Dvd 07 - Growing Unto Sonship — Art Katz

The Mystery of Incarnation and the Proclaimed Word

For the mystery of the proclaimed word, thank you my God, how any man can approach that responsibility without dread, I don't know. But thank you for the grace, my God, and the great principle of incarnation even in that.

Christ in us, the hope of glory, and that you can speak through our earthen lips. So the whole thing, my God, is caught up in great mystery. We ask the manifestation of it so as to obtain the faith of your people, that what is proclaimed they will fulfill on the same basis by which the word comes to them, through the incarnate Christ.

So bless this time, Lord. Lead us on from the beginning of this morning, we pray, in the unfolding of your great mind and appointed intention for us in these days. Receive our gratitude, Lord, as we look to you for grace upon grace in this remarkable phenomenon of speaking, hearing the word of the living God.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I think we can begin in Philippians chapter 2. It's called the hymn, Paul's hymn of the remarkable self-emptying of Jesus. The Greek word is kenosis, that God emptied himself, which I don't think that we deeply believe.

We unconsciously or otherwise assume that Jesus had divine enablement and access to things that pertain to deity that made his earthly walk different from ours. That we can only admire what he performed, but that he had a special source, being the son of God and God, not available to us.

Well, as I go on, I'm more and more at odds with that view, that he's the patterned son because he lay aside his deity. He would not have been a pattern. He would not have been a model, an encouragement for us to sonship if he had a special access through deity that is not available to us.

So let's just start there from verse 5, where Paul encourages the formerly pagan believers, Philippi, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name, which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, everything in heaven and things in earth, things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

That has got to be a hymn, not just a doctrinal statement, too glorious, needs to be pondered, reflected upon, that it took deity for Jesus to take upon himself the form of a man, that this emptying is itself an exercise of divine power.

If Jesus were not God and sent from the Father, he could not have performed this. But once having performed it, he was on another basis by which to perform his obediences, not different from ours, so that he grew in grace that growth would not have been necessary if he came fully equipped with all of the enablement of deity, but that the scriptures show growth indicates his humanity and appropriation of grace through obedience that formed him as the Son of God.

Jesus’ Growth in Wisdom and Submission

Don't look at me like that, like here comes heresy. I think that this is remarkable. And just looking at early episodes in the life of Jesus, even as a boy, before the commencement of his three and a half year ministry, when he was in Jerusalem for the Passover and got separated from his parents, who finally sensed his absence and returned and found him.

And he explained to them that he had to be about his father's business. I'm trying to find that reference. Anybody have it? I've got two Bibles here. Here it is. In chapter two of Luke, at the end of the chapter from verse 48, and when they saw him, they were amazed.

And his mother said unto him, son, why hast thou dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, how is it that you sought me? Didn't you know that I must be about my father's business?

And they understood not the saying which he spoke unto them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject unto them. But his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.

So even in this early incident, we see the process of growth in Jesus as a son of God. He did not come into the earth complete with all the enablement of deity. He laid that aside. And so he walked and came through a process of growth increasingly to the fulfillment of his messianic call and increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.

He continued to increase, but the word increase indicates growth. And by what means was it obtained? It was obtained by going down with them. Who's the them? The parents who could not understand that he had to be about his father's business.

They were non compus mentis. Even though Mary had visitation from angel and a declaration of what the destiny of the son was that was to be born of her, she did not understand his saying. So when he went down with them, he consigned himself to parents who lacked an appreciation and an understanding of his call.

And his willingness to go down under those conditions was the very key to his growth in stature and grace by going down, by submission to the authority of his parents, by denying himself the gratification of relating to parents who would be knowledgeable about his call and honor him in it.

And he went down into Nazareth, which is the anus of Israel. Can any good thing come out of it? So that statement is a remarkable summation of the principle by which growth comes to Jesus and growth comes to us.

Submission, self-denial is the key to increase in wisdom and in stature. We see this at the baptism. Before I go on to that, in another one of my Bibles, the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, was speaking about John the Baptist, who also was subject to a process of growth.

