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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Not my will, but Yours be done... | Luke 22:42 | Reformer Joe | 70710 | ||
Indy: Thanks for your input, and congratulations on the new addition to your family! I rejoice with you. You wrote: "The essence of obedience is doing what we don't want to do." In a certain sense, I can see your point. Faithful obedience, in my view, is indeed wanting to yield to God's will, even at great personal cost. It is the joyful acknowledgement that God knows best and works all things together for my good. That is the truth of the matter; whether my own thoughts consistently correspond to thet turth is another issue entirely... You also wrote: 'Given the Bible's emphasis on Jesus' obedience, perhaps we can conclude that Jesus (fully human and fully God) and the Father (fully God) had "differences of opinion" arising from Jesus' humanity that would never escalate to the level of dispute or outright rebellion.' When the early church was wrestling with these issues and eventually came up with the Chalcedonian Definition in 451 (http://www.reformed.org/documents/chalcedon.html), the way they saw the resolution to this problem is what while the human nature of Christ and His divine nature were in perfect union, they remained distinct. In other words, there is no mixture of the two natures. Some theologians refer to this as a hypostatic union between the two natures in one Person. There is communication of information, however, from one nature to the other. Jesus displayed His knowledge of some things that only God could know, and asserted His ignorance of other things. We are treading on holy ground when we talk about this, but Jesus' human nature was not omniscient, while His divine nature always has been so. His true humanity lends a very unique variable to the equation, one that God is His sovereignty has not condescended to explain fully to us. --Joe! |
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2 | Not my will, but Yours be done... | Luke 22:42 | stjones | 70738 | ||
Hi, Joe; Thanks. Combining your comments with what I said earlier, I had another thought. This isn't theology; it's just a human trying to get his mind around Christmas. In the beginning, the Triune God was what he was - three persons in one in perfect harmony. Then God created humanity. Creation was a one-way act; God was still God but humans were something new. He lost nothing of himself by imbuing us with his spiritual nature. Then the first Christmas came and Jesus "stepped over the stars to Bethlehem and Jerusalem." Is not Jesus changed forever by becoming fully human? Are not the other two, God the Father and the Holy Spirit, changed as well? What love! The Creator has traversed creation in the opposite direction. He has incorporated his creation into himself. As a Christian, I think of God bestowing a part of his own nature on humanity. As a woodworker and computer geek, I think of "putting myself" into my work, making it uniquely my own. Now I realize that when I complete a project, it also becomes part of me - lessons learned, satisfaction received, the experience of creating. Before Creation, before there was any matter, God was infinite spirit. But now God has a finite, nail-scarred body. God entered time and space as a baby. He returned bodily to Heaven, bringing time and space with him. And by that act, he brings us, creatures of time and space, with him. "Praise Him in the heavens. Praise him in the stable. Praise Him in my heart." Peace and grace Steve aka Indiana Jones (quotes from Joseph Bayley's "Psalms of My Life", "A Psalm for Christmas Eve") |
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