Pride Incarnate and Humility Incarnate
The Son of God was the Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God. But though he possessed that equality he did not esteem it a thing to be grasped after, but he emptied himself of the glory that was his own. The other glorious being, exalted though he was among the hosts of God, was not in the form of God; he was but a creature of the Most High. But he essayed to grasp the equality that was not his: “I will make myself like the Most High.” Mark now the terrific climax in each of these descriptions. The Son of God in becoming the Son of man took step after step in his humiliation, lower and lower, until he touched the bottom in the cursed death of the cross: “becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” Then immediately follows this word: “Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Satan sought to climb higher and higher until his ambition reached after the Godhead: “I will make myself like the Most High.” Immediately follows this word: “Thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the uttermost parts of the pit.”
There is more in the passages, however, than these two tremendous contrasts of humiliation and attempted exaltation, and then of exaltation and uttermost destruction. Jesus told his followers that he was sending them into the world as the Father sent him. His great Adversary likewise sends men into the world to carry out the spirit of his ambition. So he came to our first parents in the garden, and the temptation was that they should imitate him in seeking to be like God. They fell before the temptation and the sin was, essentially, a declaration of independence of God. From that day on every sin, whether the sin of an unbeliever or the sin of a born-again Christian, has resulted because of this independence of God. The conflict of that eternal world has thus been projected into the world of men. The Son of God and the Prince of demons are contending for this world, and the principles underlying the conflict are clearly set forth in these passages that have been before us.