The Man Christ Jesus (part 1)

Why do you suppose that it's important to study the humanity of Jesus? We talk a lot about the deity of Christ, that he is fully

God. Why is it important to understand his humanity? Well, apparently it's not.

Oh, Charlie. Okay.

He had to be like us in order to be our high priest. And so this morning

I want to begin to answer this question. How fully formed and informed is your Christology?

That is, your understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the reasons that we want to study this is really to kind of combat the heresy, the ancient heresy that Scott taught on Gnosticism, which would teach that Jesus was a spirit only, didn't have a human body, because to the ancient

Greek mind, the human form was inherently sinful. The spiritual, that is, that we cannot see, was good.

This is what Plato taught. It's called Neoplatonic dualism.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I stayed up all night last night memorizing that. So anyway.

Yeah, moving right along. Gnosticism. I mean, we still have some.

I always default back to my jail days. I don't know why that is. But Christian scientists are the

Gnostics of our day. Okay. And you say, what's a Christian scientist? I'll put it this way.

These ladies who would come in and visit the inmates. Janet was there at the jail bringing me my lunch because I was working overtime.

And these two ladies came outside. And I knew they were Christian science chaplains or whatever.

And, you know, one of them asked me. I've told this story, but I just love this so much, because I could picture it as clear as day.

This lady comes up to me and she says, Senior, because I've got the stripes on my arm, she says, Senior, what kind of tree is that pointing out to this tree outside the jail?

And I said, I was tired. I was rude. I was being nicely rude.

But I went over to it and I said, is there a tree there? And I was kind of, because they deny the reality of everything around us.

You know, if you're sick, you're not really sick. It's a spiritual illusion. There are no such things as illness and trees and all this other stuff.

So they are the Gnostics of our day. I actually found a website called

Gnostic Christianity Today. And you say, what's the difference between that and Christianity Today?

And to be honest, I don't know. Thank you. Thank you very much. I read it.

There was nothing really worthwhile on it, but I just thought it was funny that I found it. This is from the Let Us Reason Together website about Gnosticism.

But listen to this. The Christian form of Gnosticism, that's Gnosticism and Christianity put together here, taught that Jesus' body was not a real body.

It was really a spirit. He only appeared in human form and only appeared to suffer.

It was an illusion. Thus, Jesus could be a pure spiritual being, remember, good, spirit, good, in the midst of an evil world because the physical world was bad and not be contaminated by it.

Jesus only appeared to have flesh, which denied his genuine humanity. They believed if Christ suffered, he could not be divine because God cannot suffer.

Instead, the Bible says that God descended into sinful matter and took on human flesh.

It was real and this they could not believe. You can see this error in cults today when they refuse to believe that the

Bible teaches that God became a man. So, that's wrong.

And on the other end of the spectrum is really what heresy. If you have

Gnosticism on one end, what's the other end? Denying the deity or the more common name, it doesn't really deny the deity, but it says that Arianism says that he was,

Jesus was created. So, you have the Jehovah's Witnesses, the

Mormons and others who would say that. I mean, it's interesting, you know, Mormons say that he was born a man and then became

God. That's problematic. And then they offer you the same opportunity. Isn't that nice?

So, those are the two ends of the spectrum and the problems. But as Charlie said earlier, and really the

Bible stresses this truth, the humanity of Jesus, he had to be our high priest.

Let's look at Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2, verses 16 through 18.

And if somebody would read those verses, please. Hebrews 2, verses 16 -18. Jesus knows and he experienced what it means to be tempted.

The temptations were real. The things that he felt were real. But he did not sin.

He has full identification with us, but he did not sin. Listen to what Simon Kistemacher says. He says in this passage, the writer of Hebrews explains the necessity of Christ's identification with man.

In order to be of help to sinful men, Jesus had to become like his brothers in all but one way.

He was sinless. Full identification was necessary. He was under divine obligation to become like his brothers.

And I like the way he says that, divine obligation, and we'll develop that more. This was something he was obligated to do in order to obey the

Father. But look even back at that passage there. A merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people, to satisfy, to make an acceptable sacrifice that God would say,

I am satisfied, I am no longer angry for the sins of my people.

Now Ware in his book says this, when he's struggling with this whole idea of, you know, be like Jesus.

What would Jesus do? He wasn't thinking that because it wasn't cool back then when he was a child. But this whole idea of what would

Jesus do, let's follow in the footsteps of Jesus, etc., etc., etc. In fact, I would argue, he got to this at age 10.

