I want to look at that, for I am in a world in which everyone is selfish. If you get to God as Scripture presents Him, you see, "In the beginning was the Word." There was Father, Son, and Holy Ghost before creation. There was creation in heaven — angels were created. When you think of God as Creator, bringing everything into existence, taking the dust of the earth and building a man — do you not see the very principle of condescension coming down? Did He want the world for Himself? All creation is a display of the condescension of God. Why does not the earth reel to and fro? Because Someone holds up the pillars thereof. God comes down in providence. All the little things are connected with condescension. The Lord Jesus knew all about it; He said, "Not a sparrow shall fall to the ground without your Father." Look at the world, always rebelling against God, and yet He still keeps things in check; the whole process of His government is condescension. If I look at the Lord, there was Messiah to come, and that One is seen in Daniel 7 in the presence of the Ancient of days. But I see Him in the gospel, born in a manger, not in the palace of Herod. Was it not the same principle? I find it comes into Scripture in one place in a remarkable way. Rom. 5: 7: "For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die." If you were to point out a man to me, and say, "That is a very righteous man, he would not be in debt to anybody;" I should say, "I expect he is a very self-righteous man." It would not move my affections at all. But if you show me another man, and say, "That is a very tender-hearted man; if he hears of distress anywhere, he delights to go and relieve it," my heart would warm towards him directly. When I look into the whole heart of man, who is the one my whole heart goes out to? Not the people who are climbing up, but those who are willing to go to the bottom. I would say more if I could of the earthly relationships of the heavenly family — parents counting themselves nothing for children. The father of a family and the mother, how constantly they are going to the bottom. If you find a father with half-a-dozen sons, five of them are likely to get on in the world, but the other has a heart, and when he sees anything going wrong between his brethren, will not rest until it is put right. That is the one who gets the father's heart.
Let me just call attention to the apostle Paul. He says he is the off-scouring of all things — a model man in that respect. He gives an account of his sufferings as surpassing all of his day — the man set forth to show how far the principles shown out in the life of Christ could be carried out in a man of like passions with ourselves; and were there ever men like those apostles, through whom came all these blessings? Paul had seen the beauty of it in Christ — seen it, no doubt, in two forms. First, the only way in which blessing could come to the sinner, was by Christ's coming down lower than the sinner, when He bore the curse! I have never borne the curse — if I do not believe in Christ, I shall. He bore it, and went so low that Satan could say nothing. Paul saw that, but he saw more than that — he saw the beauty of the ways of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do let me ask, whether you see the beauty of those ways? Is it saying, "Oh, I see He went down, and I suppose I must go down — I suppose I must take up the cross?" There is that verse, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross:" does it mean as little of the cross as possible — let the heaviest end be upon Him? Is it merely "He went down, I must?" That was not Paul: he had another feeling than "must" — more than "needs be." God took up Paul, and he was resolutely set; he would go down to the very bottom. "I mean to follow His ways, I will be like Him in my walk, He came down to the very bottom, and I mean to follow that beauty." In this world while he was here, he was never seeking his own, always the things of Christ, and what comes out? In this world he followed Him, and by-and-by he will have Christ as his gain. When the Lord Jesus comes for His own, there will be no self-denial any longer.