How do you view Jesus Christ? Paul Washer explains that to comprehend who Jesus Christ is, we must look at both the pre-incarnate glory of Christ and the suffering of Christ. They must be both understood together. We can’t understand Christ’s humility until we first understand His exaltation. People wrongly think of Jesus as always being this humble carpenter, as someone who began in Bethlehem. But, Christ is eternal, He has always been the mediator between God and creation. The Son has always been everything in the mind of the Father. To think that Christ humbled Himself, became a man, and suffered the death on Cavalry is astounding. The Gospel leads us to pursue true holiness. We’re motivated by the love of God in giving us His most precious gift, Jesus, and Christ’s humility and death on the cross. 1 John 4:10 (NKJV) – “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

First one has to do to the pre-incarnate glory of Christ. And the second has to do with Christ suffering the curse of our sin on Calvary. And those two things must be understood together. You can't understand the humility of Christ, his humiliation at Calvary, unless you first understand his exaltation, that people have this idea at times, wrongly so. And in the back of their mind, they know correct theology, but they sometimes think of Jesus as always being this humble carpenter, as as someone who seems to have begun in Bethlehem.

But what we have to understand is that he has always been the mediator between God and creation. God created the world through his son. God sustains the world through his son. God reveals himself, redeems the world through his son and will judge the world through his son. The sun has always been everything in the mind of the father.

And to think that that glorious son, who was ruler over all things in his pre-incarnate state, became a man and suffered the death that he suffered on Calvary is absolutely astounding. And it's when you put those two things together that you find not only the gospel of our salvation, but you find the motivation for all godliness. Great is the mystery of godliness, and that is the gospel. The gospel is the mystery that leads us to true holiness. We're not motivated as Christians primarily by some awkward fear.

We're motivated by the love of God revealed and giving his most precious gift, and that's his son.