For me, it was age 16 and 17 and 18 in the Mormon church where I'm just like, wait a minute. I'm supposed to be like Jesus.

I'm supposed to attain this sinless perfection in this life.

That's what I'm supposed to do. That's Mormonism. Don't worry about it, my friend said.

Don't worry about it. You'll eventually stop sinning. You'll learn and you'll grow and you'll mature.

And one day you'll look and just think, I'm done with sin. I could never wrap my head around that.

Listen to how Ware describes it. In my 10 -year -old mind, listening to this, I just couldn't see how it would be fair then for God to call us to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, especially not to sin or to be angry at others who hurt us.

Since Jesus was God and we are not, if we just focus on Jesus, on his deity, if we just think, well, he's

God, so therefore of course he didn't sin, then what are we doing? We're ignoring or we're minimizing his humanity.

He goes on to say, Ware does, I want to present here some of the evidence from the

Old and New Testaments, and we'll see this in the weeks to come, that the human life of Jesus is real and to show how important it is that he lived our life, the life we're supposed to live, in order so that he could die our death and be forever the man

Christ Jesus, from 1 Timothy 2 .5, who intercedes for us and reigns over us.

So that's what we hope to do here in the weeks to come. Ware proposes, Bruce Ware from his book,

The Man Christ Jesus, that's what we're going through, if you didn't see the email. Ware proposes that most evangelicals can explain the deity of Christ, in other words, when the cultists show up at your door, you know, you love to run to Colossians 1 to John 1, good for you, awesome, to show the deity of Christ, because that's where they fall down.

But the emphasis needs to be on more than just the deity of Christ, that's an important doctrine, it's central, but we also need to teach his humanity.

From a website I found with Bruce Ware on it, not only is it incumbent on us to talk about deity and humanity together, because Christ is both

God and man, but also this area of the humanity of Christ is especially important for us evangelicals to think carefully about, because there's been a tendency in the history of the church due to the opposition to focus on the deity of Christ.

So conservative Bible -believing people have defended the deity of Christ and in the process have not given sufficient careful thought to what it means that Jesus was fully human.

Now, what are some of the implications, other than the fact that he can identify with us, what are some of the implications of Jesus being fully human?

What does it mean? Erickson, he died, he actually died, right?

He died a physical death. He could be tempted. I mean, it would be one thing, you know, if he just was a spiritual being and Satan said, you know,

I'm going to make you king of the world and all these things that he promised him when he takes him up to the temple and all the other things they did with him out in the desert, you know, turn this rock into bread and eat and all that kind of stuff.

It would be one thing if he was just a spiritual being and you could understand he's just like, get that out of my way.

I am God and who are you to tempt me? Remove it, remove it. But if he's a man and he's actually hungry and he's a man and he actually understands the lure of controlling nations, having power, having wealth, then the temptation is more understandable.

The pull would be more natural, be harder to overcome. What else?

He learned obedience. He learned obedience. Well, what does that mean?

Does that mean he disobeyed? No. No. It just means that he grew, right?

We're told over and over again that he grew in stature and knowledge. Charlie.

So if he started out, again, not sinful, but not knowing everything, and we're going to get into the kenosis here in a minute, but not knowing everything and having to learn and to grow and to even learn about obedience, what does it mean to obey?

Well, it means we feel the natural pull, the tug of disobedience.

We feel that temptation, but we overcome it. That's what he did.

He overcame it all the time. Yeah, Charlie. Okay, make your additional point.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, he had to relate to us in every way. He had to go through it.

He had to sense it. He had to feel it. And please don't use Latin in this class. Sorry.

Yeah, I think that's right. And it's good to just think about. There was something else that came to my mind while you were saying that.

It is if we consider his 33 years of living. Oh, I know what

I was thinking about. If you know me at all, you know that I am not exactly a handyman.

And I was thinking about this this morning, in light of this book and this teaching. And I was thinking,

Jesus was a carpenter. Now, we're going to have a carpenter coming to our house in a few weeks, and he is going to install a new front door because our old frame is rotting and stuff like that at our house.

Do you suppose that during the construction project that he's going to be doing there, that he will make mistakes?

Okay. Are those mistakes sins? No. No.

Because you can make a mistake, and that's not sinful. Do you suppose he might hurt himself during the process?

I mean, I know if it was me, I would have probably lumps all over my hands by the time we were done, and the door would be some odd shape or another.

