Distinctions between the natures

The distinction between the Son’s two natures, especially regarding the two realms of consciousness can be seen in several examples. The divine nature is complete. God does not change (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17). God does not grow, improve, degenerate or undergo any other form of change. Yet God the Son in the realm of this human nature did undergo changes. "The child grew and became mighty in spirit, being filled with wisdom ..." (Luke 2:40). This is growth in the realm of His human nature, specifically His human spirit, which is the realm of rational thinking. Without any textual dispute verse 52 indicates that He advanced in wisdom. In the realm of His human consciousness, He could grow. He knew that He was God and man, but that does not mean that His human mind knew everything He knew as God. His human spirit had limitations; it could grow and it became mighty.

In Philippians 2 Paul explained some details of what happened when the Son became man. Verse 7 states that He emptied Himself. He did not empty Himself of deity. Some have proposed a theory built on the word "emptied." The Greek word is kenow [kenoo last "o" is long] and the theory is called the kenosis. Such people have taught that God the Son emptied Himself of His deity and ceased being God. Less extreme variations of this theory state that He gave up some of His divine attributes. However, Paul states exactly how He emptied Himself. He became a slave. A slave is responsible to obey His master. He does not pursue his own agenda but does whatever his master gives him to do. In this instance the Son gave up the free exercise of His attributes. What He did during His earthly ministry was done in submission to the Father's will (see John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38, 39, 40). He did not cease being God but exercised His divine abilities only as the Father directed.

Throughout His earthly ministry, He continued to possess the characteristics of His divine nature. When He spoke with Nicodemus, He said, "No one has ascended into heaven, but He who has descended from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven." (John 3:13). Some Greek manuscripts have omitted the last phrase "who is in heaven." There is good evidence among the Greek manuscripts that the phrase should be included. It is significant because it demonstrates that He remained omnipresent even when He was incarnate. He also used His power, His omniscience, love, righteousness, etc.. Therefore, He did not give up the use of His attributes. He used them only as the Father determined.

In Luke 2:41-50, there is a glimpse of His deity as He conversed with the men in the temple. His parent's astonishment indicates that this was not his normal behavior at this point in His life (2:48-50). His submission to His Father is seen in the words, “...it is necessary for me to be about my Father’s business...” His mother and stepfather did not understand Him. While Mary knew that her son was the result of a divine work, she gave no evidence then that she understood that He was deity. His human spirit was growing, becoming mightier while in the realm of His divine nature there was no need or ability to grow. His conversation in the temple came from His divine nature and was expressed through His twelve year old human nature.

Other contrasts between His human and divine natures can be easily observed. The all-powerful Son of God was tired, wearied and exhausted from labor in the realm of His human nature and sat on a well to wait for His disciples to buy food (John 4:6). When a Samaritan woman arrived He began to move in the realm of His divine consciousness. He exercised His omniscience (vv. 16-19, 29). Upon their return, His disciples saw the contrast between the two natures but did not understand it. They had brought back meat and He no longer needed any (vv. 31-34). Doing the Father’s will was meat to Him (John 4:34). On another occasion while traveling by boat with His disciples, the all-powerful Son of God slept in the realm of His human consciousness. When a storm came He arose and with the prerogative of deity, told the wind and sea to be quiet and to be muzzled (Mark 4:38-39). In the realm of His human nature with its consciousness He hungered after forty days of fasting (Luke 4:2); He went aside to rest from the ministry (Mark 6:31). The omniscient Son of God, in the realm of His human nature, did not know who touched Him (Mark 5:30). Commenting on Mark 5:30, Robert Gromacki again wrote, "The omniscience of His divine nature was balanced by the limited, uninformed knowledge of His human intellect. One morning, hungry, "seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet" (Mark 11:13). His approach to the fig tree reflected the natural ignorance of His human mind, but His cursing of the tree revealed His omnipotence and omniscience ..." In His human consciousness, the omniscient Son of God does not know the day or the hour in which He will return (Mark 13:32). The omnipresent Son of God had to travel from place to place because His human nature could only be in one place at a given time. God is untemptable with evil yet in the realm of His human nature the Son was tempted by the devil for forty days. "Though Christ sometimes operated in the sphere of His humanity and in other cases in the sphere of deity, in all cases what He did and what he was could be attributed to His one Person. Even though it is evident that there were two natures in Christ, He is never considered a dual personality."

