From The Glory of the Redeemer in His Person and Work. r.p. Pittsburgh, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, n.d., pp. 126-128.
"Now, the great glory which gilds this dark part of the Redeemer's humiliation consists in the lowering of the infinite to the scale of the finite--the bringing down of the Godhead to a level with the manhood. In this lay His real humiliation, and from this springs His true glory. Had our Lord assumed our nature, descending from the highest order of angelic being, He would but have exchanged one form of created existence for another; and although made a "little lower than the angels," there would have been no such relinquishment of previous dignity, as could justify the term thus applied to Him by the Holy Spirit, "He humbled Himself." If, as a finite creature, it were possible for me to assume the incarnation of an insect, there would be in the act but the mere semblance of humility,--the appearance, and not the true virtue itself: because, there being some proportion between the form relinquished and the form assumed, the step would be but a lower one in the same scale of finite being. But how vastly different in the case of our adorable Redeemer! As we have just remarked, between two finite things there is always some relative proportion; thus a grain of sand bears some proportion to the Alps, and a drop of water bears some proportion to the ocean; but between the finite and the infinite there can be no possible proportion whatever. Now, in the person of the Son of God, the two extremes of being--the infinite and the finite,--meet in strange and mysterious, but close and eternal, union. The Divine came down to the human,--Deity humbled itself to humanity. This was humiliation indeed! It was not the creature descending in the scale of creation, but is was the Creator stooping to the creature. "God was manifest in the flesh,"--"He humbled Himself." Oh, it is an amazing truth! So infinitely great was He, He could thus stoop without compromising His dignity, or lessening His glory."
John Owen (1616-1683)
From The Glory of Christ. Edited by Wilbur M. Smith. r.p. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980, pp. 99-100.
"This, then, is the foundation of the glory of Christ in this condescension, the life and soul of all heavenly truth and mysteries: that the Son of God becoming in time to be what He was not, the Son of Man, ceased not thereby to be what He was, even the eternal Son of God."
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