Gave Up All His Rights

We sing this great song at church called He Shouted Love. The lyrics are so rich; please read them all here. I think my favorite part is the bridge, though, where it says:
He saw us in our sin  - His people far from Him
Left from heaven's throne - To bring us sinners home
See how much he paid - Suffered in our place
Gave up all his rights - Lived a perfect life
Came for us to die - He was crucified
Hung upon a tree - He bled and died for me
Took on all our blame - Three days in the grave
On Sunday he arose - Crushed the ancient foe.

I have been struck for several months now by one particular phrase: “Gave up all His rights.”

Growing up, I was very concerned about things being “fair.” I think most kids are, to some degree or another, but I remember saying these words a lot. I still remember the Easter that my brother ate my chocolate bunny. We had each been given one in our Easter basket and he gobbled his up quickly, then snuck in later and ate mine, the treat I had been saving for last because it was the ultimate goodie in the basket. Jimmy = 2 bunnies. Katherine = 0. It wasn’t fair. But I’m not still bitter or anything.

As humans, I think the desire for fairness comes naturally. As Americans, I think we have an even greater awareness of and desire for fairness. Our country was founded on the premise that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We’ve always been about “rights,” whether civil, constitutional, or the Bill of Rights, and some of the greatest conflicts in our country’s history have been around these topics.

As we slogged through the recent election season, “rights” was a frequent topic – gun rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, racial rights, religious rights, etc. People on both sides were afraid the other side would take away their rights if they won the election. And I admit, it IS scary to think you might be treated unfairly or targeted for who you are or what you believe. It’s un-American. It goes against all our sensibilities.

But then there’s that nagging phrase in that song we sing at church: “Gave up all His rights.” Jesus gave up all His rights. He’s the creator, king, all-powerful one. He lives in unimaginable glory. He MADE us, formed us out of dust. And yet He chose to come dwell with us. Gave up all His wealth, a lot of His power, and came to live among us. And not in 2016, with all our technology and comforts. He came before electricity, before refrigerators, before desk jobs and cars. Before indoor plumbing. And He didn’t come to live with a wealthy family; He came as a baby, the most needy, powerless thing one can be, born to a teenage mother engaged to be married to a carpenter. For all anyone knew, He was even an illegitimate child. There was no other, more shameful position or condition to be born into.

And He chose to do this. It’s kind of like the TV show, Undercover Boss, on a much, much grander scale. Probably the closest thing I can imagine as a parallel to this in our world today would be if Bill Gates and Warren Buffet quit their jobs, renounced all their wealth, and moved into a slum in a third-world country. And they did it all to show their love for a cockroach.

Those are the rights Jesus gave up and the position of those He gave them up for. As Christians, we are called to be like Him. We are Christians first, Americans second. But I think, for the most part, we’ve forgotten this, this giving up of rights that Jesus did for us, if we were ever taught it in the first place. And I think that, if we ever think about it at all, we think that “[giving] up all His rights” was great for Jesus, but not necessary for me.

I should fight for my rights, denounce unfair behavior, and sue those who seek to restrict me in any way. I should vote for candidates who will protect my rights. But Jesus didn’t do that. He gave up all His rights, and He certainly had way more rights to everything than I do. 1 Corinthians 13:5-7 says, “Love does not insist on its own way…it bears all things…endures all things.” As Christians, maybe we need to rethink our insistence on our own way, our rights. Rights apparently didn’t matter to Jesus, so should they matter so much to us?

I’m not saying I want to have my freedoms restricted. A free country is a sweet place to live in. But if push comes to shove, whether in our personal relationships or our collective political ones, maybe we should take a page from Jesus’ playbook and “give up all [our] rights.”