And then Jesus again increased in wisdom and in years in divine and human favor. Another such act is the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. In the time of the ministry of John the Baptist, when John was astonished that Jesus required to be baptized at his hand, and that I need to be baptized of you when you come to me in Matthew chapter 3, verse 13.

But Jesus answered him, let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness. Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were open to him and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.

And a voice from heaven saying, this is my son, the beloved, with whom I'm well pleased. In the same way that Jesus went down to Nazareth with parents who didn't understand his call, a similar act of humility is going down into the waters of baptism where he had no need in terms of his own personal sin.

But he chose to identify with the sins of the nation by being immersed with them in the place that God has designated as the place of repentance. That's why John the Baptist was astonished. But Jesus said, it's necessary for all righteousness to be fulfilled.

And this act of Jesus, so in keeping with the mind of the father, opened heaven for him and the dove came down and abided upon him. The dove is the Holy Spirit, the statement of power. So I'm going to make a case that every act of obedience by Jesus in keeping with the will of the father brings the blessing of the spirit as the seal of the father's approval of that act and was performed by the power of the spirit.

But in it, something is communicated to Jesus by which he grows in grace and in favor, both with God and with man. There's an increase with every act of obedience because the spirit of God is required in the acts of obedience.

And when the spirit of God is conferred for the enablement of an act that is contrary to man and in keeping with God's character, not only is the power of God imparted, but the character of God because God is the spirit.

And so by the successive and continuing acts of obedience and the impartation of the spirit, Jesus grows in grace and in favor into full sonship and the completion of his messianic task, which as a son is to offer himself without spot and blemish as a sacrifice unto God.

Virtue, Power, and the Moral Formation of Character

A remarkable little glimpse of this comes in Mark when he was in a crowd of people and people were pressing upon him from every side. And this woman who had that conditioned for 12 years, which no physician could heal, pressed upon Jesus and said, if I can only touch his garment, I shall be whole.

Chapter 5 of Mark, verse 28, 29, straight away the fountain of her blood was dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press and said, who touched my clothes?

The word virtue is translated in other versions of this episode as power. But I'm happy that the Elizabethan translators in this gospel retained an ancient word that stands for power, but suggests something more.

It suggests character, as if the power that was resident in Jesus was not some magical endowment, but a cumulative increase of God relative to his virtue, relative to his character, relative to his walk and to his obedience.

Because if he felt a measure of it go out from him, it means also that there must have been occasion when it came into him. So the question is, how did Jesus acquire virtue or power? And that the issue of power is the issue of virtue or the issue of character, which we have separated in our charismatic generation.

In fact, we have been so taken up and mesmerized by power, we haven't even asked or looked for or required the issue of character. And therefore we put ourselves in a place of deception and following after men because they perform impressive things or appear to, and then later we're shocked when they fall.

But the Lord in his great wisdom keeps in harmony the issue of character and power. So virtue, I'm happy for that word, and it's hardly ever used in our own conversation, but leave it to Oswald Chambers to pick up on it.

Excuse me as I fumble and bumble my way through. I've got places marked which somehow disappear when you need them. Here. If you have my utmost for his highest, you can make a note of the date, December 4th, and he entitles his selection, The Law of Antagonism, because virtue is always going to be opposed.

The earth, the world is inhospitable to righteousness. So virtue is not obtained in some kind of vacuum, but in a contention or striving against the spirit of the world, of iniquity, of evil, of self-seeking.

To stand for virtue and to acquire virtue is a contest and a struggle of a moral kind that builds the character of God and the one who stands for it. So when Jesus said that he needs to be baptized, that all righteousness be fulfilled, he was talking about a moral condition and a moral requirement that he could not explain, but he intuited that his identification with Israel's sin by coming into the waters of baptism was a moral thing.

It was an identification appropriate to a son who's called to be Israel's messiah and cannot perform that messiahship in some kind of isolation or independence or superiority to the people to whom he has come as high priest.

The high priest has got to identify with the sin of the people, though he himself is sinless, and that's righteousness. It's a moral component, and when the Holy Spirit came upon him, it's a statement of the Father's favor.

This is my beloved son. Something was imparted to Jesus of the life of God that enables him to grow in grace and stature and then go into the wilderness again to be tested. So on December 4th, Chambers says, morally it is the same.

