I. Think first, then, of Him. Think of what, and _where_ He is! Consider "what is the height" of His exaltation; and then say, if you can, "what is the breadth" of His munificence.
We know well how He gave as a poor and suffering man upon earth--gave, with what affluence, pity and delight, bread to the hungry thousands, wine to the wedding-feast, health to the sick, sight to the blind, pardon to the sinful, sometimes life to the dead! Has His elevation altered Him? Too often it is so with vain and weak men like ourselves. Their wealth increases, but their hearts contract. The more they have to give, the less they love to give. They go up on high as men count it, and climb to places of power and eminence; and they forget the friends of youth and the ranks from which they sprang--low-minded men. Not so with our exalted Friend. "It is not one that went down, and another that went up," says Theodoret. "He that descended, _it is He_ also that ascended up far above all the heavens!" (ver. 10). Jesus of Nazareth is on the throne of God,--"the same yesterday and to-day!" But now the resources of the universe are at His disposal. Out of that treasure He can choose the best gifts for you and me.
Mere authority, even Omnipotence, could not suffice to save and bless moral beings like ourselves; nor even the best will joined to Omnipotence. Christ gained by His humiliation, in some sense, a new fulness added to the fulness of the Godhead. This gain of His sufferings is implied in what the apostle writes in Colossians i. 19 concerning the risen and exalted Redeemer: "It was well-pleasing that _all_ the fulness should make its dwelling in Him." His plenitude is that of the Ascended One _who had descended_. "If He ascended, what does it mean but that He also descended into the under regions of the earth?" (ver. 9). If He went up, why then He had been down!--down to the Virgin's womb and the manger cradle, wrapping His Godhead within the frame and the brain of a little child; down to the home and the bench of the village carpenter; down to the contradiction of sinners and the level of their scorn; down to the death of the cross,--to the nether abyss, to that dim populous underworld into which we look shuddering over the grave's edge! And from that lower gulf He mounted up again to the solid earth and the light of day and the world of breathing men; and up, and up again, through the rent clouds and the ranks of shouting angels, and under the lifted heads of the everlasting doors, until He took His seat at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.