Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Be Kind

This last Sunday I was asked to preach and I struggled for a while with what to preach on. It's always difficult when you are filling in and everyone else knows you are filling in. You don't want to overlap too much with the current sermon series, but you also don't want your topic to be so unrelated to what's been going on that it has no impact.  I found inspiration simply from scrolling on Facebook. People, and it seems especially Christians, are mean.  Now of course not all Christians are rude and combative, but there are a shocking number who are. We argue in Facebook comments, send hateful messages, and generally act just like the world. This extends beyond the realm of social media and into our day-to-day interactions with so many. The Sunday lunch crowd at restaurants is infamously the worst tipping and most disrespectful, and these are mostly Christians who have just come from church. We need to be kind. Kindness is a fruit of the Spirit, but it is one we often ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Augustine of Hippo: Historical Friday

We pause our overview of the history of Christianity to talk about an extremely influential figure, whether we realize it or not. Augustine of Hippo, so called because he lived in the town of Hippo Regius, has had a tremendous amount of influence on Christianity in the western world. Many of the theological conversations we have in our churches today have been directly shaped by this man. Many of the terms and ideas we throw around originated with Augustine.  Today we are going to look at SOME of the ideas that Augustine has shaped. In reality this man has touched in some way or another every aspect of Christian thought. If I had to choose the most influential people on Christianity outside of Jesus and the Apostles, Augustine might very well be number one alongside Martin Luther. Before we get into the theological ideas, a brief biography is in order. Brief Biography Augustine's story is actually very interesting, one I cannot hope to do justice here. If you are intereste...
Post a Comment
Read more

Justice

Our view of justice is narrow and limited. Typically when we, as Christians, talk about justice we are really only referring to punishing wrongdoers for their crimes. While that is certainly a part of justice that isn't the only thing. In the Bible justice consists of much more. Consider the book of Amos, one of the minor prophets and therefore a book that most Christians barely touch. Amos is announcing judgment against the nation of Israel for their infidelity to their covenant with God. What do you think is the most repeated indictment against Israel? Interestingly it's not idolatry, sexual immorality, or war although these things are mentioned. The primary sin of in Amos is Israel's neglect of the poor and their oppression of the needy. Over and over again Amos declares that judgment is coming to Israel because of their treatment of those less fortunate. The poor are trampled and the needy are crushed. There is no justice in the land. Biblical justice includes both crim...
Post a Comment
Read more