Everything that does not partake of the nature of virtue is the enemy of virtue in me, and it depends on what moral caliber I have, whether I overcome and produce virtue. Immediately I fight, struggle, contend.

I am moral in that particular. No man is virtuous because he cannot help it. Virtue is acquired. Jesus felt the virtue go out of him as power to heal, but how did it come into him? By standing for righteousness and for the things that are moral and acquired in his walk and conduct.

So what's the significance? That the same means by which he grew in grace and in stature is the means by which we grow. By every act that is moral, that is contended against, that requires an exertion, that requires the enablement of God and obedience, pleasing in his sight requires the Spirit because the Spirit is given to them that obey him.

Not obey him for trifles that we can perform out of our own humanity, but obey him in requirements that are contrary to our humanity and that are keeping with the spirit of the world. God never calls us to what we can perform in ourselves.

The obediences are of an ultimate kind that glorify him and stand for righteousness in a world that is inhospitable, hostile, therefore God gives the Spirit to those who obey him. And in giving the Spirit, the person who is obeying is not only receiving the power for that obedience, but the character of God that resides in his spirit because the Spirit of God is not an abstract energy, just a source of empowerment.

It is empowerment, but it is also God, and his nature and character is in his life in the Spirit. So by the multiple and frequent exercises of obedience and righteousness for virtue, the character of God is being formed unto a son.

Got the picture? You don't believe it, or you don't desire it, and in fact you would prefer to believe that Jesus has a magical source that we can only admire from a distance, but never hope ourselves to emulate or to obtain.

If that were so, he would not be the pattern son. He's the pattern son because he has no advantage other than that which is available to us, which is obtained on the basis of obedience over the issues that are moral, that are demanding and requiring, for which the world is hostile and opposed.

So it takes something to go down into the Jordan. It takes something to go down into Nazareth with parents who don't understand him, and Nazareth being the lowest point morally in Israel. And then the next verse says, having gone down, he grew in grace and stature with God and with men.

Obedience Through Moral Crisis

The act of going down, that moral choice was the key to the growth, and so is it also with us. Back to Forsyth. On his book, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, he writes, page 349, he grew in the grace in which he always was.

And in the knowledge of it, as his personal history enlarged and ripened by every experience, and as he was always found equal to each moral crisis, the latent Godhead became more and more mighty as his life's interior and asserted itself with more power as the personality grew in depth and scope.

That's a remarkable paragraph that I'll repeat and try and take it apart. But the first word is, he grew. He grew in stature. He grew in sonship. He was ripe when the time of his crucifixion came. He had come to a fullness of maturity in his character and life, or else he could not have been the fit and appropriate sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

It was not automatic. It was not magical. It came through a process in a world that was contending against him by every moral choice that he made came the provision for growth in grace. And we have lost this key entirely.

We've lost the word moral. We don't think of in terms of growth and increase by acts of obedience by which God confers not only the power and the enablement, but the character of his life. Something stature is increased by every act that's cumulative.

So if we keep ourselves safe and have timid Christian lives and don't open ourselves for the requirements of God that are frightening and just want to live a narrow prescriptive life that makes no demand, we lose every opportunity for growth in virtue and in the character of sons.

And that accounts for our immaturity, our weakness, and our lack of being the impressive witness and testimony that God expects for the church to be formed in the image of the pattern son. Got the idea?

Like if you knew what it means to come and begin tonight or this morning or to continue is an act of obedience in which the dimensions are unknown, unfamiliar, for which all previous speaking and experience does not fit you.

This is altogether new and radical and a requirement. The stakes are high. This is more than a meeting. This is more than a little successful country outing. Something of an ultimate kind is being propounded, not only for those of us who are here, but those who will see and hear through the tapes and the recordings so that the man who's on the spot has got to say with Paul who is sufficient for these things.

And everything that is natural in that man wants to stay in his room, locked in safe with his books and just enjoy his own privacy and not risk and come to the place of this kind of requirement that cannot be performed except by the enablement of God by spirit.

