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“Made himself of no reputation” means to empty—the Greek word is kenoō. The kenosis theory derives its name from the word kenoō. Christ emptied Himself. The question is: Of what did He empty Himself? There are those who say He emptied Himself of His deity. All of the Gnostics in the early church propounded the first heresy that He emptied Himself of His deity, that the deity entered into Him at the time of His baptism and left Him at the cross. Well, this theory is not substantiated anywhere in the Word of God. He emptied Himself of something, but it was not of His deity. He was 100 percent God when He was a baby reclining helplessly on the bosom of Mary. Even at that time He could have spoken this universe out of existence because He was God. There was never a moment when He was not God. The apostle John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made…. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us …” (John 1:1–3, 14).

Well, then, of what did the Lord Jesus empty Himself when He came to this earth? I believe that He emptied Himself of the prerogatives of deity. He lived on this earth with certain limitations, but they were self-limitations. There was never a moment when He wasn’t God. And He was not less God because He was man, yet He emptied Himself of His prerogatives of deity.

The few shepherds and wise men, and even the multitude of angels, were a sorry turnout for the Son of God when He came to this earth. Not only should that crowd have been there, but the whole universe should have been there. All of God’s created intelligences should have been there. The hierarchy of Rome should have been there. There should not have been just a few wise men from the East. They should have come from the West, and the North, and the South. And the temple in Jerusalem should have been empty that day—they should all have gone down to Bethlehem. But they didn’t.

Why didn’t He force them to come? Because He had laid aside His prerogatives of deity. He was willing to be born in a dirty, filthy place—not the pretty, clean stable of Christmas pageants and Christmas cards. He was willing to grow to manhood in a miserable town named Nazareth. He was willing to be an unknown carpenter. He could have had the shekinah glory with Him all the time, but He didn’t. He didn’t have a halo around His head as we see in so many paintings of Him. Judas had to kiss Him the night He was betrayed so that the crowd would know which was the man they were to capture. He didn’t stand out from other men by some kind of inner light or glory around Him. He was a human being, but He was God manifest in the flesh. He laid aside the prerogatives of His deity.

Can we be sure of that? I think we can. After He had finished His ministry, He gathered His own about Him on His last night on earth, and He prayed a very wonderful prayer to His heavenly Father. One thing He said in that prayer was this: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). Notice this carefully: He prayed to have His glory restored. He did not pray to have His deity restored, because He had never given up His deity. But now that He is returning to heaven, He is asking that His glory, the glory light, a prerogative of deity, be restored. Obviously He had laid that aside. “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation.”

Jesus came to this earth as a servant. He worked as a carpenter. I suppose if you had lived in Nazareth in that day, you could have gone by the shop where Jesus worked and told Him you needed some repair work done at your house—“I have a door that is coming off the hinges; I wonder if You would come and fix it?” I think He would have said, “I’ll be right: over.” You see, He took upon Himself the form of a servant. He could have been born in Caesar’s palace. He was a king, but He never made that claim during those early years—in fact, He didn’t make it until He rode into Jerusalem in the so-called Triumphal Entry.

The prophet Isaiah wrote that Christ would come as a “root of Jesse” (see Isa. 11:10). As a young preacher I often wondered why Isaiah didn’t call Him a root out of David. Well, I have discovered the reason. When Jesus was born, Mary, who was in the line of David (and Joseph, who was also in the Davidic line by another route), was a peasant. They were working folk living in that little, miserable, gentile town called Nazareth. Then wasn’t Jesus in the line of David? Oh, yes. David was anointed king, but his father Jesse was a farmer in Bethlehem, and his line had dropped back to the place of a peasant. Our Lord was born into a peasant family.

For years this did not impress me at all, because I am a man and I like being a man. I couldn’t see that being a man was a humiliation. I think there is a dignity about being a human being that is quite wonderful. How can it be humbling?

When we first came to California in 1940, we had the experience of living in a place where the bugs and the ants are not killed off in the wintertime. We got here the first of November and had not been here long until I found in the kitchen one morning a freeway of ants coming into the sink. They were coming down one side and going back on the other side. Also I found they had discovered the sugar bowl, and they had a freeway in and out of it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want ants in the sink and I don’t want ants in the sugar bowl. So I began to investigate and learned that the thing we had to do was to kill them. Now I’m just not sadistic; I’m not brutal; I don’t like to kill things. But I began to kill ants. I got ant poison, and we got rid of ants. Then when we moved over to our own home, here were ants. They had found out where we’d moved. I have a wonderful Christian friend who is in the bug-killing business. He comes to my place twice a year, sprays everything—under the house, under the eaves, the trees—everything, and you can’t find an ant on my place.

Now I do not know this to be a fact, but I have a notion that the ants had a protest meeting around my lot. Maybe they carried banners that read, “Down with McGee. He hates ants!” But, frankly, I don’t hate ants. That’s not my hang-up at all. If I had some way of communicating with those ants and getting a message to them, I’d say, “Look here. I don’t hate you. Just stay out of the sugar bowl, and stay out of the sink. I’ll put sugar and water outside for you—I’d be glad to do that if you’d just stay outside.” But I do not know how to get that message over to the ants—except by becoming an ant. Now suppose that I had the power to become an ant. (If I could do it, I would not do it because I know some folk who would step on me if I were an ant!) But listen, if I could become an ant—from where I am now down to the position of an ant—that would be humiliation, wouldn’t it? I’d hate to become an ant. But, my friend, that is nothing compared to what my Lord did when He left heaven’s glory and became a man, when He took upon Himself our humanity, when He was made in the likeness of men.

McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 5:302-303