NN

To Cheryl,
I believe that it is vital to recognize that though Christ voluntarily adopted the form and even weaknesses of a man that in doing so He never gave up his divinity. And therefore to seek to divorce any of His actions from His unchangeable existence as Deity (including such experiences as hunger and death) will create irreconcilable contradictions in any theological idea.

Indeed this may clarify what I mean in more detail:
Human Existance of God Incarnate
I recently listened to a person assert that the deity of the Christ can be observed in the miraculous nature of his earthly life – that specific passages pointed to his omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. I do not believe this to be the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that Jesus the Christ was and is Deity and possesses the attributes of Deity. However, these verses do not prove the Christ’s deific attributes and, I think, ultimately create a misunderstanding in the nature of his earthly life.

Let us take omniscience. The verses used to “demonstrate” the Christ’s omniscience include Mark 2:8, John 2:24-25, John 18:4 which point to the Christ possessing knowledge beyond the scope of typical human experience. But, we must of course understand these verses in the light of such verses as Matt 24:36 (Mark 13:32) ~ “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” and others. Similarly, though the Christ performs miracles these are not a specific demonstration of direct deific omnipotence – the prophets in the Tanakh performed miracles just as spectacular.

And I do not believe that this is a matter of great Scriptural mystery. Though Jesus was and is God, when He came to earth he voluntarily took on the limitations of a man; though by nature He had all power and all knowledge He chose to forgo them and not access them – Jesus taking on human nature was essentially an act of voluntarily limiting His deific nature not a hybridization of God with man (Phil 2:6&7).

And I believe that this point is of more than academic interest which has direct bearing on our lives as Christians. For if He chose to not access this power during His earthly life then that means that His knowledge and His miracles came not as a direct exercise of His power as God but rather came about through reliance on and obedience to the leading of Holy Spirit. And this is a vital point to recognize for this is the same Spirit with whom the Christian is indwelt. To chalk up these verses as aspects of Christ’s deity I think blinds us to the power of the Spirit in the life of the Christian; it can blind us to our own insensitivity and hardheadedness toward the Spirit of God and remove from us the Scriptural instruction into our lives in the example of the Christ’s life.