Christian Myths and Misunderstandings

"Fully Man, Fully God?"

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See also Son of God or Son of Man?

Introduction


I have heard worship leaders, even pastors say, "Thank you, God, for dying on the cross." That, of course, is an impossibility - you cannot kill spirit, and God is spirit. (That's also why the enemy evil spirits - fallen angels - will be locked up in fire at the end of the age. )


Or they might sing, "He's the God who weeps," because of John 11:35, but in both of these instances it was Jesus, the Son of God, as Son of Man, at work.


According to Psalm 90:2 "Before...You had formed the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." 


One God. with no beginning and no end in sight. But is God just one?

Jesus: Fully Man, Fully God?

Someone sent me this question:


“To clarify about Jesus; Fully man, fully God. Your view?”


That was a follow-up to a statement I had made that people misunderstand the word 'God'. 'God' is a collective noun, the components of which are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. There is agreement, consensus and unity in everything that They do. 


They do not act independently of each other, although one might appear on Earth without the others. In Judges 13-16 the Spirit of the Lord would come upon Samson, enabling his feats of great strength. The 'Angel of the Lord' appeared to various people at different times (Moses, Gideon, Joshua) and allowed worship when it was offered, which no other angel allowed. We see this as the Old Testament form of Jesus.


The most common Hebrew word for God, elohim, and Lord, adonai, are both plural nouns. This idea is contrasted with the singular Hebrew nouns for 'image' and 'likeness' in Genesis 1:26. See further details here. 


"God said, Let Us make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness;" (AMP)


While 'Us' and 'Our' refer to the three separate Father, Son and Holy Spirit components of God or Lord, there is just one image, one likeness to represent them. 


Jesus, while He was on Earth, operated exclusively as Son of Man, except for His death on the cross. At that point, as the biological son of God the Father, He became the perfect sin offering to atone (pay the price) for the sin (“the soul that sins, it shall die”) of mankind, for all time. 


Only He could atone in that way, since, as a human (and for all time before and after) He had never sinned. On top of that, on two, previous, important occasions, God Himself had provided the sacrifice for sin - for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21), and for Abraham (Genesis 22:13), and the sacrifice of Jesus, an offering provided and presented by God once more of a perfect, unblemished Lamb, His only son, was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

Here is my response:


I don't use those expression because that's not what the New Testament uses. 


Son of God and Son of Man


Jesus continually described Himself as Son of Man. That's not a put down, that's His description.


In other words, because He had a human mother, He had a human body and was subject to all human frailty and needs. He needed to eat and sleep, and He needed to go to the toilet like us.


On two occasions He described Himself to the Jews as "I AM," which linked Him directly to the God of the Old Testament. They wanted to stone Him for blasphemy (Mark 14:61-62, John10:30.) When He asked Peter directly who he thought Jesus was, Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." (Matthew 16:16 AMP)


His Godly heritage didn't stop Him from sinning, otherwise He could not have been "tempted in every way as we are, but without sinning." It was the decisions He made in His humanity which fulfilled that. Decisions like the one shown in John 5:30c:


"I do not seek My own will, but only the will of the Father who sent Me." (AMP)


He was capable of doing things in His own right, in His own name, but He always chose not to.

His miracles were done as Son of Man 


to show that, according to John 14:12, anything He could do, we can do also.


"Whover believes in Me will also do the works that I do." (ESV)


When He 'saw' Nathaniel sitting under the tree that was either a type of vision or a word of knowledge. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12 that any of us can receive those same manifestations.


When He told the woman at the well that she had had five husbands and that she wasn't married to the sixth, that was a word of knowledge given by Holy Spirit, also. So too with Paul, in Acts 14:9, when he saw that the man lame from birth had faith to be healed. So too with Peter and John when they encountered the lame man at the gate Beautiful in Acts 3:4, while they waited on Holy Spirit to reveal what to do. And so on.


Many churches teach that Jesus could do these things because He was the Son of God, but He denied that in John 14:12, where He claimed that any son of man or daughter of man, even a child, could do the same things that He did. We have seen that happen - see here.


So, even though He was the Word from the beginning, and appears on Earth in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord, when He came as a human He emptied Himself and left all of that innate Godliness behind and took the form of a servant, according to Philippians 2:5-8.


"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (ESV)


Being human is described in Hebrews 2:9a as being "made for a little while lower than the angels." While He was human for a little while, His mother, being Mary, contributed an egg to the seed (sperm) of God the Father, implanted by Holy Spirit. That means that He always had a biological connection to His Father that cannot be broken, in just the same way that we who are born again of the same Father also have a spiritual 'child' connection, likened to a new biological connection in 2 Corinthians 5:17, with the same Father that cannot be broken.


"From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh...Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (ESV)


Because of that special connection with His Father, Jesus would have 'heard' His Father's voice from an early age, even in the womb, which gave Him a small advantage over us who often don't recognise the voice of God until much later.


However, since He only lived to do what His Father wanted ("I only do what I see My Father doing" in John 5:19 and, "I only say what I hear My Father saying," in John 12:49) and didn't follow His own ideas and thoughts to do what suited Him, He had to be specially led by Holy Spirit into a wilderness place to be tempted by the enemy.

Jesus' temptation was a unique event


That was a unique event, not so much because He was the Son of God, but because as Son of Man He only did what the Father wanted. In the normal course of events Jesus would not have been in a situation where He could be tempted because of that attitude.