But just thinking about this, Jesus, I'm certain of one thing. I mean, we're not told this in Scripture, so this is an argument from silence, which is dangerous.

But I think if you work long enough with your hands, you are going to get injured. Now, just think, the last time you hit your hand with a hammer, or the last time you walked into something in the middle of the night on the floor, you left your weights there, you left the vacuum there, whatever it was, and you hit your toe.

If you didn't say or think anything profane, then what's the next thing that comes to your head?

I know what comes to my head. I'm like, good job, Steve, you didn't think or say anything profane.

33 years, 30 years, many years, I don't know, 20 years as a carpenter, learning to work with his father, then taking over the family business or whatever, never sinned, never gave in to anger, never gave in to temptation.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah, we had a saying on the

Sheriff's Department that you wanted to grab a guy by the stack and swivel, you wanted to give him the heave -ho.

Just imagine explaining things as the greatest teacher who ever lived, you're explaining these things to your disciples, the apostles, and they're still just not getting it.

Now, as a human being, that had to be frustrating, right? And I know that most of you probably have perfect patience, but you just think, the

Lord is sitting there and he's teaching these men and they don't get it. And they stumble and they sin and they err.

I just like to say err. They err. They make mistakes. I remember when

I heard my seminary prof say err, I thought he was wrong, but I erred. So, he never sinned in any way.

And it's pretty amazing if you actually think about the day -to -day life and that's part of what we're going to do. That is so true.

And I mean, even think about getting back to the temptation of Christ, because you were just saying how, you know, and Isaiah said he would eat.

Now, just think about the temptations. He doesn't eat for 40 days. Now, if we just think, well, of course he doesn't eat for 40 days.

He's God. He can do whatever he wants. He can walk on water. He can, you know, open himself and reveal his glory.

He is God. Okay, but this is man. This is a human body actually going through 40 days with no food.

I don't know about you, but I do pretty well for about the first 40 minutes. After that, it's a little bit of a struggle.

Anybody got any food? Difficult. Very, very difficult.

So, yeah. I mean, some of these things, if we just grasp, fully grasp the idea, this is a man.

Is he fully God? Yes. But is he fully man? Yes. And let's not lose sight of that.

Let's see. Yeah. Be the instigator.

That's a great lead -in. We can't fully understand the harmony of the two natures and how they work together.

That is very true. But I want to just read this verse, and then we'll just kind of expand on it as we go through.

Philippians 2 .5 says, have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. We need to have, and that's, you know, walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

Be like Jesus. Think like Jesus. Do what Jesus would do. We don't really see that in Scripture.

Here's what we see. Have the mind of, or have the attitude of Christ, which was what?

One of self -sacrifice. And we're going to expand on that a little bit as we go through. But first, I want to back up just a little.

The incarnate Son, that is to say, the man

Christ Jesus, had a beginning, unlike the eternal Son. Right? This is not to say, don't misunderstand me here.

I'm not saying that Jesus started becoming the Son when He was born. I'm not saying that.

I'm not going away from eternal Sonship here. What I am saying is, in His incarnation, that is, in His humanity,

He has a beginning. His humanity comes from nothing, and continues on.

His eternal Sonship, that is His deity, never stopped, never had a beginning, and will never stop at all.

But the combining of these two natures, anybody know what C .S. Lewis called it? Now, I don't like to quote

C .S. Lewis a lot, because he's got a lot wrong. I was just on a show that aired last night with Tony Miano, and I mentioned

C .S. Lewis held a wrong view of the Atonement, which he said, you know, Jesus paid for our sins, but He paid the debt to, guess who?

Satan. That's wrong. That's just wrong. And you see it in the Chronicles of Narnia movies. I mean, it's very plainly portrayed, that he just had a wrong view of the

Atonement. But C .S. Lewis called this melding of humanity and deity, he called it the

Great Miracle. And it is a great miracle. It's really kind of beyond our capacity to fully grasp this.

Let's turn to Luke chapter 1, and we'll see how the fourth person of the

Trinity responds to... That always takes a minute to sink in anyway, the fourth person of the

Trinity. Luke chapter 1, and we'll begin in verse 26.

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named

Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David.

And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her, that is, Gabriel. He came to her and said,

Greetings, oh, favored one. The Lord is with you. Listen what she says.

But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her,

Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name

Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the

Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

And of his kingdom, there will be no end. And Mary said to the angel,

How will this be since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the

Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the

Son of God. Leon Morris says, Speaking with reverent reserve,

Gabriel says that the Holy Spirit will come upon Mary, and that the power of the Most High will overshadow her.

