The state of humiliation is the condition into which the eternal Son of God entered for our salvation, wherein He laid aside His glory and abased Himself, taking our nature and bearing its weakness, sorrow, curse, and death. It is the first of the two great states of the Mediator, the other being His exaltation. The classic confessions enumerate its stages, drawn from the creed and the Scriptures: His conception and birth in a low condition, made of a woman, made under the law; His life of suffering and obedience amid the contradiction of sinners, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; His death upon the cross, bearing the wrath and curse of God in the place of His people; His burial; and His continuing under the power of death for a time. The great text is Philippians 2: being in the form of God, He made Himself of no reputation, took upon Him the form of a servant, humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. The humiliation did not consist in any laying aside of His deity—He remained fully God throughout—but in the veiling of His glory and the voluntary subjection of His person, in His assumed human nature, to the conditions of our fallen estate, sin only excepted. He who was rich became poor; the Lord of glory was crucified; the Author of life lay in a tomb. This descent was not forced upon Him but freely undertaken in love, that He might fulfill all righteousness, satisfy divine justice, and redeem His people from the depths to which sin had sunk them. The state of humiliation is therefore the measure of His love and the ground of our salvation, for by His abasement we are exalted, and by His poverty we are made rich.