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Did God Need to Understand Us Better? - Looking at the Incarnation, pt. 4

As we've been looking at the Incarnation I think that there are underlying theological issues that lead to many of our misconceptions. The last two weeks we have looked at basically one issue; the hypostatic union. That is technical theology talk for the fact that Jesus is fully God and fully human at the same time. As we've seen many have trouble with that basic concept of these two, different natures coexisting in one person. So, in order to simplify the mystery, we tend to diminish either Jesus' divinity or humanity. 

This week is a little different. The misconception we will examine this week is that God became a man in order to understand and relate to us better. This is usually drawn from the book of Hebrews in the discussion of Jesus being our great High Priest, something we discussed last week. 

"For we do not have a high priest that is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." - Hebrews 4:15

Many take this verse to mean that God became a man, in part, to be able to understand our situation and plight. He needed to do this in order to relate to us better. I understand why this is appealing, but I do think we should be troubled by it. It makes us, our lives and struggles, into the center of all things. God, the Creator of the universe, left his heavenly throne just so he could better understand how hard my life is.

There are a lot of things wrong with this, so let's tackle them one by one. First, it makes us the center of the story where God is the main character. That is, in a nutshell, idolatry. Second, it assumes that there is some deficiency in God's knowledge and moral character that he would need to experience something in order to grow. That contradicts what we know about God in the rest of Scripture, that he is all-knowing and unchanging.

A third thing wrong with this misconception is that God created me. God sustains my existence every moment of every day. I don't do anything, utter any word, think any thought, or even draw a breath except by his power and will. I have the freedom to choose because God enables me to live and decide. He is closer to me than I am to myself. So, does he really need a lesson in "understanding" me?

This whole mindset is backwards. While it is true that Jesus faced temptations just like us (importantly he did not sin) it wasn't because he needed a lesson in relating to us. It was the other way around.

Jesus faced and took on all our weaknesses so we could learn to relate to God.

As usual our attempts to make the work of Jesus and the Gospel primarily about us is a mistake. It was for our sake and salvation that Jesus became a human being, yes, but what is our salvation? To live with God and know him. God knew us perfectly, but we didn't know him. Jesus, through his perfect identification with humanity, revealed God to us.

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