Was Jesus Fully Divine, or Did He Just Understand How To Live Under The Influence of The Holy Spirit Better Than We Do?
This may not be a very long post (or I may get long winded again), I just want to flesh out a thought that I have had numerous times over the last few years.
As Christians, we recognize that Jesus is the second person in the triune Godhead, and that He is God's son, and God. Unbelievers, Jews and Muslims all have a hard time grasping this belief. Unbelievers tend to struggle with the idea of three persons in one, and Jews and Muslims bristle at the thought of there being more than one persona of God.
Regarding the unbelievers, their confusion is not difficult for believers to understand, especially in light of Scripture that tells us that the Spirit must illuminate truth to us in order for us to believe, as we read in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." And we know that Jews and Muslims argue against the triune God using, at least in part, Deuteronomy 6:4 which reads, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!" Muslims do not typically use the Bible as their source, but they do recognize the veracity of the Old Testament and will use their understanding of it to argue support of Islamic tenets of faith, especially to Jews and Christians. It is actually very interesting talking about the Bible with a Muslim, though I have had the opportunity to do so to any depth only one time, but what a memorable talk.
What I wish the Jews and Muslims would recognize is that when Jesus' coming is prophesied in Isaiah 9:6-7, Jesus is proclaimed as being God. Let's read it; "For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness. From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this." Now look specifically at verse six. Notice that the child that is to be born, on whose shoulders the government will rest, is called "Mighty God" and "Everlasting Father". The words of the prophet Isaiah tell us that Jesus is God, yet the Jewish people fail to recognize this, to their own shame.
But why do I lay all of this out for you? Well, here is the thought that I have had come into my head several times, and I don't know that I have an answer to it; Was Jesus fully divine throughout His entire earthly existence which is why He lived the perfect life and performed miracles, or was it just that He fully understood how to live under the leading and power of the Holy Spirit, which enabled Him to live and act as He did?
I don't think I will spend much, if any time on arguing that Jesus was divine, because that is the default belief of anybody who loves and follows Him. What I want to focus on are the arguments that it is possible that He just understood how to fully live under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
So let's start at His childhood. We don't know a lot about Jesus' early years. We know that His birth was prophesied and accomplished by ways and means that set it apart from many other births through most of the details of it individually, but taken all together along with the supernatural aspects of His birth, He was truly set apart from everyone else. But as a baby, I can't see how anybody could necessarily see how He could be different from other babies unless He never threw a tantrum as many babies are known to do from time to time. I hate the carol "Away in a Manger" because I think it is poorly written in several places, but in particular, I hate the line that states "No crying He makes". Of course Jesus cried as a baby. That is the only way that a baby has to communicate that he is hungry or tired or needs to be changed. Unless you want to believe that Jesus had full dexterity of His tongue and a full understanding of language from birth, logically, Jesus had to cry. And crying is not a sin, so doing so does not taint His sinless state.
Then we move onto the doctrine of the "age of accountability". For those who may not be familiar with this doctrine, there is a belief, which I hold to, that a child will not be held accountable by God for his or her actions before a certain point of self-discernment is reached. This is referred to as an age, but every child is different, so there really is not a set age at which a child will reach this point, but eventually, every child reaches a point at which they understand what is right and what is wrong, and that choosing the wrong will have consequences, thus they are henceforth accountable for their actions and decisions. Some people think this is typically in early adolescence, but I tend to think that it comes a little sooner than that. So based on the doctrine of the age of accountability, was Jesus any different than any other child up to, let's say, age five or six? If He had a toy stolen from Him by another child, did He strike out in anger, or did He just quietly allow it and grab a different toy?
We really have no idea of Jesus' younger years except for a small section in Luke 2 after we read about Jesus being presented in the Temple when He was eight days old. What we then read in verse 40 is that, "The Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him." That's it. We are told that "the grace of God was upon Him", but what does that mean? Did He act differently than other boys, or was He merely blessed in all that He did more than other boys? All we can do is speculate, and that's all we know about Jesus' youth until we see Him go to Jerusalem with His parents when He is twelve years old.
It is at this time, in Luke 2:41-52, that we read how Jesus sat in the Temple and talked with the teachers, amazing them with His questions, His answers and His understanding. So we have to assume that by age twelve, Jesus was acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit to a significant degree. Here was a twelve year old Jewish boy who was astounding the elder teachers of the Law and the Prophets with not only His questions to them, which must have displayed an uncanny grasp of the writings for such a young man, but also His answers to them, either answers to their queries or His own. We don't know if Jesus was asking questions of them to learn from them for Himself, or if His questions were such to challenge the teachers in their own understanding of the writings; possibly even to open their eyes to the truth of His own coming, but regardless of the case, we know that He amazed the teachers with His knowledge.
And then I find it revealing in verse 51 where it is mentioned that Jesus "continued in subjection to" Mary and Joseph, as any twelve year old should, yet it is specifically mentioned here. Is this to signify that Jesus was an especially obedient young man, or simply that, even though He was God come to earth, He still observed and respected His parents' authority over Him as a child? We do know that Joseph was a carpenter by trade and that Jesus Himself also learned the trade, since Jesus is, at times, referred to as a carpenter as well. So we know that Jesus acted as a typical young Jewish man in this way. And then we read in verse 52, "And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.", which is also an indication that He lived at least as was expected of any young Jewish man. This is the last that we hear of Jesus until He appears on the scene with John the Baptist at His baptism, which we understand happened about 18 years later, when He is 30 years old.
