“The Restraint of Jesus”
by brian rushing
I’m sure that you’ve noticed this as well, but…
Sometimes the words of the Bible are confusing.
Sometimes when I read it, I find that the choices that God made are confusing.
Sometimes the things that Jesus said and did are confusing.
For example, how is it that Jesus – being fully God and fully human – seems to not know certain things (“Who touched my clothes?” “How many loaves do you have?”), while at other times He knows things it is impossible to know (“You have had five husbands.” “Lazarus is dead.”)?
How is it that Jesus can be hungry or tired or thirsty, while also being able to multiply fish and bread from thin air, change water to wine, command storms, heal sickness, and raise the dead? Was Jesus lying when He said He was thirsty or didn’t know something? No, Jesus never was dishonest, so that can’t be the answer. At times it seems that Jesus is fully human with little or no divinity, and at other times He doesn’t seem human at all.
Because of this back-and-forth situation we find in Jesus, I can find myself scratching my head about Him – wondering why it seems that Jesus’ divine nature and power are sometimes reduced. But I now realize that “reduced” is not the right word:
“The impression of Jesus which the Gospels give is not that he was wholly bereft of divine knowledge and power, but that he drew on both intermittently, while being content for much of the time not to do so. The impression, in other words, is not so much one of deity reduced as of divine capacities restrained.”
“The God-man did not know independently, any more than he acted independently. Just as he did not do all that he could have done, because certain things were not his Father’s will, so he did not consciously know all that he might have known, but only what the Father willed him to know. His knowing, like the rest of his activity, was bounded by his Father’s will. And therefore the reason why he was ignorant of (for instance) the date of his return was not that he had given up the power to know all things at the Incarnation, but that the Father had not willed that he should have this particular piece of knowledge while on earth….”
This answers a lot of questions for me about why Jesus did what He did and said what He said. It was all based on His connection to the Father – following His will completely.
This also helps me realize that there are times where certain things will not be in the Father’s will for my life, and certain things that the Father has not willed for me to know yet. All things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial, so if I am walking perfectly in God’s will (which Jesus always did), then God will give me the knowledge I need when I need it. And He will give me the ability I need when I need it.
Regarding Jesus’ restraint and the Father’s will, Packer concludes the idea with:
We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory… a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony —spiritual even more than physical— that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through his poverty might become rich. The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity —hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory— because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.
I am so glad that Jesus restrained Himself in accordance with the will of the Father, so that the messages of hope of Christmas and Easter became the greatest messages I ever heard and believed.
(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)