But in believing and performing as raw and ratchety and awkward as this is, something is happening. The word becomes event more than instruction. And remarkably, something happens to the man who allows himself to be that servant and used in all of the fright and dread of being able to bear the word of God, which is to say, I am going to increase in sonship by virtue of my obedience to be here and to speak uncertain things that are untested in which we're finding our way message by message.

Got the idea? It's a moral challenge where the temptation is to play it safe, speak the familiar thing that will assure blessing rather than take the risk of the uncertain. That can prove transcendent and immeasurable in value both in time and eternity.

So you see how I'm jerking and turning from one source to another? Because I don't have this down. I'm feeling my way through something not just for your sake but for my own. But the fact that I'm willing is a moral choice that imparts to me an enablement by the grace of God by his spirit.

But not only am I receiving that grace, I'm receiving the character and nature of God with the spirit so that I will be something more in Australia because we have had these days together in New Zealand.

And you're receiving a greater benefit because I have already been obedient in Singapore before coming to you. So whatever our life, whether we're speakers, however we are obedient to the requirements of God and open to the demands of God, we are in the process of growth and enlargement as sons and daughters of the Most High.

It's not magic. It's process of growth through obedience in a grace which is given by which I'm repeating myself over and over. Not only is the empowerment given for the obedience but in the giving of the spirit is the giving of God.

It's what he is in himself. His nature and character is conferred in that measure to the person who's obedient. And that's how Jesus had virtue. He, that the mere touching of his body brought a healing because the other versions say the power went out from him.

Yes, the power, it was power to heal. But it was power that came through moral obedience in the following of the father and his will at the cost to himself. There was increase. So we need to become conscious of virtue.

The word needs to be restored and that the issue of power is also the issue of character. And if we ever allow the two to become separated, we're throwing the church into a dangerous condition of just being intoxicated by the display of power without having as much concern for its source and the character of him through whom the display comes.

Got the idea? That's the road to deception. May we be as insistent upon character as we are desirous of power and never allow the two to be separated. It was not separated for Jesus. It was not separated for Paul.

Paul says, you know what manner of man I was among you from beginning to end? No one can accuse me of in any way bilking the church, taking advantage. You know what manner of man. And before God is my witness and men.

Paul was bold in the declaration of his own character. And is it no accident that he also displayed apostolic authority and power in proportion to the manner of man that he was in God? That's the apostolic formula, different from the charismatic propensity that is hungry for power.

Why? Because we're bored, because the church is gray, because we need some kind of an excitement or stirring because we have not ourselves been walking consistently in the way of the Lord and the process of growth to maturity and sonship.

And we need a compensation as excitement. See, it's a very different perspective as against the example that Jesus gave as parent son and Paul following as in the apostolic way. So let me read this paragraph again.

He grew, I love that word, in the grace which he always was. So to speak, he became what he was. He became the son of God by his own conduct and virtue and character. He attained what he was by his true origin, but he didn't come with it as a finished product and say, here I am, and you can admire me, but you can't hope to emulate me.

He lay aside what he later obtained through a process of growth through obedience. We're going to need to hear this tape again and again until this begins to filter in as his personal history enlarged and ripened by every experience.

Could that statement be made of you? Do you have a personal history that is ripened and enlarged by every experience? So that what happened to you in Singapore, when you stuck your face out and took the risk of speaking from Psalm 51 on the nature of man and sin in a favored environment where last time you were there they fell all over you, and now you're risking the loss of that relationship by an untested message that they will not likely be able to understand being Chinese?

That obedience brought more for you in the enlargement that came to me through that obedience, and this obedience, as I've said, will redound to the benefit of Australians, and my obedience is in Australia, which I cannot even now foresee what the requirement will be as I didn't foresee this.

I didn't come yesterday with a ground plan. I just came. But the obedience in Australia will redound to the benefit of the believers in Africa. And so it goes. And the process of growth in the personal history which we have, by which we are enlarged and ripened by every experience.

So I shared with someone today that this, was it this morning before we left where we were, a brother who has known me over the years, he said, Art, he said, your wine has mellowed, something like that.

This last wine is the best wine. I remember you from early years. I was blessed. I was impressed. I was touched. But now, he says, the wine has matured, you know, it's passed through something, and it's visible, and I'm tasting something and receiving a benefit of a kind that was not available when you were younger in the Lord.

