“No Reputation”

In the recorded lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ, the remembrance of a most sordid scandal appears.

"And Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias" (Matthew 1:6).

One might have suspected that the Holy Spirit would have omitted the chronicle of such a terrible evil as David's actions with Bathsheba that led to adultery, murder, the death of a child, and the sword never thereafter leaving David’s house (II Samuel 11-12). David repented of his sin, and God forgave him. But the scars of his waywardness remained for a lifetime, and proper remembrance of the king’s godliness is always tempered by recollection of his abject failure concerning Bathsheba.

The Holy Spirit nevertheless alludes to David’s illicit relationship in the very genealogy of the Lord Jesus. In fact, the entire heritage of Christ includes a rogue’s gallery of sinners, that is, every person on the list descended from sinful Adam. Perfection thus proceeded from imperfection through the agency of the virgin conception of Christ in Mary (our Lord’s father being God rather a human descendant of Adam). The sinless One thus appears in a heritage of sinners, and to the uneducated mind, appears to be as one of them.

“Christ Jesus… made Himself of no reputation” (Philippians 2:5; 7). The only glory-worthy human being who ever lived spent most of His earthly sojourn in complete obscurity (to the degree his own brethren did not know who He was). He participated in a sinner’s baptism, fellowshipped with the unsavory, died as an apparently guilty criminal, and to this day appears only in glory within the hearts of those who trust and personally know Him. Indeed, in our generation, blasphemers regularly scoff at the notion of Christ’s perfection and uniqueness, affirming Him as perhaps a good teacher, but denying any notion of pristine Divinity. He thus remains of “no reputation” to the masses.

Such humility in God should drive us to our knees and faces no less than the awesome majesty, power and glory that will one day reveal the exalted Christ. Only the God of Scripture, the true and living God, would have purposed such a revelation of Himself as displayed in His beloved Son. He alone would send His Beloved to a life of abasement in order to redeem lowly creatures who rebelled and refused to humble themselves. Who must our God be to purpose such a redemptive reality of God and man united in Christ? Only eternity will begin to fully tell the story of Perfection so loving the imperfect that He became as one of us in order we might be redeemed by the humility that so brightly reveals the glory of God.

“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare Thy name unto My brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee.”

(Hebrews 2:9-12)