In our world people are usually glorified as the move upward to stand out above all the rest.  In contrast to this,  the God of majesty was glorified as he moved downward to the very lowest place for us.  In Jesus, God descended into our desperate situation, by making it his own situation. He drew near to us identifying himself with us/giving himself fully and freely as the God of needy and unworthy people.  And he moved downward to where we are with the aim of lifting us up to where he is in God/with his Father.

In this downward movement we see God’s majestic splendour and beauty in the form of humiliation.  Karl Barth says, “In Jesus, the Almighty exists and acts and speaks in the form of One who is weak and impotent, the eternal as One who is temporal and perishing, the Most High in the deepest humility. The Holy One stands in the place and under the accusation of a sinner with other sinners. The glorious One is covered with shame. The One who lives for ever has fallen a prey to death. The Creator is subjected to and overcome by the onslaught of that which is not. In short, the Lord is a servant, a slave.”  

God is glorified in this humiliation and his Spirit is given to us to glorify him in our hearts.  The Spirit glorifies him as the exalted one, but also as the humiliated one.  For he is always the Lord as Servant in humiliation and the Servant as Lord in exaltation.