Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
You said:

3. About the incarnation. First I must confess that I believe that this doctrine is probably the hardest to understand, even above the Trinity. How Jesus could leave glory, humble himself to earth and be both fully God and fully man is very difficult to understand, let alone explain. However I don’t see what you have said as solving the difficulty. You seemed to imply that not accepting your approach diminishes Jesus humanity- I don’t think it does. Jesus is fully human because he humbled himself to become human.

Mark, I think you are confusing things here. Jesus’ humbling Himself deals with his Deity. This explains how He could set aside his right to act independently as God.

The bible declares that he was tempted in everyway like us, so he was fully human, yet he withheld temptation.

Temptation doesn’t make one human. The angels were tempted to rebel but they weren’t human. Jesus’ humanity in a kinship is highly important in the Scriptures. This shows that He didn’t just come as a separate creation that wasn’t related to us, but that he was born in our form.

If you look carefully at Romans 1:3 you will see a necessary fact about his humanity:

Romans 1:3 (NASB)
3 concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh,

Jesus had to be a descendant of David. It wasn’t good enough for Him just to be human. He had to be of a specific lineage.

The reason I believe he withheld was because he was fully God. God cannot sin therefore Jesus could not have sinned, even though he was tempted to sin because of his humanity (this is where the incarnation gets messy).

The problem with this reasoning is that it not only makes the temptation invalid, but it makes Jesus really not to be like us. Remember that God cannot be tempted? It is only because He was also human, that Jesus could be tempted. There had to be something other than his being God that stopped Him from sinning otherwise how can we look to Him as one who suffered our temptations? His sinless nature (from being the seed of the woman) made Him able to not sin but it did not prevent Him from sinning. He would have been just like Adam was in the beginning. Adam didn’t have to sin, but Adam was able to sin if he chose to. Jesus did not have a sin nature, so Jesus did not have to sin. And Jesus as a man looked to God in keeping Him clean from committing sin. We can look to Jesus as our example and follow Him in trusting God to keep us clean.

Look at how Jesus handled temptation:

Hebrews 2:18 (NASB)
18 For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.
Hebrews 5:7–8 (NASB)
7 In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.
8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.

Now some think that being “saved from death” means that Jesus was praying that He would not have to go to the cross, but this is not correct for the next part says that “He was heard because of His piety”. God didn’t save Jesus from dying on the cross, but God did save Him from the death that comes from sin. God saved Him from being tempted to the point of sinning. As a man He looked to God for His help and God heard Him. Jesus is our true High Priest who has suffered like we suffered yet without sin. He didn’t sin because He is God. He didn’t sin because He looked to God in His temptations. All of this shows the importance of Jesus’ being a sinless human that comes through His humanity and not in spite of it.

Your view makes it theoretically possible that Jesus could have sinned and I appreciate what you are saying because you are trying to understand how his humanity worked. But to imply that Jesus could have sinned is to deny that he was fully God, not able to sin.

This shows that you don’t understand the dual nature of Jesus. He was fully and completely human and fully and completely God. As God He was not able to sin, but He laid aside His right to act independently as God and He lived His life as a man. As a man he was able to sin just like the first perfect man was able to sin. If as a man He was not able to sin, then He wasn’t really human.

It also implies that God is able to sin theoretically and that he is changeable, both of which the bible denies.

Again you don’t seem to understand that dual nature of Jesus. Do you remember that the Bible says that God is not a man that he could lie? Well, God isn’t a man. But God can take on humanity so that the humanity itself is not an addition to His Deity but an addition to his personhood. So in the form of God, he cannot sin, but in the form of humanity He had to be able be tempted. What He did was what Adam should have been able to do if Adam had been faithful and had looked to God for help. There is no temptation that can force us to sin if we are living in the Spirit and putting our trust in God.

So I must protest again that emphasising this stuff about sin natures doesn’t solve any issues. I think it probably creates more.

I don’t know how far along in your pastoral studies you are Mark, but I hope that when you finish you will understand that the full humanity of Jesus and His being without sin from conception is highly important and is worth studying, worth debating and worthy of acceptance for it gives us reason for the hope that lies within us.

Not only that, but the bible is silent on this issue. It never says that Jesus was born of a virgin because only Mary did not pass on a corrupted nature. You are basically speculating on the issue.

What the Bible does show is that it was a necessity for Jesus to be born of a virgin. It is when one studies why Jesus could not have a human father, that the sin nature that comes through Adam becomes clear and understandable.

But I can see why you so it, because you need the incarnation to support your understanding of the banishment and sin, but I don’t think it works.

I came to the understand of the vital importance of the virgin birth of Jesus long before I dug deep into the Genesis account to understand that only Adam was kicked out. The understanding of he incarnation helped me to understand the fall, not the other way around. I started with the basics and worked out from there.