In the very beginning, before there was Earth, when the Spirit of God was hovering over the unformed waters, just before God, the Son opened His mouth to shout, “Let there be light,” do you suppose God, the Father turned to God, the Son and said, “We know they’ll sin.”  “Uh huh.”  “The very first ones, the ones we’ll make in our image, hand craft their features, give them personalities,.. even living in paradise, from these first two humans to every child that follows, they will all choose sin.”  “Uh huh.”  “Sin will bring death.  Death was not to be part of our creation.”  “I will buy them back!” Jesus answered.  “I’ll go to Earth, become a human being, and give up my life to pay for theirs.”  Did God, the Father, put His arm around Jesus’ shoulder and say? “I am well pleased with you, my beloved Son.  There will never be a father as proud of his son as I am.”

Revelation 1 describes Jesus in Heaven as one “like unto the son of man” with hair white as snow, feet like burnished bronze, his face like the sun shining in all its brilliance, eyes that blaze like fire, a voice like the sound of rushing waters and his words as a sharp, double-edged sword, wearing a robe with a golden sash around his chest, holding in his hands the seven stars and the keys of death and Hades.  Revelation 1:13-16 NIV

Isaiah describes the Son of Man this way, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not…he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”  Isaiah 53:2b, 3b, 5 NIV

Peter, James, and John got a peek at Jesus’ glory when He was transfigured on a mountaintop, right before their eyes.  “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.”  Matthew 17:2 NIV  and God, the Father enveloped them with a bright cloud and spoke His approval of the Son that He loved.  At the end of Jesus’ time on earth, Mark writes, “After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.”  Mark 16:19 NIV  What it doesn’t say but might have happened is, “Well done!  Welcome home!” rang through Heaven at Jesus’ arrival.

To me, Philippians 2:6-11 is Easter in a nutshell.  “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!  Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  Philippians 2:6-11 NIV