In fact, James teaches this cleverly in chapter 1:14 where he explains that we are tempted through our own evil desire. Jesus did not have "his own evil desire," not because of His biology, but because of His attitude to always be subservient to His Father.


James also points out in verse 13 that God is incapable of being tempted, so that if Jesus was fully 'God' the enemy would not have even tried! However, as Son of Man (human), He was capable of being tempted. 


He did not stop being Son of God at this or any other time because that biological connection is permanent, but that did not allow Him to function as 'God' per se. That's why angels had to come and minister to Him after the temptation - in that wilderness He had no way, as a man, to refresh Himself. Matthew 4:11, Mark 1:13

Jesus could not call twelve legions of angels


Even with His biological God connection He was limited in certain areas. When He was arrested and one of those with Him drew his sword to defend Him, Jesus said,


"Put your sword back into its place...Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?" (ESV)


If He was fully God, He would not have needed to ask His Father to send the angels to protect Him, but could have ordered them Himself.


His teachings, signs and wonders and deliverances were received and delivered by Him as Son of Man. That is attested to by John's description of the water to wine sign in John 2, as the first one, which only occurred after He had been filled with Holy Spirit at His baptism.


All of His life up to that point had been lived as a simple human, albeit with a special connection to His Father. He had no special, Godly power until that time. We also see this in the fact that his parents had to flee to Egypt to protect Him as an infant from Herod. Had He been 'God' He would have been able to also act as God and protect Himself, even as an infant. Instead, He was the biological Son of God (human) with all human frailties, and no 'God' powers (that's how we tend to wrongly see them) until later, after His baptism.


He later extended the promise of infilling and indwelling of Holy Spirit to His disciples and, consequently, us, so that we would know that we could also do ministry like Him.


That was one of the reasons that He commissioned, first the twelve in Luke 9, and then 70 others in Luke 10, to go out and do ministry like He did. Even without Holy Spirit indwelling they were able to achieve magnificent results and show us that, whatever Jesus did, they and we could do also.


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Jesus, as Son of Man, declared the paralytic forgiven 


When He was challenged to heal the paralytic let down through the roof His first comment was a word of wisdom:


"Take courage, son, your sins are forgiven." Matthew 9:2 (AMP)


He was simply declaring knowledge given to Him previously that God does not hold anyone in unforgiveness. Some of the religious leaders there (scribes) mistook His words as an unauthorised attempt to align Himself with the Godhead.


His next words showed that sickness often has its roots in either something we have done wrong, or the guilt we hold onto when we don't correctly process our wrong behaviour.


"Which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or say, Get up and walk?" Matthew 9:5 (AMP)


He correctly picked the thing that was oppressing the man -  not dealing with his past. But it is His next words which show a dramatic truth that people often don't recognise:


"And in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins..." Matthew 9:6 (AMP)


His choice of words shows that He wasn't acting as Son of God and thus specially endowed to forgive sins. His choice of words shows that He was acting as Son of Man, a human, something that any of us can do also. In this He was claiming no special God-privilege and extending the same rights to each one of us.


We could contrast that with His words at the table of Zacchaeus, a notorious cheat.


"For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost." Luke 19:10 (AMP)


There's a triple-edged message, there. One of His aims on Earth was to reach out to people who were struggling, to show that God had a solution. The number of people that He really touched in this life-changing way numbered just in the hundreds, judging from the crowd that assembled at His ascension. All of that work for such a small number.


Yet that was not His only purpose. His work as Son of Man was also to show what we could do in His name, in the same way that he ministered. The apostles and disciples (those who chose His way who were not among the twelve) went out in His name, doing the same sort of things Jesus did as a human, and were responsible for reaching many thousands in those heady first few months. Our generation has followed on from there, and the many in between as well.

"If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father"


Perhaps this comment to Philip in John 14:9 throws some people out. It's a figure of speech, meaning, "I'm just doing what My Father would do if He was here in person."

How do we know it isn't literally true?

Back in Exodus 33:20, when Moses asked to see God's glory he was told that God would hide him in the cleft of a rock and cover him with His hand as He passed by because, He said, "You can not see My face, for no man shall see Me and live." (AMP) Obviously, those who saw the face of Jesus did not have that problem.


"I and the Father are one."


This probably gets confused with the English expression, 'one and the same'. Jesus was not claiming that, because otherwise the Father would have died on the cross as well. Instead, this is another figure of speech meaning, "The Father and I are united in everything, in purpose, in commitment, in everything. There is no conflict or struggle between us."


As Son of God, Jesus had just one purpose, one function.


But it was only as Son of Man (a human) that He could complete His work of salvation as Son of God - the sacrifice that God provided for all of mankind, for all of time. For that He needed a human composition so that His blood could be shed, and for that He also needed a totally-of-God connection so that His blood would purchase mankind back from death. Only God could provide that sort of offering, only God's Son could provide that sort of connection.


Truly, this man was the Son of God.

After His resurrection, Jesus became fully Son of God, appearing in the flesh and functioning in the spirit.


That was a big change, so big in fact, that those who knew Him previously, intimately, no longer recognised Him.


Mary, at the tomb, thought He was the gardener. John 20:11-17. Jesus also told her, "Do not cling to (hold) Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father." John 20:17 (AMP)


Those who had walked with Him before His death did not recognise Him when He walked with them after His resurrection. Luke 24:13-31


He could vanish at will - Luke 24:31, and He could appear at will - Luke 24:36, John 20:19


Yet, He still had a human body (flesh and bones) which retained the marks of His crucifixion, and could still eat food. Luke 24:35-43.


In Summary:


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