This is the beginning of Jesus' ministry to the world, as it were. It is after Jesus' baptism that we see Him calling His disciples (John 1) and performing His first public miracle (John 2). I specify that it is Jesus' first public miracle simply because we do not know if He acted supernaturally in any way among His family members at home or not. But it is His baptism that I want to focus on now.
First, we must keep in mind that while the Holy Spirit worked in and through people in the Old Testament, we read over and over again how the Holy Spirit "came upon" them just prior to their words or great feats, from which we can imply that the Spirit did not stay with these people all of the time. Some examples of this are the first time we read of this in Exodus 31, where we read that God filled Bezalel in order that the works of the Tabernacle be completed according to God's design, then we also read that the Spirit came upon Othniel in Judges 3, Gideon in Judges 6, Samson, Samuel and David, along with many others.
We also know that after Jesus ascended to Heaven in the sight of His apostles, the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles when they were locked in the upper room in seclusion on the Day of Pentecost, and we are told that this will be the case for all who receive Jesus as their Saviour, in order that the Spirit "will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you" (John 14), guide us (John 16) and intercede for us (Romans 8) among many other things. This is a permanent abiding of the Holy Spirit in man. So what happened in between these things? The Holy Spirit came upon Jesus, to remain with Him, first. We see this as Jesus comes out of the water after His baptism in Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10-11 and Luke 3:22, where the Spirit alights on Jesus in the form of a dove, and we see Jesus begin to work His miracles and beginning to preach and teach after that.
This is where the bulk of our knowledge about Jesus begins to be revealed to us. It is His ministry to His own disciples and the people in general that is presented to us in the gospels and this is where we see that He is kind and caring, generous and loving, as well as harsh to those who disobey and challenging to those who He knows (through supernatural knowledge) are corrupt as religious leaders.
So this brings me back to my main premise; if we see these main attributes of Jesus only after His baptism and the infilling of the Holy Spirit, was He truly divine throughout His lifetime or did His divinity only blossom at His baptism?
This is the first time that I am really exploring this concept for myself, and as I look over what I have read so far, I think this may not be an either/or situation, but rather a both/and situation. There is no denying that Jesus started acting under the power of the Holy Spirit through the working of miracles only after His baptism, but given how Scripture portrays Him, as little as it does, through His childhood and adolescence, I think we can safely assume that even before His baptism, Jesus acted at least somewhat differently from other young men around Him. In many of the things that Scripture tells us we can only infer that Jesus was, at least very mature and responsible for His age, but I think that we can see that even by the time He was twelve years old, there was more to this young man than what one might find in other young men, and that was most was likely supplied by the actions of the Holy Spirit working in and through Jesus.
Perhaps this was due to the Spirit "coming upon" Jesus temporarily just prior to His sitting with the teachers in the Temple, since we can infer that the Spirit did not actually dwell upon Jesus permanently prior to His baptism, but we should also consider that Jesus may have had an understanding of Heaven and Heavenly things that He may have carried with Him into this life, even as a child.
The one thing that pokes a hole in this latter theory is a verse that I came across when my pastor recently referred to it in one of his messages, that verse being found in Philippians 2:5-7, in particular verse seven, "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men." Bible notes point to the phrase "emptied Himself" to mean that He gave up His privileges that He held while still in Heaven. But does this mean that He gave up all Heavenly knowledge when He came to earth? Maybe we see a clue to that in the next verse. Philippians 2:8 states, "Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.". So was the appearance as a man merely physical, or was there also a spiritual aspect to this? I'm afraid that we may never know this to its full extent until we see Him face-to-face and we can ask Him ourselves.
So I guess I haven't been able to answer my own query. But I would like to take these last few sentences to challenge everybody to consider the possibility that the reason that Jesus was able to live a blameless, sinless life in which He was able to heal and even revive others is that He was in close communion with the Holy Spirit at all times, and not necessarily due to His divinity. Now, anybody reading this has already lived too long to be able to claim to live a sinless life; "For all have sinned...", but what if we are able to attain towards sinless life and miraculous works if we can only learn to lean more heavily on the Holy Spirit in all aspects of our lives? I have heard stories of miraculous healings through the prayers of righteous followers of Jesus; that is not only relegated to the past of the New Testament, so how is it that these healings can still take place? Are those people who are able to pray these healings into existence on a deeper plane with the Holy Spirit than those who cannot? Maybe it is just that their gifts of the Spirit are such that the healings are allowed to take place due to the walking out of their gifts in faith. The same goes for prophecy. Are modern day prophets more endowed with the Holy Spirit than others are, or is it simply the outworking of their spiritual gifts? I really don't have an answer for these questions. But what a thought, that we could be as effective as the apostles if we can learn to walk according to the Spirit in the same way that the apostles and Jesus Himself did!
If this article has planted some food for thought in your mind, please let me know in the comments section below.
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