This delicate expression rules out crude ideas of a mating of the Holy Spirit with Mary, which is something akin to what some would teach, like some

Arians. Gabriel makes it clear that the conception will be the result of divine activity.

Because of this, the child to be born will be Holy, that is separate, the Son of God. We should not miss this explanation of what the

Son of God means. Ware says, The conception of Jesus and the Virgin Mary was unique in the history of humankind.

Even more remarkable than the absence of human involvement was the uniting of the divine and human natures in Jesus.

Fully God, fully man. One person, two natures.

And to Charlie's question, I ask, how do these two natures coexist? How does the infinite, eternal, second person of the

Trinity coexist with the finite humanity of Jesus? How do those two persons go into one being?

I mean, just think about it. When we talk about God, and Jesus is fully God, what does that mean?

That means He is omnipotent, He's all -powerful, and He's omniscient, all -knowing, and He's omni, omni, omni, omni.

He's omnipresent, right? He's everywhere all at once. Now, how does that compare with His humanity?

It's finite. He's not, as a man, everywhere all at once.

He doesn't know everything, and He's not all -powerful. You just go, well, how does this work?

How do these two things go together? It's hard. Hard for us to get.

Whereas the crux of the answer to these questions comes in how Paul expresses the kenosis.

Turn your Bibles to Philippians 2. Who knows what kenosis means? Emptying?

Better is... No, that's gnosis.

This is kenosis. K -E -N -O -S -I -S Emptying is correct, but it's only like 75 % right.

It is self -emptying. Yes, voluntary. He does it.

He does it Himself. Who would read Philippians 2, verses 5 to 8? Bruce.

Now, I want you to suppose for a moment that you are either a

Gnostic or an Arian. Take your pick. You're just a heretic.

You read that passage, and how do you explain that, holding your own heretical view?

Let's say, let's start with the Gnostic. In other words, you think that Jesus is only spirit, and that He only appeared to take on a human form.

How do you explain your heresy in light of that passage? Do your best. He limited

His revelation of Himself to man. Ah, taking on only the form of a man.

Okay. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? I mean, look at it. Ah, though He was in the form of God, did not account of quality.

Listen, He took on the form of a servant. What did you say?

Oh, you're on to something there. Okay, now let's try from the other... Let's say you're an

Arian. In other words, you think Jesus is a created being. How do you read that, and then defend your theory?

I think it's harder, actually, as an Arian, than it is as a Gnostic. Because as a Gnostic, you use all that form language, and you're just going to say, look,

He just appeared to be this. Of course, you might run into problems as the

Gnostic when you say, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even fake death.

No, that wouldn't work, really. It's not hard to be obedient if you're going to pretend to die.

Well, let's see what Ware has to say here. He says... And again, it hits on what

Charlie said. He says the first term that we're going to look at is morphe. It's translated in the

ESV form. You see it right there in your text. Though He was in the form of God.

When we think of that word form, we tend to think of, you know, if you...

If you say, well, you know, He's a fine form of a man, well, what would you think? You wouldn't think of anything other than outward appearance.

You know, you might think He was Adonis or some, you know, awesome -looking guy.

If you say fine form, you're talking about the physical presence or the way somebody does something, something of that nature.

But He says when you think of Plato and the forms, that's often what comes to mind when you think of these forms.

Not the way we would view it in the English world, the facade of something. We must not... Or we must think of the form the way that Plato did.

But even for Plato, the form was the essence of something. In the ancient

Greek world, that's what it meant. It meant it was the essence of something. So, contextually,

He emptied Himself in Philippians 2 .7. He emptied Himself, taking on the form of a bondservant.

He didn't take on the appearance of a bondservant, but He took on...

And really, for those of you who read MacArthur's book, you know that should be slave. He didn't take on the form, meaning just outward appearance, but it was the essence of who

He was. He was taking on the essential nature of being a slave. He took on the essential nature of being a man.

He took on human nature in its entirety. It wasn't a facade, which would mean

He came looking like a servant, acting like a servant, but He was anything... Or just acting like a servant, but He was anything but a servant.

It can't be that. This is where, again, He says the whole point of this passage is that He came in the form of servant, the likeness of men.

He was obedient unto death, even death on the cross. What is the point of this as regards servants?

It is that He took on the essential nature of a servant. The context drives you to the conclusion that He had the very essence of a servant in His incarnate state.

