54. But if His equality is doubted because
the Name is given Him after He put off the form of God, we dishonour
Him by ignoring the mystery of the humility which He assumed. The
birth of His humanity brought to Him a new nature, and His form was
changed in His humility, by the assumption of a servant’s form,
but now the giving of the Name restores to Him equality of form.
Ask yourself what it is, which is given. If the gift be something
pertaining to God, the grant to the receiving nature does not impair
the divinity of the giving nature. Again, the words, And gave
Him the Name, involve a mystery in the giving, but the giving of
the Name does not make it another name. To Jesus is given, that
to Him, Every knee shall bow of things in heaven, and things on
earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
is Lord in the glory of God the Father Ib.
10, 11.. The honour is given Him that He
should be confessed in the glory of God the Father. Do you hear
Him say, The Father is greater than I? Know Him also, of
Whom it is said in reward of His obedience, And gave unto Him the
Name which is above every name Ib.
9.; hear Him Who
said, I and the Father are one; He that hath seen Me, hath seen the
Father also; I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.
Consider the honour of the confession which is granted Him, that Jesus
is Lord in the glory of God the Father. When, then, is the Father
greater than the Son? Surely, when He gives Him the Name above
every name. And on the other hand, when is it that the Son and
the Father are one? Surely, when every tongue confesses that
Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. If, then, the
Father is greater through His authority to give, is the Son less
through the confession of receiving? The Giver is greater:
but the Receiver is not less, for to Him it is given to be one with the
Giver. If it is not given to Jesus to be confessed in the glory
of God the Father, He is less than the Father. But if it is given
Him to be in that glory, in which the Father is, we see in the
prerogative of giving, that the Giver is greater, and in the confession
of the gift, that the Two are One. The Father is, therefore,
greater than the Son: for manifestly He is greater, Who makes
another to be all that He Himself is, Who imparts to the Son by the
mystery of the birth the image of His own unbegotten nature, Who begets
Him from Himself into His own form, and restores Him again from the
form of a servant to the form of God, Whose work it is that Christ,
born God according to the Spirit in the glory of the Father, but now
Jesus Christ dead in the flesh, should be once more God in the glory of
the Father. When, therefore, Christ says that He is going to the
Father, He reveals the reason why they should rejoice if they loved
Him, because the Father is greater than He.