When we consider that Jesus laid aside some of His physical characteristics and rights for a time to take on flesh, which is astounding in itself, we should also consider that the Son, demonstrating total surrender to the Father, accepted a limitation of “operating knowledge” that was, day to day, similar to our own. This post is going to be a circuitous journey, but we will meet Jesus along the way and behold Him in different lights. Our desire here is to completely honor the condescension of the Son, and to see that in everything, Jesus was perfectly surrendered to the will of the Father.
The Godhead, (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—“the Trinity”), we understand to be Omniscient (all-knowing), Omnipotent (all-powerful), Omnipresent (everywhere at once), and All-Loving. These are qualities that are unchanging and inherent in our God. As part of the Godhead, Jesus, the Son, operates within these attributes throughout eternity. There is no doubt about Jesus operating in full omniscience and omnipotence in eternity before the incarnation, and there is no doubt that Jesus has done so ever since the resurrection. But what about the time in between, when He dwelt with man in human flesh?
I suggest that during that time Jesus never used His supernatural powers, including omniscience, of His own accord. Jesus seems to have voluntarily laid aside unlimited access to perfect knowledge as well as absolute power during His earthly ministry, to say nothing of omnipresence. Jesus’s surrender to the Father is so complete that He relied on the Father to spoon-feed however much or little information the Father willed, and it appears that Jesus often worked within a limited knowledge set when he was interacting with the Father, or with people around Him.
As an example of this, let’s examine a particular instance of prayer. Before choosing the disciples, Jesus prayed through the night. “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles…” Luke 6:12-13. NIV 1984. This is a rare occurrence in the accounts given in the gospels, where Jesus goes off to pray all night. (Another instance is right before the crucifixion, in the Garden of Gethsemane). Even though the content of Jesus’s prayer is not recorded, I will make the suggestion here that at least for some of the time, Jesus was discussing with the Father whom He should choose. I wonder if there was even some extended discussion about Judas, who would eventually betray Him?
From the text, we don’t even know that Jesus discussed the choosing of the disciples that night at all. He could have been talking about the weather, shooting the breeze with the Father, or talking sports, like we do oftentimes. But I think not. The narrative is set up to show a connection between the all night prayer, the importance of the choice the next day, and the beginning of a new era of discipleship.
If Jesus always functioned in full omniscience, though, why would He even consult with the Father about it for any length of time, let alone all night? He would already know what the Father wanted from every moment on earth–why go off and spend all night praying to the Father about something so finite as choosing twelve disciples? But there were times like this one where the Father led Jesus to seek a solitary and quiet place for unhindered fellowship. God places great value on Fellowship, not only within the Godhead, but also between Himself and every person. (And I wanted to start with this example for this very reason: we should never forget, with all this emphasis on “Surrender,” that God created us for fellowship with Him).
In and of itself, this instance doesn’t prove Jesus laid aside anything, except for time and sleep, but it does show a dependence on the Father, and the worth He attributed to long, focused, and uninterrupted conversation with Him. In one sense, the Father and Son never really experienced “interrupted” or “hindered” fellowship, except when the Father heaped the rotten monstrosity of the sin of all mankind onto the Son on the cross, which I delved into in the previous post. What Did Jesus DO? “WDJD” – PART 2 . But there was something about “getting away” to a quiet spot for more intense conversation that was necessary for Jesus.
If Jesus was operating constantly in omniscience, what more, really, was He getting when He went off to pray, than He was already getting millisecond by millisecond in constant community with the Father and Spirit? What need was there to speak with the Father “in private” that was not already filled moment by moment in unbroken omniscient consciousness?
The short answer to why Jesus would go off to pray is: that He was led by the Father to do so. This is the short answer for this entire chapter. Jesus didn’t “need” an answer or time alone in the same way that we feel that we need them. His only “need,” if you can call it that, was to do the exact will of the Father. Remember Psalm 23, when David said, “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters.” This is the level of surrender in the Son, that He was led in everything by the Father, down to the level of when to lie down, when to get up, and where to go.
Jesus did not do anything, go anywhere, or speak any words without the commission of the Father. It was exactly this constant submission that the Devil tempted Jesus to break. If he could just get Jesus to do something of His own accord, without consulting the Father, (even if it were a “good” thing, like making rocks into bread), then Jesus would be disqualified as the Savior, and His streak of perfect obedience would be broken.