I'm receiving now the benefit of the mellowing of that vintage by the successive experiences that you've had in obedience since I have seen you last and over the years. Praise God for that. I'm not boasting myself, saints.

I'm just wanting you to be encouraged that there's a process of growth available to us all if we're open to obedience to the things to which we're called by God, which are contrary to the flesh, will likely not be understood by those with whom we are even close.

We may even have to offend our parents or our wives as Jesus himself did because his mother appeal was, how could you hurt us like this and stay away, and we have to come find you? So she's making the Jewish mother appeal, which is powerful, and to the flesh and to the soul, how could you?

She's putting the guilt trip on him. But he let that bounce off him like the proverbial word of a duck's back, but the answer, don't you know? I have to be about my father's business. It doesn't matter how it hurts you.

It doesn't matter that I'm unable to explain to you. It doesn't matter that you're unable to appreciate this call of mine. I must obey and fulfill in obedience the things to which I'm called, even if it hurts you to the quick.

Many of us will bark exactly at that point. When it comes to our own flesh, there we draw the line. How can I do this and offend my own children, my own wife, my family? They'll not understand. They'll misconstrue.

I'll be looked upon as radical or forfeiting the faith. I don't know, whatever form it takes. That's why the Levites were consecrated in the day when they stood on the Lord's side and strapped the sword onto their sides and went in and out of the camp, and every man slew his friend, his brother, and his neighbor.

They had to cut flesh. They had to slay what was closest, or they would not have been ordained as the Levitical priesthood. It took that radical separation from one's own flesh, and that's what it took for Jesus.

That's what it took for Paul, who was so hated of his own kinsmen that they threw dirt upon their heads and would not eat or drink or vow, and vowed until this man was dead because he was not fit to live.

The great apostle, because of his greatness, because of his obedience, by that same measure was the deepest offense to his own people and bore it, and that's why he grew in stature and apostolic maturity, power, and authority that when he came to a pagan civilization like Thessalonica, it says he turned them from their idols to serve the living God, because the word that came to them, he said, you know, was not the word of man, but the word of God that performs a work in them that believe.

And later on in the assessment of his own apostolic history with the church at Ephesus, when it was time for him to tell them that you'll see my face no more, you know what manner of man I was with you from the beginning.

The consistency of Paul, of a moral kind, had everything to do with the stature of God in him and the authority by which it was expressed to the upturning of pagan societies to serve the living God and forsake their idols and wait for the Lord who comes from heaven to save them from the day of his wrath.

It's a message today that hardly anyone would have the courage to preach even within the church. He spoke to pagans with such power and such authority as that they believed it to the uttermost. He had a history.

He was enlarged and ripened by every experience because it's God who calculates those experiences, and out of his great sovereignty nothing happenstance, every trial, every ordeal, every unforeseen thing that brings us to crisis of decision of a moral kind is engineered by God from the throne of heaven for our growth, for our enlargement, as well as the fulfillment of the things that pertain to his kingdom and to his glory.

He was always found equal to each moral crisis. How come? Because the God who brought him to that crisis was equal in his Godhood to provide for it. There's no crisis to which we can be brought for which God would not be equal.

The question is are we willing to be brought to crisis or do we prefer to play it safe and so structure our Christian life so as to guarantee that such requirements will not be made of us. We refuse to open ourselves to the possibilities of God's call that would precipitate as crisis.

We don't want to face it because a crisis is painful and that pain is nothing other than the cross and in the bearing of it something is conferred from God that is more than just enablement. It is also his nature and that's how Christ is formed in us.

Paul's cry for the church that Christ be formed in them not by any magic but by the same means by which was formed in the Lord himself and by which it was formed in Paul as apostle. Successive obediences to the radical requirement of God in moral issues that are crisis to which we open ourselves and are willing for his namesake that all righteousness be fulfilled.

So the latent Godhead became more and more mighty as his life's interior and asserted itself with more power as the personality grew in depth and in scope. Anybody have a question, thought, comment?

Can't hear you. You said that people will be affected by the decisions that we make and you mentioned wives. Why did you not mention husband? Oh.

