the Roman trial narrative of John 18:28–38, arguing that Christ's birth must be understood not sentimentally but regally — he was born to reign as King of Kings, bearing witness to truth as the instrument of his conquest, and ruling a kingdom whose origin and character are altogether unlike any earthly empire. The hearer is called to examine whether they hear Christ's voice as subjects of his kingdom, and to rest their standing before God not in their own righteousness but in the righteousness that comes through faith in him.
Of Peter, Popes, and Promises
Matthew 16:18 — 'I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it' — is one of the most contested verses in church history, carrying enormous weight in the Roman Catholic claim to Petrine primacy and the papal succession. This sermon works through three elements of the verse: the proper identification of 'the rock' (Peter as confessor, not as papal foundation), the nature and certainty of Christ's twofold promise to build and to prevail, and the historical evidence of that promise's fulfillment from Pentecost through the Reformation to the present. The church is called to a long-sighted, history-conscious confidence grounded not in circumstances but in the unbreakable promise of the risen Christ who saves, sends, applies, and continually builds.
The Vision of One Like the Son of Man
Revelation 1:9–19 presents John's vision of the ascended and glorified Christ, identifying him as the Danielic Son of Man who has received dominion, glory, and an everlasting kingdom. The sermon works through three movements: the content of the vision itself (Christ's high priesthood, sovereign rule, all-seeing knowledge, inexorable judgment, conquering word, and restored pre-incarnate glory), John's prostrate response as the only fitting posture before such majesty, and the threefold comfort Christ speaks over the fallen apostle — his eternality, his resurrection victory, and his sovereign ownership of the keys of Hades and death. The exhortation is to wake and sleep with this exalted Christ consciously held before the heart, and to flee the passing pleasures of sin by bending the knee to the King of Kings.
The Glory of Christ in His State of Humiliation
What does the eternal Son of God's descent from infinite glory to a cattle trough reveal about the nature of his saving work? This sermon on Luke 2:1–14 traces five aspects of Christ's state of humiliation — the timing, place, purpose, manner, and cost of the incarnation — showing that each detail, from the manger to the mocking soldiers to Gethsemane, is not an occasion for embarrassment but for worship. The incarnation was not a sentimental seasonal event but the arrival of the eternal Son, veiled in flesh, to bear the wrath of God and the curse of the cross as the active and passive obedient substitute for guilty sinners. Hearers are called to centre their daily praise on this Christ, to learn humility from his condescension, and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
The Riches of Christ
2 Corinthians 8:9 situates a mundane financial appeal within a profound Christological argument: because Christ voluntarily exchanged the riches of his pre-incarnate glory for the poverty of humiliation and crucifixion, his people have been made spiritually rich beyond measure. The sermon traces three movements — the pre-incarnate riches of Christ, the depths of his humiliation, and the spiritual blessings he secures for his people — drawing on parallel passages in Philippians 2, Ephesians 1, and 1 Corinthians 1 and 30. The application presses believers to reckon daily with their possession of imputed righteousness, sanctification, and redemption as the only sufficient motive for generous, gospel-driven obedience.