Treading on the precipice of mystery | Clip from Hebrews III: The Offering of the Body of Jesus

The Humanity and Growth of Christ

Now, we mentioned this in a previous podcast, Luke 1 .52, one of those wonderful summary statements that Luke gives us about the ministry of Christ. But this is before his ministry, about his humanity, the four-fold growth of Christ there.

And it mentions that he grows intellectually. When we talk about the growth of Christ, we're not saying that he is a man who is so holy and by the help of God and by God's favor, he grows and grows and grows and reaches a place where he kind of crosses over from being one of us to being son of God.

Not that.

Right.

Not that.

Not that at all. We're not talking about sinful imperfection in the humanity of Christ, sinful ignorance, none of that. But what we are talking about is really quite a shocking for us who have hoped in him, quite a shockingly clear picture of something that we may not have spent time considering.

And that is, he is truly man, not just truly God. And therefore, in God providing a representative, a mediator, the final Adam, he gives us himself uniting his son to our humanity. But that humanity, it has to grow.

So he really is born in the womb of Mary. He is taught by Mary or Joseph and how to walk, how to clothe yourself, how to eat. We can understand that, but when it comes to the spiritual aspects, it gets a little trickier for us.

We get bothered.

Christ's Messianic Self-Awareness in the Scriptures

So you're saying, here's what we're saying, that God gave his son on earth the same means that he gives us and the son is perfectly responsive. And at each stage in life, he is perfect. But as a five-year-old, he is not a perfect adult.

And so if he would have died at five, you know, the hypothetical, then we're without.

Hope.

He must come to a point where the father says, you are now the perfectly suited mediator.

It would be joyful, glorious, and personally beneficial to continue to talk on that theme.

A lot.

I would like to add just a few thoughts, and I'm sure those could lead you to adding more, and we could go back and forth a lot on this theme. It is treading on the precipice of mystery, right? There are things, there are secrets which belong to the Lord, but it is clear that what you're saying is a radically biblical truth of faithful biblical Christology.

He did not become the son of God. He did not grow into a point where the father approved him as an adequate Savior. We're not saying that. But the Scriptures do teach that the Lord Jesus, though divine, increased in his, I guess I would say messianic self-awareness.

He didn't become the Messiah. He grew in his awareness. How did he do that? Hebrews 5 gives us a picture of one of his quiet times in Psalm 110. And it says, the father said to him, what did he say? You're a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek.

And so Jesus is reading Psalm 110 and saying, that's me. It's not that he became that. He grew in his awareness. Well, Hebrews 10, that's what we're saying. We're saying that he read the 40th Psalm, and it says things like, sacrifice an offering you have not desired, but a body you prepared for me.

Behold, in the scroll of the book it's written of me, I delight to do your will. It's like Jesus is saying, I tremblingly understand from Psalm 40 that the reason the eternal second person of the triune God is incarnate is so that I can now die.

No body, no death. That's exactly what Hebrews 2 says, that because the children share in flesh and blood, therefore he likewise partook of the same, flesh and blood, so that through death he could render powerless him who had the power of death, the devil, and free us who through fear of death were subject to slavery all our life.

If he doesn't become incarnate, he can't die. What we're saying is that he grew in his understanding during the incarnation of that why he has a.

Body.

He stood before Pilate and said, for this purpose I've been born. The whole reason I was born, the whole reason I have a body, is so that I could die on a.

Cross.

And so when he resolutely embraced that reality from his reading of the Psalms in the Old Testament, I believe before his public ministry he was 100 aware, he set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem.

He stalked the cross. He hunted the cross. But like you said, he couldn't have died at 5 or 12 or 20 and been an adequate redeemer. Shocking way to say it, he had to fulfill all righteousness and bring that active righteousness that we should have lived to the cross where he died the death that we should have died.

So much to say about that glorious thing, brother.

Christ Interacting with the Word of God

Yeah, but I mean, you know, the picture that we see here of the true humanity of the Son of God interacting with the Word of God is something that we don't often think of. I mean, I think I grew up in church, and if you were to ask me, you know, even in seminary, if someone were to ask me, okay, explain how he interacted with the Word, I would have almost have said, I think there was an invisible antenna that went up from his head and he.

Got direct, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

And I don't get those, but nobody else, but Jesus did because he's God. Well, he is God, but he's also truly man. It is a sweet, deep, but beneficial mystery to see our Lord taking scriptures and being fashioned by their realities, guided by their words.

It does remind me of the passage you just mentioned, Isaiah 50, where it says, morning by morning, the Son speaking about the Father, he awakens me. Morning by morning, he opens my ear. And then he says, and I did not rebel or turn aside, kind of how you translate those Hebrew words, two very different pictures.

One is to, you know, so the picture is Christ before the Father and the Word. You can imagine a passage like Psalm 110 or Psalm 40, you're to be, you are given this body to sacrifice it. Never in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, even the morning he woke up and that was the day he would give his body, never does he rebel and say, not me, nor does he, the other Hebrew word for a sinful response, nor does he quietly sidestep it and kind of let it go and just say, well, we're just not going to talk about that today, Father.

Yeah.

The Perfect Obedience of Christ and a Pattern for Believers

So not only a picture of the beauty of his true humanity and the proof of humanity, but also a perfect pattern for every one of us. We really do appreciate being able to interact with you through the comments.

So if you have questions or just comments you'd like to leave, leave them below and we'll get back to them as we have a chance.