John 6: 38
” For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”
The nuances of Jesus’ speech patterns fascinate me. The Gospels refer to Jesus having been born, but Jesus does not refer to himself that way. It is always in the context of coming from someplace else to be here for a little while. Being “born” was a doorway into this world for him. He had to go through that process to become human so that he could die for us.
He also refers to his Father, God, constantly. “I have come down from heaven…” is an example of the first nuance. “To do the will of him who sent me…” is the second nuance. Both of these themes are frequently woven into Jesus’ words. He consistently insists that he is not of this world and that he does only what God, his Father, wants him to do.
Q: Do you think Jesus remembered what it was like in heaven after he came to earth?
Yes, it just takes time to become a perfect spotlees lamb worthy of being a sacrifice to redeem all mankind.
And three more days until men’s retreat…woohoo!
Yes. I find trying to determine the scope of how Jesus exercised his omniscience to be an impossible question to answer to precisely nail down, but it is clear that he both knew and yet grew/learned as a man. For me, trying to figure out Jesus omniscience shows my need for faith, divine mystery, and accepting the limitations of human understanding – particularly when it comes to the nature of God (incarnation or trinity).
Last night at Philos I used my relationship to my wife to help illustrate how strange it is to think we can fully understand the incarnation or trinity. I know my wife and trust her, but I don’t fully understand her and am stupid to think I ever will – why would I expect to do so with God who is infinitely more… infinite. We don’t know God like we know Pythagoras Theorem, we know Him as children trusting and obeying a parent.
(I spent far more than three minutes thinking about all this – false advertising, jk : )