You see, Jesus was not just obedient to the principles and general commands of the Father, but He was obedient down to the submission of every thought, and He deferred to the Father in everything… EVERY thing, EVERYTHING!!! Every moment. We are called to this kind of obedience to the Lord, by the way, though it is impossible for us to maintain… (See 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”) NIV 1984, italics mine.
We see this voluntary relinquishment of power and the submission of will when Judas comes with the Roman soldiers to take Jesus into custody, and Jesus’s companions draw their swords. Peter cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest. “‘Put your sword back in its place,’ Jesus said to him, ‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?'” Matthew 26:52-54. NIV 1984. In addition, recorded in John 18:11, “Jesus commanded Peter, ‘Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?'” NIV 1984.
Jesus constantly points back to the will of the Father to explain what He does. He says He could call to the Father, and twelve legions of angels would be rushed to His side, to be put at His disposal. Even here, we see an astounding submission to the Father. Why call to the Father, and then the Father send angels? Doesn’t this seem needlessly inefficient? With a single word from Jesus, at a future moment, and with the Father’s order, the Devil will be overthrown.
Why this workaround, when facing puny men? Jesus is God Himself… why mention going to the Father and have angels do something, instead of waving his finger and doing it immediately and with absolute power? Jesus was careful in every instance to submit to the Father, and did not consider any decision or thought to be His own to act upon without the Father’s command.
Even if Jesus had called, and the Father sent the angels, and Jesus had them at His disposal, it is guaranteed that Jesus would not employ them, apart from the Father’s will. The Son, by role definition, cannot act without the Father. It merely appears that He did a lot of things without consulting the Father, simply because we don’t see a pause in Jesus’s response time. We know that it would take us some time to ask God, and so we assume, as we read the accounts of what Jesus did, that there wasn’t enough time for Jesus to get feedback from the Father.
We have been given a glimpse of some “behind the scenes” interaction in the Godhead, right before Jesus calls the dead man, Lazarus, out of the tomb, that indicates otherwise.
“So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.'” John 11:41-43. ESV. Jesus had already prayed, in stream of consciousness, to the Father about Lazarus, and the Father had made known to Him what to do and say, and how. Jesus relates, out loud, some of what He had been praying to the Father, and gives evidence of a constant, holy conversation.
There is a remarkable account of this constant conversation within the Godhead, recorded in the gospel of Luke, when the will of the Son and the will of the Father appear to diverge.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus took Peter, James, and John with Him, and then went a short distance away (“a stone’s throw” according to Luke 22:41. ESV) and knelt and fell on his face to pray: “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Mark 14:36. ESV. He went to check on the three disciples and wakened them to pray, then He came back to the Father, and asked again… “And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.” (Mark 14:39, ESV).
In Matthew 26:39, one of the ways that Jesus expressed Himself was in the form of a question: “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.'” ESV. By asking the question, Jesus demonstrates that He is operating from within a self-accepted limitation in knowledge. The Alpha and Omega was only able to ask such a thing, (if indeed it was a legitimate question, and not a rhetorical one), from a restricted vantage point.
The Son actually called attention to the fact that He desired that another provision of grace be made, instead of the one the Father was calling Him toward. He made a distinction between the will of the Father and the will of the Son. “…NOT as I will, but as You will.” REMARKABLE!!!
Does this strike you, as it does me, to be a singular and near-unbelievable condition? It seems inconceivable that there would be even a hint of a question at this point in time about what to do, especially since it was foretold that the Son would suffer and die as the sacrificial lamb, and Jesus Himself spoke of it to His disciples on numerous occasions, including just hours before this moment in Gethsemane!
If, instead, Jesus was operating within constant and infinite knowledge, then this question is more akin to acting, or posturing. It is not a real request. He would have been asking a question to which He already knew the unchangeable answer. So why waste any effort or time asking questions, when the answer is fully known?
Perhaps He is modeling here, only? I suppose this is possible. If this is the case, Jesus makes a show of going off to pray, to model for us how we should deal with difficult decisions. He then demonstrates, through His questioning of the Father, how we can ask God to do something different than the expected answer.
