Warfield on “Imitating the Incarnation”
In addition to being our Redeemer, Jesus is our perfect example for the Christian life. Today, Stephen Nichols considers a stirring sermon that B.B. Warfield preached on the humble, self-sacrificial life that Christ modeled for us.
Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. Last week we were together, we were looking at the book of sermons, The Savior of the World, by B.B. Warfield. I want to return to that book. The final sermon, the ninth sermon is entitled, “Imitating the Incarnation,” and it is on Philippians 2:5-8 about having the mind that Christ had, and Warfield plays off of that to speak of imitating the incarnation. Warfield had a classical education. In fact, when he was younger, his family had a big cattle ranch and he was often sent out to tend the cattle, and he would take classic books with him, books in Greek, books in Latin. He was a very well-educated man, and that education paid off not only in his teaching and his scholarly books, but in his sermons and his ability to craft the message.
And so I just want to read some extended portions of the sermon to you. I found them to be very encouraging to me, and I hope they are for you. He begins,
“Christ, our Example." After "Christ, our Redeemer," no words can more deeply stir the Christian heart than these. Every Christian joyfully recognizes the example of Christ. In Christ, in a word, we find the moral ideal historically realized, and we bow before it as sublime, and we yearn after it with all the assembled desires of our renewed souls. How lovingly we follow in thought every footstep of the Son of Man. On the rim of hills that shut in the emerald cup of Nazareth, on the blue marge of Gennesaret, over the mountains of Judah, we long to walk in spirit by his side. He came to save every age, says Irenaeus, and therefore, he came as an infant, a child, a boy, a youth, and a man. And there is no age that cannot find its example in him. We see him in the wilderness, calmly rejecting the subtlest trials of the evil one. We see him among the thousands of Galilee, anointed of God with the Holy Ghost and power going about doing good. With no pride of birth, though he was a king. With no pride of intellect, though omniscience dwelt within him. With no pride of power, though all power in heaven and earth was in his hands. We see him everywhere offering to men his life for the salvation of their souls. And when at last, the forces of evil gathered thick around him, walking alike without display and without dismay the path of suffering appointed for him and giving his life at Calvary, that through his death, the world might live.
As Warfield is bringing this sermon to a close, he makes a distinction between self-denial and self-sacrifice. He says, “Self-denial drives to the cloister. It narrows and contracts the soul.” Christ was not about self-denial, he was about self-sacrifice. And so Warfield says,
Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world, and self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from the world, but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there will we be to help. Wherever men fail, there will we be to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows. It means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self and others. Only when we humbly walk this path, seeking truly in it, not our own things, but those of others, we shall find the promise true that he who loses his life shall find it. Like Christ, and in loving obedience to his call and example, we take no account of ourselves, but we freely give ourselves to others.
That is Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield sermon on imitating the incarnation from his book, The Savior of the World. And I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.
