If Jesus is God, Why Did he Pray?

The Deity and Humanity of Christ

In this brief video we're gonna be covering the question of if Jesus is God, why did he have to pray? Okay, that's a I think that's a good question and it forces us to dive into kind of Christian theology 101, right?

Within Christianity, within Christian theology, we believe that Jesus is God in human flesh, right? John 1 1, John 1 14, John 1 1, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Verse 14, you jump down to verse 14, it says, and the Word became flesh. That's speaking of Jesus, right? Jesus also refers to himself as God in various places, especially within the Gospel of John and other places he's referred to as our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and in the book of Titus.

We believe that Jesus is God, but Christians do not ignore the verses which speak about his humanity, right? From the Christian perspective, Jesus is the God-man, okay? You know, people will say something to the effect that, you know, God, can God get tired?

Answer, no. Well, is Jesus God? Yes. Did Jesus get tired? Yes. And so therefore it follows that Jesus isn't God, right? We have to understand that from a biblical perspective, especially when we're doing something like systematic theology, when we do systematic theology and biblical theology, we want to know what the Bible says in its entirety about any given topic.

And so we do not just highlight and isolate certain verses that pertain to the deity or the humanity of Christ, ignoring the verses which speak about his divinity. And we don't do the opposite. We don't do vice-versa, focusing only on the divine verses to the exclusion of his humanity, okay?

Jesus Under the Law and the Need for Sinless Obedience

I think I got that right. We want to take what all the Bible says, especially in regards to what Jesus was doing. We believe that he's the God-man, and Jesus was born under the law, Galatians 4 .4, and as being born under the law, he had to obey the law.

He had to obey the law perfectly so he can be a sinless sacrifice on behalf of sinners, right? Because we know that Jesus obeyed the law perfectly. He was without sin, 1 Peter 2 .22. And because he was without sin, he was able to bear our sins in his body on the cross, 1 Peter 2 .24, okay?

The Trinity and Christ's Prayer to the Father

So in short, why did Jesus have to pray if he was God in flesh? Well, first, we want to back up and understand that within a biblical perspective, God is a trinity. God is one being who exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What we have here is the person of the Son praying to the person of the Father, and the person of the Son within Christian theology has added unto him a human nature. And during his earthly ministry, as the Bible says, he was made a little while lower than the angels.

He functioned within the limitations of of that humanity, right? And of course, he lived a perfect life, died on our behalf, and now salvation is offered or salvation is offered to men, right? So that's the reason why Jesus did many things, even as God.

He obeyed the law. He went to the temple. He would have, you know, participated in the festivals and the sacrifices and things like that because he was a faithful Jew. And being born under the law, he had to obey the law, okay?

Jesus as the Second Adam and Perfect Obedience

So, again, that's just a quick kind of explanation. I know, again, there's probably more questions that one might ask, but go ahead and ask them. This is kind of a brief explanation, but we need to understand that within Christian theology, Jesus is truly God and truly man, and we do not ignore those passages in Scripture which highlight both of those truths.

And as a man, we understand that he was born under the law and functioned faithfully. Jesus Christ did what the first Adam failed to do, right? We have the first Adam in the garden, and Jesus is called the second Adam.

Now, the first Adam failed in the garden because he disobeyed God, but the second Adam, Jesus Christ, did what the first Adam failed to do. Namely, he lived a life of perfect obedience, making himself a worthy sacrifice upon the cross.