FULL EMPTY

Kenosis comes from the Greek kenōsis which is the act of emptying or purging—it is the pouring out of everything from within. Kenosis is an important concept for Christians, who believe that Jesus emptied himself out so that He could be fully obedient to God’s will.

Jesus is both fully God and fully man. He is fully God because he is both the son of God and a co-equal member of the Trinity. He became fully man to be a model of holiness, a perfect sacrifice to restore the relationship between God and man that Adam severed in Eden. For that to work, Christ had to humble Himself fully and voluntarily by emptying himself out, culminating in His death on the Cross.

To follow Jesus, a Christian must also practice kenosis by emptying out his own will so that they he can be fully receptive to God’s divine will. For me, this is exceedingly difficult, not because I do not understand the concept or do not want to make the effort, but because I keep finding that the gas tank of my will is never quite empty—I always hold something back in reserve, even when I think I haven’t. I am never quite on full empty.

What am I holding back? I would like to pretend that I am not sure, but I know. It is humility. I am proud of my strengths and unhappy about my weaknesses. If I were humble, I would be neither. I would see my strengths in their true light, as gifts from God for use to His Glory and I would see my weaknesses in the way the Apostle Paul saw his, as that by which God makes his power perfect.

But I do not do that. Because I am not yet on full empty, I sometimes forget that I did not make me. Buying into the Worldly myth of the self-made man, I see my strengths as things I developed through hard work and sacrifice and my weaknesses as things unfairly inflicted upon me. That makes me both self-reliant and self-pitying—a loathsome and internally contradictory state of being full of myself. The exact opposite of being full empty.

Alone, I would be stuck, my efforts at kenosis futile. Try as I might I would never be able to fully empty myself of myself. But I am not alone. I am the beneficiary of the same promise that Jesus made to the Disciples, that God would send the Holy Spirit to help me learn to take no pride in my strengths and delight in my weaknesses.

Only then, on full empty, will I be fully obedient to God’s will.