Understanding the Son’s two natures is vitally important to an understanding of events as He approaches the cross. There are two primary events to consider: His prayers in Gethsemane and His time on the cross. This truth brings out an even greater significance for the cross. It will cause the believer to appreciate even more his wonderful Savior.

Approaching the cross, the desirous will of the Son's human nature was at odds with the desirous will of the Father (Luke 22:42). In the realm of His human nature, He had to align that desirous will with the desirous will which the Godhead, expressed through the Father, had chosen.

Gethsemane

After our Lord had introduced the communion, spoken with the eleven in the upper room, and communicated with His Father regarding His disciples (John 17), He went out into a garden (John 18:1). Because John emphasized our Lord’s deity he skipped over the Lord’s communications in Gethsemane. Matthew, Mark and Luke recorded these words. Luke who emphasized the Son’s humanity as the real man is the only writer who recorded the resulting sweat drops as of blood (Luke 22:44). Mark emphasizing the Son as an obedient servant records His request concerning the hour in which He would come under man’s authority. (Mark 14:35, 41). The King would not submit to man’s authority. Since the hour does not contribute to Matthew’s theme, He mentions it in 26:45.

All three synoptic writers include some of these communications, none in their entirety. Neither do they record the identical words but each records part of the communications. Our Lord communicated long enough on each occasion that His disciples fell asleep. Though the record of this communication fills only a small space, He supplicated and spoke with the Father for a significant time. The Holy Spirit bore these writers along to record some of what was said but not to record it all in detail. God gave us a summary of our Lord’s communication.

In the garden Jesus fell upon His face. He was grieved, overwhelmed and depressed (Matthew 26:37, 38; Mark 14:33). His soul was grieved even surrounded by grief [perilupw]. The soul is a human element, part of man’s tripartite nature. The feelings Jesus experienced were human. He simply said, “I am grieved.” for that human nature is His. His human consciousness was overwhelmed in the face of the hour and the cup. Neither of these would have overwhelmed the divine nature. The divine nature did not experience grief, in fact of the Father we find, “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him.” (Isaiah 53:10). “Please” is a translation of Upx “(b) towards some one, i.e. to favour him, to delight in him as in God, in men;” As the Son communicated with the Father, the emotions and words flowed from His human nature not His divine nature.

Mark recorded that Christ briefly communicated to the Father concerning His hour.The hour was the limited period of time during which He would be under man’s authority. He the Creator would subject Himself to the creature (Matthew 26:45; Mark 14:41). Christ spent very little time communicating concerning the hour. The hour caused Him some grief but it was not the paramount concern.

The cup was the focus of His communication three times. The cup was part of His death, specifically the length of time. [See Appendix 1] About a week earlier Christ spoke to His disciples of His death and its attendant events (Luke 18:31-33). Luke related three times that His disciples did not understand what He was saying (v. 34). It is so clear to us that we are confused at their lack of understanding. Yet the second phrase “it was hidden from them” explains that someone else was preventing them from understanding of what He spoke. In a similar manner, the Son chose to hide this fact from His human consciousness. Just as His omniscient divine consciousness knows the exact day and hour of His return yet His human consciousness does not, so His divine consciousness knew all the details of His death yet his human consciousness did not. The Father did not hide this from Him. God the Son Himself willingly chose to limit the knowledge of His human mind. This was similar to how He limited His human knowledge regarding the time of His return in the second coming. In His human consciousness, He did not know how long He would have to endure this death.

The Son was no coward. He was not asking the Father that His death should pass from Him. He was not asking if He could avoid the death. He was asking that He might know how long the death would last. In Hebrews we find that He was answered.

“Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up both supplications and entreaties to him who was able to save him out of death, with strong crying and tears; (and having been heard because of his piety;)” Hebrews 5:7, J.N. Darby.

The word supplication involves an unknown factor. “The uncertainty may involve the means, method, supply, need or assistance concerning something in his own life or that of others.” It is distinguished from other communication words because the one supplicating is crying out for help not knowing how God will answer. In the realm of His divine nature, He knew all things. In His human consciousness, He didn’t know how or when God might answer His supplication. As in many places in the gospels, only by distinguishing Christ’s two natures is one able to make sense of this.

For this reason, the Son, supplicated according to Hebrews 5, that the cup should pass from Him (Matthew 26:39). The “if it is possible” gives the impression that this might not be possible. The Greek in these statements assumes that it is possible, “since is is possible.” Mark even recorded that the Son knew all things were possible for the Father (Mark 14:36). Even in the realm of His human nature, He was aware that this cup could pass from Him. Luke uses boulomai, “Since You choose to take away ...” (Luke 22:42). Jesus was stating that the Father is the one who would determine, not that the Father had determined. If the cup were to pass from Him, He would have still gone to the cross, suffered and died but He would have done so knowing how long His deaths were to last. This was not the Father’s will. It was the Father’s will for the Son to approach and experience the cross without knowing how long His death was to be.

It is with this desirous will [qelhma] of the Father that the Son in the realm of His human consciousness was in conflict. Therefore, each synoptic writer records a clear statement that Son’s desirous will was not that of the Father (Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42). Matthew and Mark both wrote, “but not what I am desiring but what you...” Luke recorded a similar statement by our Lord, “but not my desirous will, but let yours come to be.” This is not a conflict between the Son in His divine nature and the Father for only one desirous will exists in the divine nature and it is impossible for the divine desirous will to be in conflict with itself [See Figure 3]. Figure†3.†

The conflict was between the desirous will arising from the Son’s human nature and the desirous will arising from the divine nature. [See Figure 4.] The Son in the realm of His human nature chose to align His desirous will with the Father’s and approach the cross drinking the cup.

Figure 4.

Apart from an understanding of the Son’s has two distinct natures, one human and one divine, the Garden event does not make sense. How could two persons who are one God be in conflict? They could not. The conflict was between the will of deity and the will of humanity. Since the Son does not have an “I” and “you” relationship, the Son willingly limited His conscious experience to the realm of His human nature. Our Savior faced the cross not in the realm of His all-powerful, all-knowing deity but in the realm of His human nature with its natural human weakness and limited knowledge.

This does not mean that the Son ceased to be divine. In fact, the value of His death was in part that the person who died is a divine person. The Church was made the unique possession of God by His own blood (Acts 20:28). God has not blood so God the Son became man so He could shed His blood. God doesn’t die, so the Son, being eternally God, willing chose to operate in the realm of his human consciousness, for only His human consciousness could experience pain, suffering and death as a man.

Because the Son had a human nature He could learn obedience (Hebrews 5:8). Deity doesn’t learn obedience. The Godhead doesn’t live by a set of rules or standards. Their nature determines how they function. In addition to what this does for biblically defining the term “son” this also demonstrates a contrast and need of the Son’s human nature to His divine nature. He suffered in the realm of His human nature. Suffering is inconsistent with God’s nature, specifically the attribute of goodness. Goodness means that God has a consistent sense of well-being which results in God being happy and content. These divine qualities are inconsistent with suffering. Therefore, the Son’s sufferings were confined to the experience of His divine nature.

He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. The context connects the sufferings to His death and the events leading to it. One may obey under a variety of different circumstances but obedience under suffering is notable. He obeyed being in the form of a slave (Philippians 2:7). His obedience was even to a cross kind of death with excessive public humiliation and ignominy. These sufferings in the realm of His human nature caused Him to be matured [A.V. “perfected] (Hebrews 5:9). The divine nature has no need of maturing nor can it mature. It is eternally perfect. The Son’s human nature could mature as He chose to face the sufferings properly and obey the Father’s will.