So, form is used in both places. Verse 6, form of God. And verse 7, form of a bondservant, meaning

He took on the essential nature. He had the essential nature of God, and then

He took on the essential nature of a bondservant. Now, again, look at Philippians 2 .6.

Did not regard equality with God. You know, something to be grasped.

Well, what does that indicate to us? It means He was equal with God.

Just as it said He existed in the form of God. In other words, He had God's very nature.

And it says that He did not view equality with God a thing to be held on to. It means He was equal with God.

What can be equal to God except God? Nothing. God has no equals.

He has no competitors. Nothing that can be held up to Him that is like Him. Again and again in Isaiah, He says what?

I am God, there is no other. But someday there will be. No, there can't be anybody else.

There can't be anybody else. So here is Christ referring to a one who is equal with God and that obviously indicates deity.

He is God. Now, let's talk about the kenosis. The verb is actually a kenosen from which we get this doctrine, the kenosis doctrine, the self -emptying.

He emptied Himself. And it literally means He poured Himself out. And I'm going to get to that in a minute so I don't want to skip to it.

The term is a fairly common one. It's used in the Greek language to represent pouring out water out of a pitcher.

It is not a complicated theological term at all. Its normal usage is just to pour something out.

So what is this pouring out? What is Jesus pouring out? Where it says, let's put the pieces together.

Here we have God who always existed in the form of God, the second person, the Trinity, who doesn't consider

His equality something that needs to be clutched or grasped. And some people have drawn from this notion that He did not regard equality with God as something to be retained, but emptying

Himself, that He emptied Himself by pouring out His deity, that He gave up His deity, that He set aside

His deity, or that He gave up His attributes of deity. And I read that and I thought, if you've ever wondered why we don't like the, what's the hymn number?

It's like 20 something or other. And can it be the one that's in the hymnal?

One of the reasons we don't like it, and I think it's like 202 or something like that, it says that He emptied

Himself, this is talking about the kenosis, 203, emptied Himself of all but love.

He poured out Himself of every attribute that He had, except love.

Well, that's not really true. That's not true at all, as we'll see. And that's one of the reasons we don't like it, because it's just not a correct representation of that doctrine.

Charlie? Yeah, you could be right.

I mean, it just kind of makes me a little, because the most well -known kenosis passage would be

Philippians 2. So, yeah. So, Ware goes on to say, he goes, now, this is a new heresy for you.

It's called, not hypnotic, but kenotic. It's the kenotic heresy. It is a prominent view in the 19th century in particular.

Many liberals have held it. It holds that when Christ became a man, He gave up being God. This is not what this passage is saying.

Notice it does not say that He emptied Himself or poured Himself out by pouring something out of Himself.

It doesn't say that He emptied something out of Himself, removed something from Himself. It says

He emptied Himself. The point is, it was all of who He was that is poured out.

And all of who He was is poured out into what? And he gives credit, by the way,

Bruce Ware does, to Gerald Hawthorne on his commentary on Philippians. He poured

Himself out. Here, he says, it's an interesting kind of subtraction,

Hawthorne says. He poured Himself out by adding, by taking. He poured Himself out by adding and taking what?

A new nature, that is, humanity. So then he asks this question.

He says, well, how could pouring out or emptying or, you know, basically subtracting oneself lead to a new nature?

And he says, well, or, you know, having a new nature in addition to his old nature, the two natures now in the one person.

And he says, let me give you two illustrations. The first illustration is a good one of emptying by adding, but it is not a good illustration of Christ, per se.

The second one is closer to the real thing. So his first illustration is, he says, let's say you go to a car lot, and naturally, like me, you go to the most expensive car on the lot and you want to take it for a test drive.

I don't do that. I'd be scared to death to do it. But let's say you just go to the car dealer. You say, well, hey, that's a nice 2015

Lamborghini. I'd like to take it for a little spin. And, you know, after the requisite credit check, you know, leaving a couple kids with the cashier or whatever, you go on this test drive.

And you say, you know what, this is so much fun. Would you mind if I went on this country road a little bit? He says, sure.

So you're driving along and it, you know, it gets a little muddy and you're just having a fun time. Look at how this thing handles in the mud.

And, you know, it's just like, it's just throwing mud up all over the car, right? Now, when you get back to the car dealership, assuming there's no other damage, have you damaged the car?

And the answer is no, you've actually added to it. You know, he says, look, you owe me a couple thousand dollars.