Because what is the issue to the one is the issue to the other. I should have said spouse but whether it's the wife facing the risk of adversely affecting a husband or a husband of making a decision that would adversely affect his wife the crisis is the same and it comes to saints who seek to obey the Lord and move on with him and in fact almost invariably the choice of saints I know are in exactly that kind of predicament and their growth comes by facing it which if they chose to play it safe and to placate rather than antagonize they would likely have if not a more harmonious marriage one freer from conflict but they know that if they are obedient they will of necessity antagonize because the spouse is not in a place to understand that obedience.

I can say in that one statement I'm describing my life in Christ for 41 years. Bless my dear wife. She doesn't have an inkling of what her husband is about and wonders why it is I can't tell jokes like other speakers and why it is that I'm so often antagonizing audiences when she wants to have them feel nice.

So I've got a woman Danish, earthly, kind who wants people to be nice to enjoy and but so she is agitated beyond measure when her husband and obedience has got to act in such a way as offends people rather than blesses them.

That's why she's not traveling with me. She cannot stand the risk. Do you think so? So the flesh that is closest to us is the greatest trial and the greatest challenge to the issue of our obedience. It's one thing to perform it before strangers but to perform it in a way that will adversely affect your Jewish mother as my salvation did.

My mother cried out and slammed the door in my face when I came back from Jerusalem and shouted that the whole apartment house heard her. He's gone mad. He's gone mad. And I knew her bias against the Lord and what her reaction would be but that there was no choice in following after the Lord but incurring the indignation, anger, and upset of a Jewish mother who had all her eggs in one basket, me.

I was her hope and the whole vindication of a lifetime of the disappointment and failure rested on her son. This is Jewish mothers. My son the doctor, my son the lawyer, my son the rabbi but my son the evangelist?

So if you've not faced issues like this you have to ask how come is the program of God all finished in society and in your nation that such a requirement has not come to you or have you consciously or unconsciously guarded yourself and not opened yourself to such prospect?

When I gave a message somewhat along these lines in the city where we came from, Auckland, I ended with a people to invite the Lord to bring the issue of the cross to their lives whatever the form that in his wisdom and love would be appropriate for themselves as individuals and they would pray right there at the conclusion, Lord whatever manner or form I'm open and welcome the operation of the cross in my life and I think only a few responded to that invitation but the failure to respond was an act of willful rejection of that prospect of suffering for the Lord's sake that denied them the opportunity for growth and would bring other consequence that is not happy.

An opportunity for decision was put before them and a decision was made for or against God and in fact that ought to be the character of all true preaching that it requires of the hearer a decision for or against God but we have too little of that because our speakers themselves are shrinking from the issue of the cross and are themselves playing it safe with the things that are predictable, tested, and will bring quote blessing and good feeling rather than agitation and all the rest.

Christ’s Obedience and the Formation of His Sonship

To continue from Forsyth, thus the sinless growth of Christ's character is in the very act of growth also of his objective achievement for us. It is the moral process of man's salvation, the gradual act of God.

It was only in history and in its actual conditions that he could realize all that was a super historic within him. The deepening of his faithfulness was the emergence of his deity. He was not acquiring deity, he was unfolding it and especially in his lowest limits his divinest mastery shows.

The lower, the greater the going down, the greater the submission, the greater the humiliation, the greater the opportunity for the formation of the godly character of a son to be formed in him and that was exemplified in taking off his garment and girding himself with the symbol of a slave and washing the feet of the disciples but that one act subsumed all his acts.

They were all of his acts were in the character of humility of going down that the lowest limit revealed the divinest aspect of the character of God by which he became son. The lower you go, the greater the prospect.

The going down to Nazareth is the increase in grace and in stature. So his true ethical personality grew in an actual historic situation. He counted for his age. He inhabited the spiritual milieu of the environment.

He filled a mighty place in the social situation of his land and his time. He was first and foremost the ever receptive son of the holy father and he only did those things which were shown him of God.

His manhood was in perfectly active receptivity. The issue of Jesus's manhood or sonship was in proportion to receiving and acting in obedience to the things that were shown him of the father. His obedience was his divinest achievement.