The Son’s sufferings and obedience are an encouragement to the believer. Because He faced these in the realm of His human nature, just as He faced His temptations, He is a sympathetic High-priest (Hebrews 4:14-15). Our High-priest knows by experience our experience. If we fail to grasp that His two natures are distinct and if we fail to recognize that He can choose to move in either realm of consciousness, then this statement seems meaningless. Many believers have doubted how sympathetic their High-priest is because they have never recognized the difference between His natures

part four coming

Thanksgiving Day Prayer

Heavenly Father, on Thanksgiving Day
We bow our hearts to You and pray.
We give You thanks for all You've done
Especially for the gift of Jesus, Your Son.
For beauty in nature, Your glory we see
For joy and health, friends and family,
For daily provision, Your mercy and care
These are the blessings You graciously share.
So today we offer this response of praise
With a promise to follow You all of our days.

A Thanksgiving Day Prayer

Lord, so often times, as any other day
When we sit down to our meal and pray

We hurry along and make fast the blessing
Thanks, amen. Now please pass the dressing

We're slaves to the olfactory overload
We must rush our prayer before the food gets cold

But Lord, I'd like to take a few minute more
To really give thanks to what I'm thankful for

For my family, my health, a nice soft bed
My friends, my freedom, a roof over my head

I'm thankful right now to be surrounded by those
Whose lives touch me more than they'll ever possibly know

Thankful Lord, that You've blessed me beyond measure
Thankful that in my heart lives life's greatest treasure

That You, dear Jesus, reside in that place
And I'm ever so grateful for Your unending grace

So please, heavenly Father, bless this food You've provided
And bless each and every person invited

Amen!

Thanksgiving

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

We Gather Together

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;
He chastens and hastens his will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing,
Sing praises to his name: He forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side, All glory be thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!
Amen

We Give Thanks

Our Father in Heaven,
We give thanks for the pleasure
Of gathering together for this occasion.
We give thanks for this food
Prepared by loving hands.
We give thanks for life,
The freedom to enjoy it all
And all other blessings.
As we partake of this food,
We pray for health and strength
To carry on and try to live as You would have us.
This we ask in the name of Christ,
Our Heavenly Father.

PEACE AND LOVE TO ALL

IN CHRIST

Suffering falls on both the good and the bad
Causing discomfort and pain that is sad
But He Who allows knows what is the best
That can only come through tempest or test.

Going through the fire ruffles but refines
But the grace to pass comes from the Great Vine
His Word comforts, strengthens, reveals His mind
For us to keep calm and His solace find.

Job suffered, endured and was promoted;
Paul, beaten, imprisoned, but mightily used.
Jesus- the Righteous- was crucified but glorified
So you and I will suffer since we're justified.

"O Lord, help me stand strong with a song
With a character, shinning and not wrong
Teach me to hold Your hand, see through Your eyes.
Lord, hear my call, hear my prayers, hear my cries."


My saviour suffered yet without sin, setting the example for me to follow. Therefore, regardless of what I see or feel, I know my redeemer lives. After He has refined me, I shall come forth like gold and like Job of old. When you ruffle my feathers, it is to enable me to fly. When you disturb my cocoon and cage, it is to enable me to rise above worldly, personal and satanic limitations and open my eyes to a new horizon of freedom.

Lord, I am convinced that You are upright and righteous in all of Your ways and so I yield to You and see beyond the natural and acknowledge that You are working in me to work through me. I believe and confess that the good work You have begun in me, You will bring to fruition.
Grant me the grace, O Lord, to persevere and hold on to the end. Help me to use every lemon that life throws at me to make lemonade that will sweeten the lives of others and bring glory and joy to You. I refuse to call any pity party or resort to cynicism, bitterness or the pointing of the finger. My Lord is good all the time!
Your grace is sufficient for me. In weakness Your strength will be made perfect. Tribulation shall build the character of God in me, forge patience, trigger productivity and creativity and You will be glorified.

Yeah! I know the fire
shall bring His desire
as I rise from the mire
to the place fore-ordained
for he redeemed of the Lord