You say, for what? I said, look, I gave you some mud. Lighten up. When Jesus comes to earth, he adds by subtracting.

He adds this new limited nature, which is a lesser, you know, it's like a, it's a lesser model.

Nevertheless, he has added to himself by limiting, by limiting himself,

I guess you could say. He's added a new nature, but his new nature is limited. And he points to John 1, 14, the word became flesh, the eternal word became flesh and dwelled among us.

And we saw his glory, glory as of the begotten from the father, full of grace and truth. Now, I'll skip over that.

Let's go to the second illustration here. And he says, and this is the one he says is more right.

And I think this is pretty, pretty good because it also reminds me of Matthew 22.

He says, suppose there's a mighty and rich king who is ruler over a magnificent country.

And as he's going through the streets of one particular city in his kingdom, he's struck by some of the poorer people there, the beggars, the people who live in rags.

And he thinks to himself, I wonder what it's like to live like that.

I wonder what it's like to be one of these poor people who have to beg for food, who have to struggle to survive.

And so he decides that he is going to put on regular clothes, nasty clothes, throwaway clothes, stuff the

Salvation Army is throwing out the back door. And he's going to go live like that. When he's hungry, he's going to beg for food.

He's going to live just like poor people do. When he is insulted, when he's shoved aside, instead of summoning the guards to protect him, to throw the people who do this in jail, he's just going to suffer through it.

When he does that, and he looks like somebody who's been living on the street for a while, what's he going to do when somebody abuses him, beats him up?

And this illustration helps us to see that the king doesn't have to give up any attributes of kingship.

He doesn't have to give up his throne. He doesn't have to give up being a king. He doesn't have to give up rights of his kingship.

But he gives up the rightful use of his privileges and abilities that he has as king in order to live like one of the common people.

And the point of all this is to say that Christ, in taking on human form to be like one of us, poured himself out, all of who he is, into that baby in a manger.

All of his deity is there, but he takes on full humanity. He cloaks his deity in humanity.

He takes that Lamborghini and covers it in mud. But he has full exercise of...

He could exercise all of his attributes, all of his power, but he chooses not to.

He lays it aside. When that happens, aspects of deity which could not be expressed are hidden.

Just like the beggar, he must willingly relinquish the use or expression of those attributes in order to live life as one of us.

Where it says, I take one of those that he gave up, not the attribute in his divine nature, talking about his consciousness, that his ability to think or to know everything, and he doesn't exercise that all the time.

One place in the Gospel account you can think that this is true is where you see Jesus had a way of thinking a desire that was different from the

Father, is the Garden of Gethsemane. Think of what Jesus said, Father, if you are willing to let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not what

I will, but what you will be done. I think in a very real sense, we see the two natures of Jesus there.

We see in his humanity, he's not looking forward to this, but he says he's willing to submit himself.

But that prayer has absolutely no meaning whatsoever unless there's a real human being being tempted and suffering.

He lived life where it says, not as some ultimate schizophrenic split in half, but he lives life in a holistic way, one mind, one will, one set of desires, one internal experience.

In that internal experience, certain aspects of his divine attributes are not allowed their expression.

For example, he doesn't know everything. He has to learn bit by bit through life. He acquires this and this causes him to grow.

He acquires knowledge and it causes him to grow. He doesn't know everything. He learns what the Father wants him to.

Maybe the Spirit is the governor in this, in terms of what is brought to him and what is not.

Perhaps the Spirit governs just the right amount of what he has to know and other things that he has not to know.

By that he experiences life as one of us from the beginning to the end. Be careful how we say that, relinquishing the use of or the expression of.

In other words, we want to be careful how we talk about laying aside of his attributes. We need to stop there.

But this, again, this is no small subject and it really can influence the way we read

Scripture as we read, in particular, the Gospels and we understand that the things that he's going through are very genuine, that he has very genuine emotions for his disciples, for the people that he's talking to.

This is not some dispassionate God, but this is a man who is also

God, who is experiencing emotions and experiencing temptation and experiencing all the trials and difficulties of life.

We need a closing prayer. Father, thank you for your sure word, for what it reveals about our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Father, it is amazing to think that he would obey, leaving his throne, leaving your side, leaving the perfect fellowship that he had with you and the

Holy Spirit to come to earth, to live as we do, to suffer as we do, to experience all of life as we do, to be tempted as we are and yet to never fail.

And Father, we praise you for him, for his perfect life, for his substitutionary death and his resurrection.