What Accounting Taught Me About Descent and Glory

Early in my accounting career, I got very good at looking like I knew what I was doing. I remember one specific time when a manager walked me through a new process. I asked enough questions to seem engaged, but nothing that would expose how much I really didn’t get. At the end, I nodded confidently, strolled back to my desk, and...

Spun my wheels for two whole days.

I finally realized I wasn’t going to figure it out on my own. So I drudged myself back to my manager, admitted I had no idea what I was doing, and, in the end, looked far worse than if I'd just said "I'm lost" in the beginning. I was so concerned with elevating myself that I humiliated myself in the process.

Adam did the same thing in Genesis. He reached for something that wasn't his, and his whole world collapsed. His grasp for glory ended in exile, toil, and death. He wanted ascent but found humility in its place.

Philippians 2 shows us the mirror image of that story. Jesus, who was already in the form of God, "did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage." He didn't reach. He didn’t even hold to his station. Instead, he went down.

The Descent

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:6-8)

Paul traces each step downward. First, Jesus took on the form of a servant. Then, he became obedient to death. And then Paul takes it one step further: even death on a cross. To a first-century reader, crucifixion wasn't just painful. It was the empire's chosen instrument of public shame, reserved for the lowest of the low. Paul is pointing to the floor of human humiliation and saying, "Jesus went there."

This is the concept called kenosis: the “self-emptying” of Jesus. His equality with God wasn’t stripped from him. He voluntarily let it go. He chose the lower path. Every step downward was intentional, made for the sake of others. When Jesus cried, "It is finished," from the cross, it would have sounded like defeat. He was at the lowest possible point: a mortal man, dying, on a cross. But those words weren’t a concession or surrender.

In this story, they were a cry of completed purpose. Of kenosis wholly fulfilled.

What Comes After

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 acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

Adam reached upward and fell. Christ descended and was raised. It’s God’s “upside-down” kingdom, where everything is flipped. The path down becomes the path up. Christ humbled himself and was therefore exalted.

This isn’t just a lesson for us to admire from a distance, though. Paul says, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” The Philippian church was meant to embody Christ’s humility, not just admire it.

And we’re called to embody it as well.

Where Are You Being Invited to Descend?

So here's the question this passage leaves us with: Where in your life are you being invited to go lower?

Maybe it's a relationship where you're more concerned with being right than being reconciled. Maybe it's a role where you're protecting your image instead of serving your team. Maybe it's an area where you've been nodding confidently and going nowhere. Maybe the most courageous thing you can do is simply say, I don't know what I'm doing, and I need help.

Voluntary descent is difficult because it confronts our instinct to grasp upward, like Adam. But the cross wasn’t the interruption of Christ’s glory. It was the pathway to it.

Holy Week reminds us that the way of Jesus is the way down.

And because of Easter, we know it’s also the way up.