"Allow me to give you an illustration of what subtraction by addition might look like and how it might take place. Imagine for a moment that someone, say, an older brother of yours, was shopping for a new car. He went to a BMW car dealership and asked to test-drive a beautiful, shiny, brand-new sports car. The dealer handed him the keys, and off he drove. Now, you need to know that for the past several days it had rained buckets in your area, and your brother decided to drive this shiny new car on the dirt roads out in the country. Well, as you can imagine, the roads were muddy as could be, and your brother drove this car wildly, turning and sliding every which way in the mud before he brought it back to the showroom floor. When he drove it in, absolutely covered in mud, the car dealer exclaimed, "What have you done to my car!" But to this, your brother calmly said, "Oh, you needn't worry. I've not taken anything away from the car, I've only added to it." And, of course, your brother was right. Every quality of that car was still there. It still had its beautiful coat of paint and its luster; nothing had been removed from what was there before. Rather, something had been added to it--a thick coat of mud! But notice what this mud did. It covered over that beautiful shine so that, even though it was still there, you couldn't see it. You might even say that the mud worked to hide the glory and brilliance of the car even though those qualities were still there, just hidden.
In a similar way, the fullness of the Son with every quality of his deity was poured out. Nothing from his deity was lost, but rather his full life was poured out as he took on the form of a servant. As that human nature enveloped, as it were, his divine nature, something of the glory and splendor of who he is as God was covered over--not lost or given up, mind you, but covered over. Since he chose now to live fully as a man, this required that certain aspects of his deity would have to stay hidden. To be a man, for example, he would have to accept the limitations of being at one place at one time, of learning new things as he grew from infancy to manhood, of experiencing hunger, thirst, tiredness, and weakness as all human beings do, and so on. Given this, are we required to say that Jesus gave up these qualities of his deity? No, and again I say, no! Rather, we say that Christ willingly gave up the rightful use of some of the abilities of his divine nature in order to experience fully his life now as a man. So, while he was in nature fully God, yet in order to live in nature fully as a man, he gave up the expression or exercise of some of his divine abilities. He did not give up those divine abilities themselves. In this way, Christ emptied himself by adding; there was a subtraction of the use of certain aspects of his deity by taking on the full experience of his humanity. And why? All for the purpose of humbling himself to become our servant, a full human being who would obey his Father to the point of death, even death on the cross. What a humbling he underwent. What a Savior he is!"
-Bruce Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts, pg. 111-113
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