Even if He is only modeling here, as could be asserted, what are we to learn from this model? I would say that what speaks louder than anything else here is still submission to the Father. In another word: Surrender. And it is BEAUTIFUL, no matter what anyone can say, otherwise, about it!
I don’t believe the Son was only modeling behavior, or being dramatic, for the sake of a good story, or to present a good example.
This is one of those moments where it is easy for us to see the humanity of Jesus, as He engages the Father, and the inspiration to us in this moment is that we, like Jesus, can surrender our flesh to His will, though our bodies may want to run in a completely different direction. There must be something about a brain of flesh that desires to protect itself, if it is thinking properly, in order to value the sanctity of life, and God’s Holy Breath. Otherwise, the Father would have been offended by the very question that the cup be taken from the Son, Jesus would have sinned in asking it, and the enemy would have exulted in the disqualification of the Savior.
So we see that the Son constantly surrenders to and accepts the limitation of the Father, and only operates within the mechanics of the flesh, (though empowered by the Spirit), and the boundaries of revelation given by the Father. There are times when Jesus obviously demonstrated supernatural knowledge, as we would expect. It is logical to ask, “How could the infinite Son not operate in infinite knowledge, constantly?” In fact, it is irrational to assume that God the Son would operate in anything but infinite knowledge. As a response, I would like to point out a couple of very startling instances of our infinite God choosing to limit His grasp of infinite knowledge.
Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32 are identical in asserting that there is something of a secret about the timing of the Second Coming within the Godhead (which, again, is mind-boggling): Jesus said, in referring to the timing of His own second coming, that “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” NIV 1984. Here, at least, is some information that the Son is not privy to.
Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” NIV 1984. But to conceal a matter within the Godhead!?! This is beyond my understanding. Somehow, God’s glory is even greater and more beautiful in that there is a bit of a surprise within Himself! The Son is waiting, even now, for the time to be revealed when the Father says “NOW!!!” “GO!!!”
I am getting goosebumps writing this. Can you feel some of that excitement that is pent up and carefully managed within the Godhead, where the Son and the Spirit are willingly ignorant of the time of the wedding, when the Son as Groom comes for the Church, His Bride?
I know something of this excitement from personal experience. As tradition suggested, I did not see my bride’s wedding dress, nor her in her wedding dress, until our wedding day. And furthermore, my eyes did not see her on that day until that moment when the organ music swelled, and Purcell’s “Trumpet Voluntary” began to play, and the double doors in the back of the Church were opened, and she was there standing in a glorious white dress, with her arm under her father’s arm! And she was radiant in her love for me, and our eyes were on one another finally as Bride and Groom.
The experience was surreal and one of the most powerful visions I have ever seen, made completely sublime by the fact that I had waited my whole life to see and know my bride the way that she was revealed to me in that moment and known by me that day. My breath was taken away at the sight, and I could not have been more thrilled in the moment!
And so I cry at weddings, even if I don’t know who it is that is getting married, because my heart is taken back to the day it was covenanted to my wife, and the day when she surrendered herself to me, and I surrendered to her. And more and more, as age and experience of the Lord gain advantage within me, I feel a building excitement at the thought of THE WEDDING of the ages, and what that moment will be like for the Savior of the World when He comes for His dearly purchased Bride, made completely sublime by the fact that the Groom has waited for the one single solitary right moment in all of eternity for the Father to open the doors to the completed Bride, assembled together and presented for the first time to the Groom, awash in the reflected radiance of the Shining One, surrendered to Him and full of love for Him.
And so the Son waits for the moment the Father will reveal, willingly “in the dark” about the exact time, in increasing anticipation and in a constant state of readiness to do the Father’s bidding in the instant the Father commands.
I suggest to you that He is right now continuing in eternity the surrendered way that He lived among us—active in the will of the Father and constantly ready to do the Father’s bidding in the instant the Father commands. (May God reveal in us, the chosen ones, how we are to be like the Son in this respect, and may He grow in us an increasing sense of His purpose and activity and will in our moments, despite our desires and the tendency of our own wills to deviate)!
This shows an ongoing instance of voluntary relinquishment of eternal fact, presumably for the enhancement of Glory and Joy within the Godhead. We should be glad that God is willing, in this same manner, to suspend access or reference to certain knowledge, because He actually promises to do this very thing over something else that is very significant in eternity future. God Forgets?