Vos: "the word 'came' is...suggestive of a previous sphere and state which he exchanged for our world"

"'The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost'...the word 'came' is in itself suggestive of a previous sphere and state which he exchanged for our world, a sphere and state wherein no seeking nor saving was required, because there all live secure and blessed in God. But much more suggestive is this word when coupled with the name 'Son of Man.' It is not accidental that our Lord makes use of this self-designation in a connection like this. Elsewhere also we read that 'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom' (Mt. 20:28). And in a number of other passages the title is associated with his abode in the world of heaven, whence he descended to these lower regions of ours. In the prophecy of Daniel, where first the phrase 'Son of Man' is used to describe the Messiah, twice a 'coming' is affirmed of the Person so designated: 'There came with the clouds of heaven One like unto a son of man, and He came even to the Ancient of Days' (Dan. 7:13). Now, while our Lord often identifies the 'coming' thus described with his return to judgment, yet he likewise once and again retrospectively associates it with his first advent, when he came out of the glory he had with the Father before the world was.

"Being told, therefore, that it was the 'Son of Man,' who came to seek and to save, our first thought surely should be of that unspeakable grace of our Lord, who, being rich as God alone can be rich, yet for our sake became poor as sinful man only can be poor, that by his poverty we might be made rich. The depth to which this seeking and saving brings him down should be measured by the distance there is between the highest in God and the lowest in man. To lodge with publicans and sinners might be condescension for a high-placed personage—what language will express its meaning in the case of the infinite God? The 'Son of Man,' who unites in himself all that Deity and humanity together can lend of glory to the Messianic state, he it is who came to seek and to save the lost. It was such a glorious life that was wholly given up to its very last thought, poured out to the very last residue of its strength, and that for the task of helping us, the lowest of us, who would have turned away from one another, because the sinful felt it a degradation to stoop to such as were a degree more sinful than they acknowledged themselves to be. When we combine this consciousness of ineffable glory sacrificed with the consciousness of absolute surrender to the service of the most despised, then, and only then, do we begin to understand somewhat of the indignation with which Jesus repudiated the charge, brought by sinful men, that it was unworthy of him to associate with publicans and sinners. With superhuman dignity the one word 'Son of Man' silences that voice of murmuring in the streets of Jericho, and every echo, we may add, of that same voice from any quarter, or any age, when it presumes to criticize the gospel of Christ on the ground that it speaks in accents of the sovereign grace of God." -- Geerhardus Vos, "Seeking and Saving the Lost"