The Hidden King: Easter Post

Prince disguised as pauper?

There’s a sort of fitting fairy tale where a great king disguises himself—either as an ordinary commoner or as a pauper—and goes out and travels among his people.

Fitting because it’s eminently practical: he can see how they would treat him. They will reveal what they are really like in a way they would not if they encountered him dressed in all the trappings of his power. For if they saw that, they would only say “Yes, sir” or “Of course I will do it,” or stutter and nod obediently.

Also fitting because it’s beautiful: truth being revealed—truth that is normally concealed. In the case of a good king—how wonderful for him to see how things are. How joyous if he is treated generously when he (seemingly) has little to give back, and to have him be glad at how his people served him. And to know that, for once, all this is not being done because of his great power and position. We rejoice to see good—so often overlooked—rewarded.

For an example in a modern context, there was a show called “Undercover Boss.” It was a reality show where CEO’s pretended to be entry-level employees,¹ so as to get a bit of an insider’s view of their operations. Now, I accept a healthy dose of cynicism about Reality shows—but the concept still delights me.

And this is in some ways like and in some ways unlike Jesus.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

(2 Corinthians 8:9)

He did come to earth in the guise of someone who was orders of magnitude more-ordinary and less-glorious than He really is.

He didn’t need to come to earth to find out “what we were really like.”²

He knew that we—humanity—would do to Him “whatever we liked.”

So what he came to earth for was to lower Himself more deeply than a king putting aside his royal garments and taking up the garb of a pauper. He was setting his face and going straight into deep humiliation, a sorrowful life of being misunderstood by those closest to him and despised by those who were, religiously, most in a position to “get it right”—and, ultimately, intentionally walking towards his own death.

We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory… a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony—spiritual even more than physical—that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it.

—J.I. Packer, “Knowing God”

But that was not the end. There was the lowering, and then the exaltation, so he can be described in this way:

 …Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…

(Philippians 2:5-9)

And that also is fitting.

1. Yes, they do come up with some excuse for the presence of a camera crew, in case you are wondering.

2. Though in the scriptures, there were multiple events that, from their descriptions, gave you the sense that God is going to “go on down and check up on things there.”