Luke 14 | The First Became Last
It never ceases to amaze me.
Jesus, who existed before the world ever was, full of glory, honor, and power, left it all to come as a child, small and needy, meek and mild.
Even as He grew, and “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52), He never once looked to rise in fame or claim a throne, even though a throne was where He belonged.
Instead, the First became last.
Last of all mankind—the very bottom, as He took the weight of all the sin of the world upon His shoulders, bearing the intense weight of the wrath of God.
And while He was here on the earth, sitting in people’s homes, eating with them, talking with them, healing them, so many had no idea they were in the very presence of God Himself. They chose places of honor and looked down their noses at Jesus, so different from them.
They had no idea how different indeed.
But with His face set on the task in front of Him, He kept teaching, kept healing, kept preaching, and demonstrating the very thing He asked of His followers: living all-in for His Father in full obedience, counting nothing in this life as more valuable than the joy He knew awaited Him when His task was complete.
The First became last.
He did it so that all who were truly last, sinful man, could be lifted up to the incredible place of honor as children of the Most High God.
The last can be first,
because the First became last.
“Infant Holy, infant lowly,
for his bed a cattle stall;
Oxen lowing, little knowing
Christ, the babe, is Lord of all”!*
“For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 14:11